Features
New Noise: Loon Lake, Dirt Farmer, Carb On Carb, The Blank
By Mess+Noise
It’s straight-ahead indie rock versus sleepier impulses in this week’s roundup of Soundcloud offerings.
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– From slacker-pop to the ARIA Top 20: yes, Loon Lake have enjoyed a fairly meteoric rise since their first EP in 2011. Last year brought a second, Thirty Three, complete with its hit ‘Cherry Lips’ (ranked #29 in the Hottest 100), and this year the Melbourne boys are finally putting out an album. The first taste is ‘On Fire’, another effortless-sounding single. This one builds from a stuttered guitar start before adding a loping bass line and more of a pub howl in Sam Nolan’s vocals. It was produced and mixed by Steve Schram (San Cisco, Eagle and the Worm). It plays at being a fairly straightforward rocker but proves more structurally interesting than most – and in under three minutes.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] On Fire by LOON LAKE
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– Dirt Farmer haven’t lost the “breezy lightness” of last year’s self-titled EP, if new single ‘Delilah Lightning’ is any indication. In fact, it comes close to evaporating there in the middle. But come back it does, slowly and as leisurely as ever, under the guiding hand of producer Anna Laverty (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Florence and the Machine). The song’s out now through Gaga Digital. Dirt Farmer play Boogie 7 – in Tallarook, a stop on the Hume a third of the way between the band’s current home of Melbourne and original base of Albury, NSW – on Easter weekend (March 29-31) and launch the single at Ding Dong in Melbourne on Friday, April 12 and at The Beresford Hotel in Sydney on Friday, May 10. The latter’s free, with support from SWRLS.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Dirt Farmer - Delilah Lightning by Dirt Farmer
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– OK, not the newest of noise right here – the EP came out last July – but it can take that long for New Zealand music to drift our way. Carb on Carb are the Auckland duo of James Stuteley and Nicole Gaffney. Their name-your-price debut EP No Body Perfect harkens back to troubled, inward-looking 1990s indie rock, as heard in ‘Trace Minerals’. The band hit Melbourne on Friday, May 3 to play Gasometer with ScotDrakula and Psalm Beach. It’s $5 on the door. More Australian dates to be announced.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Trace Minerals by carboncarb
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– Perth teenager Henry Ascroft – a.k.a. The Blank – made waves last year with his ambient-R&B gem ‘Burn’, featuring typically lovely guest vocals from Colorado artist Steffaloo, who has lent her voice to Chrome Sparks, Teen Daze and many others previously. It came from November’s dollar-priced Plastic Dreams, third in a trilogy of EPs. Other tracks tend towards cosmic instrumental hip-hop, but Ascroft shows off his range – and his own voice – on the folktronica quiver of ‘Falling’. Immersive, soundtrack-y stuff all around.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Falling (From Plastic Dreams EP) by The Blank
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