The Fresh 50: 40-31

Have you ever stopped to think just how awesomely exciting the Australian music scene is? No? Well we here at Rip It Up Digital certainly have, so much so that we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves. So we decided to make a list celebrating the very best in Australia’s emerging musical talent. We call it The Fresh 50.

The cultural cringe is a thing of the past as Aussie musos have proven time and again we’re a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. Whereas we were were once considered a gimmicky stereotype thanks to Men At Work or Olivia Newton John, now we’re producing some of the freshest music on the planet.

So what do we mean by fresh? Well fresh can mean a lot of things in music. It can refer to new and forward-thinking ideas, a cutting edge take on something old and stale, or simply being fresh meat on the market. We took all this into consideration when selecting our Fresh 50 talent, picking out the acts that we think are gonna be big wigs in the future. But we also thought we needed a couple of rules, so to be eligible for The Fresh 50, artists:

   - Had to be active in the past 12 months (1 July 2009 – 1 July 2010)
   - Had to still be active as at 1 July 2010
   - Could not have more than one full-length album to their name (EPs not included)

So with all this in mind, here are the next 10 lucky participants in Rip It Up Digital’s Fresh 50.

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#40   Seja

From the tribal humming at its beginning to the squeaky sequencing in its body to the electronic wailing at the end, I'll Get To You is an exemplary offering of synth pop beauty. Its creator, synth aficionado and member Regurgitator and Sekiden member Seja Vogel, is equally sublime throughout her debut album We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares. Using the full strength and range of her many, many synthesizers, Seja crafts an ingratiatingly electronic soundscape usually coupled only by her disaffected vocals and the drum machines contained within her little magic boxes. She makes the synthetic sound majestic with an effortless sweep across her keys. Whatever musical secrets she harbours are surely worth giving a damn about.

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#39   DZ

“We don’t play with backing tracks” is perhaps the most proudly adorned message on DZ’s MySpace page. It’s also the one that best sums these guys up. Being a two-piece, DZ might be limited in a spatial sense, but more often than not they use it to their advantage and continue a bizarre trend of duos that seem to make more racket than the most over-produced, over-polished stadium rock band you could think of. Their grimey garage rock has a lot of electronic elements to it but damn it when they play it live, they play it LIVE. They’ll squeeze everything through an array of pedals and effects boards but at least they’re playing the music you’re hearing. “We don’t play with backing tracks” – a refreshing sidenote to the scourge of bastardised electronic acts currently plying their trade.

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#38   The Seabellies

The Seabellies continue to edge their way to greatness. They’re not there yet, but they’re not far away. Through a flurry of singles and a couple of EPs this Sydney collective have demonstrated a thorough understanding of the art of catchiness. Their melodies develop in your head like some sort of musical foetus until fighting it consumes all your energy and you give birth to the words of The Seabellies in an unhinged rendition of their finest work...it’s happened to all of us, right But they’re not quite there yet, and that’s probably because it’s hard to appreciate a band like The Seabellies through individual songs. Enough of this singles business, let’s hear an album already!

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#37   Circle Pit

Rock is back and Circle Pit are carrying its re-ignited torch. Okay, rock might not have actually burned out at any point but the members of Sydney's Circle Pit are the rockiest things going around this side of the Stone Age. They just ooze this sun-drenched rock & roll vibe both in their long-haired and leather jacketed look and in their psychedelic show-gazer sounds. And they clearly don’t mind pushing the boundaries of social acceptability with their androgynous live performances and pornographic MySpace mis en place. But image is always fleeting so it’s lucky Circle Pit can back it up with their nostalgic post-grungery. It’s as if they’re writing the soundtrack to their own wasted, hedonistic little lives.

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#36   Big Scary

Big Scary are so fresh they change their sound according to the seasons, or at least that’s the plan. In 2010 Tom Iansek and Jo Syme, more compactly known as Big Scary, have decided to give in to the elements and allow their creative currents to flow with the changing winds of nature, releasing a new track for each passing season. The first instalment Autumn is a delightfully carefree number, epitomising the ethereal imagery the season is known for with a two-part harmony, rolling snare drum and beautiful piano line. As the depths of winter settle in around us, we wait in earnest for Big Scary’s next seasonal offering.

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#35   Teenagersintokyo

The move to London has proven to be too sweet an apple for many Australians to resist and Teenagersintokyo are no exception. Like many before them, this group of expatriated Sydney-siders have moved seeking greener pastures and they may well have found them. Before and since releasing their debut album Sacrifice, Teenagersintokyo have got all the right people talking from Zane Lowe to the NME. The Horrors remixed their track Peter Pan, which shot to the top of the Hype Machine chart, and just for fun they thought they’d tour the UK with Gossip. Not bad for a bunch of scatter-shot indie kids with more moods than a menstruating housewife.

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#34   Ernest Ellis

There’s something strangely enthralling about Ernest Ellis. At first listen he’s just another guitar-strumming indie type but his haunting vocal ability draws you in with its airy despair. It’s a voice with as much allure Bon Iver or Dougie from The Temper Trap. It hums on its own frequency and guides his songs through the rocky emotional ravines Ellis travels through. His brilliant formula is best seen on Loveless, the first single from Ellis’ astonishing debut album Hunting. The tingly guitars give you shivers as Ellis recounts some torrid love story over the percussive earthquake happening all around him. It’s as pretty as it is symbolic, and it’s totally enchanting.

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#33   Cassette Kids

Like a bubble of vibrant technicolour bursting onto your television screen for the first time, Cassette Kids have taken that often mundane and stigmatised genre known electro pop and turned it into the animated musical playground it should be. Their approach to freshness is simple: not to take themselves too seriously and just to be who they are without overthinking the whole process.

“We’ve never gone, ‘We can’t do this because it’s too that’.” ascertains front woman Katrina Noorbergen. “We just really wanted to do everything that we felt like.”

On debut long-player Nothing On TV, Cassette Kids have done just that. They’ve embraced their inner pop desires without shedding their indie skins. A Trip to SXSW and guest stints for none other than Lily Allen ensure they’ll be one to watch in years to come.

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#32   Closure In Moscow

By the time you’re reading this Closure In Moscow will be tearing up a stage somewhere in the US as part of a little event known as the Warped Tour. Taking place all over America over seven weeks, Warped is one of the last old-fashioned rock festival tours still going on and in 2010, Closure In Moscow is one of two Australian bands to make the cut (Parkway Drive being the other). It’s a massive pick-me-up for a band who just seven months ago were controversially dumped from the 2010 Soundwave line-up. It’s also a compliment to Australia’s punk scene, which continues to churn out international success stories. Writhing about like an emo-tronic Mars Volta, it’s no wonder why everyone wants a piece of Closure In Moscow.

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#31   Tim & Jean

When you were 16 you were probably a) popping your zits, b) trying to get laid, c) worrying about exams, or d) all of the above. Well Tim Ayre and Jean Capotorto (that’s a soft ‘J’ in case you were wondering) are 16 and instead of participating in your typical teenage activities, they’ve been busy playing Parklife, tagging along on tours for Two Door Cinema Club, Operator Please and Art Vs Science, and blowing (most of) the competition out of the water in last year’s Triple J Unearthed High contest. Yep, they’ve done all that, at 16, without releasing a single thing. As these two pubescent prodigies ready themselves for their debut EP, we’re quite sure there’ll be one or two interested eyes cast in their direction.

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