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 9 September 2019.

Sampa The Great - The Return (Ninjatune/Inertia/Thinking Loud)**Album of the Week

On her debut full length, Sampa the Great creates a sense of home and explores having to redefine her self-identity away from the comforts of family and friends. Built on four years of personal and musical soul-searching, the album builds on reference points from classic hip-hop to ancient Southern African sounds.

Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls (AWAL Recordings)

The 5th studio album by English songwriter Natasha Khan is a love letter to the 80s sci-fi and fantasy films of her youth. Written during a period when Khan was writing a film-script herself, Lost Girls becomes a soundtrack to an imagined movie, with wide-screen synth-pop, nostalgic instrumental flourishes and dark electronics.

The Hunter Express - Should Have Come On Sunday (Brain Drain)

The second release from the Melbourne collective is a laconic and invitingly familiar collection of Australian indie-folk. The deeply collaborative album - recorded in Melbourne, but mixed in Santa Monica and mastered in the UK - explores the breakdown of relationships, and loss of connections.

Mermaidens - Look Me in the Eye (FLYING NUN RECORDS/Deathproof)

The Wellington trio continue to push new sonic boundaries on their third album, released by the legendary Flying Nun label. Driven by the dual lead-vocal attack of front-woman Gussie Larkin and Lily West, the album title Look Me in the Eye represents a double meaning of confrontation and intimacy.

Tinariwen - Amadjar (Wedge)

Recorded on the road in Western Sahara and Mauritania in late 2018, the legendary desert blues collective face up to their oftentimes violent personal fates and political struggles on Amadjar. With significant instrumental features from Warren Ellis and Cass McCombs, as well as Mauritania’s Noura Min and Jeiche Ould Chighaly, the recording is carried by the deep and resonant singing by founder Ibrahum ag Alhabib.

Kindness - Something Like a War (Female Energy)

Following years of collaborating with the likes of Robyn, Jazmine Sullivan and Cosima, Kindness drop the new release Something like a War. The record is a collection of divergent genres and inspirations: classic house, funk-inflected bass, swing, and high-production synth-pop.

Octo Octa - Resonant Body [T4T LUV NRG]

The American DJ and producer created her newest album in her New Hampshire cabin. Deeply influenced by the forest and nature surrounding her, the album remains indebted to the sounds of drum’n’bass and breakcore while drawing on themes of togetherness, embodiment, love, healing and survival.

Lower Dens - The Competition (Ribbon Music)

Lower Dens urgent new pop album deals with the mental health implications of modern capitalism. It posits that “you need radical and unquestioning compassion for yourself if you’re to reimagine what society could be.”

Frankie Cosmos - Close It Quietly (Sub Pop/Inertia)

The New York songwriter and erstwhile teen indie prodigy Greta Kline addresses the harsh realities of the mid-twenties over 21 songs on Close it Quietly. The album upends the concept of the known, imagining and reimagining motifs and sounds throughout the release.

Collarbones - Futurity (Independent)

The Sydney/Adelaide electro-pop two-piece created Futurity over 5 years, naming their album from a term used by queer theories Esteban Munoz to describe the use of aesthetics to envision utopian modes of being. The album, through an appropriate mix of electronic bangers and gentle ballads, explores devotion, romantic hope and the ever-present need for a crush.