Sunny Side Up

A heavy new compilation from Brownswood shines a light on the independent underground

in Melbourne, where a close-knit collection of artists have taken cues from soul, jazz

and club culture to carve out a fresh Melbournian sound. Featuring nine different

groups, many of them sharing members and studios, the record surveys the musical

contours of this bubbling scene, nodding to house, broken beat, samba, p-funk and soul.

Recorded over a week at The Grove, a fabled house-cum-studio in the North Melbourne

suburb of Coburg, it's home to the record's engineer, Nick Herrera, and two members of

Hiatus Kaiyote, the city's breakout gangster-soul dons with whom many of the record's

personnel have collaborated. Silentjay was musical director, the Rhythm Sectionaffiliated

multi-instrumentalist and producer (who's played with Joey Bada$$ and Flying

Lotus) marshalling together the album's different players, many of them part of

influential collectives 30/70 and Mandarin Dreams.

Nurtured in the city's collaborative, close-knit confines, the scene has been bubbling

up under the radar of Australian music institutions, in the garages and makeshift

studios of Melbourne's suburban sprawl. Sunny Side Up is a colourful portrait of the

scene's potential, exploring the story behind this flourishing period and shining light

on some of its most compelling figures.