- It feels like forever since James Blake started putting out slow and soulful songs that make ladies sigh. It even feels like forever since much more recent echoes of his phenomenon like Chet Faker started making wads of green with roughly the same formula. Part of the reason it seems like so long is the million other quietly voiced crooner-producers who’ve been trying to do exactly the same thing.

We may have reached saturation point for sensitive white-boy soul. Probably not, but I suppose other people aren’t forced to listen to half as much of it as I am. Still, it’s not all bad, because every now and then even my jaded ears hear another take on the style that can make it seem fresh again.

Allthingslost is one of those unexpectedly happy moments. Abraham Tilbury is an unassuming Brisbane producer who’s just slipped out a four track EP. Titled Light, its approach is slow, uncluttered, beats only sparsely populating cold environments of synth melody and, of course, featuring Tilbury’s mournful voice expressing a flood of feeling, front and centre.

It really doesn’t stray too far from the formula at all, but that, ironically may be its strength. The simplicity allows for a careful, methodical recreation of the sound with everything exactly where it’s supposed to be: it’s perfection of a kind.

Of the production work that’s done, much of it is on Tilbury’s voice: multi-tracked harmonies, considered distortion, ‘artful’ use of autotune, sometimes all crowded together, coming close to pushing the melodious pop qualities somewhere darker altogether.

It doesn’t though and for the most part there isn’t much variation within the four cuts, but again what might work against Allthingslost in a longer format here has an elegance reminiscent of a haiku.

From the simple fragment of an EP like Light, I’m not really sure where you go in the future, certainly not without significantly elaborating the game-plan. Cynically, you might well be able to make an album of exactly the same thing, get one-hundred-thousand Facebook friends and a best album ARIA. Probably the only thing I can agree with other people on is that this EP, right now, is a good thing.

- Chris Cobcroft.