Pilerats, Journalist

The first album you should definitely listen to this year.. One of my cultural resolutions heading into the New Year was to listen to more albums start to finish, instead of just zoning in on hyped tracks and thrashing them. First cab off the rank is Panda Bear’s Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, and as I come to closing bars of the final track, I couldn’t have asked for a better album to confirm this was the right resolution to make. Interesting enough, nobody heard it first as a cohesive whole: in a cool marketing move, the album was premiered track-by-track on radio stations across the globe (including Sydney’s FBi). The fifth album from Noah Lennox, the co-founder of one of the most influential alternative pop-rock acts of the 21st century, Animal Collective, was has given us a pretty damn strong album showcase in Grim Reaper, going all over the place with his beatmaking (in a good way): thematically sitting between the drippy-hippy warmth of 2007’s Person Pitch and the darker, mor

Electro-popstress Elizabeth Rose chills New Navy's out even further.. November last year saw the release of New Navy's latest single Pelican, a typically breezy piece of chilled-out pop from the Sydney three-piece. And with the new year they're kicking things off with an equally chilled-out start thanks to Elizabeth Rose applying her certain set of electronic skills to a remix of Pelican. Unsurprisingly it's a bouncy little effort from Rose that keeps things pretty downbeat until the final stanza, where it grows to almost dancefloor-worthy. If your dancefloor is a sunny patch of grass or the beach: Follow Elizabeth Rose: FACEBOOK / SOUNDCLOUD Follow New Navy: FACEBOOK / WEBSITE

Time Pilot turn up the intensity on a track from Sydney's Spirit Faces.. Perth producers Time Pilot had a really industrious 2014; edging their way into the contemporary Australian electronic music map with some promising originals, including a killer number, Vowel Play, on our Pilerats Records RAT PACK #2 Compilation, before ending the year with a big undertaking - a remix for Peking Duk & Safia's Take Me Over, that they very much nailed. Their studio work was matched only with their aptitude on the live circuit; as they tore apart the local stage at CIRCO Festival, and took on live sets at a number of WA club nights, with aplomb. Time Pilot show no signs of slowing down in 2015, in fact they've hit the ground running, putting some work into Cloudplay, a warm, low-key offering from Sydney electronic instrumentalist Spirit Faces (TEEF Recordings), that Spirit Faces shared with us as a premiere on Pilerats last last year. Time Pilot imbue the lilting track with razory atmospherics and b