Th Blisks sound connected precisely because they are not in the same room. Elixa was largely assembled across Australia, with files moving between Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman in Muloobinba/Newcastle and Nipaluna/Hobart, and Yuta Matsumura in Warumpi/Papunya. The distance is audible not as dislocation but as space: gaps where melodica, guitar, drum machines and voices can meet without becoming tidy.
Released on 21 June 2024 through Melbourne label Efficient Space, Elixa is the trio’s second album after the DIY 2022 debut How So?. Besseny and Bowman also make ritualistic ambient-pop together as Troth; Bowman founded Altered States Tapes, while Matsumura brings a history in Sydney punk alongside his solo work. Th Blisks do not smooth those backgrounds into a compromise. Their music works because the seams remain visible.
“Enchancity” opens with a downtempo pulse and an almost weightless melodic surface, immediately establishing the record’s peculiar balance between warmth and unease. “Do You Bless It?” pushes deeper into dub space, with submerged tape textures and a vocal that seems to come from the far end of a corridor. “No Know” is colder and heavier. Then “Knuckledust” lets a bittersweet pop instinct rub against ambient breakbeats rather than resolving the tension.
The melodica is crucial.
It carries an obvious lineage from roots reggae and dub, but Th Blisks treat it less like a genre signifier than a wandering voice. Around it, hip-hop breaks, post-punk guitar and cheap-sounding electronic textures create a music that feels handmade without romanticising lo-fi production. “Esk” is the clearest example: jangling guitar and boom-bap rhythm sit beside detuned, minimal electronic detail, each element slightly askew from the next.
That crookedness links Elixa to Australian DIY traditions as much as to British dub or trip-hop. The trio’s method is collage, but not the hyperactive kind. Sounds are given time to stain one another. “Umbrah” and “E v E” close the album without suddenly revealing a hidden centre; the appeal lies in how consistently Th Blisks maintain their own weather.
The group’s first album has also returned to circulation, extending a project that initially seemed capable of remaining a one-off. Heard beside How So?, Elixa feels more deliberate without becoming cleaner. The trio still value accident, murk and odd combinations, but the songs hold their shapes more confidently.
Th Blisks make pop music from loose connections: between cities, scenes, instruments and decades. Elixa never forces those pieces to agree. It simply finds the point where their friction starts to glow.
