Nothing’s better than getting a reminder of how much pure brilliance there is to be unearthed in Sydney’s music scene if only you look hard enough. Telafonica, for example, were previously unknown to me before this week but have now rapidly found a place on my “bands to watch” list via their new single entitled “The Quest For Love Aboard the Belafonte”.

The tune is a gorgeous 4 minute abstract pop piece – assembled using a lush palette of pianos, synths, guitars and a fractured, clattering assortment of rhythmic elements. Lyrically, it follows a first-person narrative of a girl’s hazard-prone voyage seemingly motivated by a quest for love. It has a bittersweet theme, which is reflected in the arrangement’s progression – instead of a continuous build, it does the opposite as it pulls apart piece by piece until all that’s left are sparse, reflective and yet deliberate components.

The single release features 3 remixes all of which are enjoyable listens: a quirky 8-bit Actual Russian Brides interpretation, an (excellent) dubstep-meets-ambient-glitch take by Koroshi and the band’s own epic treatment which is a demented journey through a melting pot of abstract early-90s electronic genres at their most acid-infused.

Best of all the release is completely free, which means there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t get on over and pick it up. Keep an eye out for the album (entitled Love on the Second Stair) when it drops in “about a month”, according to the band.

The band also has a tune on the excellent New Weird Australia compilation, which you should also definitely make time to get amongst.

Upcoming Telafonica gigs:

• October 30, 2009 – UTS Loft Bar w/ Deadbeatz and Subsketch
• November 14, 2009 – Mars Hill Cafe, Parramatta – Album Launch Show w/ Charles Buddy Daaboul

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the Laneway Festival 2010 lineup dropped a few days ago. It looks like this. I don’t have a lot to add except huh? This lineup seems extraordinarily short on essential viewing this time around.

There are two acts I’m keen about – the prospect of seeing Echo & The Bunnymen is more than exciting (but are they really a Laneway act? and let’s face it, they’re not the band they used to be), and I’m keen to see The Xx whose album has been getting a lot of spins here in the last few weeks. But apart from that, beyond some of the better Aussie acts which I can see anytime, there’s nothing in there that I’m eager to catch. It’s nice to know that Josh felt somewhat the same way.

This is kind of disappointing, as I’ve really been impressed by past lineups for the event. No festival has a perfect roster of bands, but Laneway always came as close as you could generally hope. It’d be nice if the second announcement righted this, but I guess tickets will disappear by the time that rolls around anyway.

The move of location (to the Sydney College of the Arts in Rozelle) is not particularly surprising, and probably necessary. It will be interesting to see how this development affects the atmosphere of the festival – if you’re after a taster Daniel Boud has photos of the new site which are worth a look.

This one came as a complete surprise – I’ve been spinning the album repeatedly waiting for it to wear thin on me, but it’s come up as a total winner.

El Perro Del Mar is the project of Swedish pop songwriter and singer Sarah Assbring – she has previous albums in her discography, but for whatever reason I hadn’t run into her before.

First, the upfront confessions: I only actually gave this album (entitled Love Is Not Pop) a go due to its production being handled by Rasmus Hägg (one half of the esteemed electronic group Studio), being mildly curious to hear what sort of treatment a pop singer/songwriter would get in these sorts of hands.

As it turns out it’s an extraordinarily low-key treatment: mellow, lush and completely captivating. It’s sonic nature straddles a balance between the organic and the artificial and comes across as sounding like a truly authentic production. There’s little in the way of distracting studio manipulations, studio trickery or gimmicks – it’s an album of straightforward songs presented with a healthy amount of care taken to the presentation of the sonic layers that bring them to life.

Nearly all of the instruments on the album were played by the artist and producer. There’s a pleasant unrefined, personal edge that comes from this – the instruments are obviously being played by people with less technical skill than musical skill and, as a result, instead of robotic session players we get far from perfect but thoroughly enjoyable performances. Take the drums on “Change of Heart” for example – they’re full of inadvisably cluttered playing, flirting dangerously close to completely falling out of time, but they’re completely human and organic and all the richer for it. I smile every time I hear it.

Much of the playing is simple but completely intentional – the synths, the guitars, the pianos, the drums – all obviously played by people that know what their musical intuitions want to see realised. The sound and mix are tastefully reminiscent of 70s production: lots of dry, upfront bass and drum sounds, with reverb and delays liberally applied to vocals, guitars and synths.

I’m getting off track – but rest assured, there’s plenty to unearth for production geeks – but as for the songs, they’re simple songs of (yep) love, and they do their job of suiting the mood perfectly. Sarah’s vocals are lovely and lowkey and do a great job of bringing the emotion to life.

I’ve said enough. I like it a lot (surprise!). Despite its surprisingly short length (7 tracks, with 3 solid bonus remixes for Aussies) it’s a satisfying listen and one that seems to bear out repeated ones at that. Good things comes in unexpected packages!

El Perro Del Mar was recently in the country (which I missed, sadly). Roanna from Those Walls, Your Ears covered one of her Sydney shows which apparently didn’t see a lot of punters didn’t turn up, which is a shame.

The album’s out and in stores via Inertia, as of mid last month.

Listen

• Change of Heart (mp3)

I mentioned a little over a year ago that I’d been enthusastically getting amongst all things Apparat. If you didn’t see that post, go check it out and get a hold of those albums – a year later they still rank high as some of my favourite albums for repeated listening.

I’d been keenly awaiting an upcoming collaboration LP between Apparat and Modeselektor, another key Berlin electronica group that you may have come across when they gathered some attention by getting Thom Yorke in on vocals for “The White Flash” from their last album Happy Birthday. Ironically, the album evaded my notice for a good couple of months after release – and here I am blogging about it even later still. However, I haven’t seen a lot of talk about the album here in Australia so I figured I’d throw my commendation for it in.

The album promoters for the Moderat project seem to have made a lot of mileage out talking about the supposed tensions that exist in the Apparat/Modeselektor working relationship. In many ways, it’s not hard to see why such a tension would exist – Modeselektor seem to enjoy a goofy, hip-hop derived, swaggering beat-heavy synthetic sound while Apparat has increasingly been moving towards an ambient yet organic approach to his music. To put it more simply: Modeselektor’s music is good for clubs, Apparat is good for headphones and living rooms.

So where’s the album land, sonically speaking? In many ways, the trademarks of both entities exist evenly across the record, though the whole ends up being a little more on the dramatic, serious side. That’s not to say it’s slow – it’s generally quite uptempo – but it’s fairly minor key and takes its identity more from texture than rhythmic propulsion. The trio seem heavily influenced by the dubstep movement – notably first single “Rusty Nails” and closer “Out of Sight” live in Burial’s shadow just a little, while bringing it under a more refined, Berlin-esque structure. Elsewhere, some excellent Berlin ambient techno gets a couple of tunes (“3 Minutes Of” and “Nasty Silence”) and even a very pop-sounding rave anthem (“Sick With It”) is amongst the lineup.

Initially I was a little disappointed by the release – it seemed to lose my interest a few tracks in and repeat itself – but over many replays I’ve gradually come to find it a solid, thoroughly enjoyable work. Much lies in the detail, waiting to be unravelled over repeat plays.

As a result, the disc is certainly no party starter in atmosphere but it’s an impeccable disc for evenings (and, in my case, coding) – a detail-rich labour of love (and possibly even frustration, judging from the cover) that may not see a followup due to Modeselektor and Apparat’s own busy careers (presently on hold while they finish touring as Moderat). Worth a listen.

Rusty Nails (video)

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I apologise for the insane lack of posting (if anyone had noticed)… life has been immensely busy between moving house (I am now, terrifyingly, a resident of Ryde), multiple music projects (notably Soma Music, which has been immensely exciting and rewarding) and even Real Work. Things are settling down, so hopefully more blogging will follow – there’s a big backlog of albums that I’ve been meaning to cover.

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With some sadness Aussie music bloggers bid farewell last mongth to Sean from A Reminder. He’s left for his native land of Canada and I certainly hope that his mother country realises what a boon has just arrived for their music scene as his coverage of music in Australia will be hugely missed here. Hope the move is fruitful Sean – and I’m looking forward to hearing what you unearth out of Canada’s music scene!