Ah yes, it’s Bloghound Billy at it again after a cool quarter year hiatus, a period during which I was hounded mercilessly by fans, artists, creditors and publicists alike. “When will you write about my new single, dumbass?” and “you understand it’s a loan right? You can’t just keep the money?” are just a few of the questions that I’ve failed to answer over the past quarter.

I’m gonna answer this one though. You’ve not asked it yet but I’m gonna answer it, stand back now. YES. Yes, this song is one of the best Australian tracks of the year. YES, it’s one of the best produced hip-hop tracks of the year, local or international. YES, it’s indicative of a luminous future for Australian hip-hop. Its called THANK THE LORD by uprising Sydney crew Savour The Rations.

Can we pause on the production though for a second… The hand drums, the maniacal plucked sounds pattering like rain and those classic-Kwame manipulated bass sounds that allow the beat end to carry the same energy as the vocal parts – some feat, truly. Maybe I should have led with this but indeed it’s produced by Kwame under his production handle ‘thayboykwame’. He’s also one of the four MCs who lay bars over his production and I’m gonna have to put my hand up and say that I was expecting his flowcomotive punch to leave the other three in the dust. I was dead wrong and that’s what makes this crew feel so lucrative – there’re different voices to this and each bring fire and thunder of their own. That’s the strength of a crew like Brockhampton who can exhibit so many personalities in the one track and I think that’s what gives gas to THANK THE LORD too.

Imagine this thing live though… just dwell on it while you’re listening and thank the lord you get to. No word on whether or not these four will continue releasing under the mantle of STR in months to come (Kwame, Domba, Raj Mahal and Gibrillah all have blossoming solo projects in 2018) but on the strength of THANK THE LORD, you’d have to think they’ll go in on some more posse cuts. Please.

Well ol’ Pipsy is from the great city of Dunedin but that didn’t stop him uploading to triple jay unearthed dot com did it? Hijinx afoot? No mam, Pipsy went and moved to Melbourne so it’s all above board. What he did next is what we’re here to talk about, cause he went and put out this lil ol’ LP called Users and there’re a few on here that are worth your attention. The one that got me most immediately was this reverb sodden ‘Holiday’ that’ll slurp you the same way Sures did what feels like so long ago. We’re talking critical levels of sun soaked buoyancy here folks, unsinkable bubbles of hook laden pop.

Pipsy, real name Paul Pouwels-Trumpour, plays every instrument and even mixed and mastered the damn thing. Paul, nice one. Colour me impressed.

It’s best received as a full record experience but I’m not gonna tell you how to take your music, I’m not your damn dad and even he should know better than to try to micro-manage your media consumption. Dude really needs to dial it back 30%.

I heard this song this morning in our regular Tuesday morning triple j Unearthed music meeting and lemme tell you, the effect was immediate. Sweet child of the ocean and literal sunbeam Claire Mooney brought this in full of nonchalance, as if she wasn’t just about to play us an absolute wonder wrapped in jazz, psych loops and hundred dollar bills. I played it down. “This is fine, I guess”, I shrugged. I knew though. I knew that Claire had unknowingly stumbled upon a rich mineral deposit, and I was ready to take it off her hands. “Mind if I borrow this for a minute?” I asked, hefting the mp3 in the air and catching it again. “We won’t have much use for it but it might make for an excellent paperweight, perhaps. Or I can just chuck it in the bin for you if you’re finished with it?”

I pocketed that sweet file and I knew I’d committed a great evil, but what was I to do in the face of a groove this infectious. Vocals, flitting in and out, probably lyricless and largely formless but another dynamic that helped to drive this song constantly onward. I considered burying it in a lockbox so that only I would hear the song again but it felt wrong to deprive the world of this great rhythm. Now, I present it to you, underneath this text and as spectacular as I’ve suggested. The reference points on his Unearthed page are Caribou, Floating Points and Kevin Parker and that’s just about the listing of its parts. They’re a Melbourne four-piece founded by former Lurch & Chief member Brendan Anderson. Starts strong, ends stronger, here for you right now.

Carla Geneve is Perth’s next great hope, just nineteen years old and full of wild promise. I recently came across a state municipal report which stated that Western Australia had abandoned mining income in favour of capital investment in Carla Geneve stocks. And I’m no financial advisor but let me give you this piece of (financial) advise- you’d best do the same. The profit & loss graph looks like the sort of gradient that would be horrific to walk up and she knows her way around pharmaceuticals so we’re looking at some real short term dividends. First hand witnesses tell me that her performance at the WAMI’s was packed to the brim and talked about through the entire conference but that’s not the evidence you need. Listen to this absolutely song here. Greg’s Discount Chemist, is Carla’s… fourth maybe (?) song so far. She dropped three in batch a year ago but this feels like her moment with a quickened influx of fans following in the track’s wake. It’s wonderfully local in its lyrics and tone, and clever in the way it delivers turn of phrase (I’ve heard she doesn’t like her own line in “wish I could kill time but times killing me” but it is, of course, excellent). When the track breaks down to that lax baseline at the 1:45 I’ll tell ya, I damn near wept out the Yakult I’d just drunk and wouldn’t that just have been a damn waste of some good probiotics? It’s so beautifully earnest and she could read me my pacemaker manual and I’d still be riveted. Viva Geneve.

B-B-BONUS BEAT! That’s right, your favourite segment is back and with it comes a remix built around that bridge bassline from the Carla Rae Jepsen track above. You don’t get this on musicfeeds, I’ll tell you that for free.

I am not coping with this Marcus Whale cover of Troye Sivan’s ‘My My My!’. Not at all. All the coins have fallen out of my pockets, my umbrella has blown inside out, my headphones have become incredibly tangled and my laces are an undone spaghetti mess. I’m a total shambles. Marcus has taken what is unarguably a monstrous pop song and amped up the monstrous to make it both melodic and crushing in the one moment. I’m almost disappointed when it ends in that I want it to billow into even thicker chunks of noise. He’s playing some shows soon and word on the street is that he might even be working on some new music or whatever I don’t know. I don’t need new music, I just need this. What a titan.