Japanese Breakfast finds her healing space

New music from Japanese Breakfast, Cornelius and more . .

SERvin’ Up! – w/c July 17, 2017

The Stevens – Good
Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder
Cornelius – Mellow Waves
Japanese Breakfast – Soft Sounds From Another Planet
Sheer Mag – Need To Feel Your Love
Shabazz Palaces – Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star
Michael Nau – Some Twist
Kane Strang – Two Hearts and No Brain
Bjorn Torske & Prins Thomas – Square One
Various Artists – Zamrock!

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Hello,

Michelle Zauner started her solo project Japanese Breakfast following the death of her mother, with the ensuing debut Psychopomp both wrenching and joyous with its raw detailing of life’s wobbly undertow in stark, bright listening. It’s an exploration continued on her follow-up, Soft Sounds From Another Planet , but Zauner places a dreamier gaze on her songs to evoke that hanging feeling while in healing. Soft Sounds from Another Planet has a gorgeous and crystalline sound that evokes both space and Disneyland (hey, it’s a small world after all) in its fantastical outlook and velvety pop sheen. Positively shimmering, Zauner really cuts through with a kind of upbeat melancholy through her lyrics that circle both memory and future days.

Space is also the place for Shabazz Palaces, the Seattle hip hop outfit following a great lineage of African-American artists – Sun Ra and George Clinton as Dr Funkenstein to name but two – casting themselves as from another planet to provide a viewpoint on the world with distinct Afro-centrism and magical realism. The duo’s new album Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star drops visitors from outer space unshackled by humanity’s constraints in a weirdly magnetic and murky mix of dub, free jazz and psychedelia, offering a stranger-in-a-strangeland take on the ills of social media and modern society malaise. It is the most abstract, groovy and dope polemic you will hear this year.

Japan’s Cornelius made a string of albums dating back to the ‘90s where his singular take on taking pop into a digital age was second to none. If anyone remembers his lone Sydney performance at the Enmore Theatre back in 2003, you will indeed remember it very well for essentially being a whole Vivid festival in one two-hour performance of spectacular light and dazzling sounds. After spending the best part of a decade making soundtracks for anime films, touring with Yoko Ono, collaborating with J-Pop singers and remixing work for the likes of Philip Glass he has returned with a new solo opus, Mellow Waves. Unashamedly in love with old sounds and new, Mellow Waves is yet another bubbly confection of bright 60s-type melodies taken into entrancing, often frenetic realms of electronic texture and rhythm, nodding to lounge, exotica and funk without camping out in any for too long. For all the intricacy, it sounds effortlessly great, immediate and just so damn life affirming. And it sounds, with a sweet and humble kind of glory, like nothing other than Cornelius.

Also, new tunes from The Bombay Royale, Shoeb Ahmad, Billy Bragg, Four Tet, The Ocean Party, Ghostpoet, Lost Horizons, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, Ariel Pink, Beaches, Mr Lif & Akrobatik, Torres and Gold Class (phew!)