Excess – Escape From Brisbane (2015)

Excess – Escape From Brisbane

Excess is the side project of Matt Kennedy, better known for his work in the Brisbane outfit Kitchen’s Floor. His latest album under the Excess moniker Escape From Brisbane is a sprawling and expansive concept album, inspired by old sci-fi soundtracks and films of his youth. Listening to Escape From Brisbane makes me picture Daniel Johnston scoring an old John Carpenter flick, except with a bunch of heavily accented Australians on vocals. Kennedy enlisted multiple contributors from the surrounding Brisbane music scene. Recorded in just under six months, Kennedy intended Escape From Brisbane to act as a time capsule for Brisbane’s music scene in 2014 and 2015, and with twelve contributors on record, it very well might be one in the future. Constructed almost entirely from lo-fi synthesizers and featuring extensive reverb and echo effects, Escape From Brisbane is quite a brilliant look at the Sunshine State’s capital from the perspective of the city’s fringe dwellers.

The album opens up with a message from musician Gerald Keaney, who states “Warning: a high quality stereo system is required to appreciate this track. Without high resolution playback, this will be wasted.” It’s a bold statement, and would come off as quite pretentious if it weren’t for the obviously low budget recording techniques utilised on the album. The cheap keyboards and Casio synth-effects that permeate are more reminiscent of The Magnetic Fields then The Thing, while the. “Pathology Of A Walk” displays some trippy dub rhythms, while vocalist Leighton Craig echoes and crashes around in the background, practically using his voice as an instrument itself. “Body Control” is a very creepy track with some uneasy tritone chords, seemingly designed to put the listener on edge. Singer Lizley’s monotone vocals ensure the track wouldn’t sound out of place on somethine like The Resident’s Commercial Album, while the salt-shaker drum machine does nothing to ease the tension. “Take Another Photograph” see’s Daniel and Sarah Spencer busting out their best Bowie impressions for the bouncy little number, a bright ray of light amidst the dystopian darkness that characterises the rest of Escape From Brisbane. The final track “I Used To Live In Brisbane” is a grating and extremely annoying song, in which vocalist Nicola Morton feels the need to simply repeat the song’s title for a good 5 minutes straight.

The production is where Escape From Brisbane falls flat. Considering it was originally released as a cassette only affair through Kennedy’s record label Virtual Cool, the whole thing reeks of the low fidelity and static sound that only tapes could provide. Side note: I understand the resurgence in vinyl records as a viable format (sound fidelity, beautiful artwork, etc.) but the cassette revival just baffles me, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel their, people. After a while however, the John Carpenter worship begins to wear a bit thin and the songs start blurring together. As a documentation of Brisbane’s off-kilter and spaced-out independent music scene, it works surprisingly well. However, as a cohesive album it falls a bit flat. There’s not a whole lot of substance to Escape From Brisbane, but it does it’s job well. Kennedy and his motley crew have constructed a charming and enjoyable little romp, featuring all the delightful quirks and idiosyncrasies that defines Brisbane’s music scene, while also doing its best to make you want to re-watch Escape From New York again. There’s not much substance, but it should provide some great listening material. It’s certainly a better representation of Brisbane than the Dune Rats entire discography, I’ll give them that.

6/10

Twerps – Range Anxiety (2015)

Twerps – Range Anxiety

Australia has always had a very warped view on what constitutes indie rock, let’s face it. We had a good thing going in the 80’s with The Go-Betweens and The Church, but once the 90’s came round, we suddenly thought shit like Frente! or Jebediah were good representations of our alternative music, and that’s not even getting into all the Silverchair wannabes. In the 2010’s, Australia’s vision of indie rock seems to have come full circle again, with bands playing a slight variation on the jangly sound that The Go-Betweens were pushing back in 1988. The most prominent out of all these bands would easily have to be the Melbourne-based jangle pop quartet, Twerps. Twerps rose to prominence along with their similar- minded contemporaries Dick Diver and Courtney Barnett by playing a version of jangly guitar pop hearkened back to the 80’s indie pop scene. These bands owed as much to The Go-Betweens and early R.E.M. as much they did to the laid-back Dunedin Sound groups such as The Bats or The Chills, in terms of. This isn’t simply an Australian phenomenon either, international acts such as Canada’s Mac DeMarco or Real Estate from the U.S. have also gotten in on the jangly pop fun. And with the twenty year cycle in full effect, it seems funny that the sound of rickenbackers and strumming guitars has made such a resurgence in indie circles. Twerps Range Anxiety is their latest attempt at capturing the jangly zeitgeist into album form, following two self-titled albums and multiple EP’s,

Twerps previous release, 2014’s Underlay EP functioned like a more lo-fi version of Range Anxiety, and as the bands first overseas release, it helped introduce international audiences to their own particular brand of ramshackle guitar pop. Range Anxiety is the group’s first album for prominent US indie label Merge Records, the home of such respected indie acts like Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Neutral Milk Hotel. “I Don’t Mind” is a rather breezy and sweet way of opening the album, with its ‘couldn’t care less’ lyrics building a rather carefree atmosphere, and it feels like the perfect soundtrack to those last few days of Summer. “Back To You” is the fastest paced song on here, and is prominent for including a flute section amongst all the acoustic guitar strumming. “Fern Murderers” sounds like it’s trying something different, with the inclusion of an Angelo Badalamenti-esque keyboard and some eerie bass strumming, but the track fails to evolve or go anywhere past the odd few echoed chords and breathy vocals. The problem with Range Anxiety is that, while it’s all indeed very pleasant and unassuming, there’s nothing here that really grips you or makes you feel anything other than mild enjoyment. After the first fifteen minutes, virtually all of the songs blend together into a big, jangly haze of pleasantness, and it feels like every song runs at the same tempo, so there’s basically no pacing involved whatsoever.

Range Anxiety is about the closest you could get to calling something comfort food rock, there’s virtually nothing on here that you haven’t heard before. However there’s something intriguing about just how derivative and uninspired Twerps manage to be in the space of 40 odd minutes. It takes dedication to make something as bland and run-of-the-mill as Range Anxiety, and Twerps are nothing if not dedicated to regurgitate the past 30 years of alternative music with all the tenacity of a kid in a candy store. There’s a few sparks of brilliance here and thereabout on the album, but most of the album simply reeks of blandness. “Adrenaline”, with its vapid Be My Baby/Just Like Honey drumbeat and cooing Fleet Foxes-esque backing vocals is possibly the worst offender in this regard.

Twerps sound afraid to challenge themselves, or go beyond listeners expectations. If you’re a newcomer to the band, fi you’ve ever heard 30 seconds of a Yo La Tengo song, you’ll have heard the entirety of Range Anxiety. It’s possible to adhere to a well-worn template and still come up with an enjoyable album in the process (see: Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days from 2014, or Courtney Barnett’s How To Cut A Carrot Into A Rose EP from 2013). However, Twerps don’t simply There is nothing on this album that hasn’t been done before by much better artists. If middle-of-the-road landfill indie rock is your thing, give this a go. For everybody else, just stick to 16 Lovers Lane and the Flying Nun back catalog, I guarantee they’ll both give you far more enjoyment than this will.

4/10

Allday – Startup Cult (2014)

Allday – Startup Cult

The Australian hip-hop scene has never been exactly brewing with creative juices. Whether it’s Hilltop Hoods and their regurgitation of 90’s Native Tongues style rap (with all the afrocentricism replaced by middling samples and jokes about Adelaide), or 360 and his obvious bogan-baiting lyrics and stage behaviour, (not to mention godawful collaboration choices, seriously Gossling?) Australia has never exactly been a world-leader in the rap game. Iggy Azalea aside, not one single Australian rapper has made it big outside of the homeland. This could be attributed to various reasons (location, cultural differences, lack of ambition, etc.) but when you listen to someone like Seth Sentry or Bliss ‘N Eso, you get the feeling that their music would work extremely well in Northgate, but wouldn’t exactly go down well in Long Beach.

However, Allday happens to be cut from a different cloth than the legions of floral shirt & snapback wearing 360 clones you usually see getting airplay on Triple J. Startup Cult is the 23-year old Melbourne MC’s long awaited debut, coming off a string of self-released Bandcamp mixtapes that’ve been doing the rounds for the past few years. Allday’s soft, R&B-esque flow owes quite a bit to fellow emotional crooners  such Drake or Frank Ocean and his gravelly, cigarette-stained flow evokes Tyler, The Creator at his most mellow. Listening to Startup Cult you get the feeling that Allday has more in common with overseas MC’s like Childish Gambino or The Weeknd, as opposed to Seth Sentry or Kerser.

“Clouds” features a peculiar backing sample of Darth Vader’s breathing noise, which perplexes the listener while Allday’s woozy flow entrances them into the song’s grasp. “Taking Hold” sounds like a lost B-side from Drake’s Take Care, with its soft piano chords and minimalist percussion intertwining with Allday’s story about getting picked up by the police one night, then going to work a shit job in retail the next day. As he croons “I hope it kills me, ’cause I need the pain/I hope you’re ready for me, ’cause I need the same”, you can just hear the hearts of fangirls swooning everywhere. The pitched-down voice at the end of the track sounds like Allday recontextualising Tyler’s Goblin, and putting his own spin on it. He even manages to sprinkle in some Crash Bandicoot and Dragon Ball Z references into the track, while he’s at it. The production can get a bit monotonous at times, but Allday’s chilled-out flow never loses its charm even throughout the album’s 50+ minute running time, which is a tough thing for even the most experienced rapper to accomplish.

“God Starve The Queen” is easily one of the best tracks on the album, with a club-ready beat and some breathy vocals to sweeten the deal. About 40 minutes into Startup Cult, you start to realise just how accessible Allday’s music is in regards to his contemporaries, and just how easy it would be for him to blow up internationally. His cloudy, ethereal beats and soft flow sound no different from the multitude of unsigned rappers littering DatPiff and various Soundcloud pages. The moody Tumblr-indebted aesthetic that Startup Cult reeks of would resonate extremely well with today’s current crop of #Sadboys loving teens. For someone who groans at the thought of more cheesy songs about fish and chip shops and skateboards climbing the ARIA charts, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a rapper who can elevate himself above such clichés and deliver a cohesive album in the process. If Startup Cult is any indication, Allday has the audacity to go beyond the Triple J Hottest 100 and make his mark on the world at large, not just a couple of Melbourne suburbs.

6.5/10

Carmada – Realise EP (2014)

Carmada – Realise EP

Carmada are one of the hottest production duos to make it out of Australia in the past year. After releasing their debut single “Maybe” earlier this year, the group caught the attention of one Sonny Moore (a.k.a. Skrillex), who signed them to his OWSLA label and tasked them with producing an EP. As of this writing, Realise has topped the iTunes Dance charts, and Carmada recently performed back-to-back DJ set with Skrillex and Diplo for Triple J. The group has had a meteoric rise to success in the past year, so it’s only fair that Carmada put their money where their mouth is when it came to Realise’s success.

The EP kicks off with a soft and moody tune “Realise”, featuring vocals from Brisbane soul singer Noah Slee. Slee warbles his way over some soft piano chords and some genuinely whacked-out production work (listen to those keyboards after the drop hits!). Carmada basically throw everything but the kitchen sink into “Realise” and somehow get it to pay off. In most other artists hands, a track like this would be an absolute failure, but in the context of Realise, it just works so fucking well. “Carmalude” starts out with quite possibly the oddest buildup of all-time, featuring a saxophone that gets higher and higher until an almost polka-esque hoover effect appears. Carmada don’t want to play by the trap rulebook on Realise, rather they’re incredibly content to blend genres as they see fit, and tear up the dance rulebook. “Maybe”, the album’s standout single and the one which has impacted Australian radio in a huge way, is one of the major standouts. It’s a trippy, wonky-sounding trap hit, that has all the trappings (excuse the pun) of a pop crossover hit. The lurching bass drop sounds tailor-made for the Stereosonic/Future Music crowd, but the opening piano has more in common with something a SoundCloud bedroom producer might produce, rather than the festival-conquering artists that Carmada have aligned themselves with. The “Help me close to you” vocal sample, pitch-shifted to hell and back admittedly has more in common with someone like Four Tet rather than say, RL Grime.

Before going into this EP, I expected the whole album to be different variations on the tropical trap influenced sound of “Maybe”, but the majority of the songs on here are quite downtempo and moody. The final track, “On Fire” see’s Carmada laying down some soft handclaps and piano chords while Melbourne singer Maribelle whispers “I know too much, but give in to the thrill, adrenaline rush, forget how I feel.” over some spaced-out percussion, before Carmada drop some of the most insane synth-stabs you’ll ever hear in the tracks bridge. It’s a fitting title, considering the pedigree of the EP itself.

Carmada don’t conform to any EDM cliches on Realise, nor do they make any attempt at chasing current trends. Rather, they’ve decided to blaze their own trail through the current electronic landscape, tearing down any obstacles and walls in their way. They’re part of a new wave of Australian producers such as Wave Racer or Cedie Janson, who essentially take overseas electronic trends and then fuck with their established formulas, until the genres damn near unrecognisable. Rest assured, if they keep putting out EP’s as good as this one, Carmada definitely have a long and fruitful career ahead of them.

9/10

Flight Facilities – Down To Earth (2014)

Flight Facilities – Down To Earth (2014)

Flight Facilities’ Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell are beginning to become some of the top producers in Australia’s dance music scene. After a strong run of singles for the past few years, the group have begun to branch out into the album world with debut “Down To Earth.” The duo first made their name in the late 00’s, producing several high-profile remixes for fellow Australian groups such as Sneaky Sound System and Bag Raiders. They followed these up with a number of singles over the course of the 10’s, with their 2012 single “Clair De Lune” scraping into the Australian Top 40 and even going Gold in the process. With their brand new album “Down To Earth”, the duo attempt to tackle the long player format, and see if their disco-tinged brand of house can last for a full album’s length.

“Down To Earth” is structured like a concept album, opening with an in-flight greeting and the sound of jet engines bookending the album.  Like many dance albums, “Down To Earth” is loaded with guest appearances. Indie songbird Emma Louise gives an illustrious performance on lead single “Two Bodies”, which kicks the album off in fine style.  Reggie Watts lends a hand on “Sunshine” and shows off some impressive vocals, while the duo provide an extremely funky backing beat. The duo’s most famous song, “Clair De Lune” makes an appearance in the middle of the album, bringing it’s dreamy and airy elegance, while singer Christine Hoberg’s breathy vocals work glide above the track. It’s one of those nu-disco workouts that has managed to   The last track of the album is a 73 second long reprise of the band’s debut single “Crave You”, sung by none other than Australia’s favourite singing budgerigar, Kylie Minogue. Kylie’s voice suits the track quite nicely, but it makes you wonder why they didn’t just tack the original “Crave You” onto the album, rather than go to the lengths of roping Miss Minogue in to help push album sales. At times the album can feel a bit airy, almost like vapid chillout music. However, the filler on the album is far and few between, and the standout tracks more than make up for the

“Down To Earth” functions surprisingly well as a cohesive album. While the weather heats up and the temperatures rise into the 30’s in Australia, Flight Facilities deliver one hell of a summer-ready album It’s a very evening-centric album, the kind that evokes watching beautiful sunsets with your friends, while downing a cheap summer lager. Like Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” from last year, “Down To Earth” manages to channel the disco sounds of the 70’s in a refreshing manner. However, “Down To Earth” doesn’t feel like a throwback album at all, Flight Facilities keep the album firmly planted in the modern era, with a fresh forward looking output. The album doesn’t recycle the sounds of yesteryear, as much as it updates them and makes them feel modern, in it’s approach. “Down To Earth” delivers on the promises of Flight Facilities earlier singles, along with providing a solid dance album that should entertain you in the warmer months of the year.

8/10

The Aston Shuffle – Photographs (2014)

The Aston Shuffle – Photographs (2014)

Australians just cannot create enjoyable dance music. No matter whether producers try their hand at hands-in-the-air big room EDM (see: Timmy Trumpet, Will Sparks, everyone in the Melbourne bounce scene) that obnoxious electro house sound (see: every late-00’s electropop group) or even taking a stab at deep house (as some of this album’s tracks seem to do, when it’s not giving breezy Electropop tunes a good run-over.). Australians can’t seem to grasp the more intricate forms of 4×4 dance beats. They always feel the need to mess it up by going overboard on the synths (Cut Copy) having embarrassing vocal interludes (The Presets) or simply just by trying to juggle way too many elements at once (Miami Horror, Empire Of The Sun, every Electropop group circa 2007-2010). Even when we try and mix things up a bit or try and adapt to foreign trends (as fellow producers RÜFÜS tried on last year’s Atlas), it always comes across as a pale imitation of other acts (see also, Chet Faker’s entire career).
The Aston Shuffle are by no means immune to this fact. This album sounds like it’s stuck between multiple worlds. Half the tracks sound like they belong to the latter part of the last decade, with echoes of the Dance-Punk/Ed Banger House sound coming through in certain points (“Can’t Stop Now” sounds like Justice having a jam session with Avicii, and it’s exactly as weird as it seems.) Similarly, parts of the record seem to be channeling the current EDM craze, making you feel as if you’ve crash landed into the middle of Stereosonic after leaving the Café Del Mar. Just listening to “Tear It Down” makes me feel as if I’m surrounded by gym junkies with no shirt and tiny singlets, trying to sell me terrible ecstasy. “Astronaut” is an extreme oddity, as about 10 seconds in it starts utilising a trap beat in the background. Vocalist Joel Compass does his best to help the track rise above its mediocre beat, but he can’t help it sound that great (although British deep house duo, Gorgon City released a fantastic remix of “Astronaut” this year, which blows The Aston Shuffle’s version out of the water.)Combined with the 80’s synthesizers and the awkward Usher-meets-Lex Luger production, it just comes off as extremely awkward and forced.

Come to think of it, most of the songs on this album feel like the work of a band that are kind of out-of-touch- with the modern dance scene, and are desperately trying to stay relevant. There’s just this huge grab-bag of all these random sounds in this album that it feels so contrite and forced, like the buildups in Ordinary Love. If summery electropop is your kind of thing, you might enjoy this album, but I personally just found it extremely underwhelming.

5/10

RÜFÜS – Atlas (2013)

RÜFÜS – Atlas (2013)

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for RateYourMusic trashing The Aston Shuffle’s debut album for being dated, boring and overblown, citing it as an example of Australians being unable to produce House music without making an ass of ourselves. Let me make a slight adjustment to that previous statement. It’s not that we can’t produce House music, it’s just that we feel the need to drag it down with so many unneccesary flourishes. Quite often, I notice that Australian producers tend to put little bells and whistles onto tracks to make them somehow more, dare I say, palatable. A little electropop here, a melodic hook there, a little Peter Hook sounding baseline just to finish it off. In the late 2000’s, there was an explosion of Electropop and House producers coming out of Australia, with groups such as Cut Copy, Miami Horror, Flight Facilites and Empire Of The Sun leading the charge. Those groups had their heart in the right place but quite often they found the need to emphasize the cheesy 80’s aspects of the tracks and go overboard on the pop sensibilites, rather than letting the tracks develop a groove and work as dancefloor killers.

The reason I bring this up is because RÜFÜS (or RÜFÜS DÜ SOL if you live in North America) surprisingly manage to sidestep these issues on their debut album Atlas. Blending elements of Nu-Disco, Electropop and Deep House, the band manages to craft their own beautiful sound that pays homage to the past, while adapting to current trends. Opener “Sundream” has a very breezy mood to it, with deep synths and a falsetto hook that manages to evoke images of both Bondi and Ibiza at the same time. The album’s highlight “Tonight” manages to remind me of fellow Australian dance group Gold Fields, with it’s smooth 4×4 beat and synth flourishes. This isn’t a record that puts “home listening” first and foremost, it’s straight to the dance floor here. I can imagine most of these tracks working well in clubs or lounge bars, working the dancefloor into a frenzy with it’s sunny beats.

The reason RÜFÜS works so well is that they’ve developed their own individual sound, but at the same time they keep it clearly rooted in the modern era. This doesn’t feel like a record that’s trying to revive the Electropop scene, bring back the 80’s or cater to any specific trends. It simply feels like a great dance record that they felt the need to produce. In a country where most “electronic music” tends to vary between mindless EDM or countless Flume clones, this album stands as a beacon shining amidst a sea of mediocrity . Pick this up straight away

7/10