The synthpop of Brisbane’s Scraps (Laura Hill) is described by her US label Not Not Fun as “alienated karaoke”. It’s spot on. She is both solo and solitary sounding, making music to dance to, despondently. No duo or trio could have made a record this entwined in its own logic; reduced to only the rawest sequencer rhythms and most essential melodies, bent to Hill’s will.
Notes snake up to coil around her vocals, before sliding away. The backdrop – enmeshed in the songs through samples – is the isolation and communion of the Australian suburbs: girls gossiping on the phone; the tipsy chatter of (what sounds like) mums at a pool party; a guy detailing his hobbies in a creepy pitch-shifting voice. Hill is a master of the waning synth note, wringing out every of drop of melancholy from the fades on Touch Blue.
