This guy is one of the most promising people of 2015. His EP is one of the most promising releases of 2015. This song is one of the most promising songs of 2015. I think it’s reasonable to refer to a song as promising even after the fact if it doesn’t sum to immediate sensation, if it contains the possibility of growth and later understanding. One can sit and dwell on this song for a while and it won’t necessarily follow the same linear path for everyone. The samples take a long time to resolve into the beat and the beat itself takes time to resolve and even when it does, it bursts apart again forcing your jiggling knees to reassess their movement. Find the tempo again, find the new rythm. That dark, single piano note recurring again and again and again. And again. It’s foreboding and it tells a story unto itself before lyric becomes part of the narrative. Still ignoring lyric though, is that an affected scream or a siren? Wait is that Bruce Hornsby’s EXACT piano tone under the female vocal that started this damn track (it’s back, btw). There’s definitely a tale unfolding but the story arc is so confronting that it’s easy to focus on the structural elements of the track and find it finished before you could consider fully what you just listened to. And there’s an EP of these tracks still to come.

Jack Grace has ghost produced a whole bunch of acts over the past year and been a feature vocal under different names on a bunch of other tracks but the new name indicates new things, the first of which is the unilateral violation of my year’s best of list. Shoe in this, without a doubt.

I just now clocked that there was a new Bilby track on the internet but it’s a tricky little beast because it’s doesn’t live in a traditional dwelling (soundcloud, bandcamp, apartment) but exclusively on Triple J Unearthed*. So even though it’s killing my sound doc aesthetic I’m embedding it because timing is currency and I like currency like I like this song, which is to say heaps a fair bit. Also, if you’re one of the two overseas readers, this might be a nice introduction to Unearthed? Get in there. There’s actually two new tracks (new to me, anyway, it’s been a while since I caught up on Bilby news) and Champion Ruby is the faster of the two. It’s pinned down by a tinny drum machine track and is mixed more murkily than the second but it’s a good illustration of the elements that make Bilby so diverting. Hitting syllables right on guitar plucks and strong refrains that are hard to extricate from your head once there.

The second track is this one Smoak It which is a signpost by which we can once again know that Bilby likes to smoke things. This one is from closer to the start of the year but it’s still more fresh than the last time I wrote about our m8. Bonus news, I was looking through his fb images and saw that he played a show with March of the Real Fly. Isn’t that just perfect though? That show would have been righteous.

*Hey I found it on soundcloud now but I can’t very well just go back on all that stuff about unearthed can I?

I’ve covered Laurence a couple of times as he released his EPs and records onto bandcamp with a casual indifference. Community radio and Triple J alike (as well as almost all other blogs, really) haven’t paid too much attention but I don’t get the impression that this bothers Laurence all that much. You don’t exactly pick a performance name like Laurence with SEO in mind so it’s probably not an excercise in music business. This first one right here (the fourth from the EP) closes off like any other Mac Demarco Laurence track, all flying runs down the neck of a guitar whilst Laurence husks gently over the track. The Armidale native, singing about small town blues? I’ll take it. He’s all Melbourne now but we weren’t all born with long black in our veins, like yours truly. Melbourne born and bred, this author, with a penchant for warehouse conversions and exposed light-fittings. I know a thing or two about Melbourne, boy, I’ll tell it to you straight. Now there’s a town, Melbourne.

The second one I have for you here is Civic Video Love Song which is a good song for you to listen to and arugably the best song written loosely around Civic Video so far this year. There’s elements from acts like Kurt Vile or LP era Middle East but there’s mostly just a dry warmth that would lend itself beautifull to an inland Australia roadtrip.

Here he is on facebook.

I’ve never written about Sex On Toast before but what I have done plenty of times is wanted to write about Sex On Toast which I obviously can’t prove. You’ll have to just trust me on this one won’t you. This video is something I was mere millimeters away from writing about (in fact there’s still a post in my drafts that uses the term ‘bang city’ so it’s probably best I never finished it). They’re a ten piece affair outta Melbourne who unashamedly just dropped this deep-feeling number.

This song from PhysiQue was initially recorded for use at West Pymble Fitspot in the early 80s. Despite absolutely adoring the track when it first started playing over the PA in ’81, several of the Fitspot staff felt that the gym’s ambiance might benefit from a second track on the loudspeakers rather than the single track on continuous loop. Fortunately, their complaints fell on deaf ears and ‘Same Mistakes’ was played without interruption until the 24 hour workout center was unceremoniously shutdown in 1994. Many readers will recall the circumstances of West Pymble Fitspot’s closure when it was discovered that the staff had been tampering with their treadmill speeds against manufacturer advice leading to several grazed knees and a number of very furious patrons. Long time member Mrs Kelican said of the incident, “I’m most surprised that this would happen here, of all places. I thought after the aquarobic drownings of the 70s, Fitspot had upped its game but here we are in the mud again. Do you know who I should speak to about validating my parking?”

That interview was recorded in September 1994 and by June 1996 West Pymble Fitspot had been bulldozed to rumble. In its place stood a brand new restaurant from the critically acclaimed chain Hungry Jacks and while residents are still enjoying Jack’s range of fingerlicking flame-grilled beef patty burgers, the song that defined that space for almost 13 years was lost. Until now. Fitspot employee Flint Milton had disregard regulations outlined in the Fitspot code of conduct and recorded his own synth cover of the track which was originally recorded by the thirteen-piece classical guitar outfit PhysiQue. Now with most of the original founding members deceased or incarcerated, PhysiQue have used Flint Milton’s cover of ‘Same Mistakes’ as the basis of a brand new version of the track and here’s the kicker – you can hear it below. There’s only one surviving member left from the original twelve but Andrew Elston, now living in Sydney, is determined to bring the track back to its former glory.

Sometimes when I walk past that hungry jacks late at night think i can hear the original guitars whaling out over the dull hum of those deregulated treadmills but then the wind blows and I’m once again in the present, a double bacon deluxe in my hand and dreams in my heart.