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LP
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LSSN 089LP
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"From out of nowhere -- if nowhere is the febrile, warped and twilit imagination of Julia McFarlane --comes Whoopee, the second album by J. McFarlane's Reality Guest. Whoopee is an esoteric, kaleidoscopic movie in music form directed by Julia McFarlane and co-conspirator Thomas Kernot. Full of life, breakbeats and smokey vignettes on the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships, Whoopee is a stylistic evolution from everything McFarlane has done before. Surreal, beautiful in parts and replete with the aching wisdom McFarlane's songwriting has always promised, this Reality Guest pulls back the curtain on a whole scene of naked truth. Recorded in Melbourne in bursts since the release of 2019's Ta Da, Whoopee features a new sound palette and band member in Kernot. The duo dive deep into electronic pop tropes, mining digital synths, samples, breakbeats and deep bass grooves, largely dispensing with live instrumentation. If Ta Da took twists and turns with your expectations, offering a Dada-ist, monochromatic take on pop music, Whoopee is McFarlane's subterranean love-sick pinks, reds, greens, purples and blues. Whoopee is both more accessible than previous Reality Guest work and somehow more obfuscated. Where the production on Ta Da was dry, sharp and strange, this Reality Guest is blurred, almost smeared with the effluvium of '90s/'00s culture and existence. Through it all, it's hard to deny the undeniable pull of the songs."
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CD
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LSSN 070CD
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"Ta Da is the debut full length from J. McFarlane Reality Guest, the collective name for the trio headed by the eponymous Julia McFarlane. As a member of the group Twerps, McFarlane has traversed guitar-centric, melodic pop music for some years while honing a highly unique, personal musical language. This is the first recorded unveiling of her affecting, oblique songwriting panache, originally released in her native Australia on Hobbies Galore. Wheezing into view with a troubled reed instrument set against a series of whoozy synth lines, 'Human Tissue Act' is a foggy curtain the listener is invited to peel back. The dissonant notes are left to dance entwined, with clarinet heralding a Harry Partch-esque mallet percussion interlude. It's a mood. With no resolution in sight, an audience dragged closer into uncertainty is suddenly drenched with the light of inter-weaving wah wah synth and saxophone. 'I Am A Toy' introduces us to McFarlane's vocal, an effortless and matter-of-fact, accented statement that quietly takes the reins. While McFarlane's previous work in Twerps might reference '80s UK and antipodean guitar pop, Ta Da showcases different influences immersed in psychedelic music and synths. It's a brilliant, deft concoction swimming in Young Marble Giants-type minimalism, washed with bare pop and harmony similar to Kevin Ayers making sense of a Melbourne suburb, full of faces half-recognised in the blanching sun."
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LP
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LSSN 070LP
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LP version. "Ta Da is the debut full length from J. McFarlane Reality Guest, the collective name for the trio headed by the eponymous Julia McFarlane. As a member of the group Twerps, McFarlane has traversed guitar-centric, melodic pop music for some years while honing a highly unique, personal musical language. This is the first recorded unveiling of her affecting, oblique songwriting panache, originally released in her native Australia on Hobbies Galore. Wheezing into view with a troubled reed instrument set against a series of whoozy synth lines, 'Human Tissue Act' is a foggy curtain the listener is invited to peel back. The dissonant notes are left to dance entwined, with clarinet heralding a Harry Partch-esque mallet percussion interlude. It's a mood. With no resolution in sight, an audience dragged closer into uncertainty is suddenly drenched with the light of inter-weaving wah wah synth and saxophone. 'I Am A Toy' introduces us to McFarlane's vocal, an effortless and matter-of-fact, accented statement that quietly takes the reins. While McFarlane's previous work in Twerps might reference '80s UK and antipodean guitar pop, Ta Da showcases different influences immersed in psychedelic music and synths. It's a brilliant, deft concoction swimming in Young Marble Giants-type minimalism, washed with bare pop and harmony similar to Kevin Ayers making sense of a Melbourne suburb, full of faces half-recognised in the blanching sun."
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