Melbourne-based Hipwell’s new record, Too Much, is a new school kosmiche love letter scribbled on the walls of the collective unconscious. First released in 2021 and recently reissued via Island House Recordings, the debut LP plays like the memory of a weird dream you’re not sure you had, but you miss anyway.
Where Hipwell’s Gardenworld (also released via Island House) bloomed with lush ambient and spiritual jazz, Too Much is rawer, smaller in scope but bigger in feeling. It’s the sound of someone feeling too many things all at once and hitting “record” before the emotional overwhelm passes.
The opener “Sparkle Me Wet” is dew-soaked guitar shimmer. The title track, “Too Much”, spirals with narcotic glow, Hipwell’s distorted – and a bit unsettling – voice flickering in and out from the haze.
“Smoke You” loops time like a skipping cassette, one of those moments too tender to touch. On “Red Mist Morning,” Jakub Kasperkiewicz’s guitar summons a ghost jam between Emeralds and a sleepwalking Robert Fripp.
There’s Blade Runner-like noir here, too. The synths hum low, chrome-toned, and sometimes ominously, conjuring futures too extraordinary to imagine. The closer, “Our Sea,” is exquisite in its sweeping cinematic tones. Bashar Gurkhan’s violin weeps into the drone before giving way to swells of synth.
Too Much is kosmiche with cracked skin: urgent, divine, and sometimes unnerving. It’s a vision from Hipwell’s dreamworld that he has graciously let us peek at. And if it’s good enough for Island House to reissue, it deserves a play on your speakers.
Check out Too Much by Hipwell on Bandcamp here.
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