One of the many (many many many) artists that I’ve been wanting to write about for some time is an incredible new Sydney band that have just recently appeared on the radar. They’ve already begun collecting much acclaim around the traps, and really I’m just dropping in my additional two cents on a group that is sure to be doing many more great things in the very near future.

Bon Chat, Bon Rat are a three-piece group specialising in a melodic, partially electronic sound that never you never quite pin down to any particular genre. Somehow they manage to cohesively tie together a dreamy, synth-pop oriented sound while never actually sounding constrained by any of the particular “scenes” that synth-pop has found itself in. 80s synth-prog/pop revival? No, somehow it’s fresh enough that it never feels like it’s retreading a past movement. Chillwave? Nope, it’s definitely not within that category. IDM’s second coming? Nope, it’s more accessible, more organic than that. Throughout the EP’s play you can definitely spot a lot of seminal influences amongst it all, but as a whole the band manage to get away with sounding like they’ve got their own thing happening.

Part of the identifiable fingerprint of the band’s sound is live instrumentation which is frequently included without being too smoothed-over by effects and post processing. Whether it’s a minimal guitar arpeggio creating texture across the mix, or a distorted live bass line sitting amongst the foundations of a track – they have a direct, live feel rather than something that’s been shorn of its natural characteristics. In a sense, it helps give the impression that the band is much more than elements filtered through a laptop.

On their new six track EP, three of the tracks feature vocals (four if you count the vocoder-tinged closer “Nowhere Paradise”), which are all differently approached – ethereal in “Map of São Paulo”, densely harmonized in “Tribes” and very direct in “Le Rayon Vert”. All are impressive in their delivery – excellently developed melodies, great vocal performances. Meanwhile, the instrumental tracks are densely atmospheric, almost soundtrack-like pieces built around simple ideas which explore dynamics via elaboration in texture and instrumentation.

Through all of this rambling and raving I guess what I’m trying to say is this EP is great dammit and you have utterly no excuse not to have it when it’s available as a free download (linked below), or in physical form for the low price of $5. Go get amongst it.

Download

• The full Bon Chat, Bon Rat EP

Buy

• The EP via the band’s store

Once again, I apologise. Despite my best intentions to get content into this blog at a proper rate again, there have been numerous distractions coming from nearly all directions. Just wanted to give an update on what one of these directions is.

Since we’ve moved out to Ryde (land of the musical black hole), we’ve wanted to see what we can do to encourage a bit of activity in music around here. As we seemed to have landed on our feet in moving into a house seemingly purpose-built for hosting gigs, the first step for doing so seemed pretty obvious. So for the last few months we’ve been working out how we can approach this, and out of all of that The Gate was born.

We did a test gig a couple of nights ago to see how viable the idea is and I’m am utterly thrilled to say that the gig went incredibly well, to the point where we’re more than eager to develop the environment as a venue to host a semi-regular event.

For the first gig we got some friends of mine – Garage Hymnal – to do a show for their fans. Telafonica (who I’ve raved about before) graciously accepted an invitation to play a support set.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a post about what we’re doing as a heads-up on what will likely be happening in the near future. Ideally, each event will be an opportunity to feature up and coming artists and bands from Sydney and beyond in an area that doesn’t ever get to see them. On top of that, we think we’ve landed a space that’s a unique and exciting place to see music, and definitely one of interest to people beyond this area.

The backyard is a 150 capacity space (deck and yard) with a naturally landscaped raised level in the yard that functions as a stage.

All events will be non-profit, with all proceeds from door donations and coffee (after costs) going to the bands.

Anyway, we’ll see how things go! Look out for an announcement over the next few days for a gig on June 19th.

Thanks to Jatin Valabjee for the photos.