THUMP Australia's Monthly Oceanic Report Will Bring You the Down-Low on the Best Overlooked Music Down-Under

The Oceanic Report is our new column bringing you ten of the most notable Australian and New Zealand electronic tracks that may have recently flew under the radar, carefully curated by presenter of triple j and Double J's Something More, Tim Shiel. This month, Tim brings offerings from Swan River to Cook Islands, and everywhere in between.

Few things bring me more joy than an email notification about a new Mei Saraswati release dropping on Bandcamp. Field recordings of Swan River water creatures and marshes meld with surprising harmonies and minimalist soul rhythms. This is experimental soul music. As always with Mei, the naive vibe here can't quite completely mask her astonishing vocal talent.

This gorgeous piece of sound collage from Sydney multi-instrumentalist Jacques Emery breathes rarified air. There are some sublimely tender moments here amongst the dreamlike sound design - which makes sense as apparently these songs are love songs. Vocal experimentation, pianos & treated ambiences collide, recalling Feels-era Animal Collective in places.

Putting big empty spaces in your music takes courage. Melbourne composer Donald U'Ren expertly weaves the sounds of Rarotonga island life (recorded during a Uni trip to the Cook Islands) into a rich and minimal sonic adventure.

The funk experiments of Hiatus Kaiyote affiliate Matthew Kirkis continue to be guided solely by their own alien logic, leaving us with fragmented beats that are only barely penetrable by us mere humans. Like with most of his work, I find myself listening to "Cold Crush" over and over in some effort to acclimatise to its strangeness, only to at some point coil away from it, scared of losing myself forever in it's labyrinthine rhythmic logic.

Felicity Yang's constructions are becoming increasingly complex, and though there's definitely an implied volatility here given the sheer number of elements in play - so many moving parts - its still as delicate as ever. Oscar here feels like a planet; Felicity launches a collection of sounds into orbit around his voice with the precision of a NASA controller, clearing room for the trajectory of every sound, avoiding any and every possible collision. From the ground, an artificial constellation forms.

Making ambient music in 2016 is not hard - a laptop mic, a free download of PaulStretch, and a SoundCloud account, and you're most of the way towards making that Fennesz record you've always wanted. Except you're not. It still takes a special someone—with keen ears, great taste and, most importantly, a beating human heart—to elevate signal processing past just a soulless technical exercise. The new EP from Perth's Tourist Kid does just this: yes, it's a conceptual record focused on "cultivating spacial awareness" but it's also a human expression of feelings, a rich collection of frozen emotions.

This collaborative project brings together long-time friends Harvey Sutherland and Kane Ikin for an EP of textured dance music that is actually less than the sum of its parts. Both collaborators have excised part of their modus operandi in the service of each beat—there's no room here for Harvey Sutherland's fruitier side, and Kane Ikin's noisy textures are more focused, and less cerebral, than usual. Sometimes subtraction is the key.

Young Sydney duo IljusWifmo execute rubbery club music with precision, tempering dark energy with playful rhythmic trickery. Their debut EP has been released by a Romanian record label which is great for them, as they are on the record as wanting to "move to Europe". Sad face emoji.

Fallopian Tunes strikes again, with a precisely rendered collection of shambolic beats from Melbourne producer Exotic Snake, who, for some reason, I keep wanting to call Erotic Snake.

We now have a fittingly stark video for this paranoid techno banger from Melbourne producer Elisabeth Dixon. Keep your eyes out for a proper release of this one soon.

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Tim Shiel is a Melbourne-based musician and radio broadcaster who currently hosts the Double J and triple j program Something More. He also composes music for games, and has toured as a member of Gotye's live band. Follow Tim on Twitter.