BUG0BEAT

About the album

Melbourne’s Cool Sounds, aka pop polymath Danis Lacey, returns with new EP BUG0BEAT, his first new music since 2022’s game-changing album Like That.

Like That supercharged Cool Sounds’ usual jangle-pop sparkle with a disco-glam stomp, and saw Cool Sounds get added to national radio in France and Spain, featured in a big US public service ad, and take off on a UK/Europe tour. At home they were playlisted on Double J and had feature albums from RRR and 2SER.

Now with BUG0BEAT, Cool Sounds head further into oddball funk-damaged pop, presenting a six track EP with an unusual origin story. Dainis says – “Me and my friend Dylan Young (Way Dynamic) recorded this collection of songs in an old barn filled with vintage recording equipment. It was an unusual place to record songs I had written on the computer, filled with samples, synthesisers and processed sounds. We painstakingly recreated the demos with organic instruments. Suddenly decisions that once seemed nonchalant, like flicking through a sample library and changing drum sounds mid song, meant afternoons of pulling new drum kits out of storage or exploring the barn for new ways to use instruments.”

Somehow this recording process got Dainis thinking about insects, and the idea of Bug0Beat was conceived. “This process of making the digital feel organic made us think of bugs, creatures that quietly inhabit the spaces around us,” he says. “We imagined bugs dancing to our grooves and landed on the phrase BUG0BEAT when visitors asked what type of music we were making.”

Cool Sounds have now released five albums, moving deftly through indie-rock, slick 80s pop and wistful alt-country, with a lightness of touch that disguises Lacey’s sardonic, perceptive songwriting. 2019’s Cactus Country and 2021 EP Sleepers were both nominated for AIR Awards.

“A slicked n’ slippery, dance-ready aura of disco and funk-flexed pop” – Raven Sings The Blues
“A gloriously funky and summery psychedelia-meets-disco affair that cherry-picks the best bits of the likes of Tom Tom Club, Hot Chip, Tame Impala and Daft Punk” – The Daily Express (Scotland)