Archive for June, 2014
I have a friend named Si. What? What’s Si short for? Geez, I don’t actually know. I’ve always assumed Siclops but then I’ve never asked. Let me get back to you. As well as being a generally likeable cat and being one of the few people who can functionally wear a beige trenchcoat, Si has a third merit; He runs a boutique agency called Wondercore Island.
Wondercore manage all the good bands and none of the bad ones. Wondercore also put out irregular mixtapes, irregular in that they contain wonderfully queuereighted collections of odd, abstract Australian music that sits on a soul/fusion/jazz tip. It’s not a populous scene but it’s one that Wondercore firmly presides over with a technicolour scepter and a communal spirit. Also, it’s irregular in that the space of time between each release is not consistent etc.
Yesterday was a mixtape day and so I’ve prepared for you a few of my choice cuts from Wondercore Island #3. Involve yaself.
First off, imagine me listening to a mixtape with an unreleased Oscar Key Sung track on it and then opting not to write about it. You can’t, can you? Thus, Oscar Key Sung ‘Hollow Grams’, a reworking of his ‘Holograms EP’ title track. The whole thing has been reduced to some core sounds and structures with the light addition of shattering glass sampled toward the end of the piece. His remix game is strong and even moreso when applied to his own gear.
Hiatus Kaiyote are here flipped by Brooklyn duo The Stuyvesants and rhymed over by one of Australian hip-hop’s most radiant hopes, Remi Kolawole. The verse is usual braggadocio fare fused with Hiatus praise (“Let me present Nai Palm from Hiatus, yeah the greatest, c’mon”) but it rolls nicely across the reimagined HK beat.
The tape’s more produced tracks are punctuated by a few simpler instrumental moments. There’s a very, very pretty piano track Hiatus’ resident wizard Simon Mavin and there’s this one from Jamil Alexandros Zacharia (who?), a soundscape composed of guitar plucks, strums, wobbles and twangs over some more distant, deeper sounds. More plz.
Hear and download the whole Wondercore Island #3 Mixtape for free right here.
In December 2013, Yon Yonson dropped the best EP of 2014. Hypomantra is eight tracks of exploratory, experimental pop weirdness and naturally I got all tangled about it and wrote some really rather gushing things over at Mess + Noise. In April, and here’s where it gets good, I doctored some images of the band members into compromising situations and used these images to blackmail the two (sometimes three) piece into our very first live session and thus, Sound Doctrine Show & Tell was born. YonYon invited us round to Rick’s backyard where they played the title track from their EP while Matt Davis filmed and Joe Hardy recorded and the end result is, I think, rather wonderful.
So, without further ado,
Sound Doctrine Show & Tell Presents
Yon Yonson – Hypomantra
Artists you need to know rn
| 1. 1300 |  |
316 |
| 2. Voidhood | |
259 | 3. jamesjamesjames | |
186 | 4. Zan | |
174 |
| 5. Sesame Girl | |
147 |
