Dynamite in Black and White
It's hard to imagine a tougher task than capturing Hot Little Hands on disk. Their sound ranges so much: one minute it's swimming with swampy cymbally synth, the next trumpets are blaring and you're at the fair. You could almost argue that if there was a signature HLH moment, it would be the sudden, and wonderfully nonsensical shifts in tone, pace, tempo, everything.
LP3
The trademark sound of this New York two-piece (three-piece in live shows, however) shines through yet again on the act’s third album, aptly titled LP3. Opening with the X-Files-like Shiller, the album is set apart from the previous two long players with its at times chilling sound, but don’t fret - the bouncy squeals we all love in Ratatat’s music still feature prominently throughout the record.
Volume 1, Wooden Shjips
Jamming good - San Francisco's Wooden Shjips have all the sea rhythm and outsized heaviness their name suggests. Loving on the strung-out sounds of ‘60s dead flower psychedelic rock, these guys make no beef with dropping out completely - ploughing a riff into the red ad nauseam and deep into the earth.
Low Tracks Era and Spotwelders Vol. 1
Fans of West Coast style - THC strength character, brainy arrangements, episodic movement, game loving bounce - are put on immediate need-to-know basis with two new releases by Melbourne's Aoi. Available free, source direct from the author, Low Tracks Era and Spotwelders Vol. 1. pack production clout and musicality enough to empty whole shelves of industry-sanctioned hip-hop; both literally - by repurposing the good stuff as samples - and retroactively - by showing up so much conventionally released, Kangaroo-hop as BS.
Self-taught Magic from a Book, Je Suis Animal
Je Suis Animal took all the interesting subjects of their arts degree and spun them into an album. It's the cinema geek in-jokes told through the strings, wind and melodica-esque cameos that turn this happily Norwegian pop into something suited to a silent film score.
Self-taught Magic from a Book is Lost and Lonesome's fiftieth release and has the right balance of lyrical storytelling and dance-around-your-room juice.
Dream Island Laughing Language, Lucky Dragons
The nanotechnological dream of photosynthesizing computers appears within reach when listening to Lucky Dragons. While the Macs employed by the LA duo are probably the regular kind - plastic, circuits, software - the weird and near-total naturalism of their sound on umpteenth release, Dream Island Laughing Language, begs the question - are they not living things, inlaid with grass, coconut husk or animal skin? While everything here is excessively treated, chopped and processed, somehow it comes across as Natural History - ethnomusicological and live, suntanned and relaxed - like a bunch of geckos and undiscovered aboriginal life jamming together on some Tron-island beach.
Ceduna, the Sand Pebbles
Like a scene out of Oliver Stone's sixties psyche-crapfest The Doors, last summer Melbourne's Sand Pebbles trekked out into the desert with a bag full of 'shrooms and kicked out some jams motherfucker! And they ended up there during Melbourne's hottest heat-wave in years. Um, oops. Hydrate dudes.
Ceduna is their recorded result, an album of trippy, pummeling SoCal classic rock, all swooning four-part harmonies and noodling guitars.
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