4ZZZ Music Dept.Best New Arrivals For February Part Two

Local Artists:

Greg Brady: Big Man On Campus EP (Indie)
- Greg Brady's latest four-tracker comes down the middle between charmingly offkey jangle pop and easygoing post punk. I say easy-going but the beat is often positively motorik, which I guess offsets all of the softer elements, including Greg's gentle, Tim Steward-ish croon. (Chris Cobcroft)

Harley Young: Phone Home (Indie)
- Acoustic strummer Harley Young won quite a few hearts and minds with song titles like Balls Deep in Boona. His quintessential Australiana with its mixture of humour and melancholy returns on this new EP. Strangely, it's lo-fi, but comes across with perfect clarity: raw and immediate. If you're short a sad smile, songs like Kate And The Old XD or Barina Jean will surely put one on your face. (Chris Cobcroft)

Australian Artists:

Angie: A Ring (Single) (Rice is Nice)
- I spend half my time listening to this track wondering how it would sound if it were done with hugely distorted electric guitar. Angie's done that same sort of thing that Espers did a few years ago and turned something enormously heavy into acoustic folk. The results again are strangely gentle and brutal at the same time, dark and forbidding, right down to the strangely insistent and pounding piano outro. (Chris Cobcroft)

Aphir: Deeper In (Single) (Provenance)
- Aphir’s Deeper In is just that. You’ll find yourself leaning into this song as it possesses that same immersive quality that certain mystics enchant mirrors or pools with in order to lure you into a realisation or bestow foresight. This is the kind of wavy electronica that blooms into the calibre of FKA Twigs or Bjork. (Nick Rodwell)

Bliss Wrecks: It's Already Too Late (Single) (INDIE)
-From Global Communications remixing of Chapterhouse in the ‘90s to Brisbane’s FOREVR glitching out in 2016, shoegaze has a very engaging relationship with electronica. Perth’s Bliss Wrecks offer another variant: gritty Lo-Fi. Their single chops hard and fast with the noisiest of arpeggiators and washed guitars. It’s so crushed, it’s borderline 8-bit but every bit is rad. (Nick Rodwell)

Brightness: Oblivion (Single) (I OH YOU / Mushroom)
-Oblivion will stimulate intrigue or apprehension - Alex Knight, as Brightness, creates a combination of both with this introductory single. With subtle directives taken from various 90’s alt-movements, the sense of melancholia in this song is kept at bay with a gritty and resilient drive that keeps Oblivion afloat. (Nick Rodwell)

Dream Rimmy: Like Me (Single) (Indie)
- Perth's Dream Rimmy are pretty interesting. Usually their shctick is psych infused shoegaze that sounds a bit like classic Ride. Latest single has a much bigger dose of midtempo electronic beats and, suddenly, we're in Sneaker Pimps territory, all dream pop triphop. Ever so slightly medicated bliss. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ghost Drums: Imprax (Sleepybod)
- Bedroom productions are always such curious insights, always quite eclectic. Perth’s Ghost Drums proves to be cream of the curdled glut that is bedroom producers with a folktronica that displays an extra level of discipline. It takes it’s form from the the early Lo-fi explorations of Animal Collective but with a more delicate touch. (Nick Rodwell)

HTML Flowers: Diamontees On Ur Coffin (Single) (Wondercore Island)
- HTML Flowers is good for a number of reasons. The beats he makes cut their own path: here he's doing the impossible and making trap interesting in 2017. His voice is deeply individual, sitting just on the right side of irretrievably twee. The self-indulgent weirdness is actually the perfect counterbalance to the incredibly raw, pure heartbreak of Diamontees On Ur Coffin. Very moving indeed. (Chris Cobcroft)

Jazz Party: Talking In Your Sleep (Indie)
- Few contemporary jazz bands can really give you that feeling you get from an Ella Fitzgerald, a Sarah Vaughn or a Dinah Washington. Melbourne's Jazz Party come closer than most and roll in a chunk of Shirley Bassey besides. As simple as that, really. (Chris Cobcroft)

Kakariko: Yam A HA (Single) (Hive Minds)
- **** me this gets you at the base of the spine. The Melbourne dude, now doing time in Berlin, fronts with his sonorous, Jack Ladderish baritone, then slams it with a slow and low, dirty electro-funk, bellowing reverberantly over the top. Reminiscent of some of the best moments of Peter Gabriel. (Chris Cobcroft)

Light Entertainment: Tableaux (Single) (Indie)
- There's post-punk and there's post-punk. Sydney band Light Entertainment do a version which reflects their rather good range of influences. Can and Faust, Barry Adamson and The Birthday Party, Primal Scream and Echo & The Bunnymen: all of these and more find their way into music that is circumspect and restrained until suddenly it lashes out, electric and lethal. Complex rhythmic change-ups, bass clarinets, sick sax solos and clever songwriting that makes seven minute songs seem like three - there's an awful lot to supposedly Light Entertainment and I like all of it. (Chris Cobcroft)

Moonbase: It Don't Matter Ft. Anderson Paak (Single) (Dew Process / Universal)
- Sydney's Moonbase has shortened his name (from Moonbase Commander) and signed to a brand new label (Dew Process), but is still banging out the bass music you know him for. Here he's teamed up with one of urban music's most stylish success stories, Anderson Paak, for a cut that brings Anderson's smoothness and bonds it with Moonbase's brutality for a fairly unstoppable edm banger. (Chris Cobcroft)

VICES: Broken (Single) (Resist)
This is physical AF. Sydney’s VICES bring the righteous heavy with a level of tact that doesn’t lose hardcore’s vitality whilst also extending the rhythmic catharsis that we want and need. (Nick Rodwell)

Yon Yonson: Yes No Sorry (Teef)
- Yon Yonson has a talent for both weirdness and a pop melody that rivals the likes of Animal Collective. I feel like his distinctive oddity has been struggling to find the right home over the last few years, but hey, here comes Teef, which is like emergency shelter for the bizarrely talented. This (really) expansive full-length is everything I expected: insanely eclectic, in just the first few tracks Yon and co. leap about between low-key indie-pop, Afro-pop, jazz, hip hop and piano bar crooning. I keep saying, it's nuts, but it's pretty engaging, if you haven't run across Yon Yonson before, now is definitely the time. (Chris Cobcroft)

New Zealand Artists:

Aldous Harding: Horizon (Single) (4AD / Remote Control)
- This song is arresting. New Zealand native has paired with the producer for PJ Harvey for her next album and this leading single is both physically and emotionally moving. It’s deeply imbued with duende - that sense of sadness and passion that may give you goosebumps, that compels you wholly. BIG FEELS. (Nick Rodwell)

Overseas Artists:

Boerd: Void (Single) (Cascade)
- Swedish producer Boerd (it's pronounced Bored, natch), is busting on to the international scene with a melting mix of ambient, old-school glitch and, on this single, a really sweet and slow female vocal. Carefully structured and serenely shapeless at the same time, it's a blissful balancing act. (Chris Cobcroft)

Lowly: Prepare The Lake (Single) (Bella Union / Pias / Mushroom)
-Danish alt-pop that follows on from that curious lineage of Radiohead to Alt - J. With dynamic rhythms and alluring melodies, there is a sweetness in this that is delicious. (Nick Rodwell)

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya: hOp Off (Single) (Fathers/Daughters / Red Eye)
- This Chicagoan is a curious character. One of those do-everything-types, wirter, singer, rapper, producer, horticulturalist, pure hypothesis. From verse to hook, his versatility as a rapper and singer is obvious, and as much as this track is essentially one big flex, there is deep sense of silliness that pervades it all, making it a lot of fun. (Nick Rodwell)

SPC ECO: Under My Skin (ELaB)
- This is so full of slow, lightly medicated pop hooks it's almost like Enya, which is worrying, but in the end, very difficult to say no to. Dean Garcia of cultish '90s synth-gazers The Curve teams up with vocalist Rose Berlin for something that isn't -to be honest- a whole lot different. The darkest of triphop beats, gallons of reverb and a fearless embrace of infectious cheese (up to and including autotune). Like sugar and smack. (Chris Cobcroft)

Témé Tan: Ça Va Pas La Tête? (Single) (Play It Again Sam / Pias / Mushroom)
-Témé Tan is Belgian with Congolese roots, a combination that proves to be infectiously worldly. Think Manu Chao with an even more buoyant sense of pop finesse. The title translates to “Are you crazy?” which I am happy to accept that i am if it sounds this fun. (Nick Rodwell)

4ZZZ Music Dept.Best New Arrivals For February Part Two

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