Australian Music Is Bloody Great: Obscura Hail

Where do you hear great new Australian music these days? Community radio is one crucial outlet and Amrap – the Australian Music Radio Airplay Project - offers Australian musicians a pathway to airplay from the hundreds of community stations to a weekly listenership of nearly 6,000,000 people. Go to amrap.org.au to get your music to thousands of presenters using the site each month to find new Australian music. If you haven’t got your music on Amrap, what are you waiting for? Community radio uses Amrap to source Australian music for airplay. You can discover all the great Australian music championed by community radio on the Community Radio Plus App, featuring the diverse range of community radio stations nationwide in one handy spot!

Amrap’s national radio show Australian Music Is Bloody Great features Australian artists presenting their favourite recent Australian music. Australian Music Is Bloody Great’s previous hosts range from Dune Rats to Sampa The Great to Phil Jameison.

We’re proud to team up with Amrap to bring you Australian Music Is Bloody Great as a Pilerats feature!
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This article originally appeared on amrap.org.au
Written by Ella Stewart

Naarm (Melbourne) indie rock trio Obscura Hail have just released their second album Playing Dead. Lead by songsmith Sean Conran, Obscura Hail blur the lines between folk and pagan pageantry Nintendo DS synths and dynamic guitar work. The band take the reins of Australian Music Is Bloody Great this week to offer a few current Australian music faves.

Double Happiness - Electric Sheep

Sean: This is one of two sibling tracks [Double Hapopiness] recently put out independently, and it's definitely got a finger on my pulse, at least. {They are] reminiscent of Black Marble, Boy Harsher, The Cure, even early Presets. There's just something about a voice whispering poignant dis-ease, with the future of AI buried beneath oversaturated zero-velocity drum machines conversing with warm synths and punchy basslines, sponged with distant but relentless guitar licks, mixed together in an appropriate midside pseudo-monotape fashion, wouldn't you say?

Billiam - Sleeping In The Mountains

Sean: Not too far along my chosen spectrum is Billiam, [in] what may as well be an endless catalogue of thoroughly warped but timeless bedroom-punk hits that embody the phrases ‘gotta go fast’ and ‘we are Sex Bomb’ (from the movie Scott Pilgrim Vs The World).

loveshovel - No Hunks

Kaelan: This was a random find for me while I was searching through AMRAP. I had never heard of them before, but this one stuck out. Great surfy, psychy sound. It just sticks out from the sea of punk music and rock that we make in this country. It's great to hear women write punk songs and scream about stuff they don't like.

Aquatico - SCAPEGOAT

Kaelan: We were lucky to share a bill at Bush Music Fest this year with Aquatico. I had never heard of them and just went to watch their set the night before we played and they killed it, they were awesome. Just a three-piece sound for lots of the set. It was huge. Blaise's guitar playing shreds, Tina shreds.

Grievous Bodily Calm - Cascades (Kuzich Remix)

Tamara: We had the pleasure of playing alongside Kuzich (who remixed Cascades) recently at the Cactus Room in Melbourne and got to witness first hand how he lifts up a room with his spacious and sparkly produced beats. So it's exciting to hear how he interprets Grievous Bodily Calm's flow, especially since they exist in that similar mellow and groovy space. I don't think I could properly describe the feeling of this one, it kind of feels like the moment of weightlessness at the height of a double jump on a trampoline.

Tim Guy - Imagine That

Tamara: It's got catchy pop melodies and a sweet bass line, which I'm a huge sucker for. As you groove along, you'll notice Tim's insightful lyrics, which give a wink to the ignorance of the human condition. A track that'll have you dancing along with every bone in your body.

Obscura Hail - Foreign Substances

Tamara: We are going to finish this up with a shameless plug of our own single!