May 19

May 19 Lounge Sounds #1 with COUSIN and Ben Fester

Lounge Sounds is a series focussed on bringing you an album, mix or playlist suited to home listening, selected by a different artist each month. Featuring some of the best tastemakers and selectors in the country, each instalment is a chance to listen to music you may have never heard before, and find out what our favourite artists have been gravitating towards for relaxation in recent weeks.

To kick things off we have none other than the Sydney brothers Ben and Jackson Fester aka COUSIN. Equally admired in their respective fields, the siblings create and curate music that’s rooted in the energy of Australia’s club culture. In spite of the current challenges, both have been working hard to bring music to the people. At the end of March, we were blessed with COUSIN’S brilliant debut EP A Message From Q - a heady and hypnotic four-tracker released on his revered Moonshoe label - and more recently the haunting ‘Bloom (ft. Zosia Kossak)’, a drumless and highly introspective track on Best Effort’s isolation-inspired Stay in Bed Vol.1 compilation.

Meanwhile, Ben recently brought his signature sound to our living rooms DJing for the House of Mince 24 hour livestream and on Room 2 Radio, Sydney’s new online nightclub. If you missed it, the maverick DJ and producer also treated us to an ethereal new track on Moonshoe’s sprawling LIMBS compilation earlier in the year, and continues to unearth gems and showcase the Australian underground on his Sunset show with Kato on FBI radio.

Ben (left) and Jackson (right) in the studio.

With all this and more to come, we caught up with Ben and Jackson to find out what lounge sounds they’ve been bumping during iso. Being the insatiable diggers that they are, the brothers have picked out 5 tracks, 4 albums plus a mix recommendation for us to delve into. Their selections vary from leftfield experimentalism via Gothenburg’s Porn Sword Tobacco to an incredibly rare 1975 live album by Terry Riley and Don Cherry, all with one ingredient in common: quality. Check out the Sydney brother’s stellar Lounge Sounds below.