Archive for April, 2021
In 2021, I exist entirely within one of two modes – dreampop or hip-hop, and you just got a healthy blast of the best in new Australian hip-hop courtesy of 1300. You know what time it is. Please meet Canberra’s Sesame Girl, a band of four who’re but one song deep* yet what a lovely record, truly. Heather’s vocal is effortless, gliding with ease over these beautifully dry but colourful guitars. There’s something about the thickness of her ‘s’ sounds that would drive a speech pathologist mad but is somehow pure cream here. In her slower moments she channels the strength and drawn out power of Victoria Legrand while also retaining a quicker vocal tempo to deliver some of the verses with a little more immediacy.
*A little extra digging has revealed that this is -not- their debut single. It’s been written up as such out there, but it is not. And look, much gets made about artists falsely claiming a new releasing as their debut single when they’ve already had releases under the same moniker but I don’t begrudge it. YOU try navigating an industry that expects you to break on single one lest you become old news. There’re career phases and Get Up certainly feels like the start of something new. There’re some beautifully wilting acoustic singles upon their bandcamp that’ll comfortably find themselves on your ‘ugh, I stayed up all night and the sun’s coming up soon, I’ve made some bad life choices recently’ playlist. Do try one out.
This morning, my guy Rich sent me a text with a link to this song that simply said “Nah this is a f–king moment”. Uncensored of course, but this is a family friendly webzine and we shan’t be allowing that language to befoul these pages. But I hit go and suddenly I was listening to the best new hip-hop song? Out of Australia? Ok then. 2:30 and this record had established itself as one of my favourites of the year, eviscerating me with thick production, flawless flow and bars in Korean. Makes more sense when you consider that this five piece Sydney crew are Korean-Australians, with everything they drop on instagram captioned in both languages. This track doesn’t showcase some slim hat-tip to their culture but a central connection, bleeding through both this and the single they’d released prior. Their first drop ‘Brr’ bangs but ‘No Caller ID’ is The One. The group’s producers pokari.sweat and Nerdie put the beat behind this one and it kicks like a mule in an earthquake. The sounds of hyper-bright laser-rays flit in and the change of MC’s each time seems to be signposted with production affectations, either adding in synths chords or deep 808 bass, such that the whole track embodies movement and it’s brief 150 seconds of life is vibrant. In spite of errything that’s going on in the beat end, the quality of this vocal mix means every line sits sharp atop this thing like crystal on the tablecloth. That’s enough similes for a few weeks now I reckon, please ingest this and let me know what you think.
Artists you need to know rn
| 1. 1300 |  |
316 |
| 2. Voidhood | |
259 | 3. jamesjamesjames | |
186 | 4. Zan | |
174 |
| 5. Sesame Girl | |
147 |
