I wanna say euro disco, I wanna say Mediterranean, I wanna say so many things and places about this song but the truth is I don’t really know what’s going on or where I am right now or the direct line of reference for a track like this. Andras had elected to leave this track garnish free and it certainly from the dry production. Oscars voice is left raw and bare just as God intended it while the kick drum is accompanied only by only a responding snare, neither drum sound particularly effected. There’s no unnecessary percussion littering the mix, just Andras prodding at his keys in a way progressive enough so as not to feel like a set of loops. This is excitingly the first new material since the pair released mini-album Embassy Cafe last year and it promises a return to form with perhaps even a little more vocal melody on this record than the last, if this single is anything to go by. The duo have never toured the act up to Sydney but I have high hopes for such a tour sometime during this record’s life. If you’re down Melbourne way you can see the song live very soon indeed, so soon that it’s actually THIS SUNDAY! That’s literally the soonest Sunday available, provided you maintain a traditional view of Sundays. I know a lot of people have been thinking ‘What even is a Sunday? Maybe a Tuesday is a Sunday?’
Well it ain’t. A Tuesday is a Tuesday and a Sunday is a Sunday you post-modernist pig. If you’re like me and you hate that line of thinking and also love this song then you’ll be there at Howler on Sunday, except that I won’t be there because I am in Sydney.

The first installment of what I’m going to dub ‘Key Sung Wednesday’ is a reimagining of Key Sung’s ‘Holograms‘. To suggest that the song has been stretched out to this new six minute affair would be a misrepresentation of the Zacharia process. It’s an entirely new orchestration that effectively only takes lightly from the vocal stem of the original track and while it’s been stripped of the latent sexuality of Oscar’s jam, in that loss is a different gain. The new take is an ambrosial feast splayed out wide and thin. This is only Jamil’s second recorded single, the first exclusively available via the third Wondercore Island Mixtape. I definitely needed this today, if only to cleanse the memory of the Griswold’s record that came in the mail yesterday. You’ll find Jamil involved with some of the sideprojects of the various Hiatus Kaiyote members as well as recording with the don juan himself, Kirkis. Here’s to what comes next.

Black Vanilla (recently returned victorious from a Splendour In The Grass set) are back with a track that is perfect for all you middle class whiteys who want to feel somewhat less middle class whitey. SMACKS is (according to the hollered vocals of the song itself) ‘the antidote’. The antidote to what exactly? Maybe to ‘chill’ music. Maybe to ‘nice’ music. Maybe to MUSIC ITSELF.

What we here at SoundDoc just bloody love about Black Vanilla is the singularity of vision you hear in their releases. The tracks are always so focused, every note and lyric filled with more aggressive sneer than a coalition backbencher driving through Mt Druitt.

2050 years ago Cicero wrote ‘What is there for which mortal man may wish that he did not attain?’ and I think with the advent of free downloads, we can finally put that question to bed with the answer: nothing. Listen and download here.

Medium punch teams up with Matt On The Moon here which is big news for anyone familiar with the individual work of either artist as well as anyone who is simply a fan of people working together and human cooperation. Very appealing are those trackpad double kicks and crunchy textures on the snare, the work of Medium Punch who is the producer half of this pairing. Anyone who styles themself on an arcade fighter reference is already kicking goals before the song even begins. The song is fairly split in two with the first half based around a footwork rhythm and the second something closer to the Key Sungs, Movements or Collarbones’s's’s in its sultry downtempo groove. I need to listen to this a few more times to decide if I love that vocal or not but, at the absolute minimum, it’s an interesting first offering from two artists I’d previously not heard of.

Though I’ve never put down words about Big Scary I’ve always been a fan of Tom Iansek. I like what he does as a producer and I like what he does as a solo artist. You loved it when I talked about his solo record Man Of Leisure in 2012 and your loyalty to the blog has been rewarded with another Tom Iansek record. Back then he was just called Dads but presumably there was an announcement and an awards ceremony because he is now #1 Dads. Heck of an achievement, very well earned. I’m not sure if the record is going to be populated exclusively with collaborations but it’s two from two so far. The first track featured Tom Snowden of Lowlakes and was good but certainly not as good as this second jam. Ainslie Wills joins Iansek on this one as co-writer and vocalist and she’s really done a number. Iansek himself sings the harmony with characteristic humility, there only to thicken the mix as necessary. Heavy handed he aint. All that without even mentioning that guitar, that verbose guitar line that joins Ainslie’s vocal melody for the chorus. It’s so tonally expressive that I can almost hear lyrics in each note but then maybe that’s just the acid. It’s a Thursday morning, after all, and I refuse to sit through a marketing meeting without the aid of hallucinogenics. Never again.

The record is called About Face and is out 8th August through Pieater