Community radio music directors often have an encyclopaedic knowledge of local music and an insatiable thirst to keep their ears ahead of the curve. So in this Tone Deaf series, the Australian Music Radio Airplay Project (Amrap) invites music directors to highlight new Aussie tunes that you might have missed.
Andrew Khedoori from Sydney’s 2SER continues the series with a selection of tracks currently making their way to community radio through Amrap’s music distribution service ‘AirIt’.
Check out Andrew’s selections below and if you’re a musician you can at apply at www.airit.org.au to have your music distributed for free to community radio on Amrap’s AirIt.
The Grand Magoozi – The Last Cowboy
The beguiling self-titled debut from The Grand Magoozi – the alias for Victoria’s Susie Scurry – comes off like Patsy Cline finding herself in a downtown lounge bar in 1950s New York to work her charms.
Scurry’s quietly rollicking songs have a elastic way with vintage country, rockabilly plus some doo-wop and jazz spirit in the way they tumble out but it’s the cinematic way she tells a story with her enveloping and gorgeous voice that gives these songs their engaging presence and warmth.
Andrew Tuttle – Registration
Fantasy League is the new album from Brisbane-based produced Andrew Tuttle and it’s his best realisation yet for his intoxicating blend of modular synth melodies, folk guitar and banjo.
Tuttle makes these seemingly polar opposites a match made in sonic heaven – it’s like the soundtrack for Deliverance composed by John Carpenter! What a world we live in, eh?
DJ Soup – Don’t Be No Foowl (edit)
The fourth instalment of the locally-produced compilation That’s Not An Edit (does that make it an ‘edition’?) is out, featuring yet again some great DJs and producers coming together in the name of choice reworks.
We’re talking funk, soul, disco, hip hop, reggae and more getting reincarnated into a strewth-you-beaut boogie wonderland, featuring 2SER’s very own Meem (2SER’s Back To Funk), Paris Groovescooter (2SER’s Jumping The Gap) and Hober Mallow (2SER’s Mighty Reel). The grooviest thing about it all? It’s a name-your-price download on bandcamp!
Adam Young – The Queen of The Plains
Sydney’s Adam Young’s guitar playing showed more allegiance to the ragged country-rock of Crazy Horse than Nirvana during his time with local indie rickers Big Heavy Stuff and The Daisygrinders. Stepping out solo for the first time with his debut album Elementary Carnival Blues brings that streak into glorious full bloom.
This triumphant gem of alt. country playing and storytelling is also in thrall to classic pop melody that may be the only line back to his indie roots, but thankfully so. What makes the album such an accomplished first turn is the deep joy Young brings to his songs, where heart is equal to craft and every feeling counts in his big picture.
Red Zora – Shadows
Sydney’s Red Zora take the thump and grunt of ’90s grunge and infuse it with a welcome overload of melody flowing from multi-layered guitars that effortlessly ooze shoegaze and country vibes like they were always an easy pairing.
Fans of crafty and heady sounds of yore such as The Cloud and Throwing Muses would do well to check out their debut album, Lovers & Addicts.
Gabriella Cohen – ‘Sever The Walls’
If you find many garage-rockers disco defections displeasing, you might do well to check out Melbourne’s Gabriella Cohen.
The one-time singer with The Furrs has released her solo debut, Full Closure and No Details, scuffing up 60s girl-group pop with layers of grimy blues-fuzz, melody, bounce and a real stomp in its step. ‘Sever The Walls’ gets stuck in my head for hours after each time it comes onto the 2SER airwaves.
Asdasfr Bawd – Sayer
Alex Clayton is a classically-trained 19-year old from Melbourne who has turned his hand to minimal techno and downtempo house under the curious name of Asdasfr Bawd (‘az-das-ah-fah bowd’).
His new EP Underpass is a sublimely moody work of impeccably precise rhythms and shooting textures spun with mesmerising results. The atmospheric measure of Italian master Donato Dozzy comes to mind, as does the ominous dark undertones of Burial. Solitaire Recordings are unearthing some great new local players in this sphere, marking them as a label to keep your eye on.
The Goon Sax – Up To Anything
Some of the bands trying on the ’80s/’90s shaky and erudite pop style on these days are merely young at heart, but The Goon Sax are young with heart.
Their debut, Up To Anything, is unabashedly heart-on-sleeve stuff and sweet in the way they go about it, revisiting the earnest, romantic witticisms of Jonathan Richman better than many who come off forced by comparison. It’d be an unfairly hardened point of view to call this nostalgic, and it’ll be great to see where their exuberance leads them down the line.
Summer Flake – Make Your Way Back To Me
The second album from Adelaide’s Stephanie Crase (now Melbourne-based) as Summer Flake shows a wonderful blossoming of her songwriting gifts – qualities that don’t immediately sparkle but uncurl and absorb you with each listen.
Hello Friends is crystalline and heartfelt indie pop to melt into with Crase’s gentle harmonies and a real sensitivity and substance that have her a cut above the pack.
