First Beige: Doplar | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- What exactly is a Doplar? Is it a magical monster, taking the form of something familiar, but hiding another thing, completely different, beneath the skin? Is it the uncanny oddity of sound transforming as it flies by at speed? Is it any of these things at all? Last time I checked that’s not quite how you spell the word I’m looking for and … I have no idea what the one that titles the debut album by First Beige means. However it does, at least, offer a handy metaphor for the way these dance chameleons operate.

The Meanjin / Brisbane six piece are, more than a lot of bands, in a process of metamorphosis. Building from the original bedroom-psych project of David Versace, adding members over the years and hopping from one sound into another as the fancy took them. Beginning around 2015-16 as a self-described Tame Impala ripoff, FB moved on into urban-inflected jazz sounds. In recent years it's like they never really abandoned any of that? Instead through the mind meld of endless jam sessions the whole lot simply became more dynamic, faster, sleeker. So like our little magical monster, what you once saw is still here, but while you weren’t looking it's been rearranged into something else entirely.

It’s like there’s a contradiction at the core of First Beige. They talk about being a nearly pure jam-band: not taking on board overt influences, or really making conscious decisions about where they’re going. They just let the vamp take them there. At the same time they literally have an intellectual vault of their favourite funky ideas that they’re always dipping into, flinging new riffs into the improv process for a good spit’n’polish. Given half a chance they will also gush about how inspired they are by their favourite artists -like Floating Points or Harvey Sutherland- so I guess, whatever. I might be being too picky, but at least the idea of an inconsistency at the heart of the band also offers a neat angle into the ephemeral sound of Doplar. It’s like First Beige are explicitly obsessed with house, but…this largely isn’t house. It’s funky and it’s dance, but also, really, it’s not disco; not really. It’s too funky for krautrock, there’s no motorik beat, but at the same time it’s kosmische as ****; we’ll just put that on top of the pile of mysterious and mystical things going on here.

First Beige really do like to jam and, after getting out their EP, Mirrors, just ahead of the pandemic, they set their eyes on a regular improv night at local joint La La Land. Of course lockdown, even Queensland’s lockdown-lite, largely put paid to that idea. Did that stop them? Definitely not. Instead they retreated to their abodes and in brisk fashion, picked up where they left off with Mirrors and jammed (and recorded and mixed) everything into the even more extremely smooth and streamlined sound of Doplar.

Apparently lyrics are always the last cab off the rank in the First Beige songwriting process. In the same way as you might slap a decal saying ‘sport’ on the side of a roadster, on this record the words are like an emblem for the languid, philosophical, sentimental and always slightly mystical sound of the music. They’re also kind of didactic: handing out lessons of the spirit to some unnamed other. Take “searching, searching for your lifeline / Hoping that you’ll be fine, whatcha gonna do with that?” or “To keep it real is a different kind of mind / To know yourself when you're on the line / To know yourself you can't only look behind." It’s funny, making music like this seems to lend itself to these kinds of contemplations: I can’t help but think of the Zen meditations of fellow funky Aussies Mildlife every time I put on Doplar.

If I was going to have a gripe with Doplar it would be that First Beige come a little too close to living up to that name. By now they’re so efficient at the really smooth thing they do, that it’s possible to get lost in it and maybe they get a bit lost in it too; every element blending into one. I sometimes start listening to one song, then realise I’ve started listening to another without actually being aware of it. The vamp is, per the name, seductive and mesmerising, so beware.

They might be lost in sound or in philosophical contemplation,but First Beige are still very active promulgators of the groove. Premiering singles on US tastemakers KCRW and planning wide-ranging tours of Europe (a place which, from what I remember, would be gagging for stuff like this). The band like nothing better than letting it rip on stage and will be only too happy to provide. I’m still not quite clear what the album title means, but First Beige have an uncanny funk, one that will very likely be Doplar-ing across the planet everywhere.

- Chris Cobcroft.