We've rounded up Adelaide's best new music for February, including Druid Fluids, Coldwave, Deep Sea Data and Glowing.
March 2, 2023
Culture
Adelaide’s best new music
Druid Fluids — ‘Into Me I See’
Unparalleled when it comes to sound and aesthetic vision, local psychedelic outfit Druid Fluids have once again delivered, with their new single ‘Into Me I See’. With a crunchy sitar and rollicking guitar lick soundtracking a colourful video clip (the brainchild of local visual artist Miles Dunne), this is the kind of experience that could give someone comfort when going through a legal, medically-guided psychedelic trip. (AS)
Remarks
Listen to this playlist on Spotify or Apple Music.
If you’re a South Australian band or musician with a new release, let us know about it.
Coldwave — ‘Spurs for Business Cards’
There’s something sinister in the off-kilter riffing in Coldwave’s ‘Spurs for Business Cards’ – the second single from the band’s debut EP Same Window, Different House. The song starts with a familiar driving beat, singer Harry Evans sermonising his dream-logic lyrics, until the band collapses in on itself three minutes in. Falling into near silence, things get serious when a note from the bass guitar signals a reprise, the song building again for a full minute until it pushes beyond the bounds of its recording equipment and into another plane. Coldwave is playing a show to celebrate the launch of Same Window, Different House at the Crown & Anchor this Friday, 3 March. (JVE)
Glowing — ‘Pay the Price’
The second single in as many months from Glowing, ‘Pay the Price’ is a quieter and more restrained version of the band – for most of the track’s three and a half minutes, anyway. It opens sparsely – a simple drumbeat and twinkling guitar riff, slowly building until it hits the fiery crescendo final of the last 60 seconds. (JVE)
DARK DAYZ — ‘SCREAM’
There are a surprising number of bands called Dark Dayz, or some variation of that name, on Facebook. There is even the now-defunct spin-off Dark Days mini-festival in Hobart. But what sets Adelaide’s DARK DAYZ apart — aside from the fact that the band name is totally stylised in uppercase and has a ‘z’ at the end — is the five-piece’s genre-mashing. ‘SCREAM’, the outfit’s latest single, is a blend of post-punk, new wave and alt-rock, and breaks from convention with muddy guitars, a clear synthesiser riff, and jangly vocals. A beam of light on a dark day; a standout from the many titular Facebook twins. (AS)
King of Spain — ‘Ferrol’
Neo-soul nine-piece King of Spain launched their debut single ‘Ferrol’ at a gig at The Lab in early February, and it is heaving with funk. The production is crisp, the musicianship is clean, but still the group manages to find a bit of grime between the keys. (JVE)
Gratts — ‘Sun Circles’
The latest single from Gratts (musical moniker of Belgian import Tristan Jong) harks back to the halcyon days of the disco and house resurgence of the twenty-teens. It’s a medium-paced groove and brings together a global team of artists: New Zealand saxophonist Nathan Haines, London singer Mr Beale (aka Ellie Beale) and Gratts’ compatriots Jasper Hautekiet, Levi Wynants and Frederik Kuhn. Put out on Gratts’ new label Be Strong Be Free, ‘Sun Circles’ was released alongside an instrumental version and a remix from Berlin-based producer Alex Kassian. (JVE)
Jae — ‘Torn by Plü (Jae Remix)’
If you’re reading this on the day this story was published, it is Thursday, four days into your working week, and you’re probably looking for a way to escape the stress of whatever deadline you’re working towards. This lo-fi beat from Jae is exactly the kind of warbly, soft path out the drudgery you need. On the artist’s Bandcamp page, the bio reads that Jae is a “concluded chapter”, which spanned April 2020 to February 2023, so consider this a farewell. (JVE)
Deep Sea Data — ‘Hypnotised’
This bubbly, indie electronic bop belongs to a cadre of tracks often made by Adelaide-based musicians where it sounds like the work is unravelling as you try to understand it. Consisting of off-kilter guitar twangs, a clinical drum beat and a repeated ‘hypnotised’ refrain, Deep Sea Data casts a spell. We are submerged further from the surface and into their strange, repetitive world. (AS)
resigned beauty — ‘Under eucalyptus’
There is something endearing in ‘Under eucalyptus’ – an emo, diaristic, noisy diatribe, written by a low-key musician called resigned beauty. The grainy album art — a janky photo of an orange sunset backdropping the city, framed by the arms of a eucalyptus tree — matches the home-recording quality of the unpolished, four-and-a-half-minute song, featuring stop-start guitars and growling vocals. The album art looks like it was taken on a flip phone, and the song recorded on voice memos, spliced and stitched together haphazardly at the end of a night. It is raw, and, somehow, it works. (AS)
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