New, Newer, Newest: Some wonder from Down Under

So what's sounding new on New Sounds Radio? If you're looking for genre-free, hand-picked, ear-catching, other-hyphened-word music then we are your friends and your ears and brain will thank you for tuning in. Let us do the hard work for you finding what's great out there with a simple click of the pink LISTEN LIVE button in the top left. 

Other than scolding my colleagues for their terrible attempts at imitating my accent, I spend a good deal of time in the office explaining the eccentricities of Australia - the melodramatic politics and the brilliance of the democracy sausage, that we invented boxed wine and wifi, how to trap a Huntsman spider and release it safely, that gun control does work, what a quokka is, etc.

But forget the democracy sausages, quokkas and the sharks, now is when I get to write about some new Australian music we’ve got playing on New Sounds radio.

Padma Newsome – Cloud Theory

Australia’s distinctive landscape and environment has always had a significant influence on the art, literature, film and music created by its inhabitants, both before and after colonization.

Padma Newsome was born in Alice Springs, in Australia’s “red center”, he’s a composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, conductor, and dabbles in projects with The National and Clogs.

His latest project, a sonic essay entitled The Vanity of trees, was inspired by the surroundings of Mallacoota, a small town located in the eastern corner of the state of Victoria. As the title suggests, trees are a particular focus; the grey gum, the snow gum, the black wattle, the desert bloodwood, koalas, wombats and fruit bats all serve as inspiration.

The tracks ‘Trunk Proud’ is especially haunting and paints a musical picture of the stillness of Mother Nature, and the particular eeriness that comes being isolated in the remote Australian outback.

Weekend – Flume

Flume started off his career with a CD-ROM he got in a cereal box of music software. He’s now a hugely successful international artist, and while appealing to the mainstream and having talent don’t necessarily go hand in hand, for Flume it does.

For someone who has had little musical training, his work is musically clever and complex. He is a wizard at building juicy textures and plays around with the stereotypical tropes of popular electronic music. With each listen I find something new in his music.

‘Weekend’ is off Flume’s second companion EP to his studio album Skins. It features the gorgeous vocals of Moses Sumney and addresses the often short-lived nature of relationships. It sparkles with lush, shimmery sounds and textures, and is best heard with headphones to let it all just swirl around inside your head.

Preludes, Op. 8: No. 6 (For Four Hands) – Julian de la Chica, perf by Lisa Moore

Both New York and Australia can claim credit for this one - Two expats based in New York, Lisa Moore (from Australia) and Julian de la Chica (from Colombia) are responsible for this lovely series of preludes for piano and synthesizer.

The 14 preludes were written over a two year period and continue the composer’s interest in moving between post-minimal and ambient music.

It’s one of those works, and one of those performances, that invites you to listen to the space in between the notes, or in the composer’s words: “The Op. 8 cycle is a process that improvises the image that is absent. The hidden image creates emotion, truth and reality… The Preludes are an exploration of another kind of virtuosity... the virtue of sound. What lies behind, what we do not see.”

'Prelude No. 7' has an abandoned 80s fairground vibe with the waltz-like accompaniment in the left hand and the subtle addition of ascending and descending synth passages that float around the melody like an ominous merry-go-round jingle, but from the 80s.