Long gone are the days when us music industry fat cats could slide into a boozy four course lunch, have our assistants slip a nice pair of Bose studio cans onto our delicate ears (remember this was when Dre was a hip-hop producer, not an industry leading headphone technologist) and crack cannelloni over our coffees as we listened to the newest and greatest hot tracks from around the globe. Sure, I can still write a creative headline incorporating both the band’s name and their release title in a new and creative way*, but who even notices?

So, these days we scour the internet much like a regular person does, and then we just tell you what we think.

The Spunloves have just put out a new recording, two sides of one small piece of vinyl, it’s lazy and punchy in equal measures and that makes me feel so alive. Take the first two lines on the b-side Vomiting Up Flowers “Do you want to get stoned with me? But i don’t smoke these days…” That’s the dichotomy of the modern world, what you want and what you need almost never line up. So what you end up with is this uneven feeling, a sheen across your life like dew on a cold morning. The Spunloves are laughing at you as they sit on your lawn, shimmering in that morning dew.

Anyway, we promised you a cut and dried opinion, and we have an Abbot-esque reputation for always delivering on our promises, so here it is: I like the Spunloves new 7″. Their self-reflective wistfulness is backed up by an aggressive and primal edge in their sound, a moment where they come together and are aligned and pulsing together and then they loose it out again. An instant where you are lost in the image and then lose your train of thought.

So, don’t sleep on this, it has the Sound Doctrine seal of approval.

*headline removed by editor

I like to imagine, as those synthy sounding notes peel out through the track, that it’s actually the wailing voice of Ned Beckley filtered and filtered again until it becomes a piercing whine. It’s one of the many aspects of this track that add more levity to the production than much of his past record. Sure the weight is still there in the form of that brass and thumping bass (who is Atlas without his globe and would Shaq be Shaq without size 22 Reeboks?) but there are groovier and more playful elements that see him edging onto new turf. The track rolls rather than thunders onward, a smooth movement punctuated by rising synths, slicker bass kicks and a 50s vocal sample. He’s a true sound engineer and meticulous in his dedication to individual sonic crumbs which is likely why he’s found his composition work in such high demand. I think we’re past the point at which I can be trusted to objectively discuss Lower Spectrum records anymore and have entered a period more reasonably referred to as the fanning out stage. If the recording below was actually dead silence I’d be none the wiser, having employed a level of cognitive override sufficient to hear only what I expect from anything with Lower Spectrum’s stamp on it: excellence.

He’s touring nationally at the end of April and I can affirm without hesitation that you’d be a fool to miss it. I’ll except only two excuses for absence and those are incarceration and death so be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice or be present.

If I’m being honest with you reader, I don’t listen to a whole lot of this sort of business. I go in on the odd, foolishly bumpy Woolymammoth number or ocassional Herzeloyd banger but as a general rule, anything with trap influence or a future bass tag is usually just a soundcloud skip away. Half of the reasoning is that it’s the sort of music which inspires this sort of inane, highly irrelevant comment.

Noone cares what you wanted mate, the song is the song. The bloody soundcloud generation and their inevitable, valueless two cents. What So Not For This Guy, you kno what I mean? There were however, a couple of mitigating factors that bid me hit play on this record. The first was that Time Pilot delivered a wonky, unexpected remix of Spirit Faces’ Cloudplay around a year ago (out via Sydney label TEEF, Stereogum’s Record Label Of The Year 2015). The second was that this came with trusted peer recommendation and a Pilerats Records co-sign which is usually enough for me to, absolutely bare minimum, press play. The third is that they are famously lovely humans, so that’s the foot upon which we’ve launched off.

I don’t know if they’re the best technical producers* in the country but I don’t think that’s their charm. It’s not a record for the audiophiles among you (Pilerats signed Lower Spectrum to fill that particular niche) but it’ll appease anyone hoping to hear some strange rythmic manipulations. Individual samples gain and lose pace unexpectedly and strange sonic references permeate the track throughout. There’re string sections that feel lifted straight from Ben-Hur and the afro-beat inspired vocal cuts that evidently approve the track’s title. This one might not be for the Sound Doc loyalists but there’s certainly something to it.

*They also might be, I don’t have an ear for this sort of bizness.

I reserve a certain few overly hyperbolic praise for a couple of top tier artists. Not commercially top tier, but top tier in the heartranks of this particular digital publication. I’ve toyed with the idea of creating a Sound Doctrine canon but it’s always felt too self-important so I’ve settled with just covering every bit of work a certain few artists release without reprieve. Among the alumni are artists like D.D Dumbo, Oscar Key Sung and today the very, very special Lower Spectrum. His last EP/video (out through Zero Through Nine) elicited some fairly strongly worded praise from these dry lips and found itself placed squarely at the top of my best of 2013 list. So, as the glow of your monitor and my words intermingle, know that I have been anticipating these new Lower Spectrum songs for a minute or two already and the giddy praise that pours forth might be tainted by disgusting, putruid subjectivity.

‘Proxima’, like everything else that Ned Beckley has worked on, is meticulous in its clarity. He’s one part producer/musician, one part raw sound designer. Every single note is just so, a part of an overall narrative that could only be structured around sounds that speak. The attention to detail when it comes to aural nuances sees him score fashion weeks, ballets, short films and sometimes even long films which traditionally differ from short films in terms of duration. Mostly, they are longer. I won’t get too bogged down in the structural elements of this thing because I’m always more interested to talk about what I feel than what I hear and talking about me is terrific while writing about how things sound is quite hard.

This new single is an overwhelmingly heavy thing, battering you not with any ominous ‘heaviness’ as prescribed through metalcore or grind but the sense that something truly colossal cometh. There’s no fear in the face of the glacier but there sure is a whole bunch of awe. It’s no wonder it’s taken Beckley as long as it has to deliver new music, he’s evidently been tube feeding high calorie meals to this song for nigh on eighteen months until it reached suitable girth to overburden our airwaves. Now it’s in danger of pulling our silly blue planet out of orbit and plunging us all, screaming into the sun. Cheers Ned, didn’t need a planet anyway.

There’s an EP due out sometime soon via Pilerats which will redefine physics

This next Sable EP has been about a thousand years in the coming and now that the first of it is here it’s immediately obvious why it’s taken this long. It’s a massive departure from the EP that brought him to the international stage but if you were taken entirely by surprise then you weren’t paying attention. That Kanto two tracker that he released toward the end of last year hinted at a love for affected vocals and Thunder Wave particularly can be seen as a bridging track between this new EP and the older material, retaining the casiotone twinkles but moving toward the sparser, longer syllabicated tonality and vocal fueled new tracks. There’s a big bunch of PC Music influence through the vocal most obviously but also there’s a reference to Sophie’s Lemonade in the central dropped section. The big takeaway is that Sable is proper songwriter now but also that the branding around this song is without equal, at least domestically. The press shot is the live action partner to the graphic novel that’s being slow released through his socials as we speak, featuring a pokemonesque fox like thing that turned up on the Kanto release too. I suspect it’s the same animal that’s been his logo for a while now.

But hey T-man, isn’t this a bit too commercial for you mate? Aren’t you into all that underground business? Doesn’t this already have 7.6 billion plays on tunecloud? Well yeah, sure, I’m a hot tastemaker with a heck of a sonic palette, but this is a good song right? And in the end, isn’t that enough? Historically it hasn’t been, but today it is. Plus look at these graphics from the cartoon and then come back to me you peanut. Now where’s that new Wave Racer?

*NOTE: Sable out through Pilerats Records who I have a business relationship with. If you feel like this post was written for any reason other than simply because I like the song, please don’t listen to the track.