File this one under songs like incisors cos it comes with a sharpness of intent that’ll drive through muscle and bone. She may’ve only release a trio of songs but Ruby already feels like one of those essential lyricists who I’ll be emotionally grappling with for years to come. This one hits me with the despondency of Stella Donnelly’s Boys Will Be Boys though it errs a little closer to the side of systemic music industry manhood than it does the crushing physicality of BWBB. That said, it’s all part of the one thing and Ruby’s anecdotal storytelling is a partnership of hearbreaking and beautiful. “I can’t afford therapy with the money they pay us to sing songs” is just about enough to level you on paper before you feel the influence of Ruby’s vocal. Rarely do you get the songwriting and the vocal both but well, here we are.

On most records a backing choir that features the likes of Angie McMahon, Maple Glider and more would be the headline but it’s hard to center that narrative when Ruby herself has so much more at play. No doubt those artists are on the song for that very reason. One hell of a song.

Calling yourself a name as reductive as Jingle when you’re making music this complex and layered? That’s a flex. Also maybe it’s a portmanteau of the artists name Joshua Ingle but my Arts degree quite simply hasn’t equipped me to ponder such questions. He’s been preparing remixes for the likes of Kučka and Ninajirachi in in the last three months so having warmed the tarmac he chosen this as the moment to finally become airborne.

The Novacastrian producer wrote this song for a charity compilation raising money for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. It’s over 60 tracks long and features the likes of Arca, clipping and Holly Herndon among others so the taste? The taste is good. This song ‘Too Many Things’ centered those radar synths and Jingle’s manipulated vocal cadences for the first half before my attention was drawn to those viscerally crushing kick drum slams.

Shoutouts to Dave Ruby Howe who upon hearing this sent it to me and remarked ‘it had some sound doc energy all over’. The man knows. He’s always known.

I did a cursory search of earlier articles to see if I’d previously written about Dolorres. He’s had a trio of heaters in the form of ‘Heelys’, ‘IQ’ and his debut single ‘Fluffy Dice’ which features a 14 second feature from Agung Mango and a video showcasing hotboxing of the highest order. A shame, it appears I never got around to writing any of the three tracks up and that’s a stain I’ll have to wear for years to come. I’ve earned my fate.

Single three is called ‘D.T.R’, abbreviated for ‘define the relationship’. Centered around the universal disparity in the way a relationship is perceived by the people apart of it, the lyrics run through the litany of internal insecurities one might have about putting it all on the table. It’s built around an acoustic guitar loop which, I think, he had already hinted an affection for in the Fluffy Dice outro, but it’s layered up with warm bass, shakers, synths and tomtoms and anvil-heavy piano. The vocal production is gorgeous as hell, ranging from raw recording to fully delivered autotune across the tracks five and a half minutes. While we’re here, can we talk about duration? He’s heading towards with six minute mark with this record with an outro that goes for over a minute long. It’s a stark contrast to the streaming savvy tactics of The Kid Laroi whose recent drop ‘Stay’ is a snappy 2:20, clearly with a mind of eliciting repeat listens. DoloRRes evidently wants none of that, no discounts applied, he’s demanding full fare. Pay the man.

Born in Rome, he’s one of the few Melbourne music types currently celebrating the Azzuri EURO victory who I’ll accept it from. Lot of bandwagon jumping going on from cats who reckon Chiesa is the first of his name. Cross your fingers that Melbourne stays open for at least a while longer so that you might get the chance to see this one come off live, in line with an EP coming next month. I’ve never seen a proper DoloRRes set but I did get a glimpse of him as Agung Mango’s tour DJ on the Genesis Owusu shows, during which he jumped up for plenty more than button pushing and it was molto bene (Italian for ‘five stars’, trust me).

Meet your guy Hector Morlet who plays Clarinet and sang this song. He’s got a bunch of soundcloud lo-fi hip-hop beat type records floating around that are really quite nice, particularly those you’ll find on his descriptively titled ‘Hec’s 10:00 [EP]‘. It runs for 10 minutes, that’s extremely accurate. The songs I like most from that release are the ones where he’s spilled his vocals across them, low slung and draped in comfort like an afterthought while he calmly produced the beats live. It’s warm and homely, as the truest bedroom hip-hop beats should always be. Here’s another I really appreciated called Golden Sheets.

He also did a bit of a sing for Noah Dillon and is one of the merry band of Bush Chooks that Jack Davies has assembled. He’s evidently a man about Perth, someone vested in a community. We should talk about Picture Frame though, because it’s quite a long way from any of those soundclouds I mentioned. On this, his first kinda… ‘official’ single I guess, he’s gone yachting on the French Riviera, holidaying in a Neapolitan coastal manse. It’s a timeshare Still Woozy with a short term booking courtesy of Kings of Convenience paid for entirely in the credit of that clarinet. I know I’ve already said it, but I’d like you to acknowledge that you’ve heard me when I remind you that it is indeed Hec himself on that ‘Rinet (shoutout to my woodwind heads) as well as every other instrument on the track I think maybe.

Indie Randy Newman really killed it with Picture Frame, a track I’ve listened to at least 15 times in the past week already. Gorgeous and thick on groove, hang this in the… hang it in… HANG THIS IN THE LOUVRE I’M SO SORRY.

Today’s offering comes courtesy of Fatshaudi and Luca Rain, a partnership formed around this two-track release Dance All Day / Make Believe. It’s not really an a-side/b-side type affair since both tracks are equally beautiful in their varying intensities but Dance All Day seems like the focus track, so that’s where I’d direct you first off. You can have them both embedded her though, I’m santa today and you are my devoted acolytes, receiving each of my presents as if a sacred . I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t really understand how Christmas works, but I think I’m close.

I feel like this is the sort of record that’d make fans out of some of my favourites like Lonelyspeck or Cookii. I wonder if some of Lonelyspeck’s production palette has bled through the pages into Dance All Day because some of those floating synth textures are making me hideously nostalgic for their unparalleled Lave EP. I suspect Fatshaudi and Luca Rain worked together across this dewdrop production whereas the vocals might be… Luca Rain? I went on google and gave them my search data, just so you wouldn’t have to, and still I found virtually nothing about the artists so I went direct to the source to ask for them for some key Fatshaudi and Luca Rain facts. Luca Rain told me that her favourite colour is blue (at the moment). Fatshaudi passed on that she is a piano teacher and that she and Luca Rain are best friends. You can never count on it, but I do think there’s a good chance I’m gonna get a Walkley for this investigative journalism.

Forced into some deeper sleuthing, I can tell you that they’re seemingly from Meanjin / Brisbane and that Rachael (Fatshaudi) also presents a show called Full of Air on 4zzz that focuses on a gamut of electronic sounds and the artists who make them outside the dominant male paradigm.

Here’s a bonus cut from a [probably] Fatshaudi side project called SFT-CR. The same deft production touch applied but applied with the weight of a jackhammer here.