New Noise: Loose Pills, Strict Face, Closer, Sensaround

Hopped-up power-pop, cathedral-ready synths, noisy ambience and discombobulated jazz comprise this week’s roundup of new music.

– Where have Loose Pills been all our lives? Playing hopped-up power-pop that’s like Sydney’s answer to Cheap Trick or the more muscular side of Big Star, the quartet come out swinging on their debut album Rx. The members have done time with everyone from Lemonheads to The New Christs, and the LP is a nonstop barrage of bittersweet lyrics, rowdy two-guitar assaults and crunchy old-school cool, right from the one-two punch of opener ‘The Mess For Me’ and single ‘Not the Driver’. With only an EP prior to this, it’s an impressive showing all around. And if somehow you can’t hear enough of the guys’ record collections in their songs, you can literally see dozens of them in the video for ‘Get Drunk, Play Records’. Rx is out now on CD through Off the Hip, with vinyl coming in mid-September through China Pig. Pre-order the vinyl here.

– Adelaide’s Jon Santos continues to be one of our very favourite Australian producers, thanks to his ultra-squishy work as Strict Face. Santos abruptly shed his early grime earmarks to arrive at something beautifully unique on April’s single ‘Fountains’/‘Highbury Skyline’, as if he had suddenly distilled his work down to a pure, fluid substance free of genre connotations. M+N writer Lawson Fletcher praised it in our mid-year wrap, calling it “a prime example of the flexibility and emotional range of club music in 2014.” Now we have ‘In Evergreen’, a track bending faux exotic, New Age and nostalgic notes into another feat of slippery grace. It sounds like the soundtrack for a dance party held in a cyberpunk cathedral of tomorrow. ‘In Evergreen’ is the first taste of the next Strict Face EP, Marble Isles, due out September 8 through English label Tuff Wax.

– Melbourne’s Closer self-identifies as “pulsating ambient music, driven by piano, guitar and static tape hiss,” which pretty much sums it up. But there’s a fascinating drift between classical and ambient and noise territory on the new $4 digital EP Descent. It toes the line between tranquil and unsettling, finding a real vibrancy in that sweet spot. There’s been talk of a live incarnation fleshed out with multiple players, but for now Closer is a thing of Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Speaking of, Closer posted a reworking of Nils Frahm’s ‘You’ on the latter and it’s racked up 20,000 plays in the past year. Also check out Shane Parsons’ stunning pastoral video for the previous EP’s ‘The Sense of Being Stared At’.

– Sounding like a jazz duo thrashing noisily against an ominous layer of electronic shrinkwrap, Sensaround combines the Rhodes and pedal work of Alister Spence and the alto and soprano saxophones of Raymond MacDonald with samples and pedals wielded by Shoeb Ahmad. Now officially a trio after Spence and MacDonald’s two-piece album Stepping Between the Shadows, Sensaround explore the improvisatory possibilities of their expanded instrumental scope on Isotropes. The album features a handful of short tracks anchored by the 22-minute centrepiece ‘Sense IV’, which starts off eerie and discombobulated and continues further down that same track, inviting in flurried textures and spooked tangents along the way. Out via Ahmad’s label HellosQuare, it’s getting launched this weekend in three cities. Spence’s own titular trio, featuring The Necks’ Lloyd Swanton, will support the band in Sydney tonight (Aug 7). Scottish native MacDonald, meanwhile, has worked in the past with Jim O’Rourke, Future Pilot AKA and members of The Pastels and The Delgados.

Thurs, Aug 7 – Foundry616, Sydney, NSW [w/Alister Spence Trio, Raymond MacDonald + Shoeb Ahmad]
Fri, Aug 8 – PhotoAccess @ Manuka Arts Centre, Canberra, ACT [w/Sebastian Field/Rory Stenning/Danny Wild]
Sat, Aug 9 – LongPlay, Melbourne, VIC [w/Wooshie + Peter Knight/Joe Talia]

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To nominate new music for this column, email us at news@messandnoise.com.