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Koi Child is headlining Volumes 2016, but they’ll also be watching. Here are the 10 bands they know they won’t miss and neither should you

Volumes 2016 is approaching fast, and the line-up is fat. In fact, it’s overwhelmingly fat. The festival is so chocked full of badass acts that punters are doing it tough trying to figure out which artists they’re going to spare the time to see.

Bar-hopping between the event’s four sick venues isn’t going to help either – it’s one of those line-ups that’s so good it’s going to be impossible to see every act you want.

Volumes 2016

If you’re going to Volumes 2016, your heart will surely be torn between acts. Luckily, we’ve enlisted the help of festival headliners Koi Child to make your Sophie’s choices for you.

Silky jazz fusion seven-piece Koi Child are sitting right at the top of Volumes’ ticket, and they deserve it. Their self-titled debut album, produced by Tame Imapala‘s Kevin Parker was a wonderland of slow jams, tight-as-shit rap verses and jazzy chord progressions.

Obviously, Koi’s slot is one you can’t go without, but the band was nice enough to shoot over 10 recommendations for other acts you have to catch at Volumes 2016:

Nicholas Allbrook

Nick is an especially good person and this Karrakatta Cemetary‘s lyrics and hive of wood and steel skitterings are utterly beautiful.

Donny Benet

A friend showed me Donny a few years ago and I fell in love with the combo of certified-hot ’80s drum machine bangalores and totally earnest vocal delivery. The tune he puts together during this video feature is actually incredible.

Jaala

As someone who grew up loving Jeff Buckley and who respects any music that manages to weave weird compositional tricks into conventionally listenable songs, Jaala inspires a kind of shameful jealousy. The track Hard Hold got stuck in my head for weeks.

SilentJay x Jace XL

These dudes are absolute motherfuckers. While we’re on the topic of Jeff Buckley, hearing them turn Everybody Here Wants You into the virile future R’n’B synth-scapade it was always destined to be is deeply cathartic.

Godriguez

Godriguez has such a great sense of awry time-feel and understated forcefulness. Here, that “PAP!” snare punctuating all the potent spaces Sampa the Great leaves and the heavily filtered organ simmering underneath are just so satisfying. Feels like somewhere close to Madlib and Slum Village and that’s a very, very good thing.

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30/70

30/70 rocks. This track represents well what I dig about ’em – that (heavy quotes here) “Melbourne” “neo-soul” sonic aesthetic, the attention to detail & craft, the worn-out production… real cool.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

I very much dig the jangle here. It’s good jangle. It’s actually pretty comforting.

ORB

This is like the late stages of the entropic/heat death of the universe, except for riffs – all the fancy-schmancy riffs have long since carked it and we’ve gone back to the elemental, primordial riffs that will always be there for us, slugging it out until the end of time.

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