Another quietly intoned, deeply felt transmission from the Australian experimental folk underground courtesy of Brierfield Flood Press, who are really beginning to display an impressive propensity for this kind of thing. Public Holiday At You Yangs Regional Park is a first time collaboration between Mess Esque’s Helen Franzmann and solo artist/producer, Nick Huggins, the result of a series of improvisations built around an agreed code of practice - shared intuition, shared space, shared understandings of sound and structure, and so forth. The outcome is a record of great nuance and intimacy, a lowercase assortment of gentle vocals (sometimes filtered via a vocoder, though never obnoxiously or intrusively so), sparkling keys, ethereal flute and diegetic sound that borders the intersection of folk and ambient music. There’s a striking similarity to the hushed song of label mate Hana Stretton and in turn, that also of Mt. Eerie/The Microphones, that sense of singing and song that feels as natural as breathing or as inevitable as the wind - you opened your mouth and this is what came out; you opened the window and this is what blew in. Such instinct is hard to divine, rarer still to be able to conjure in collaboration with another. In that sense, Helen Franzmann and Nick Huggins communicate a unique understanding.
FFO: Hana Stretton, Glen. Rey, Wilson Tanner, Unchained, Mt. Eerie
