Today¹ The Paper Scissors released their brand new² EP. You’ve come at a good time too because I’ve got the exclusive streaming rights³ to first single ‘Held Down Threw Up’ which, after a quick google search, you’ll find nowhere else on the internet*. They’re four tracks of gravity free slow jam bliss. As I understand it, climate change means that in 2212 we’ll all be marooned on small islets with the water level roughly mid shin sipping on robotic coconuts. Most land will have melted and the sun will have run out of petrol and oil magnates will control movement tween day and night. Eventually aquatic habitation will become a possibility (most scientists believe this will occur around 2260) at which point we can abandon our islet stilt-huts and migrate to our final home in the Atlantic. Roboto-tropicana will be the flavour of the day and our Paper Scissor pals will be prying wallets open by the dozen. Take this chance to smoke a download while it’s free. I sent it to my pal Merrick and asked him his thoughts on it but he didn’t reply to me so either something has happened to him or he is disrespecting me. I hope he’s ok. I think he’d really like this too.

[EP DOWNLOAD: RIGHT CLICK + SAVE AS]

The Paper Scissors – Held Down Threw Up

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The Paper Scissors – Down With Something

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¹ Back in May
² Not that new
³ I don’t.
* Some places

Here’s a quivering mess of an EP with more pent up  energy than little Johnny Ritalin, bane of teachers, curse of parents, ruiner of educational outcomes. The group is Phobiac and this isn’t the first release they’ve rel… -put out, but it’s the first I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. Vocal styling that maybe makes me think of the Medics, or even Royal Headache (it’s a stretch), is the most understated element of the noisy shamozzle. Delayed guitar clangs around itself like the earlier mentioned child in a caravan kitchenette and the whole thing is recorded, as the youth keep saying, ‘lo-fi’.

The drums sound like machine gun bursts in ‘Triangle Song’ (probably my favourite from the six-tracker), a tune which spends the last twenty seconds pulsing with what might be the richest moments of the EP. Phobiac seem to be at their strongest when they build up a head of steam but their slowest songs have a poppier, shoegazing sensibility that will better lend themselves to radio play (which they will have when awareness of this EP comes). They’re based in Surry Hills, which has no shortage of no-talent grunge so it’s nice to see something sturdy come out of the place. That was rude. I actually really like you Surry Hills, you’ve given me some good times and I meant that as a compliment. Let’s never fight again. Allow me to make this clear, this EP is fantastic and undoubtedly some of the best rock’n'roll I’ve heard this year. It’s a free download or $5 for a physical copy so whichever you choose, just choose. While we’re talking choices, I probably could have picked a different image for this post. At least you get to see it a full three times this way. People are into repeat images, right?

Tricky-finger Tim is the new name under which Tim Fitz has been operating the past few months, by virtue of his astounding piano chicanery and his unexpected decision to have it legally changed. It certainly sounds good though. Good and professional. Tricky-finger Tim. That’ll stick. Along with a fictional new name, Fitz has a legitimately new song and it sounds exactly as you’d expect for a Tim Fitz track, which is to say it sounds nothing like anything else he’s released.

At this point it isn’t really clear if the following is a strength or weakness but Timothy Fitz cannot make music of any consistency. Hold there, I’m not say that there are variances in quality, I’m saying that this business is hard to classificate (it’s a word, look it up). The only feature you may recognize is that of the piano part, which if you’ve listened to Fitz before (and you damn well better have since he’s 20% of what I post about) you’ll know is something of a staple. It adds a spectre of lucidity to a tune that would otherwise rumble like a queasy stomach.

No news on what’s next for Tim Fitz but if you haven’t already had a listen then take this chance to hear his award winning sophomore EP here. Almost ran with this when I couldn’t find a good press shot and still sort of thinking I should have.

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.