Helen Franzmann and Nick Huggins - public holiday at you yangs regional park (Brierfield Flood Press) [Ambient]

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's July 26th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is a curious release from a curious label - Brierfield Flood Press, who in their own words, “are a small Australian label. who release music and publish poetry, when the time feels right.” I can’t attest to their poetry, but I almost recommended their last musical release from Field Commander Alli. If intimate alt-folk is your thing, don’t delay, and this, their latest release from Helen Franzmann and Nick Huggins is definitely too good not to shout about.

I’m classing it as ambient due to its gentle, calming and transportive nature, even though it’s got a rhythmic, albeit resting, pulse at times. The songs are saturated in field recordings that bring oft-ignored ambient sound, whether natural or urban, to the fore and to your attention. An old piano is tinkled every now and then, synth tones are played and looped from another room; in fact it sounds like everything is done from rooms adjacent to the microphone, which, to compound the distant, lo-fi vibe was quite possibly situated next to an open window on a farm. I can’t find out who did what, but the distressed electroacoustic ambient atmospherics provide a threadbare, but cozy rug for Franzmann’s painfully shy vocals and occassional conversational snippets from the pair to rest on, as they probably discuss which household object to start rattling, clanking or squeezing next. It’s a gloriously lo-fi, quietly eccentric, oddball ambient, refreshingly timorous singer-songwriter album that, rather like its label home, is curious and defies easy comparison.

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Playlist Companion

Find them in the Ambient Pop Playlist. (But not on Spotify)