Australian hip-hop has felt at an inflection point of late. OneFour’s aspirational drill continues to dominate despite persecution; Barkaa’s unsparing political screeds blaze from mainstream radio; the shapeshifting Tasman Keith has captured the attention of the country’s top music prizes. The work of each speaks to lived experience and social justice.
Amid the pack, a more psychedelic strain of rap has emerged, too: hybrid forms grafting jazz, funk, dance and punk on to the genre from artists such as Genesis Owusu and Teether and Kuya Neil.
Slotting neatly into this category is Agung Mango (real name Anak Agung Jordan Oka Wardana), whose new album In Belly We Trust speaks as much to the psyche as the street. It is explosive rap-rock, Eno-indebted textures and opiated R&B; it is an album that leaps – intergenerationally – through time and communes with Wardana’s ancestry. Like a tree’s roots feeding ripe, sticky fruit, it draws from the ancient to nourish the future.
On album opener Pray4taksu, in a candid recording, Wardana’s uncle Oka extols the virtues of taksu – a Hindu-Balinese concept that unites mystical inner power with the physical body. Wardana weaves his Balinese heritage and his experiences travelling the island across the album.
The track Pemecutan Napoletana brings his Italian side into the fold, too. Over a largely beatless tide of Balearic jazz, Wardana playfully references nasi jinggo banana leaf rice packets in one bar and San Pellegrino in another.
Much of the album floats in textural waves, but the single Gut is a frenzied rap-rock hybrid recalling Yeezus or NERD’s Rockstar. Wardana grapples with heaven, hell and the sense of time running out under the weight of the pressures that govern our day to day.
Gut isn’t the only explosive track, either. After a first half of gently plucked guitar, The Moth Prefers the Moon explodes like Bali’s serendipitously named Mount Agung volcano. The track tells the story of a ghost, here embodied by a moth, that has lost its ability to strike fear.
As its title implies, the album proposes reaching inside and trusting your gut. On In Belly We Trust, Agung Mango finds transformation through bridging the sacred and profane – you might call it taksu in action.
For more: Agung Mango’s album In Belly We Trust is out 1 August. He tours through south-east Asia and Australia until September.
This month Guardian Australia also listened to …
Eves Karydas – Burnt Tapes (out now)
Karydas is no stranger to transformation – she began her career as Eves the Behavior before ditching the moniker and flirting with viral fame with the hit Further Than the Planes Fly. Burnt Tapes is another left turn for the pop singer: bracing and introspective in a rapid-fire industry. As she declares on the opener: “I guess I’m not a girlboss.”
Christine Anu – Waku – Minaral A Minalay (2 August)
She returns! Waku is Anu’s first original album in two decades, and it proves why she’s one of Australia’s foremost storytellers, weaving a personal history of her lineage and her grandfather’s migration from the Torres Strait to Australia.
Eliza & the Delusionals – Make It Feel Like the Garden (19 July)
There’s a bit of the 1975, a dash of Gracie Abrams, a hint of Faye Webster in this Gold Coast trio’s jangly indie rock. The perfect soundtrack to falling in love.
Empire of the Sun – Ask That God (26 July)
Almost two decades since the mega-phenomenon Walking on a Dream, Empire of the Sun still has it. The duo offer more expeditions to the cosmos here – with a welcome appearance from associated act Pnau too.
Elsy Wameyo – Saint Sinner (26 July)
Wameyo’s hip-hop is propulsive. The Kenyan-Australian rapper told the Guardian in 2022 that her music comes from “pre-meditation, pre-prayer, pre-crying” – Saint Sinner, appropriately, sounds like catharsis.
