| #687 |
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2003 |
Perilous 687 Part two of my best picks of 2003 interspersed with commentary that you might decide to skip. This week I look at some of the best local releases of the year. 2003 was a solid year for local producers with some of the hardwork of the last few years paying off in proper releases. Interestingly at the same time live performance opportunities slumped in every major city in Australia. Adelaide lost interest in anything that wasn’t banging, and shows that should have done well in Melbourne and Sydney were surprisingly empty. Nevertheless the picks of the year for me were Hermitude’s debut album From Alleys To Valleys (Elefant Traks), one of the best downtempo albums in quite a while and one that should have been licensed overseas. Full of warm organic tracks it sits well alongside UK favourites like Bonobo, but was let down by its heavy metal typography and sleeve design which gives no indication of pleasures within. Adelaide’s Superscience became Clue To Kalo and finally released Come Here When You Sleepwalk (Mush/Leaf) and embarked on a gruelling 30 show US tour with Themselves (Anticon), and Sydney’s Triosk released their excellent 1+3+1 (~scape) with Berlin’s Jan Jelinek, a fine combination of jazz and electronic experimentation. Related to Berlin more than his home town of Perth, Dave Miller put out some more top 12”s for background Records but the best would be his Akufen remix for A Touch of Class which saw him move in broken beat territory. Best compilation goes to Symbiotic Sound System’s excellent Ants Farm Aphids (Symbiotic) with tracks from all the Symbiotic crew who are basically all members of one or more of Curse Ov Dialect, Music vs Phsyics or Tzu. And from the same mob, Curse Ov Dialect’s wonderfully absurd debut Lost In The Real Sky (Mush/Valve) also finally saw the light of day. Just across the Tasman, my pick of NZ releases for the year was the criminally underrated album from Phelps & Munro titled Slowpoke (Flavour), an odd blend of punchy MPC hip hop beats and moody post-rock guitars. On Decemeber 28 we have the final Noodle of the year with Osaka experimentalists Pig & Machine closely followed by the regular mashup cheap NYE event – this year called Stool. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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