The best Australian music to hear this month
A monthly look at our favorite new albums, EPs, singles, and videos from local musicians.
Kiva, Kiva
Dance music has exploded in Australia’s mainstream festival culture over the last decade, turning the spotlight on our local 20th-century creators. Itch-E + Scratch-E’s 1993 album had a fantastic reissue last year. Itch-E Kitch-E Kooand now one half of that duo, Paul McDermott (aka Paul Mac) and singer Royce Doherty, have received a vinyl-only reissue from Naarm’s excellent new reissue label, Gazebo. Self-titled albums Kiva is an ethereal expression of fluid weird experience through downtempo breakbeats, intriguing dub, and acidic synth lines.
Sea of Mystery Swaying to lavish drum beats reminiscent of Goldie’s Urban Lifebefore diving into silencing acids and resurfacing between bird call samples. The album opener’s refrain – “we were forever born from the stars” – points to the inseparability of queer and trans experience from the history of dance music and society at large.
Opening the Melbourne launch party, D.Tyrone, a nonbinary trans producer-DJ, noted how the aesthetics of electronic music are shaped by queer social forces, like Patrick Cowley’s traveling synth stages released during the AIDS crisis. songs on it Kiva Today’s anti-trans discourse incorporates a wealth of emotion, history, and politics, making them as timely as they were when they were first published. Nick Buckley
MUNGMUNG, Fei
Sydney artist MUNGMUNG’s Fei sounds to us like a Christmas present lost in the mail (I imagine Santa deliberately holding it back so he can rattle his sleigh’s speakers on the return journey). Released in the final days of 2025, this is the kind of music we could all use to set the stage for 2026: bright, bouncy, brash, and hotter than any summer-long spritz.
Tracking all of 2023 Boujee BabyThe Sydney rapper has gained fame for his playful aesthetic and forward-thinking sound, but Fei – made with long-time collaborator Taka Perry (the Canberran producer is making his own debut last year by co-producing Katseye’s sumptuous film). To touch) – takes funhouse maximalism even further.
Four-track EP – Fei It means “to fly” in Mandarin – an endlessly repeatable jolt of good vibes. popdattrunkWith its bass-heavy beats and winkingly erratic flow, it’s an infectious nod to 2000s blog queen Uffie. wompx4It’s party-starting hip-house with its double-time bars and crazy club beats. Play around with it and keep the holiday spirit simmering a little longer before the dour routine of daily life really settles in. Robert Moran
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Robert Moran is deputy Spectrum editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
