Small Hours Highlights:
Jan-March 2025

Twelve tracks we loved playing this winter in the bar. A recent release from the super group Contrahouse featuring a surprising contribution from Bruce Hornsby, proving his late career vitality. A sidelong dub techno excursion from Melbourne- based artist Leo James. Some contemporary Spiritual Jazz in the vein of Alice and Pharaoh from the north of England via Work Money Death. A track from the incredible Music From Memory compilation of Japanese ambient techno. And my personal favorite discovery of recent memory, Cameron Winter. I first queued this record up while making dinner, and quickly realized it deserved a dedicated listen. I sat in my house, jaw dropped and blown away as I made my way through “Heavy Metal” thinking to myself, I’ve never heard anything like this what am I listening to this is beautiful and unhinged.  

The track presented here, Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed) is one of Winter’s more approachable songs, an excellent, bouncy tune about longing. The real treasure however lies at the tail end of the record. The final three song suite is a wild ride worth taking. It begins with Nina + a Field of Cops- a chaotic wall of sound, with free association verses that capture the confusing complexity of infatuation, vividly set to what feels like being in the middle of a riot. “$0” is next and starts with a gentle groan and piano movement- a bleary eyed reaction to the song before. This builds to a repeated proclamation at the end of the song that makes you rethink the whole tongue in cheek-ness of the album that felt so apparent until this point. Winter delivers a jarring statement that speaks beyond the words he sings. He really seems to mean it, has he meant it the whole time? 

This tune is followed by one of the more complex love songs I’ve heard recently, perfectly placed at the end of the album, the comedown of a roller-coaster-trip. “Can’t Keep Anything” isn’t a love song in the conventional sense. It seems to me to be a song of acceptance and understanding. You can sense Winter’s catharsis that comes from his examination of love and loss and how they are intrinsically intertwined. His sideways acceptance that sometimes, what is the most loving for all parties is also the hardest. It’s the exhausted realization after a shared experience that, regardless of how close it’s brought you, regardless of how it feels, regardless of it all, you can’t give your whole self away and still be your whole self. It’s a gentle song with imperfect production and a beautiful delivery from its author. Cameron really taps into something here, wise beyond his 22 years. I invite you to explore this jarring and beautiful record from top to bottom.