It's another list of our favourite things to hit the 4ZZZ Library. If you see anything you like you can request it:requests@4zzz.org.au

You can also SMS a request: 0416 281 220

Or call: 07 3252 1555

Thanks to Krishan Meepe, Nick Rodwell and Adrian Marsh for their contributions to this list.

Australian:

Anna O: When The Winter Came (Indie)
- Anna O claims to be influenced by Kimbra and James Blake, which is unerringly apt. Her moody, r’n’b tinged pop has a dark, mid-tempo to downbeat electronic backing. I don’t know who’s doing the beats and production here, but they’re a frickin’ pro. This is entertaining. (Chris Cobcroft)

Dear Plastic: Everything’s Coming Up Roses - EP (Indie)
- Melbourne’s Dear Plastic do triphop with a brutal, suffocating quality. Like Bjork or PJ Harvey when they become more intense than anyone can handle. I think, at album length, they’re going to want to find some other moods. There’s some here, already. Title track, Everything’s Coming Up Roses has a go at mixing in some jazz croon, starting out a bit Sarah Vaughan, before getting back to a Bjorky shriek; that’s a pretty impressive track. This could be great, it...just needs to be pushed, so subtly, in the right direction. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ernest Ellis: Inside Outside (Single) (Spunk)
- Another subtle change of tack for EE. The synthesiser give his leathery alt-rock and country charm a loungey quality. He throws in some sax licks just to make it completely obvious, all swimming in a little pool of echoes. With the possible exception of Dan Bejar’s Destroyer, he continues to be, never quite like anyone else. (Chris Cobcroft)

Gang Of Youths: Riverlands (Single) (Sony)
- The last time I heard Gang Of Youths they were doing boring indie-pop. Riverlands couldn’t be more different. Slow, lo-fi and shadowy gospel, driven by deep piano chords and nearly lost in rumbling brass and mournful echoes. Fans of King Krule, Tom Waits, Perfume Genius or Gil Scott Heron’s last work will find much to like. Great. (Chris Cobcroft)

HTRK: Blue Sunshine (Single) (Mistletone / Inertia)
- The HTRK sound is always hard to pin down but this latest single is smoother than usual, probably. The darkness is still there along with some glitchy drums and dub effects, this song put me in a weird headspace. While it's pretty minimal, washes of ambient sounds and noise are all that accompany the breathy, barely sung vocal. Like if Beth Gibbons was the only important part of Portishead. (Krishan Meepe)

Lowlakes: Iceberg Nerves (Kunsthaus / Cargo)
- I’m not sure they even have any lakes to speak of, where Lowlakes originally hail from, that being Alice Springs. Lowlakes music, too, is out of place, with a cold, even frozen quality to its synth-pop. The EDM beats are of varying vintages, from 90’s triphop to 80’s new wave, but equally good. Tom Snowdon’s voice is also a significant asset; with a distinctly deep but feminine quality, he sometimes sounds a bit like Antony Hegarty or even Tracey Thorn. Chilling and charming and extremely accomplished. (Chris Cobcroft)

I Know Leopard: Hold This Tight (Single) (Indie)
- The synth inflected indie-pop-rock of this Sydney band mixes in an 80’s twist and tops it off with some thick production layering for a powerful bit of pop. There’s lots of things going on here that, if you pushed them slightly in the wrong direction, could be pretty generic. This single however, is stylish and knows it. (Chris Cobcroft)

KLP: Decide (Single) (Indie)
- The fairly standard edm-pop of this single might make you think of a generic Australian chart-climber from the ‘90s. There’s something, however, especially in the vocals that reminds me of Rat Vs Possum’s dancier sounds or (kyu successor outfit) Gnome and that’s gotta be good. (Chris Cobcroft)

Miles Brown: Electrics (Single) (IT records)
- Couple of new wave cuts with authentically crappy ‘80s production, given an especially gothic feel by Miles’ dark and rumbling baritone. (Chris Cobcroft)

Oscar Key Sung: Holograms (Single) (Two Bright Lakes / Warner)
- Another smooth future soul offering from the Melbourne producer/singer. Looking forward to a full length release. (Krishan Meepe)

Saint Tropez All Day: Saint Tropez All Day (Single) (Indie)
- Aiming for a bit of Prince and David Byrne or maybe more local heroes like Client Liaison and Donny Benet, STAD make ‘80s electro-funk-pop that may be a little twee, but certainly is quite damn pumping. (Chris Cobcroft)

SANS: Bluebird (Single) (Indie)
- This girl-fronted, Melbourne indie-pop band are ably aided by KM Heidke and Washington producer Ben McCarthy behind the boards and on bass. What really sets them apart is the thumping pace they take this advance single at. There’s also a tasteful touch of 60’s girl-group style here. Looking forward to an EP in April. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Stiffys: Boogie Boarding (Single) (Indie)
I haven't previously been a fan of the 'erection rockers' but hey, a drum and fuzz bass duo have to put out a good song eventually. Every word in this song is either boogie or boarding and the bridge gets slow and ballad-esque with a full horn section. If you're not excited yet you probably don't like having fun or an erection. It's like if Death From Above 1979 were Australian and drunk their whole career. (Krishan Meepe)

San Lazaro: Serendipity - EP (Hopestreet)
- Five cuts of all sorts of things, from salsa to funk to reggae, only united by sounding very Latin. Extremely well done; might lack some of the cross-over potential of a band like Ozomatli, but there’s not much to separate them in terms of production sound or skill (on record - haven’t heard them live, which for music like this would be a big thing). Unexpected and impressive. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Two Dark Eyes: Sleepless (Single) (A&R Department)
- This Sydney band combine nasty blues rock with lurid synths, grimly lo-fi production and a dark Australiana. Without being exactly the same, this reminds me of the sweat drenched villainy of Lost Animal. I hope they’ve got more that sounds as good as this. (Chris Cobcroft)

WAZA: Love Is A Battlefield (Indie)
Warren Abela AKA WAZA is Sydney-based producer, he has just released his latest labour of love... Love Is a Battlefield.It's a beat tape witht he same kind of shtick that Action Bronson is developing a rep for rapping over, light hearted samples with electronic beats dropped behind. As instrumentals, It's fun but largely forgetable. (Nick Rodwell)

Vinnie LaDuce: Irene (Single) (Indie)
- Vinnie is a mysterious dude who’s famous for doing other things. Here he’s doing electro-reggae, almost on a bass music tip, that is pretty fricking stylish. Seriously, if he makes much more like this he should give away whatever else he’s doing. (Chris Cobcroft)

Violet Swells: Jupiter's Garden (Single) (Indie)
- Violet Swells reckon their influences are Brian Wilson and Pink Floyd. Maybe if you bring the two together it sounds like this, but I reckon VS sound like the Beatles at their most heavily psych. Whatever, it’s a pretty impressive recreation of psych-rock-pop at its most intricately tricked out. (Chris Cobcroft)

Local:

Ape Farm: Alphabets (Single) (Indie)
- New single from the post-hardcore band. It’s pretty bloody great, with mathcore precision, an arty appeal and moments that are reminiscent of ATDI. Since that’s kind of the holy grail of the style, I don’t think there’s too much more you can ask for. (Chris Cobcroft)

Astrid And The Asteroids: Astrid And The Asteroids EP (Indie)
- Astrid And The Asteroids might be no more (who will tell West End how crap it is now!?), but they’ve left us with this EP as a parting gift, including their cultishly huge singles Autopsy and, of course, West End. It also features slinky jazz stylings, downbeat / nu-jazz kinda stuff and diva action that would stand up well against the likes of Katie Noonan. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ayla: Wish I Was (Single) (A&R Department)
- Credit where it’s due, this indie-pop-rock with a deeply voiced vocalist who might sound a bit like Adele, is hot enough to blow the hell up. Don’t often hear something like this coming off the Sunny Coast. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Good Ship: Sea Monster (Single) (Autumn Recordings / Stompbox)
- The Good Ship continue their folk-rock / gypsy / country comedy routine. Particularly on the b-side, Misunderstood, the strong country flavour makes this seem like Wagons (sans the baritone) and that’s got to be good. (Chris Cobcroft)

Heavy Roller: Heavy Roller (Single) (Indie)
- Heavy metal and stoner together, a little bit Sabbath, a little bit Motorhead, a little bit Kyuss; all good. (Chris Cobcroft)

HITS: Jesus F Christ (Single) (Conquest Of Noise)
- Loud, fuzzy, fast and messy alt. rock. Just the way god intended. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Ninjas: Kill 'Em All (Single) (Indie)
- Retro-pop shares space with loud and grungy guitar, things get predictably Jay Reatard-esque and that’s just fine. (Chris Cobcroft)

Phil Smith: Year Of The Dog (Indie)
- There’s a hangdog modesty to Phil Smith’s style that might make you think this is...somehow less than it is. His mournful Americana moseys along, a lost character, walking slowly but steadily through the dust. It might not impose itself on you, but if you pay attention, around the acoustic strumming there are subtle licks of banjo, mandolin, piano, steel guitar and fiddle, fine production and - the key ingredient - classic songwriting by a bloke who knows how to write. (Chris Cobcroft)

Pissed On: Pissed On (Indie)
- Remarkably strong and strongly uncompromising hardcore / grindcore. Brutal, fast, minute long songs that will blow your head apart. It’s a pleasure to hear this sort of thing done well. (Chris Cobcroft)

Quintessential Doll: Live Like I’m Dying (Single) (Indie)
- This twee synth-pop has a slow, epic build and a depth of orchestration which pushes on into post-rock. There’s actually a bit of precedent for that sort of thing, in the form of Mice Parade or Brisbane’s own Mr. Maps. This is both musically interesting, very well put together and with a pop sweetness that could cross-over. I hope to hear a lot more from Quintessential Doll. (Chris Cobcroft)

Scraps: Electric Ocean (Fire)
- The synth-chanteuse is truly conquering the world, now, signing to legendary British label Fire. Her latest collection of outsider pop gems sound more accomplished than ever, too. If you weren’t over this, time to get familiar. Everyone else will be very pleased to get exactly what they expected. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Strums: Rock 'n' Roll (Single) (Indie)
Its a hard-rockin' ode to rock 'n' roll with all the hollers and hoots and guitar solos that you'd expect, and want, out of the archetype. Brisbane boys respectin' the rock. (Nick Rodwell)

Tigermoth: Traversing Karma (Indie)
- More oldschool goodness from the, now, veteran, but still prolific instrumental hip-hopper (and guest rapper Stylemaster). Thickly layered, hypnotic samples with a focus on borrowings from Indian music and philosophical, mystical musings. (Chris Cobcroft)

Winter Of Reason: Monsters (Indie)
- Epic arrangements of folky, singer-songwriter tracks. Beautiful songs sung with a delicate lilt, backed up by finger picked guitars, strings and ambience. The tracks are long and winding but that's probably the way they should be. (Krishan Meepe)

New Zealand:

Neil Finn: Dizzy Heights (Lester Records)
- The always-on-the-go Neil Finn returns with his first solo record in twelve years. That’s a bit misleading actually: Pajama Club collaborating wife, Sharon and sons Liam and Elroy are all here. Only brother Tim sits on the bench this time round. Another collaborator, one with the most significant consequences for the sound of Dizzy Heights is producer David Fridmann. The same psychic medium who made hypnotic magic for Mercury Rev & The Flaming Lips helps turn Finn’s classic pop into completely head-bending stuff. Some of it’s a bit disco and ends up sounding a bit ELO, at other times it’s Bowie-esque art-pop. I reckon it could be even better if Finn had surrendered himself completely to the art-psych craziness, because a few tracks feel like MOR pretending to be psych. Still it’s hard to fault one of the great pop-songwriters, this is mostly pretty sweet. (Chris Cobcroft)

Overseas:

The Alvaret Ensemble: Skeylja (Denovali)
- Minimalist experimenters The Alvaret Ensemble teamed up with four Icelandic musicians and performed 9 shows completely improvised in an old church on a small island in northern Netherlands. Greg Haines took the recordings back to Berlin and mixed and edited them and this is the result. Spacious soundscapes of piano, brass, voice, electronics and percussion sometimes developing into crashing thick noise, other times trickling away into silence, at all times completely absorbing. (Adrian Marsh)

Bibio: Down To The Sound (Single) (Warp / Inertia)
- The enigmatic Bibio delivers another hard to define single with an immediate air of intrigue and an obvious fascination with texture and ambience. It never gets to a chorus though, and I really wanted it to. (Krishan Meepe)

Blue Daisy: Psychotic Love (Single) (37 / Pias / Mushroom)
- On this single, Blue Daisy’s Kwesi Darko starts out sounding like a mixture of Tricky’s husky menace and Gonjasufi’s fuzzy mess. As it builds to its appropriately unhinged peak this slowly erupting triphop banger reaches a level of intensity that is all its own. (Chris Cobcroft)

Co-Pilgrim: I Know Love/Grew Into Something New (Single) (Battle Worldwide Recordings)
- A strong Mamas & Papas vibe running through the lilting retro-pop of Co-Pilgrim, and some Don Henley too, courtesy of a Boys Of Summer cover on the b-side. All good. (Chris Cobcroft)

Drive-By Truckers: English Oceans (ATO / Pias / Mushroom)
- The long-serving alt-country / southern, roots-rock band keep on laying down the redemptive rocking music that you need along with a good slug of Jack, just to face down your life. (Chris Cobcroft)

Hydras Dream: The Little Match Girl (Denovali)
- Swedish duo consisting of film score composer Matti Bye and avant-garde singer-songwriter Anna Von Hausswolff have produced an album exploring the H.C. Andersen story 'The Little Match Girl’. A story about a girl suffering from hypothermia. The album switches between the dark and cold and the warm and melodic falling somewhere between experimental modern-classical and avant-garde dream-pop. An eclectic mix of tracks held together by story. (Adrian Marsh)

Jimi Goodwin: Oh! Whisky (Single) (Heavenly / Pias / Mushroom)
- Frontman of English indie band The Doves is embarking on a solo venture with this single. In fine form, Oh! Whisky showcases his songwriting talents with layers of guitars and pianos and a request of the divine entity known as whisky. Give me patience, truth, empathy but don't give me the blues is the request, one that will ring true with the lost and depressive variety. Fans of The Gin Club will enjoy this tune. (Krishan Meepe)

Kimono Kult: Hiding In The Light (Neurotic Yell)
- This is definitely one for the hardcore fans. John Frusciante, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Teri Gender Bender are all in on this supergroup and everything is as weird and wonderful as you would expect. I don't understand a word, I don't get the synths peppered through every track and I don't know why they decide to put guitar parts where they do. But my inner fanboy and I like every moment of it. Prepare yourself before you get into this one. (Krishan Meepe)

Kris Bowers: Forget-er Ft. Julia Easterlin (Single) (Concord Jazz)
- Some beautifully crafted contemporary jazz by up and coming pianist, Kris Bowers. Amongst his resume you can find tours with Marcus Miller, Aretha Franklin and a spot on the Kanye/Jay-Z collaboration album, Watch The Throne. This piece is just tastefully minimal cool jazz played to some looping vocal melodies courtesy of Julia Easterlin. Play it all day without realising. (Krishan Meepe)

Liz Green: Where The River Don’t Flow (Single) (Pias / Mushroom)
- Gee, Liz Green follows her own muse, or maybe Annette Hanshaw’s. Liz Green’s ol-timeiness is stuck firmly in the 1920s here, complete with tuba, double-bass and pian-ee. It could be that I watch too much Boardwalk Empire, but there’s an effete moral decadence to this kind of crooning and Green captures it with an unadorned perfection. (Chris Cobcroft)

Lowell: Cloud 69 (Single) (Arts & Craft / Create/Control)
- If you were to take one part dirty, buzzing synth lines, one part thumping tribal rhythms, two parts fist pumping choruses, mix it all up with cool effects and soak the whole thing in attitude you'd be close to this single. Lowell has an energy that seeps through every word and a production aesthetic that keeps every moment stimulating. (Krishan Meepe)

Lucius: Turn It Around (Single) (Pias / Mushroom)
- Nifty pop tune from New York that strikes the balance between annoyingly repetitive and interestingly odd. For fans of Sia, Kimbra and singing along badly when you've only had one drink. (Krishan Meepe)

My Education: 5 Popes (Indie / Headbump)
- A (vinyl) re-release of the Texan post-rocker’s 2004 record. Warm, thickly textured, life-affirming, full of guitars and other strings. Now, as then, it manages to be substantially more interesting than many records following the post-rock template. (Chris Cobcroft)

Nightmare Boyzzz: Bad Patterns (Slovenly Recordings)
- Alabama lads, Nightmare Boyzzz have got scuzzy power-pop down pat. Mashing major chords with self-destructive themes, they lovingly proclaim themselves to be scum-pop. It's everything thats romantic about Punk, distorting your doo-wop and drinking your demons. (Nick Rodwell)

Nothing: Guilty Of Everything (Relapse)
- You might be a shoegaze band, but you don’t get on Relapse unless you are the most crushingly heavy shoegaze band in existence, mushing up other bands into blood-paste, just by playing at them. At the same time, Philadelphia’s Nothing are deeply, warmly melodic in a way that will draw in MBV fans, probably more than those who like Deafheaven. Haha, who cares what Deafheaven fans think, posers (JOKES!!). (Chris Cobcroft)

The Pack A.D.: Do Not Engage (Nettwerk)
- Big, crunchy, all girl rock from Vancouver. Drum and guitar duos never do it for me quite the way drum and bass ones do but these girls can also write a decent song to backup their crunchy tones. Full of chunky guitar sounds and cool pedals, the album favours attitude and repetition over tricky changes and solos which is sometimes a criticism but usually just fucking cool. (Krishan Meepe)

Sun Araw: Belomancie (Drag City)
- A new album from the strange experimenter. Some of it sounds like a psych-rock album shattered, almost beyond recognition. Other bits have a quirky sound-collage pop quality. Still other bits sound like an efx machine randomly malfunctioning. Occasionally the blips and bloops congeal into some ambient epic. An organising principle may be even harder to discern here than usual, but a Sun Araw album is like a venus flytrap for curious music nerds, I’m sure many will try and comprehend it’s strangeness. (Chris Cobcroft)

Swaying Wires: Some Blue Sky (Battle Worldwide Recordings)
- Gothically tinged folk-rock out of Finland. This seems much more ‘straight’ than someone like Chelsea Wolfe. Perhaps SW’s Tina Kärkinen seems less likely to breathe fire on me and eat my charred remains. Certainly there’s less all encompassing echo and murk than a band like Esben And The Witch. Perhaps it’s this unadorned quality that appeals the most about Swaying Wires. (Chris Cobcroft)

Tinariwen: Toumast Tincha (Single) (Wedge / Anti- / Pias / Mushroom)
- If you haven’t checked out the mind-bending, desert blues of Tinariwen yet, do yourself a favour. This venerable and highly storied Malian band blend North African and western styles into a hypnotic and absorbing sound that it is very difficult not to be grabbed by. (Chris Cobcroft)