Detonate

PRΔD@NΔ: Chop-Screwy Suey

If it weren’t for his talent, we could never forgive PrΔd@nΔ for his painfully hard-to-spell hipster nom de producteur (just as you’d never forgive us for the pretentious use of a French phrase here). Being something of a walking music encyclopaedia, PrΔd@nΔ was into every niche electronic genre before everyone else. Heck, he was a […]

Review

Zee Avi: Ghostbird

Zee Avi, Malaysia’s answer to a Mandy Mapes and Norah Jones amalgam is back. After her tour of doing Malaysia proud and putting us (finally) on the international radar, she tiptoes cautiously to the expansion of her sound. On Ghostbird, she tries to reach precariously out of her comfort zone and experiment a little. This […]

Detonate

Mushroom Buttons: Pushing The Right Buttons

You might remember him as Phrozt from our 2008 Cool List but he’d rather have you forget his hip hop past. Jason Chee aka Mushroom Buttons belongs in the same category as another beatmaker with the same first name, Nosaj Thing – midi pad-armed and experimental without seeming pretentious. Mushroom Buttons – You Would Never […]

Music

She & Him: Christmas Day

Whilst Christmas has probably not held claim to a particularly ‘hip’ image since JC and the Biblical days, sometimes all it takes is the endorsement of Hipster Royalty to make a commercial craze buzzworthy again.

Music

Goyte: Easy Way Out

Belgian-born, Australian based music-making mutant releases new single ‘Easy Way Out’

Review

Oliver Huntemann: Paranoia

Techno doesn’t get a lot of respect or wider recognition in electronic music these days. More prone to conjure stereotypical imageries of E-laden youths in dingy underground London clubs than music critic acknowledgment, it is fitting that Oliver Huntemann’s Paranoia happens to be released at this point of the genre’s growth. With it, not only […]

Review

Dum Dum Girls: Only In Dreams

Dum Dum Girls is one vintage venerating band that could easily be dismissed as just that, yet another retro reverent band. But that would be reductive criticism. Informed by France’s yé-yé (a contemporary example would be April March of ‘Chick Habit’ fame), they’ve certainly gotten enough criticism of that from their debut. Sophomore album Only […]

Music

Soft Rocks: The Curse of Soft Rocks

Distancing themselves from the monotony of today’s musical palette, Soft Rocks, out of Brighton UK, have pieced together a musical soundscape on their new album The Curse Of Soft Rocks. After a pause in musical releases spent spinning edgy parties and curating mixtapes for the likes of Beats in Space and ID Magazine, the new […]

Review

Feist: Metals

It’s a music critic cliché to claim an artist has grown every time they release a new record. So we’ll do one better and say that Feist has always had the maturity despite her traipsing the fine (and rickety) line between artistry and commercial success. You’ve known her through obvious hits like ‘1, 2, 3, […]

Review

Alias: Fever Dream

Anticon was the de facto hip hop collective that was changing the sound of the genre. Being made of predominantly white boys, the then collective (now a record label) built a reputation as experimenters of a type of music that was stubborn to the idea of changing. This naturally led to their distancing themselves from […]