Bedroom Suck Records News

Don Glori, a.k.a multi-instrumentalist Gordon Li, returns with a remix EP that tears open five tunes from his groundbreaking debut, Welcome.

Taking an opportunity to sink into some of the ideas explored on the original album, the five remixes featured here sees some of Europe and Australia’s finest throw open the shutters and shine a light on Li’s inventive compositions and remarkable instrumentation.

Rosie from the Block, a.k.a Belgian multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ Roselien, leans right into the percussion and drum kit playing that made Welcome so infectious, layering this with cheeky bubblegum-beat bass lines that lend the whole affair an incredibly smooth, street-soul styling.

Other key players include Swedish duo Mount Liberation Unlimited, lending their take on things an introspectively dark, brooding atmosphere that evolves into one of their trademark acid-house extended journeys; Australian radio DJ and producer Ennio Styles working alongside Liam de Bruin, hip-hop/soul duo Man Made Mountain, led by MC Cazeaux O.S.L.O, and an insanely infectious organic house take on hit single Dlareme by one of Melbourne’s finest, Teymori.

A perfect companion to an album that broke open the Melbourne scene and laid out new parameters for the quality of jazz, samba and funk-inspired music emerging from that city, Welcome Remixes breathes fresh life into this incredible album and reminds us just how goddamn fun making, playing and performing music can be.

Aptly titled, ‘Welcome’ is the debut album from Don Glori. A kaleidoscopic free dive into his world, featuring 8 recordings of revolving jazz, Brazilian, soul and funk inspired compositions spinning together and blurring into a genre bending slew of new music.

There is an intangible element of joy and connection sitting just outside the grasp of description or definition that can be felt throughout this album. Each song on this album captures the spirit and irrepressible energy that underpins the core of the Don Glori project.

Imperfections are captured along with the moments of transcendence. Layers of vocal harmonies oscillate next to pulsating samba rhythms while spiritual overtones permeate throughout. Congas and percussion form a holy union with the drum kit, co-piloted by Don Glori’s own bass lines.

Saxophones, horns and flutes flutter in between the musical canyons carved out by the piano and vibraphone. When you press all of these forces together you can start to feel the intangible; the intrinsic human elements existing in the creases. The sweat, excitement and willingness of each musician to dedicate their spirit and take risks on every track of this album.

It’s clear from the outset that this is an expansive body of work, from the spiritual jazz opener ‘Maiden Waters’ to the bubbling street party that is ‘Dlareme’, and ending on the unashamedly seductive ‘Commodore’. This is the kind of record that will translate equally well to both the dance floor and the lounge room rug.

Australian hip-hop/neo soul duo SO.Crates are a boom-bap prayer sent live and direct from the heart of two of the culture’s most committed students. The group features Melbourne based beatmaker and DJ Skomes alongside California-via-Adelaide MC & poet Cazeaux O.S.L.O, not to mention the MUSE, a forever changing third party who completes the creative trinity of the Crates. With a legacy built on releasing a steady flow of cold-crush records and delivering uplifting live performances to the party people, SO.Crates prove that hip-hop’s golden era is not a lost date in time, but a foundational state of mind. Functioning as a considered preview of what to expect from the album to follow, the hypnotic first release 'Stars' is an auditory exploration of what happens when two opposing charges collide; the joyful and the melancholy. Here, layers of instrumentation, samples and vocals sit atop a foundation of grounding beats — the track's roots from which piano samples, live trumpet and vocal embellishments spring. "When Skomes gets in his stride, it's always a bit of a happy/sad feeling. It can go either way, like a mood ring", says Cazeaux O.S.L.O. "I guess you could say we make mood ring beats, and 'Stars' is no exception".

Other Joe is the pseudonym of producer, mastering engineer, and label-head Joe Buchan, an individual with a penchant for free-wheeling experimentation and genre-crossing musical tastes. Drawing upon a wide array of sounds that pay homage to his love of both the beautiful and the abrasive, Joe devours indiscriminately whatever sounds might cross his path, the result giving birth to the unique musical journey that is listening to an Other Joe record. After a few years spent playing in bands and releasing small bodies of work under different monikers, Joe released what many listeners know as his breakout record, Alien Haze, a beautiful collection of recordings that oscillate from collages of field recording and found sound, sublime balearic-era saxophone symphonies, and introspective neo-classical psychedelia. His latest work, blessing from th eheart (typo intentional), expands on Other Joe’s love for blending field recording and acoustic instruments with electronic processing. Beginning by reviewing the catalogue of creative notes he had archived since the release of Alien Haze in March 2019, Joe picked apart voice memos, Logic projects, iPhone videos and whatever else he could lay hands on. Says Joe, “looking over it all at once, the musical ideas I had been attracted to over the past eight or nine months started to make a bit more sense - I could see that there were instruments I was liking, or chord progressions that I kept coming back to, structures and forms that I had found engrossing. Sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that I had made without realising.”

From mimicking drum sounds with their mouths and then processing the result to create a world of intricate, intimate sound; to recording a short EP’s worth of work at the snail’s pace of a minimum 12 months, the Sydney based duo Thomas Gray & Liam Ebbs approach their work with a fascinating blend of impulse and consideration. Sounds can be carefully sulptured, massaged, edited and reworked, only to be thrown out the window and replaced with a whole new set of material at a moment’s notice. The pair pay acute attention to mood, space and atmosphere; they are not afraid to take their time. Listening to their compositions is like travelling through the countryside on a train, downriver on a boat, or rising into clouds through the windows of a commercial airliner. Gray and Ebbs’ music, it feels, is an accompaniment to thought and feeling, a personal soundtrack to carry in one’s head. As Eno said when famously coining the term ‘ambient’ - “Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.” In 2022, the pair will return with a new EP, ‘Blue’, their first for the Bedroom Suck Records label. The five tracks on Blue continue to explore the world that lies somewhere between organic and electronic, between natural sound and manufactured signal. Acoustic instruments make a notable appearance, as does a strong lead vocal in ‘It’s Alright’. The music is evocative, nostalgic and inspirational; It leaves one feeling hopeful.

Midday Moon is a survey of ambient and experimental music that emerged from Australia and New Zealand between 1980 and 1995. These recordings are sourced from a rich variety of micro-labels, private pressings, theatre soundtracks and artists' personal archives. Curated by Melbourne based DJ and archivalist, Sanpo Disco (a.k.a Rowan Mason), the collection delves deep into the world of outsider music that emerged in Australia and New Zealand in the latter half of the twentieth century, as synthesisers and early workstations began to enter the consumer marketplace. The record is an odyssey in itself, a journey that takes listeners into the unsung world of Australian new age composers. There are stories abound within this volume, from the mysterious disappearance of Helen-Ripley Marshall after the release of her 1988 album 'Green Chaos', to the journey of American-born, Perth based blues/rock guitarist John Heussenstamm, who unexpectedly turned his finger to 'ambient' music in the late 80's; and again from Melbourne based Ros Bandt, who made a series of recordings exploring the resonance of a hollow concrete cylinder 5 stories beneath busy Collins Street in Melbourne's CBD. Compiled by Sanpo Disco / Mastered by Mikey Young . '(Ambient music is) a surrounding influence that induces calm and a space to think... it can accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular.' - Brian Eno / 'A richer and more diverse ambient genre began to form. Music that crafts a unique cultural geography of landscapes and atmospheres: real and imagined, natural and man-made. Some artists turned their attention to the singular acoustic ecologies of overlooked spaces around the country. Others fostered interests in non-Western music cultures and instruments. The common thread is their use of new technologies to conjure interior and exterior regions, through acoustic and synthesised sounds.' - Sanpo Disco