Now I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t heard a much rougher, tougher version of this song from a loooooooong way back. There were a few vocal neuroses but the raw essence of the thing was there. The band have reconstructed it over a stretch of months and it’s now a clean, refined ore from the rough piece of coal that once lived on the band’s bandcamp. It’s no diamond but I don’t think this is outfit works within the precious stone industry. Maybe Tiger’s Eye could be the closest they get, man those are some cool stones. Again though, not exactly precious. Anywho, in the time since that older demo went live, they’ve knocked together a proper EP, re-recorded LOVE, covered ILOVEMAKONNEN’s Club Going Up On A Tuesday and then convinced the Fader to premiere the thing. Although I don’t put much stock in premieres, a cosign from the Fader should be good enough for you and your notoriously low standards. Here’s both LOVE and the cover below.

My bud buds and semi-profession relaters over at Pilerats are releasing this HAMJAM record and sent me this track for my listening. Transparency. I’m writing about it because I dig it, not because we’re fellas.

Andrei Eremin aka Ony The King but also not really aka that name but I think it would be deserved and not out of the realms of possibility so maybe let’s make it happen. That’s the name of the dude who’s gone and remixed this Milwaukee Banks track. We’ve talked about him a couplea times before by virtue of his production work but also while listening through his originals and I’ve always been pretty heavy on the praise as befitting of his efforts and that run of form isn’t going to stop here. I was pretty middling in my feelings towards Milwaukee Banks before I caught their Bigsound set but I’ve polarised my opinions and they’ve moved in the right direction, provided you’re also a fan. I was filtering their records through a hip-hop lens and in that way it didn’t feel like it cut through too well. Not a skip-hop lens, just the same sort of measure stick you’d apply to a Jackie Onassis track maybe. It’a actually quite a tricky bar to measure up against because it demands not only forward thinking production but a vocal that is more modern than most Australian hip-hop but still an Australian voice. Then I caught the second half of that Bigsound set and I realised I was seeing them all wrong. The dudes aren’t going to be the next Jackie Onassis, they’re going to exist in the same world as Black Vanilla. Dylan isn’t an MC, he’s a vocalist which sounds arbritary but I promise it ain’t, I just don’t have the time nor the inclination to explain why. Something to do with the vocal’s relationship to the beat, etc etc.

Meantime, I also caught Ony’s own set at the party I put on which was always going to be a roaring success (because of me and my involvement and all the things that I do) but this fella span that remix and my word, it was onnnnnnn. Free download too. A straight shoe-in for any of y’all booking future DJ sets.

Episode 3 of Sound Doctrine’s post-modern theatre-art emotionscape Show & Tell saw us sitting in the living room of a friend of a friend of a friend watching Spirit Faces performing ‘Hurts Less Than Heartbreak’. It was strange hearing it performed stripped bare of the thundering electronics but in their place sits a dark, pondering series of chords punctuated only by the tap of fingers on smartphones and my own excited heavy breathing as exposed hammers hit strings. This one can speak for itself…

Filmed by Matt Davis at Silent Creative
Audio by Lewis Tems

I’ve sat on this one for a few minutes because I’ve had lots of stuff to do ie only bloody well starting my own record label / Ponzi scheme. A new Foreign/National track is worth returning to despite my tardiness because the five of them delightfully straddle that formless psych aesthetic and the rigid form of a highly structure track with ease. For that reason I’m going to keep the psych references to a minimum because, in fairness, 98% of what bloggers label as psych is pop-rock with reverb. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t pull out a lazy Tame Impala reference or suggest easy stonerisms for the next three minutes (one minute if you skim read- recommended.)

This is just one of the multiple [great] singles that F/N have popped online from their debut EP due out this month through Sam Gill’s DOWNTIME Records. Honestly, it feels like the 73rd single these dudes have released this month but that might just be due to the fact that everyone everywhere everytime keeps writing about them to the point where it’s literally the only feature of my feed. You can personally blame this band for the fact I don’t like any of your wonderful statuses or thinspirational images, I’m just not seeing them, sorry.

BONUS CONTENT: F/N covering fellow Melbdogs The Harpoons.

Tame Impala.

As soon as I received the email for this one I knew something good was coming. I just knew it right down into my bones. They started shaking a bit and that was when I knew it right up in there. That was the exact moment I knew about this song. I knew it was a song that was going to have not just some good bits in it but also some good ideas. It’s all about the protagonist Lux who happens to be out wandering the suburban rains when he has a great realization. I’m pretty sure it’s something to do with love or something but I can’t really tell because lo-fi etc but I think this song is actually pretending to be more dischordant than it actually is. You can hang your hat on that guitar section and the chords padding into the background actually resolve the melody real nice like. It’s one of those deceptive Bored Nothing affairs that parades as a black coffee but is actually pre-loaded with artificial sweetener. Man, that’s a lazy metaphor. In conclusion, this is so good that I’d be willing to award it Sound Doctrine’s album of the week for this week, despite the fact it’s just one song and I don’t do an album of the week.

You can have it as a free download via Airpunch if you wanna.
So Melbourne, so good.