Playlist 11.06.23

A little less emphasis on the beats tonight, or it's beats within other genres or in service of something other than moving bodies on dancefloors... There's riveting spoken word, futuristic raps and weird adaptations, and later, post-jazz and spooky sound-art.<br /> Thanks to Holly Conner aka ilex for her excellent selections last week! She'll be looking after the show again next Sunday while I'm away for Dark Mofo. LISTEN AGAIN if you dare! Via FBi's stream on demand or podcast here. Farhad Bandesh & David Bridie - Freedom [David Bridie Bandcamp]<br /> Not Drowning, Waving - Little King feat. Robby Douglas Turner [Rampant Releases/Liberation/Bandcamp]<br /> Edwina Preston & David Bridie - Brother Sister Grave [David Bridie Bandcamp]<br /> Melbourne treasure David Bridie may be cast these days as a pleasant "adult contemporary" pianist-singer-songwriter, but he's always worked in unexpected areas musically, from the ambient/proto-postrock/global-folk gregariousness of the frankly uncategorisable Not Drowning, Waving to the post-Penguin Cafe Orchestra chamber pop of My Friend The Chocolate Cake (never quite as twee as their name would suggest). Lyrically, Bridie has often focused on stories of working class, middle Australians, little people - and also on his dedicated activism, whether for the freedom struggles of West Papua or against the inhumanity of Australia's punishing treatment of refugees. All this comes to the fore on his latest album It's Been A While Since Our Last Correspondence. Each track is a short story or piece of poetry, spoken (and occasionally partly sung) by its writer, and all the breadth of Bridie's lyrical interests is there. I really recommend the whole album, even if you're leery of spoken word and music (he says, having just released such an album recently, maybe check it out?) All contributors have risen to the challenge with deeply engaging and moving vignettes. Essential is the work from Kurdish refugee, artist and musician Farhad Bandesh, freed as part of Medevac but still fighting for resettlement (ten years on from fleeing Iran). The mixture of his spoken word and electrifying singing with Bridie's postpunkish backing is a highlight. And celebrated Melbourne author Edwina Preston presents a sly slice of family life on her piece.<br /> As a longtime Not Drowning, Waving fan I couldn't resist a brilliant, bizarre piece of spoken word from Melbourne indie music & film identity Robby Douglas Turner - too abstract to be storytelling as such, but something that has resided in my head since my school days (if not quite 1987, when