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7 trailblazing moments in music making (that changed everything)
Originally published 27/2/24 @ jbhifi.com.au From the first ever recorded sound, to artificial intelligence (it’s here!), we’re looking at seven major moments in music recording history – ‘cos after these events, things were never the same again. 1877: Enter the phonograph Before 1877, if you wanted to hear some music – any music at all…
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Predicting Taylor’s poetry: Our theories on who she’ll reference in The Tortured Poets Department
Originally published 11/4/24 @ jbhifi.com.au. Taylor Swift is a modern day poet – who else can come up with lines like ”You call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest” (from magnum opus All Too Well)? We also know that she admires the…
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Peter Garrett interview: “I’m not a navel-gazing, sensitive flower child – rather an activist by temperament”
Originally published 12/3/24 @ jbhifi.com.au. Across a multi-faceted career which has touched almost every corner of the arts and activism, Peter Garrett has established himself as one of our most passionate national icons. But his talent isn’t set in amber; with his second ever solo album, there’s a commitment to fluidity on show. We put…
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Here’s why Air’s Moon Safari made such a sexy, space-age splash
Originally published 6/3/24 @ jbhifi.com.au. Air’s 1998 album ‘Moon Safari’ touches down with a 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray Pack this week, so we’re taking a telescope to its terrain. At the tail end of the ’90s, there was a sizeable group of music fans who were begging to be beamed up into a new cloud…
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Album review: Khruangbin link distinctive bass with sonic lace on ‘A La Sala’
Originally published 5/4/24 @ jbhifi.com.au. Texan trio Khruangbin have delivered their most thought-provoking album yet in this collection of gems which, as per historically usual, contain the most minimal of lyrics. The title of Texan trio Khruangbin’s fifth album means ’To the room’, and that warmth of familial connectivity is here, along with views out…
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Gurrumul takes flight on posthumous ‘Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow)’
Originally published 17/10/22 @ jbhifi.com.au. Born on Elcho Island off the coast of Arnhem Land (NT), Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was from the Gumatj clan of the Yolngu people. His final, posthumous album Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow) arrives in tandem with a remarkable new documentary. There’s a part in upcoming documentary Gurrumul where the titular artist…
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Radiohead lift a corner of the curtain with ‘KID A MNESIA’
Originally published 18/10/22 @ jbhifi.com.au. This collection of reworked and rare morsels from the Kid A and Amnesiac era (2000-2011) makes you realise just how many experiments a band as innovative as Radiohead leaves on the cutting room floor. Not because those ideas are inferior, but because the mothership has to lift off at some…
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Beyonce’s disco-licked ‘RENAISSANCE’ is a sonic cornucopia
Originally published 18/10/22 @ jbhifi.com.au. Rebirth, euphoria, and the guts to grab life’s neck and squeeze every bit of growling ecstasy out of it – that’s Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE. Across an epic 16 tracks, Beyoncé’s first album since 2016’s Lemonade is an absolute cornucopia of ideas: dangerously droning synth bass which cracks into R’n’B ’90s realness,…
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Yaeji has silversmithed an electronic treasure in ‘With a Hammer’
Originally published 7/4/23 @ jbhifi.com.au. NYC-born, Seoul-raised and Brooklyn-residing musician Yaeji has been noticed in electronica circles for several years now, working with Charli XCX, Robyn and Dua Lipa. But on ‘With a Hammer’, she’s powered-up with a Fire Flower. That doesn’t mean this treatise on anger and how it manifests (inwardly and outwardly) is…
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Foo Fighters’ ode to Taylor Hawkins explodes past the sum of its parts
Originally published 2/6/23 @ jbhifi.com.au. With a heart peeled open and a freshly glistening abandon in his voice, David Grohl leads his band into a place that’s less a new chapter than a new volume in the tale of Foo Fighters. But Here We Are, Foo Fighters’ 11th album and their first since the untimely…