Look at that, it’s already the sixth of January. While you were busy spending the last six days downloading torrents of Pitchfork’s year end best records, you already broke most of those resolutions that you made at midnight last Tuesday, when the hope of the new year was still ahead of you.

It may seem that this all doom and gloom, the truth is that we aren’t pessimists here at the Sound Doctor Blog. Actually the motto here in the office at Sound Documents is “whatever the opposite of pessimistic is, that’s us”. With that in mind, now is the time to drag your eyes off the scales and lay them down here, because we have something for you.

You see in the manic rush to get the hell out of digusting old 2013, a few bits of aural gold went right under the radar. Can you blame us for that? Well, you probably can actually, but we want to say sorry, we are here to right the wrongs.

One of those that slipped by was a new record from Melbourne’s Chris Bolton – aka Seagull. Ocean From Above dropped in October on Two Bright Lakes with a minimum of fanfare and fuss, and spent the ensuing months creeping up into our ears. To be completely fair, this record is really more of an aural diamond than the aforementioned gold. Forged at high pressure and extreme heat around 140km into the earth’s mantle and then appearing beautiful, bright and sparkling in the light of the day. Ocean From Above is quintessential Seagull, building on the framework of 2009′s Council Tree it is a loping, pulsing work which ebbs and flows with the tide.

As ever he does, Old Man Bolton has complemented his record with some beautiful visuals. The middle of December saw this video for ‘Original Shape’ released: Slow and elegant as the same passing of days it portrays, as ghostly gulls hover in and out of the shot. The track underplays its hand, staid guitar lines lie under Bolton’s wandering prosaic melodies as other worldly voices and synths hover persistently above drawing you to the close.

Buy the record, buy them all, because this is the perfect soundtrack with which to face up to the year ahead. As always, I end this with the ever present reminder that if you don’t enjoy this music, then you’re doing it wrong.

New music is being churned out all the time. I don’t know if you guys know this but every minute, somewhere in the world, 46 terrible albums are given the tick of approval by fat men smoking cigars. What’s the only thing that can save us from this nightmare combination of bad tunes, lifestyle disease and mouth cancer? If you know the answer to this, be sure to get in touch with any remaining members of Sticky Fingers in about 20yrs. In the meantime, THIS REMAINS OUR ONLY HOPE: huge new jams from avante-garde musical futurist Kirkis.

At first, it might feel like chaos. A synthetic kick-drum pounds out an irregular pattern, sometimes anticipating, sometimes a little late, sometimes spot the beat. Over this, a synth stutters out a melody in triplets. Each note of the sparse-yet-effective vocal line is positioned on the off-beat. This might give us a clue as to why the opening of this piece seems so rhythmically chaotic, as almost nothing is happening on the counts of ’1, 2, 3, 4′. These beats are implied, but are largely ignored by the tune itself. THE SCIENCE OF MUSIC! To make sense of it, we need to become little metronomes, keeping the time in our heads. Helpful hint: try tapping your pen on the desk. Another hint: if you’re working in an office, to keep noise levels to a minimum, you could tap the pen on your leg instead.

Some heavy side-chain compression synth swells begin that will make us think “Hey, is this a gig at Sydney venue ‘Tone’ circa 2011?” Alas though, ‘Tone’ is now ‘The Soda Factory’, Jarred Beeler is no longer curating musical events and Flume has 4 Arias. We’re none of us getting any younger.

Even though it aint what we’re all holding out to hear (the new Oscar record slash EP slash release of the year) it’s still got the name Oscar Key Sung across it so you know it’ll be [at the bare minimum] interesting. It’s the second beat tape he’s dropped so rather than comparing it to most recent single ‘It’s Coming‘ you’d be better off putting it next to Tape Beats EP from 2011. This particular beast is a little dark and a little underground, which isn’t to imply that it’s unknown but more a suggestion that it reminds me of this. You’ve witnessed top flight music criticism here, I hope you were taking notes.

A few months ago, ‘The Key of Sea Vol. 2′ compilation was released, featuring contributions from ‘once asylum seekers’ teaming up with Australian alt-music cool kids such as Chet Faker and Sounddoc favourites Jinja Safari. This album was intended to raise awareness and money for the important work done by various Australian Refugee organisations. Great cause, people.

This might be the only thing Chet Faker has done in the last year that hasn’t completely exploded all over the internet, and I think I know at least 2 reasons why: yes people, today we’re talking about the 2 biggest dirty words in Australian pop culture right now: jazz and refugees. Jazz, once the ultimate musical expression of rebellion and life has now been relegated to the status of ‘novelty genre’, technical but not ‘hip’ (unless sampled). Forget the fact that all the most important western music in the last 50 years has its roots in jazz, music culture’s inner teenager has become ashamed of its embarrassing dad and that is just where we are. Oh well. And refugees, those people living off your hard earned taxes (oh wait you’re a uni student paying next to nothing in tax) but with nothing really to contribute to society (unlike you, allegedly). Well guess what people! Chet Faker disagrees, and when a bearded man believes something, you can never rule out the possibility that one day that belief could become a Holy Book, and even further down the track, a Channel 9 TV show.

A double bass line opens the piece, brooding and minor. Cymbals are introduced, not the bright shiny kind but the dark, jazz kind. The keys join the rhythm section in this moody Bflat jam, laying the foundation for Chet Faker’s vocals. The instruments are played by musicians from ‘The Royal Swazi Spa’, a South African ensemble. The vibe is kind of reminiscent of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Footprints’ (circa 1966) so I could definitely see why someone might feel it doesn’t sound ‘current’, however I think that if you put a fat 808 drum track over the top of this and added some sidechain-compressed synth, there is a 90% chance that hipsters in bars could be ambiguously moving their upper bodies to this tune in no time.

Now, to Chet’s vocals: the guy is the real deal. One thing about Chet Faker is that he doesn’t really show off range-wise, he just sings the damn song and sings it well. Chet Faker’s voice is like when you have a beautiful Vintage Telecaster plugged into a Blues Junior amplifier: you can turn off all the damn effects pedals now and just listen to the damn instrument. Got it?

Ok, have a listen, and try not to let the nylon string guitar solo after the first chorus put you off, maybe we’ll all learn something. Enjoy!

You might have seen this one crop up on Me And All My Friends, Who The Hell, Mess + Noise maybe, Indieshuffle, which is to say almost ever blog ever. Time now to have it covered by the uglier little brother though, the blog with a set of braces and a bad case of pigeon toes. It’s me guys! I’m here now! Are we all going to hang out? It’s no real surprise that it’s been covered so comprehensively because, to borrow the words of the Cottees marketing team, ‘we can tell a good Jam’. This particular blend comes equipped with a boxercise video for good measure too, so if you woke up this morning devastated that you’d missed your Thursday morning PT session then I’ve got you doubly covered. Structurally it presents a delightful progression that neither races ahead of itself or stagnates but slowly unfolds layer on layer of vocal padding before eventually extricating the main vocal melody from all around it in a strong final showing. Also, I think [at least in Australia] we’re a little gung ho with our R&B references. I know there’s a huge onslaught of future R&B and nu-soul coming to the fore but not everything is necessarily R&B. There’s hints of it at the beat end but all in all it’s a stretch, not to take anything away from the quality of the song. Beautiful vocals in the realm of Feist or Austra (or even Bree Tranter for that matter) but what I like about it over most else in its weight class is that it doesn’t give itself over to that light and easy whispiness that seems to be the curse of the female feature vocalist and now sees many lady-artists dropping their vocals low in the mix on THEIR OWN TRACKS. I’ve been lucky enough to hear another slice of Banoffee recently and it needs to be said that there’s a high place held in reserve for her next coming. Fingers crossed we don’t have to wait to long/