Blog Posts

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: Lasca Dry - 'Sweet Sea Surrender'

1/3/2021

Lasca Lee Kallister Dry is a musician hailing from the small town of Ulverstone, Tasmania. Born in Hobart and moving shortly after, Lasca spent her childhood listening to the 60s and 70s music that would go on to shape her taste and inspire her own music.

Lasca has developed her very own unique flavour of slightly bittersweet melancholy songs. Heartfelt, honest and deceptively simple, Lasca Dry’s songs are direct, emotive, and built with haunting vocals and contagious melodies. Lasca sings of life, love and loss, carrying her listeners into new places and other realms.

Her debut album, Sweet Sea Surrender, is an amalgam of 60s pastiche and her own modern originality. Lasca travelled to Melbourne's Run Stop Sound to record with Neil Kelly, getting the album to tape in the short space of two and a half weeks, in order to capture a moment in time and enable a smooth flow and a strong connection between the songs and the sounds, making this a cohesive and whole experience of Lasca’s unique and raw style.

Sweet Sea Surrender explores the struggles and learning curves in Lasca’s life. Thoughts, feelings and new discoveries in life's meaning are all things that compel Lasca to write and explore herself creatively.

Release: February 26th, 2021, Independent
Words: Lasca Dry

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: June Jones - 'Leafcutter'

22/2/2021

A prolific artist and singular voice in the world of Australian music, June Jones has released her sophomore album Leafcutter on Emotion Punk Records in collaboration with Remote Control Records.

Despite this being Jones’ first self-produced record, Leafcutter feels in many ways like a logical sequel to her previous releases, which include two albums with Two Steps on the Water, the self-proclaimed “emotion punk” band she fronted from 2014 to 2018. Like her past albums, Leafcutter is a collection of songs exploring different aspects of her experience as “a deeply emotional trans woman, a lesbian with ADHD.” Her signature vocals – dynamic in their ability to move between syrupy cool and impassioned exclamation – are present as ever at the forefront of this record.

Lyrically, the songs have the confessional intimacy that Jones has become known for. The verses are both poetic and analytic, in a voice that is unmistakably hers. She creates a sound that is at once familiar and unlike anything else that has come before. The atemporal collaging of old and new styles defines Jones’s self-taught approach to production on Leafcutter. She reminds us that everything new is a rearranging and reimagining of traditions.

“I made the whole album on a tiny refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad that I bought off a guy at a McDonalds. 18 months and over 1000 hours of work later, the album is finally finished. As someone diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, I have been almost entirely self-taught as a musician, whether it’s singing, writing songs, learning an instrument, or producing my own music, I just haven’t been able to sit still long enough to get through a lesson. But there have definitely been moments along the way where I have learned a lot from people, like sitting in the studio with Geoffrey O’Connor throughout the process of making Diana, or getting feedback on mixes from my dear friend and superproducer Geryon. Sometimes I wish I could approach learning in a more structured and systematic way, but I get overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities of music, so I’ve always felt more comfortable intuiting my way through things.”

Leafcutter manages to feel both intuitive and unpredictable in a way that calls to mind a classic Björk or Kate Bush album, finding a tentative home in the nebulous definition of art-pop. From above it is a pop record, but from within it resembles a labyrinth overflowing with intricate details that reveal themselves with each listen. Jones’s intuition informs both the album’s pop sensibility and experimentation. One thing that she delivers yet again is a record bursting with songs that get stuck in your head. Leafcutter, insectoid in name, is home to no shortage of earworms.

“One of my favourite albums of all time is Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion. For me, it’s a perfect pop album, with bangers from start to finish. In a funny way, I aspire to achieve that kind of consistency with every album I make. I feel like I am probably more prone to boredom than most, and it’s a state that I find almost painful. If there’s one thing I want to avoid as an artist, it’s being boring.”

And boring this album is not. Every song feels like its own little world which Jones invites us into, where we are asked to sit and feel with her for a few minutes before moving next door to another one, with similarities and differences, made up of things both familiar and strange. On Leafcutter, Jones pulls off the unlikely feat of finding harmony in that which, according to our own intuitions, should be dissonant. In the second last line of the opening track, 'Jenny (Breathe)', she sings “There are as many worlds as minds here to perceive them”, and so too is the case with the quantum art pop of Leafcutter.

Release: February 19th, 2021, Emotion Punk Records/Remote Control
Words: Remote Control

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: Luca Brasi - 'Everything Is Tenuous'

15/2/2021

Tassie legends Luca Brasi have reached a new level with their fifth album Everything Is Tenuous. Propelled by the inactivity of Covid lockdown, and encouraged by friends Andrei Eremin (engineer) and Darren Cordeux (producer), the four-piece took their first foray into self-recording, and it turned out to be an absolute game-changer. Empowered by their time at the helm, Luca Brasi have written their most potent songs to date.

From his home in Hobart, singer and bassist Tyler Richardson reflects on the process of writing and recording Everything Is Tenuous. With touring being a total uncertainty, the time was right for Luca Brasi to try something new in order to keep exercising their creative muscle. Having already acquired a working knowledge of recording tech through years of demoing, it didn't take much to tip the boys over the edge into full blown self-production mode.

“We were so stoked,” Richardson beams. “Andrei is amazing. He was the one who said to us 'you guys can actually do this'. We did as much as we could by ourselves... we bought a bunch of gear and taught ourselves how to use it. We ended up self-producing the whole thing here, and Andrei mixed it by proxy on the mainland. Darren Cordeux from Kisschasy worked with us on structure, so we'd send them the songs and they'd give us their two cents and send it back,” he says.

And the results speak for themselves. “It gave us as a massive chunk of time to work on the songs and learn how to produce them,” Richardson continues. “We've been writing this for a couple of years. We were half way through it when we toured the UK late in 2019. The idea was to come home and get stuck into it over summer, then get back on the road. We had a big tour booked early in 2020 that got cancelled, so we decided we wanted to make a record at home.”

Ah yes, touring. While it seems like both a distant memory and a mirage on the horizon, touring will at some point resume, which is music to the collective ears of Luca Brasi – one of the country's most roadworthy bands. During the period of social distancing and whatnot, Luca Brasi have mucked around with acoustic renditions of their new songs, but their desire to hit the road and perform them in full flight is palpable. For now though, patience is paramount.

In spite of this, 2020 has been massively productive for Luca Brasi. Everything Is Tenuous is a natural progression from 2018's breakthrough album Stay, which elevated the band up the ARIA charts and catalysed the biggest tours of their career. Uplifting, powerful and sophisticated, Everything Is Tenuous is the Luca Brasi record fans have been pining for; trademark stuff - sweetly melodic, with a lyrical undertone of melancholia.

With 2021 being Luca Brasi's 12th year as a working band, Tyler explains that the key to their successes and longevity has been their friendship. From touring the world together, to now self-producing the greatest album of their career, their love and fraternity has guided them through some amazing times. Looking back, Richardson is both humble and grateful. The experience of creating Everything Is Tenuous serves as the perfect metaphor for Luca Brasi's enchanted career. “It was a gamble,” he says, “but it paid off.”

Release: January 12, 2021, Cooking Vinyl Australia
Words: Deathproof PR

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: Dannika - 'Gems'

8/2/2021

Dannika has unveiled her debut album, Gems, via Spunk Records / Osborne Again. Etching her vision across a 9-track record, Dannika seamlessly weaves candid stories and hardy life experiences with a whimsical sense of humour.

Gems has been in the making for the best part of four years. Crafted alongside bandmates Liam Parsons and Stefan Blair of Good Morning, and Paul Ceraso, the record is a labour of love, living and triumph for the band.

Listening to Gems, it’s impossible to deny Dannika’s dexterity, her specific, distinctive style — a natural gravitation toward bright melody, a fondness for blushing, impressionistic prose on slower songs and beautifully direct, almost bratty rebukes on faster ones — but Gems isn’t so feeble as to rely on some kind of auteur myth. On the plainest level, this album is clearly the product of four people who are in tune on some kind of profound emotional level, whose contributions are strongest when working in tandem with each other.

More importantly, though, Gems feels written by the characters that appear in its stories. This album is dedicated to “our friends,” and how could it not be? These songs are inspired by the “grown arse fucking men” asking for too much advice, the girls dating down, the friends who have passed and the friends yet to come; the album’s most stunning love song, I Don’t Wanna Be With Anyone, is about Dannika wanting to be by herself, not in a sad, defeated sense, but in a way that is sharp and clarified.

That Gems is materialising so many years after Dannika’s first EP, For Peaches — four years, a lifetime when your friends are some of the most prolific musicians in Melbourne — feels right; like catching up with an old friend, time has revealed exciting new parts of Dannika. Gone is the endearing looseness of For Peaches, replaced instead by thick grooves that grip tightly.

The songs that comprise Gems have been such an essential part of our lives for so long that they feel tactile and specific, like objects unique to our lives: they’re not just songs, but mixes laboured over by Stefan and Liam and Paul, messages in the girls' group chat, demos played through Nicola’s car speaker and drowned out by the sound of the freeway, friends singing to each other at a house party, and videos shakily filmed in The Tote front bar and sent over Messenger to Emma. It’s important to stress that Gems doesn’t refer to precious jewels, but to Dannika’s favourite food, potato gems — things to be devoured, comforted and nourished by, best consumed at any time of day or night, and, of course, most enjoyed when shared. These songs are inalienable parts of our lives now; they’ve brought our friends together over the past few years and, now, maybe they will for you and yours too.

Release: 29 January, 2021, Osborne Again/Spunk Records
Words: Spunk Records

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: Arlo Parks - 'Collapsed In Sunbeams'

1/2/2021

Collapsed In Sunbeams the highly anticipated debut album from Arlo Parks, has been released on Transgressive / [PIAS] via Inertia Music.

Speaking about the LP, Arlo says "My album is a series of vignettes and intimate portraits surrounding my adolescence and the people that shaped it. It is rooted in storytelling and nostalgia - I want it to feel both universal and hyper specific."

2020 saw Arlo continue to ascend, gracing the covers of Evening Standard Magazine, NME, and Dork Magazine, as well as being included on the 2020 Dazed 100 List, all whilst performing stand-out shows for the revered COLORS and NPR's Tiny Desk series - plus being one of only three artists to perform at Glastonbury.

Arlo has also been named an ambassador for the British mental health charity, CALM. Whilst her songwriting has seen her gain new fans in Billie Eilish, Florence Welch, Phoebe Bridgers, Michelle Obama, Angel Olsen and Wyclef Jean, among others.

Release: January 29, 2021, Transgressive/Inertia
Words: Transgressive

EDGE RADIO RECOMMENDED: Zac Henderson - 'Lay The Stones'

25/1/2021

Tasmanian singer-songwriter Zac Henderson has released his long awaited studio record, Lay The Stones. On the album, the full Zac Henderson experience is realised across 10 heartfelt and meticulously created songs. Written across a number of years, the album’s material details the scope of development and introspective moments in Henderson’s life. Having become a busy touring artist since the release of his debut EP Procrastination almost four years ago, life experiences changed for the artist as his music took him around the country and overseas. Lay The Stones is a result of this beautiful chaos being channelled into new stories on record.

Working on the album away from Tasmania, instead creating in Gippsland with his band and mixer/engineer Greg J Walker, the experience of making Lay The Stones was a fulfilling experience for everyone involved. Zac says: “Working on Lay The Stones as an album was one of the most exciting and involved musical experiences of my life so far. I managed to assemble a band of terrific musicians to play on the album and a brilliant producer who were all incredibly invested in the music. The environment in the studio was perfect; it felt like a lot of the time we were just goofing around, but we got a lot done and when we were playing, we were really playing.”

Honesty in songwriting and the showcase of vulnerability on record are shining highlights of Lay The Stones as a listening experience, as Henderson’s unique voice twists and weaves around some beautiful narrative bends.

“All of Zac’s songs are like little paintings of the important experiences in our lives, which I’ve either been involved in or can relate to deeply. I find so much value in them because they’re pretty much all riddled with little words of wisdom to help you through the situations we all get ourselves into. And even when they’re not so deep, they’re just a fun time. He manages to write with such character, to the point where the listener really gets a sense of his relationship with life.” - Jay Jarome (backing vocals).

Release: 22 January, 2021, Independent
Words: Beehive PR

<<Previous

Forward>>