If you brought my accountant Trevor in here and said “Trevor, break the numbers down for me”, he’d immediately tell you that across the board, through the years of Sound Doctrine, Simon Lam is the most written about artist. I’d ask you not to though, because Trevor bills by the hour and I’ve not paid his last two invoices so I’d prefer if you didn’t invite him onto my digital property. Oh good grief, he heard you say his name and he’s here already. GO HOME TREVOR.

Admittedly I’ve never written about Simon Lam under his own name, covering him as one third of I’lls, one half of Kllo and one hundred percent of Nearly Oratorio. It’s in his most holistic format that we’re hearing him again tonight, the face voice and production behind Nearly Oratorio. I like to think of this as his low-risk project, where he can release whatever he damn wants and to hell with the critical and commercial outcome. It’s the liberation from consequence I suspect, that means it’s here that he offers up some of his best art, and the new one Juniper proves me right again.

His vocals are tiny, the keys are caressed and it’s the sort of song you find yourself physically leaning towards, hoping to glean its inner secrets via closer inspection. Try as you might, you won’t crack it, for Lam is warlock of the highest order and his secrets won’t be plumbed by your normie energy. Cop the song, EP on the way soon.

Jim could be a Lido, or a Grynpyret if the next few years go as they should so cross those fingers and pray for rain cause this dude deserves it. He’s blessed us with a brand new little liquorice twist that goes by the name of ‘When You Love Someone’ and its and colour and candy. Jim builds this one from 16 bit gaming sounds replacing them block by bright block with instrumental elements of Jim’s own two hands. Bass, guitar parts, rolling piano lines and a sax part that’s going to head to head with the new Alex Lahey for the title of Best Unexpected Sax Arrivals of 2019.

It’s just about enough to get me writing a blog post about it, just about?

Danny Barwick has been on my radar for a hot minute. One quarter of his 2017 Distance EP was a song called ‘Flickering’, good enough that I included it in my 2017 Unearthed Staff Picks and juiced it for months afterwards. It had all the elements that I’ve come to understand as part of Danny Barwick’s brilliance. Fizzing synths, his (sorta) deep voice and most notably, perfect piano lines. Every song is built around a gorgeous key section in such a way that I’m a whole bunch of certain that his writing process surely starts with just mister Barwick at a piano. Don’t misunderstand me here, Danny’s records might have some beautiful elements but so often they’re just outright sinister. The production on this newest single ‘Milkolka’ is more threatening than that letter from Allianz I received when I forgot to finalize a third part insurance claim, strings demented and mishapen, synths stabbing wildly like prison shanks in the dark. Seriously though, you gotta make sure you submit the claim or else you will get a sinister letter with the heading ‘Intention To Sue’.

‘Milkolka’ is the first taste from his next EP releasing by the name ‘Tigers’ which I expect we’ll get to hear in 2019.

One of my favourite records of this year dropped way back in January. That was the debut Tram Cops full length even in my dreams, a record that moved Michael Vince Moin from ‘Melbourne musician making weirdo acoustica-jazz’ to ‘one of the most creative nodes in Australian music rn’. It was the realization of the ideas from several records that Moin had dropped under the name Laurence, like William, Andromeda (2013), It’s Real (2014) and Happy Town (2015). Dropping these hyperlinks in, I’m actually starting to think that maybe Moin is the artist I’ve written about more than any other on Sound Doctrine over its eight years of life? He’d be neck and neck with Oscar Key Sung and Tim Fitz [music] but interestingly by contrast to both, he’s never tasted any big name-making success, including in the wake of ‘even in my dreams’.

He entered a new phase in the second half of this year, releasing singles from his next album Not Forever. This second single follows on from October’s ‘this is it’ and let me tell ya, you can almost blow past that first in excitement for this second because it’s the one you’ve held out for. Gentle guitar parts baking in a Summer haze and horns that fade in as if from the distance, both lounging atop percussion that’s drier than Coober Pedy (look it up, you’ll find that’s quite dry indeed). Mikey’s a heck of a guitarist but he also has the capacity to produce guitar sounds so that they sound damn gorgeous. That’s the first and final third of the track but in those middle bars it’s spry, trotting guitars. As ever, you’ll find old mate messing with the format and gluing pieces of songs together but, as ever, somehow it doesn’t feel disjointed.

There’s something extremely moving in the way that Moin grabs simple refrains and drives sentimentality into them like a tent peg into dry festival earth. The lyricism is often sparse and simple but it nails me more often than not. Album’s out November 9 (his first through a label, on ripper tiny Melbourne indie Neat Lawn) and you can secure yourself a copy here.