Canberra
I’ve watched this video too many times now, enjoying the process of my brain deliquescing and hardening back to a goopy solid across the course of its three minutes and forty-two seconds. Can we quickly take a moment here to ackowledge how annoying it is that ‘forty’ is spelled ‘forty’, by the way? Absolute kulak behaviour, no-one needed to drop the ‘u’ out of there. Wild to consider that even though this music video stands paramount as a brilliant piece of visual art, Voidhood’s musical accompaniment is at no point overshadowed. This song bangs, courtesy of that N.E.R.D-esque electronic production and his vocals are a strange mixture of deep tone and alternating flow, changing all the way through.
I first came across Voidhood after he collaborated with fellow Canberra local Ryan Fennis (who you might remember from such early works as ‘To Me’, written about by your guy right here). Ryan and Voidhood teamed up on this high beam record called ‘Tapped’, the first joint release between the two from an upcoming project they had coming. Seemingly, this new single from Voidhood ‘Dissociating’ sees him back on his lonesome, but I’m no less excited to see what the two come up with next.
Meantime, bury yourself in this.
In 2021, I exist entirely within one of two modes – dreampop or hip-hop, and you just got a healthy blast of the best in new Australian hip-hop courtesy of 1300. You know what time it is. Please meet Canberra’s Sesame Girl, a band of four who’re but one song deep* yet what a lovely record, truly. Heather’s vocal is effortless, gliding with ease over these beautifully dry but colourful guitars. There’s something about the thickness of her ‘s’ sounds that would drive a speech pathologist mad but is somehow pure cream here. In her slower moments she channels the strength and drawn out power of Victoria Legrand while also retaining a quicker vocal tempo to deliver some of the verses with a little more immediacy.
*A little extra digging has revealed that this is -not- their debut single. It’s been written up as such out there, but it is not. And look, much gets made about artists falsely claiming a new releasing as their debut single when they’ve already had releases under the same moniker but I don’t begrudge it. YOU try navigating an industry that expects you to break on single one lest you become old news. There’re career phases and Get Up certainly feels like the start of something new. There’re some beautifully wilting acoustic singles upon their bandcamp that’ll comfortably find themselves on your ‘ugh, I stayed up all night and the sun’s coming up soon, I’ve made some bad life choices recently’ playlist. Do try one out.
I live by the same code as esteemed fisherman John West. The fish that John West rejects? Those are what make him the best. I’ve looked that clam digger square in his dead eyes and stole his catch phrase damn near word for word. ‘The songs that Sound Doc rejects are what make Sound Doc the best’. And let me tell ya, I reject a lot. Any asshole can keep up to speed with every new release, that doesn’t impress anyone. Picking just good gear out of that, that’s the service your boi offers. So even though a dude like Genesus Owusu is covered to death, he’s in all the playlists, he’s written about on every local music news website and he’s not that usual deepcut energy, I had to get him in here. This record is simply too good to reject.
For those aren’t yet across the Genesis Owusu backstory, I shan’t be sharing it to you because you should damn well know better. Here’s the song.
When I first came across this new single by Ryan Fennis, I was listening blind. I didn’t know what was coming through my headphones was but it was immediately something special. My good friend and also person who I harass horribly at work Rhosian once told me that rainbow Paddlepops are actually just caramel paddlepops with a whole bunch of colouring in them and while that may be true, I maintain that on a blind taste-test, i can witness the rainbow. So too with this song, immediately I knew this was rainbow rather than caramel, whatever the artist might be called and wherever they might be from. This song swirls with colour sounding both bedroom produced and professionally made. It’s that “is this a demo? but why doesn’t it also sound so good?” idea that Jai Paul skilled-up in his released-but-actually-leaked-but-actually-released LP (hit me up if you want those mp3s, for real).
The strength of this record seems to be that Ryan Fennis can really play. Evidentially a ruthless guitarist, he also seems to be have production chops beyond his years (I don’t know his age but I’d wager he’s overperforming). He has a woozy, hypnotic vocal and a way of singing that almost sounds like he articulates on the inhale rather than the exhale which offers this really weird, breathy quality. Looks as if he’s been putting in mileage around Canberra these past few years but the other states haven’t yet connected the dots. Perhaps that’s what 2019 is all about for Ryan Fennis, feels like he’s just about ready.
Artists you need to know rn
| 1. 1300 |  |
316 |
| 2. Voidhood | |
259 | 3. jamesjamesjames | |
186 | 4. Zan | |
174 |
| 5. Sesame Girl | |
147 |
