Sweet heavens, Brothers Hand Mirror have thrown me a curve ball. The pair had the nerve to release a new EP the very night that I’m off to see their show. HOW AM I GOING TO MOUTH THE WORDS STAGE RIGHT WHEN I DON’T KNOW THE SONGS!? How indeed. Hopefully it’s loud enough so as I can just move my mouth about a bit and the rest of the club will assume that I know something they don’t via bootlegs/youtube. “Yeah, this is set is mostly just underground joints for the oldschool fans”. I won’t actually say underground though, I’ll just say “UG”. Up on it.

Posturing aside, it’s a good EP. A much, much more cohesive collection of tracks that hold together more than those of their last EP, while maintaining that eccentric aural collage that gets your underarms moist. The first song you’ll stream below is called ‘Friend of Mine’ and it sees Oscar Key Sung providing a more accessible beat than most we’ve heard from him (Assuming that this is one of his. HTMLFlowers has been dabbling in his own beatsmanship lately). The second is the last of the five, the title track ‘Muddy Now’ and it’s most pleasurable indeed. It’s no more than a single note electrified and repeated with some birdsongs buffering it from the ever more impressive verse of HTMLFlowers. I have to shuffle off pretty soon so let’s call that it for the moment and barring accident I’ll pad this out later down the track. I’ll let you know how the live versions are played out. If you’re in Sydney then you should probably just meet me there. k-c-u-soon.

Brothers Hand Mirror – Friend Of Mine

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Brothers Hand Mirror – Muddy Now

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Download the whole EP over here on a pay-what-you-want basis.

HTMLflowers is the name under which Grant Gronewold operates. At least it’s one of them, anyway. He’s also one half of Brothers Hand Mirror, an act that I’ve championed to death over the course of this year and one that you certainly need to be listening to if you’re not already. More than just a sonic prodigy though, Gronewold also produces some astounding graphic art, the image featured to the right of this text being one of his more recent.

What I like most about Gronewold (aside from his incredible technical creativity) is that he lets his personality permeate his songs. His raps aren’t two-dimensional bootycall rhymes but the outpouring of an embattled soul. More than most any other artist I’ve listened to, Gronewold’s heart is visibly in his music. The most recent personal deluge is ‘Almost Living’, a track that explores life with cystic fibrosis, a condition that sees him spending a great deal of time in hospital. It’ll feature on a forthcoming record he’ll be releasing that will be thematically centred around living with chronic illness. It’s worth taking the time to watch the video if you haven’t already, it’s damn compelling.

Html Flowers – Almost Living from Ryan Alexander Lloyd on Vimeo.

If you’re open to earnest, left-of-center hipster-hop then this is for you. He was recently interviewed over at Crawlspace and had some seriously interesting/candid responses to share with the world. Below is the explanation he gave for the seemingly bizarre moniker HTMLflowers.

“Now, HTML Flowers… I want to become everything I think I can be in terms of an artist. The name HTML Flowers is like – my dad died a while ago and I never really knew him, and we found out nine months after he died via an internet obituary. The website gave you the choice of lighting a virtual candle or leaving some flowers for him, so that’s where HTML Flowers comes from. I picked that name because I wanted a name that reminded me of how pathetic my father’s life and death were, because he was a really isolated person who couldn’t connect with people and he had a lot of addiction problems as well, and he was just someone who was so self-centred and who ruined any chance of family and love for himself.”

Aluka are an a capella three piece straight outta Compton Melbourne who’ve just now released the first track from their debut full length. Think a poppier Mountain Man and you’re probably not far from the truth of it. The track has also been remixed by Oscar Key Sung whose idea of a remix is obviously not far from cover. Obviously it’s killer though, as it is, afterall, Oscar Key Sung. Guy can’t do much wrong as far as I’m concerned and I’m very concerned indeed. I’ve spent the week listening to the new Tame Impala and while I’m knee deep in appreciation for the thing, the jury’s still out on ‘Is it as good as Innerspeaker?’

Probably not. This track from Aluka has been a good interlude from the mind-spiralling Lonerism in that this is a definite, concrete set of sounds without an excess tone to be found. It’s been an even better interlude still from the B.O.B playing over the work loudspeakers. I wish my life was a permanent B.O.B interlude. That’s the dream though, isn’t it?

This week I’ve been listening Melbourne’s Cold Hiker whose wailing Radioheadisms were passionate enough to keep me more than interested for the full duration ‘Phosphenes’ a whole bunch of times. Old mate’s fluid falsetto was the draw card that pushed me through the first listen but the off beat tom hits and swaggering flow were what’s bid me play it through a few more times. Let’s be honest though, there’s more than a little Paranoid Android in there. I’m a man of faith though and I’ve forgiven it in the foreknowledge that this is just the tip of the Cold Hiceberg.

Anyway, has been sitting in my drafts all week and it’s not getting any more significant with each passing day so I’m going to cut this bird free before I strangle it to death. That hour we lost via daylight savings hasn’t done me any favours even if it’s allowed me to witness natural sunlight for the first time in since March. Heavens above.

I am posting this because MT over at WTH sung it’s praises so loudly. No, that’s not fair. I hit play on it because she said it was dynamite, I’m posting it because it is dynamite. The EP is unmissable if you’re hoping to hear the shape of things to come for Australian music/all future playlists I make. Here’s ‘Steps’, the first track I heard from Mansion, Alaska, along with the EPs introduction track ‘Lune’, which is a smooth welcome to the five tracks I’ve had on loop all day.

I’ve forever been a proponent of a snare and cymbal heavy drum sound so the drumming on ‘Steps’ was always going to buy the group some credit in my ledger. They’re unafraid to spend time instrumentally, building not to a vocal crescendo but to the patient in and out of radio static.

Downloadable via Triple J Unearthed, here’s just one more to whet your appetite.

[MP3 DOWNLOAD]