Interesting to note that music is one of very few things that can be positively described as moody. I’ve never been set up for a date with the line, “Yeah, she’s really moody and brooding, you’ll love it”. Additionally, I’ve never been set up for a date, but if I had and it was prefaced with that sort of comment, that’d be it for me.

I think that’s a pretty apt description of the Luchi EP you now find before you. Not dark, not brooding, just moody. It has many of the trappings of lilting folkcoustica but it’s bathed in low bit drum samples so odds on the thing probably was’t birthed in Justin Vernon’s barn. For a first offering it’s a sparkling effort. I’d like to hear a little more mix-up on the beats and less regularity to the way they’re looped but I’m not a demanding guy. And let’s be fair, even if I was, this is a bit of alright. There’s a good bout of diversity amongst the five tracks and can I just say something? Can we pause for a second? I want to thank Luchi for not including an interlude. People need to settle down with the interludes. You’ve put out a five track EP, how poor do you think my attention span is? As if eight minutes in I’m going to pause the record, sit there for forty five seconds of silence and think to myself, “Where’s the interlude on this thing? I NEED A MOMENT.”

From the looks of things they haven’t been a bastion of productivity these past few years. Formed in 2010, Luchi finally released their first EP in 2012 and when you think about this mathematically (and why wouldn’t you) you’ll realize that this means the band have only managed to release 0.2 tracks per month – a figure that becomes even more alarming when divided by the number of band members. The individual output of each musician is 0.05 songs per month over the past two and a half years. That’s barely half a song a year.

Truly worth a download though. Available gratis on bandcamp, though if you feel like paying a few dollars I strongly endorse it. See below for a graphic representation of payment options.

I’d be very interested to see them live and luckily that opportunity is at hand as they’re playing FBi Social on June 22.

New four track EP from off-center hip-hop duo Brothers Hand Mirror is a release you’d best listen to this week if you’re going to stay fresh. It’s the mentos of EPs, the freshbreathe deluxe. You’d even consider calling tic-tacs on this thing but when you listen to those beats it’s pretty evident that we’re talking more than 1 calorie. This is the high-fat business of Oscar Key Sung (aka Oscar of Oscar + Martin) on the boards and the nonsensical, image heavy rhyming of HTML Flowers. It’s a quavered lyric delivery that reminds me a whole, whole lot of Cincinnati’s WHY?, an Anticon group that already went a long way to blur the lines between hip-hop and hipster. My good-pal Maccy D who captains 2SER hip-hop show In The Red called this hipster-hop and that’s probably fair, given that I’m loving it and I’m not the firmest proponent of Aussie hip-hop.

The two tracks I’ve taken from the EP are ‘Our Will’ and ‘Oops Oh My’. The first because it’s the beat that most closely resembles historical Oscar Key Sung, the second because it’s an amazing cover of that Tweet (no twitter) track from way back when. I should point you to the whole EP though because ‘Waterfall Walker’ has a gritfingered blues lick that you’ll be crushing on. All four lo-fi gems are free for download anyway so even if you’re disappointed (unlikely) all it’ll cost you is a few seconds of your time. Ready go.

The nature of musicianship appears to have changed over the past however many years in as much as it’s not longer sufficient to be a member of just the one band. I’ve seen dudes find success in the side projects of side projects and still move into new material under a new name. That last sentence is an untruth but it serves the purpose of the point I’m trying to make; bands bloom into bands bloom into bands. It’s the nature of unsigned man.

The fertility of a band such as Parades then should come as no surprise to anyone remotely involved with their music. Parades are rich, experimental and technically exceptional. From it’s potent loins have already come the king of feature records, Jonathan Boulet, and let’s not forget what the kids have dubbed ‘the great rural ballcrusher’, ‘the big man’s dirty hands’, ‘the valley of angry smirks’, or more simply Snakeface. The band’s individual nodes were inevitably going to pursue their own creative exploits and so, we have Light Giant.

Light Giant – Waste of Wine [FREE DOWNLOAD]

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It brings me great pleasure to share strong Australian music, more so still when it’s Sydney based and thus this three piece have been a hearty treat during this weather-wrecked weekend. There are multiple layers of distortion and falsetto, the two criscrossing as the song builds and builds. This isn’t the tried and tested indie-folk crescendo we’ve heard too many times now (enough with the xylophone) but it’s actually the result of a smarter mix, not just the constant addition of instruments. If you’ve listened to it once, hit play again, you’ll further appreciate it with subsequent listens.

Second single from Bearhug’s Bill, Dance, Shiner brings DIY lols by virtue of Gary’s Express Video Studio and an emotional performance. If you haven’t already bought the record, do it, or at the very least drag-and-drop it into a Spotify playlist (RELEVANT!)

Checking back in with our favourite surf-pop-no-more two-piece Sures, proved more rewarding than anticipated this morning. I apologise if that sentence was as tough to read as it was to write but hopefully message conveyed, yes? The ‘we all knew it was coming but didn’t say it’ news that they’d signed with Ivy League Records was made public and not so coincidentally they relaunched their reverb-heavy four tracker with a bonus fifth track. I’ve hoped in my heart of hearts that Sures weren’t a one trick Pony and this new tune ‘Stars’ is making me think they certainly won’t be. It’s faster, tighter and more directed than their other sun drenched wanderings. It’s still reverb heavy and rife with two part harmony so OG fans will get what they crave while those looking for growth will surely hear it. They’ve made it the opening track of their EP which is now looking like a pretty strong release on the back of this late inclusion and that Poseidon track. Without further adieu, here is ‘Stars’, the song that’s given me new confidence in Sydney’s Sures.