- If you're a beat enthusiast you may be aware of Saint Surly, a Brisbane based beat-maker and visual artist. In 2013 he, and fellow beat nerd, Monster Monster released On The Off Chance - a body of work where they used their MPCs as instruments and took a step back from the rigidity of programmed arrangements and instruments. Now, in 2014, Saint Surly has dropped another curiosity, The Gleaner - Part 1.

The EP takes its name from an almost ancient practice of gleaning, which essentially was where you'd pick over a crop field that had recently been harvested and collect what the commercial harvest missed. Saint Surly explains that he has appropriated this economical endeavour to sourcing sample fodder from the $1 bin that you find in op-shops. Think of all the under-appreciated copies of Tijuana Brass Plays the Hits of Ravi Shankar or Harry Secombe's Cabaret Christmas that sit there year after year, there is so much commercial chaff to glean.

The music itself remains economical in that the entire EP is only 10 minutes long, but its brevity demands close attention. With crafted beats, movie dialogue and interloping grabs of obscurity, it all weaves in and out like the fleeting echos of daydreams. The eight tracks have such a cohesive rhythm and a flow that it creates quite a surreal experience. Given there is an interlude of dialogue taken from the anime film Akira and a beat named after the author Haruki Murakami, I suspect that magic realism may play a significant part in Saint Surly's creative spectrum.

If you invest in this brief first act, crushing bits and pieces, blurring the line between analogue and digital, it will work magic. It's not only for those beat nerds and their love for the hardware behind it, but also for those who appreciate groove.

- Nick Rodwell.