Keanu Nelson’s vocals are full of heart and soul, as the young Aboriginal Australian artist recites poems from his notebook over Yuta Matsumura’s minimalist Casio beats. In keeping with his first full-length solo outing Red Ribbon while shedding some of the post-punk angularity of his earlier work, those beats by Matsumura offer a propulsive and even anthemic mix of roiling dubwise percussion under plangent keys and dreamy synths. On first listen my crude touchstones would have been Toots and the Maytals, The Clash and Joy Division, but the album notes for Wilurarrakutu just as aptly suggest ‘Francis Bebey meets Suicide meets a slew of home-made Soundcloud artists, broadcasting from one of the most remote places on earth’.
Hailing from the small community of Papunya northwest of Alice Springs, an artistic hub which has gained international renown for the ‘dot paintings’ of the Papunya Tula collective in the seventies, Nelson is a visual artist who paints in that same Western Desert style. Having gathered a collection of private poems about hearth and home, love and loss and the lasting bonds of family, he was encouraged to begin singing them after encountering Matsumura at the Papunya Tjupi arts centre. In turn the duo were inspired by the strong local gospel scene and reggae beats which passed around the community via USB sticks, with their eight searing and haunting tracks appearing last year on the Nipaluna tape label Altered States before being picked up by the venerable Mississippi Records for this wider release.
Matsumura has previously served as a singer and guitarist for the Sydney bands Orion and Low Life, and while his production here is minimal in means, there is nothing couched or spared in terms of the amplification and emotional affect of his beats. Nelson’s vocals, sung in Luritja and English, always carry over the top of these compositions with real heft and a rugged yet sonorous style which could find success in almost any idiom. The combination feels especially profound over the plosive kicks and babbling streams of ‘Kungkaku Wangkapayi’ and ‘Kutjupa Tjuta’, while the winding and sawing synths of ‘Lonely Man’ turn the track into a kind of picaresque. Alien ascents and intergalactic blips and beeps embellish ‘Watjilpa Wiyangu’ and ‘Tjapinnynya’ boasts a classic reggae offbeat, before those pads and drums sit out of the album closer ‘Kapi Tinna’ as a simple synth wave creates space for the boundless reverberations of Nelson’s instrument.
Meanwhile the stirring opener ‘Family’ is the song which kept ringing through Cooper Bowman’s ears after the Altered States founder bore witness to Nelson and Matsumura’s impromptu jamming session in Papunya. These moody and spare tracks offer a cumulative solace, really sounding like a lost soundtrack to so many eighties climaxes from romantic dramas to more piquant science-fiction fare, possessing through their spectral dream pop a submerged and aqueous quality. Wilurarrakutu reminds me of taking evening swim classes as a young child in the mid-nineties while the water aerobics adults splashed and squatted in the neighbouring pool overhead, waving their arms and thrusting up neon flotation devices to a stream of cavernous eighties tunes like ‘The Power of Love’.
