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This week, 2SER’s Lachlan Holland shares the must-hear Aussie tracks spinning on community radio right now.
2SER’s Lachlan Holland’s Community Picks
Charlie Needs Braces – NYAA WA
Charlie Needs Braces, the musical project lead by Charlie Woods, just dropped their second album, NYAA WA (“take care”) and it’s a brilliant combination of theatrical electronica, jazz, and dubby production that is inextricably connected with land, culture, conservation, family, and nature.
Intertwining live performance and loop-based rhythmic sampling, vocals, and fantastic affected horn lines, it won us over at 2SER as a brilliantly freewheeling record that covers a lot of sonic territory and [a lot] of playful and warm cinematic sounds.
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The local Eora mainstays centred around Sam Wilkinson have featured a revolving cast of members over many years, and are, as notable music journalist and fan Randall Shrub sagely says, ”a band with people in it.”
Their seventh studio record Sedan Crater has arrived, a mammoth sixteen tracker which finds them pushing and poking into the odder and more discomforting reaches of rock ‘n’ roll. A reference to a 1960s nuclear test, it’s explosive stuff, a self-described “tightrope walk between artificial intelligence and genuine stupidity.” Truly a record for our times.
Berlin-based Australian expat Elodie Gervaise released a new album on B3SCI RECORDS at the tail end of 2024, and it’s a shot out of the blue of sultry electronica. The producer and vocalist began her musical path on the NSW North Coast with Galaxy Girls and Candy Lucid, before settling in Germany and releasing solo work with a more international focus. Here, she has crafted a sound that is an alluring collision of trip hop, house, R&B, and synth music.
Exosoul‘s intricately composed beats gel perfectly with closely delivered spoken-word poetics. Gervaise’s lyrics cover a lot of ground too: self-realisation, sexuality, artistic inspiration, communication, relationships, and much more. This is a bit of a gem of left-field pop and gothic, mystical electronica and won a lot of fans on the station.
Feelings of nostalgia run rich through Monorail with its explorations of both direct and impressionistic memories. The passing of time and healing are a central theme with particular references to the past of Sydney. The title and cover art is a direct reference to the often maligned (and now long-torn down) Sydney monorail:
“Thinking about how slowly things change that it seems like they’re the same, until you look back and realise everything is completely different. After a while you forget most of the bad things and just good memories remain. This made me think about the Sydney Monorail. An outdated, inconvenient, expensive method of public transportation that people remember fondly cause it was fresh and looked cool. I tried to make it sound like an album that could’ve been made while the monorail was still active”
The whole LP has a blissfully deteriorated feel, a hazy sonic backdrop, intertwining guitar melodies, cellos, keys, and affected drum loops that drive on gently within their closed circuit, much like the records’ namesake. While the album features a host of collaborators performing live on various tracks, much of the production consciously blurs the lines between live and sampled parts. A fantastic listen and beautifully put together album which was also made just up the road from the 2SER studios. It also prompted a lot of reminiscing on 2SER about the city’s past. Big fans here!
Close Counters – Lovers Dance Academy
This is the third studio album from Finn Rees and Allan McConnell and got straight A’s from 2SER with its perfect balance of funk-laden boogie and soulful house music.
The instrumental tracks on the record, such as opener “Waterfall”, are excellent takes on propulsive synth-disco. It’s the stellar vocal features (including from Allysha Joy, Jace XL, and Tiana Khasi) that really graduate this to a sleeper classic and one of the most rounded dance records to come out of this country in years.
While their previous work (SOULACOSTA I & II) offered a more sample-based club leaning , in comparison Lovers Dance Academy graduates into looser and warmer live grooves and a more collaborative approach, all without losing any of their previous dancefloor sensibility. Sign me up!
CINTA has long been a staple of the underground jazz and soul scene in Sydney, as well as many other collaborations, such as being a core member of funk megagroup The Regime. WORTH CONTROL is her second studio release as a solo artist, being the follow-up to her equally excellent debut Feel Good. In comparison, WORTH CONTROL has a more vulnerable and revealing tone lyrically, touching on themes of self-worth, love, and betrayal, with deep, textured production, and orchestration, skirting between jazz, blues, and contemporary R&B. It’s a superbly put together take on various directions in modern soul and worth many plays, and has many fans on 2SER.
The Naarm/Melbourne five-piece have laid down a superbly paced, and tightly played, record that ebbs and flows between noisy and urgent post-punk and slowed-down sleazy guitar-pop.
Representing a further evolution for the group fronted by Bec Allen and James Lynch, it’s an excellent, wide-ranging album that explores absurdist themes and the malaise of current life in a post-pandemic world, and [is] highly recommended.
