Features
New Noise: Leaks, Nonsemble, Honeymooon, Count Citrus
By Mess+Noise
This week’s roundup of Soundcloud offerings ranges from a teen producer and a chamber group to ambient drone and retro-rock.
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– Leaks is 19-year-old Melbourne producer Thomas Guida. This week he released the name-your-price seven-track De Landa EP through US digital label Absent Fever. The closing track and single is ‘I’m Glad You’re Still Here’, which feels a bit like a quieter, moodier cousin to Flume’s ‘Holdin’ On’. Fans of Guerre and James Blake are also welcome to love it, hate it, pick it apart and/or generally argue about it.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Leaks - I'm Glad You're Still Here (Single from the forthcoming "De Landa Ep" on Absent Fever) by Leaks.
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– Brisbane’s Nonsemble formed last year under the leadership of composer Chris Perren (Mr. Maps) as an eclectic chamber group that “tips its hat equally to Mogwai and Ligeti; Autechre and Philip Glass.” Bringing together generous sweeps of piano, strings, percussion, vocals, guitar, synths and samples, Nonsemble are at once heady and keenly melodic on their debut album Practical Mechanics. It’s out July 6 as a digital release or, more interestingly, alongside a limited, hand-numbered full score with quotes and images plus a full set of instrumental part booklets. What makes the latter even more appealing is the album’s unusual approach: “Practical Mechanics employs various rational and rule-based pattern-making techniques, including Schillingerian methods, list structures, additive and constructive techniques and others devised by the composer … [It] playfully explores the belief that science can solve all human problems. The titles and text excerpts are taken from the tattered pages of vintage issues of Practical Mechanics, a home science and technology magazine published between 1933 and 1963.” The album launches next Friday (June 7) at The Box in Brisbane’s West End. It’s BYO and $15 on the door from 7pm. Supporting are Kathryn McKee and Sadglint.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Nonsemble - Movement IV - Photographing Noise by Mess+Noise
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– Following February’s debut single ‘Hail the Madmen’, Aussie expats Aaron Shanahan and Benjamin Plant are back as Honeymooon (yes, three Os) with the free-download single ‘Sure Stuck’. It’s less disco than the previous single, and closer to the forthcoming album’s professed influences The Beatles and Todd Rundgren. This new six-minute-plus jam is sugary (and at times bleary-eyed) retro-rock with lots of harmonies, synth, guitar fuzz and other opulent extras.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Honeymooon - SURE STUCK by Honeymooon
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– ‘Crude Oil’ is the name-your-price new track from Adelaide’s mysterious Count Citrus, following last year’s Fault Lines EP and a couple singles since. It begins as a pulsing ambient drone before adding beats and other gradual complications to the overall wonkiness. A lot of the elements seem to bristle at each other’s presence, or disregard it altogether. It’s a fascinating, addled listen that stretches to nearly eight minutes of absorbing mutations.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Count Citrus - Crude Oil by Mess+Noise
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