Sunny Side Up / Various

Sunny Side Up / Various

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 records engineer, Nick Herrera, and two members of Hiatus Kaiyote, the citys breakout gangster-soul dons with whom many of the records personnel have collaborated. Silentjay was musical director, the Rhythm Section-af liated multi- instrumentalist and producer (who's played with Joey Bada$$ and Flying Lotus) marshalling together the albums different players, many of them part of in uential collectives 30/70 and Mandarin Dreams. Nurtured in the citys collaborative, close-knit con nes, the scene has been bubbling up under the radar of Australian music institutions, in the garages and makeshift studios of Melbournes suburban sprawl. Sunny Side Up is a colourful portrait of the scenes potential, exploring the story behind this flourishing period and shining light on some of it's most compelling figures.