Simona Castricum is one of Melbourne’s most unique underground electronic artists, DJs and producers of emotionally textured synthwave and technopop. Hers is inspired by gender and sexual nonconformity, relationships with architecture and dreamy futures of transgender cities between URL and IRL spaces. Simona’s iconic live performances are cardio-electronic percussive expressions in rubberism, smoke haze and laser beams, shared catharsis, and self-confrontation.
 
Panic/Desire is the third full length album from Simona Castricum — an allegory about gender nonconformity lived in the spaces between urban and digital realms.
 
Of the album, Simona says:
 
“Panic/Desire is the soundtrack to my experiences of the city as a gender nonconforming person; songs about how I move and navigate through the city in the night; how I find a place of belonging — somewhere between my fears and desires. Panic/Desire is about transition, resistance, empathy, and how the city, its architecture, and its relationship to tactile and virtual worlds hold archives of emotion that influence the way I move a feel about urban space.

Release: July 19th, 2020, Trans-Brunswick Express
Words: Brain Drain PR

Filthy Little Star is an ever-evolving music collective from Hobart. The first music from Filthy Little Star since 2017's At Rest, glittering new album Toxic Drags was created during 2018 - 2020.

On Toxic Drags, Filthy Little Star are Van Winkle, Pete, and Joe.

Release: June 2, 2020, Independent

Jehnny Beth first emerged in public consciousness as the charismatic lead singer and co-writer of UK post-punk band Savages, who received Mercury Prize nominations for their classic two albums, Silence Yourself (2013) and Adore Life (2016). But it’s in her solo debut -- To Love Is To Live -- that Jehnny Beth truly steps into - and claims - the spotlight.  The album is a sonic tour de force, a dark cinematic meditation on the strange business of being alive. Throughout the record, she explores the deepest reaches of her creative consciousness, wrapped in a whirlwind of sounds, the result of collaborating with producers such as Atticus Ross, Flood, and Johnny Hostile, and songwriters like close friend Romy Madley Croft of The xx, actor Cillian Murphy, and IDLES' Joe Talbot. But it was David Bowie that ultimately pushed Jehnny Beth towards starting a debut album in the first place.
 
“I guess the idea first emerged the night that Bowie died. It was 4am in LA and I played his music in bed until the morning. Now when I look back I realise Black Star had a huge impact on me. It was suddenly clear that we are perishable beings, so I made a silent promise to myself”
 
In accessing the darkest, most uncomfortable parts of herself, Jehnny Beth has created something stunningly cathartic and rich for discourse. “I like the concept of music as a palimpseste, consisting of a succession of veils, that you can lift one by one” she says.  “I think the music that lasts for me are those that throw our complexities into our faces, reflecting our fundamental multiplicity, with its lots of contradictions and ambiguities. Because inside each of us is a galaxy of diverse identities, which needs to be recognised”.
 
From subverting power balances, to highlighting the delicate depths of sexuality, to marrying dense textures with stark instrumentation, To Love Is To Live sees Jehnny Beth giving her intense vulnerability a glorious voice.
 
Recorded between Los Angeles, London, and Paris, To Love Is To Live is an album built on freedom as its foundation, inviting in old friends from the jazz community to contribute improvisational elements. There was no line uncrossed, no sound left unexplored, no theme too existential, revealing an album as eclectic and complicated as its creator with her utterly unique perspective on the world. 
 
The album is a tumble through life’s loftiest questions, an album forged from the ambition and courage of an artist putting everything they've got right there into the music. “From the beginning I wanted to make a record that would give a sense of a journey. I wrote this album as if it was the last one I was ever going to write.” 

Let’s hope it’s not.

Release: June 12, 2020, Caroline Australia
​Words: Brain Drain PR

TWO SIDES: Stories and Music from Home  is a compilation of stories and songs created at home by local artists, writers and musicians that talk about staying connected from a distance during the pandemic. 

TWO SIDES: Stories and Music from Home was developed by Clarence City Council's cultural team to support artists and invigorate creativity during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is a collaboration between Clarence City Council, CONSTANCE ARI, Hunter Island Press, The Story Tellers Group, Music Tas, Edge Radio, The Brisbane Hotel, Pablo’s Cocktails and Dreams Bar & The Grand Poobah.

TWO SIDES will make you laugh, make you cry, and teach you how to make your own hand to hold.
 
Supporting your local artists and your arts community by purchasing this compilation album means that your generosity gets equally distributed directly to the artists involved. To buy a copy of the publication and album for $5 (including shipping), head to the Clarence Arts and Events website: https://www.clarenceartsandevents.net/events/two-sides-stories-and-music/

Release: June 15th, 2020, Clarence City Council

Party Dozen is a sonic partnership loosely based on improvisation between saxophonist Kirsty Tickle and percussionist Jonathan Boulet.

Their debut LP The Living Man earned critical acclaim in 2017, and they’ve toured relentlessly ever since – each performance a trial of physicality and an expression of maximalism. Like the legendary Dirty Three, the members seem to meld into one mind, oblivious to the viewer. Tickle effortlessly navigates Boulet’s ever-shortening attention span and wild tempo changes; form gradually materialises from chaos.
 
Notorious for this challenging, unhinged and technically enthralling live show, Party Dozen have played Falls Festival, MONA FOMA, Dark Mofo and WOMAD and toured the country with Liars (UK), These New South Whales, Tropical Fuck Storm and Viagra Boys (SWE). 
 
The duo return with their second album Pray For Party Dozen in May this year – once again self-producing and releasing on their own label, Grupo Records. Tracks like the eponymous "Party Dozen" act as a bridge between The Living Man, where evil sample loops build the foundations upon which the duo erect a brand new temple of irreverence. 
 
Elsewhere, they flirt with electro-Krautrock (Auto Loser), stoner (The Great Ape) and even subtlety (Scheisse Kunst). It still sounds like Party Dozen, but somehow louder; more hushed; even wilder. Plus there are two songs with lyrics. It’s smart enough to make you move and dumb enough to make you think.

But it’s not greater than the sum of its parts. There are no parts – there is only Party Dozen.

Release: May 22nd, 2020, Grupo Records
​Words: Best & Fairest