Soundscape is a weekly look at local and international releases making an impression on our musical radar. The list offers a cross-section of EPs and albums arriving at the station.

We have been busily scouring the Soundscape! Check out some of our favourite finds for this week 13 July 2020

Vanessa Worm - Vanessa 77 (Optimo Music)**Album of the Week

The debut LP from the Dunedin-Born, Melbourne based artist displays a striking versatility and range, with songs spanning experimental folk, peak-time dancefloor beats, post punk, drum & bass, and electronic pop. Released on the lauded Glaswegian label Optimo Music, Vanessa has said about the release “It was a way for me to put my mental state onto a plate - the joys, the fears, the epiphanies...I intended for Vanessa 77 to help others to heal, self-realise and alchemise.”

Floodlights - From A View (Spunk Records/Caroline)

From A View closely follows on the heels of 2019s EP Backyard which saw the Melbourne group gain air time on community radio stations around the world, and a record deal with Spunk Records. On their debut long play, the four piece sharpen their sound with a renowned studio (Head Gap Studios, Preston) and engineer (Nao Anzai). Continuing to explore the world through the lens of historical awareness, Floodlights explore themes of identity, personal crossroads and the misuse of power.

Julianna Barwick - Healing Is A Miracle (Ninja Tune/Inertia)

Julianna Barwick has said of the title of her new album: “you cut your hand, it looks pretty bad, and two weeks later it looks like it never happened… That’s kind of amazing, you know?” It’s these small, miraculous occurrences that we pay little attention to which form the driving concept of the album. Musically, Healing is a Miracle is meditative and reverb drenched, built on improvisation and sonically indebted to close collaboration with Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Nosaj Thing and Mary Lattimore.

Hachiku - '99 Dreams' EP (Milk! Records / Remote Control)

99 Dreams is the new covers EP from the Melbourne based band led by German-Australian bedroom producer Anika Ostendorf. Ostendorf covers the cult West German 1984 hit 99 Luftballoons, Sia’s soaring pop opus Chandalier and the Cranberries debut single Dreams.

Lonnie Holley - National Freedom (Jagjaguwar)

The Alabaman sculptor and musician takes the simple and familiar building blocks of American roots and makes them strange and beautiful on his new EP. Throughout the 5 tracks, Holley wanders between piano improvisations, downtempo dub, and longing blues. Central, throughout, are Holley’s unforgiving, gravelly vocals, with which he invokes dreams, philosophy, mythos, and, in his most compelling tracks, the anguish of lost love.

Rebel Yell - Fall From Grace (Rice Is Nice Records)

Fall from Grace is the second LP from the producer Grace Stevenson aka Rebel Yell. On her new release, Stevenson creates fresh, hypnotic and unapologetic techno designed as “club music for the overthinker”, both tackling Stevenson’s own vulnerabilities, as well as trying to untangle an increasingly confusing world through beat and groove.

The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers (Dew Process)

The Beth’s newest album was written during a period when the band became a full-time pursuit after they quit their jobs and began a long tour across North America and Europe. It is this process which forms the conceptual core of the album, with lead vocalist and songwriter Elizabeth Stokes exploring the proposition of leaving your life, family and friends on another continent to chase your dreams, and all the uneasy baggage that comes with that. Musically, the ten tracks continues the bands penchant for rollicking power-pop jams and sing-along choruses with economic arrangements and careful production by Jonathon Pearce in Auckland.

Boris - No (Sargent House)

The prolific Japanese metal trio have been releasing records since the mid nineties, harvesting sounds from psych-rock, doom, thrash, shoegaze and pop. On their latest release - fully self recorded during quarantine - the band channel all of the claustrophobia, anxiety and indignation of the turmoil of our times into 40 incredibly compelling minutes of hardcore vocals, doom-metal riffs, and rock n’ roll hooks with more feeling than any other band so far in 2020.

Keleketla! - Keleketla! (Ahead of Our Time)

Kelekelta! is an expansive collaborative project, with a network of artists and musical communities from Johannesburg to London, Lagos, L.A. and West Papua. Featuring well over 20 musicians and producers from around the world, the final product is a future-facing web of styles and influences, connecting different points in the global contemporary jazz and soul movement. Recurring throughout the record is the capacity of music to face-up to and influence politics, with themes of empowerment, revolution and freedom, at times universal, and at times regionally specific as in the Benny Wenda led ‘Papua Merdeka’ which centers around a call for freedom for the nation of West Papua from Indonesia.

Various Artists - Fluxx Vol1 (Fluxx Records)       

Functioning as both a celebration of Fluxx Records first birthday and an expression of longing for a return to the club, the local collective release a 29 track compilation of dark and experimental electronic dance music. Featured here are debut releases from rising stars in Melbourne’s club scene Georgia Bird, Different Shades and Delfi.