When I first heard this thing it hit me harder than the Taronga zoo branded slap bands that my daughter keeps inexplicably losing, forcing me to purchase yet more slapbands. Harder than slapbands and harder even than the recurring cost of slapband repurchase. These are zoo gift shop slapbands too, objectively the best and most expensive slapbands. Harder than that.

Not because the beat was particularly chunky, though immaculately produced by Sydney hip-hop monster (and Godriguez collaborator) Stackhat and not because that voice is weighty and beautiful both. It hit me because right from the outset, this damn song kept reminding me of my own mortality. I mean the thing opens with a ticking clock, interposed into the production throughout the track so that you might never forget your impending doom. It’s all part of the semi-nihilist tides moving beneath the song, declaring that we’re all just matter. But there’s an optimism too, signalled halfway through the song with Nardean’s laughter and the ‘that’s a good thing’ tempo change. That’s the point at which Nardean starts to paint scenes of mortal beauty, things that are lovely even if fleeting. And please do not sir even begin me about the bit where she flows upward in pitch like a reverse vocal waterfall (low gradient obvs).

It’s wonderful structure and songwriting and lyricism and vocals and production and I just don’t know if I’ve heard another Australian song of the same finished quality in 2k18. There have been some wonderful and unique artists thus far but this is a holistic monster, the real deal, every box ticked. You could submit this for a US visa and they wouldn’t even request further justification, you’d be sorted.

Don’t ask me who she is or where she’s come from, you can scope Nardean’s socials for that side o things. I’ll tell you though, her future is where I’ve cast my eyes. There’s a full LP in the works (completed even?) made possible through an Australia Council grant and I’m quietly optimistic of more as good as this.

Yesterday I found a new artist the same way I find every other new artists on this gross website- an email from my cousin who saw another local artist repost a video of the first artist covering them at a brisbane market. That’s my format right there and I refuse to discover music otherwise. They’re a duo called Elder and they’ve got just this one song called Vagabond and boy howdy, it’s a good’n.

I haven’t received a press release about it but I bet if I did it would say that it was recorded using several singular pieces of rigatoni attached by a series of well cooked linguine strands. You can hear the starch, the reduced clarity and particularly an increase in the amount of audible pasta. You’ll be thinking to yourself “well now, I haven’t before heard of a song recorded on various pastas” but I beg of you, have you ever heard a song that sounded like this? Surely not monsieur. What a strange concoction. Unpredictable vocal melodies whipping like flags in the wind of those awful (or amazing?) new wave guitar sounds. Truly friend, I must insist you explain to me from whencst a song like this comes because i need to find its parents and mall security are offering little to no assistance. Was it left here by accident? Did it grow here? From what parallel realm have you conjured those strange pipes.

There’s only one thing to do here, in a mystery such as this. Band, you will need to deliver me several of your finest mp3s for further investigation. I am officially soliciting your audio and I will report back to you, my reader friends, once I’ve collated more evidence. Meantimes, cop a download over here and have a lovely week why don’t you.

I started writing the draft of this post by accusing you of having not read the last time I wrote about Tram Cops. I’ll need to put my hand up here though, apparently I’ve never written about Tram Cops. I’ve written about Michael’s earlier project, the simply titled Lawrence but Tram Cops? Well that’s my hidden shame.

Trying to apply a genre to tram cops is about as viable as trying to apply a leash to a pet cicada and let me tell you here and now, Cedric does not much like it when I try to tether him. So let’s leave that fools errand for other music “writers” and do what we do best here: spruik artisanal, bio-ethical mp3s. This one’s a bloody good one, refrained around the mantra of “I stand on stolen land”, with more than a handful of production ideas coming in and out like tides. It comes from Even In My Dreams, the freshly released full LP, and it’s indicative of the noodling, wing-nut orchestra that’s involved in this record, a menagerie of instrumentalists enlisted to birth the sprawling beast. It’s hard to pick just a few tracks that’ll express the diverse strangeness of this record but here’s a brace for you.

I don’t say this lightly but Tram Cops give me the same feeling that D.D Dumbo did very early on. The feeling that I’m listening to an outsider, an artist entirely in his own lane who might explode into cult fandom or who could just as easy reach no one. Explode. Please explode.

Did you buy yourself a fresh set of tribal talismans cause it seems as if your luck has changed for the better. You’ve just happened to stumble upon sounddoctrineblog on a rare and wonderful day. It’s a Bilby day. Hold on there though my pal, that’s not all. No, it’s not even Bilby month. This is Year Of The Bilb. The dude has unleashed a fresh new five tracker on us and I’ve heard from the online forums that’s it’s just a taster before the next LP (also due this year). So big things ahead, but let’s take a moment of Mindfulness to savour the flavour in the here and now. A snack sized release with incredibly clever lyrical moments.

A lot of my favourites come from ‘SYDNEY RAPPER’, his call-out track to contemporary sydney MCs. “Take the gun sounds outta your song, do it for fun not for the funds” or “My mixtape is alright mate and your mixtape is a migraine” are both small miracles in themselves but a hugely underrated part of Blinky Trill’s rap game is his hook writing. The chorus on ‘SYDNEY RAPPER’ is so pristine, pure and memorable. It’s a layered vocal and it’s delivered sweetly atop some thickly dimensional production from Atlanta producer type Meltycanon. Then there’re tracks like ‘Barnaby Joints’ which is his mandatory weed track (“more importantly f**k the AFP”) and also sees one of my favourite new phrases in the form of ‘Joe Hockey Blunts’. Just dwell on that for a minute. Nobody knows what it means but it’s provocative, it gets the people going.

The way Bilby uses his vocal is constantly changing, moving from an attention to repeated words to repeated syllables to elongated sounds to party-popper quick verse. The dude’s a visionary of the highest echelon and I would like him to be my dad thanks. Even the art for this record is remarkable. It’s a holistic experience and it deserves to be block mounted in your study so that every time you’re struggling with that writer’s block you just can’t seem to shake, you can look up at lil animated Blinky Trill and see what true creativity looks like.

Nissan first entered the Micra in motorsports with the March Superturbo R. Introduced in 1987, this rare pre-facelift K10 weighed in at 740 kg (1630 lb) with half interior, roll cage and tool kit. It was built for the new sub-1600 cc Group A class, and shortly after in 1988 Nissan released the March Superturbo as a road car.

While the March was a favourite with the drivers in the Japanese Rally Championship, veteran Swedish rally driver Per Eklund finished the 1988 RAC Rally in 21st position and the 1989 Acropolis Rally Greece in 10th place.

Only a true rally car could produce rhythms as driving and powerful as this, though truly Micra has come a long way since 1989 because this is no tenth place track. You’re listening to a bonafide blue ribbon contender that’s in a weight class of its own. A first upload for a brand new act who’ve made a white hot bar of steel in the form of ‘Child Grows Old’