These are not times in which trust is handed out lightly. Videos may be fake, partners potentially toxic, life itself COULD be a package deal imposed by parents without consent. No – we trust nothing and no one. With one exception: music coming out of Australia and its surrounding areas.
There is something in the way Australia musicians inhabit their bodies – a looseness, a lack of strain in the best possible sense. The trio Th Blisks confirm the rule. How So? is trip-hop inhabited by benevolent spirits, with a touch of diet dub; nothing here presses too hard, nothing fully asserts itself.
That is how it’s done in Australia .
The three members are unlikely ever to front a protein-bar campaign. Yuta Matsumura is known from the excellent Red Ribbon – post-punk in spirit, pop in the bloodstream, hypoglycaemia in the legs. Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman, as Troth, have released on labels such as Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox and A Colourful Storm; their trip-hop-leaning synth-pop, too, favours the veil.
How So? cures hyperactivity; no dopamine spike to be expected – the finest white-people dub since Peaking Lights. Recommended track: »A Salve«. For anyone wondering what a blend of The Cure, Augustus Pablo and Carla Dal Forno might sound like.
How So?
