Stories

I keep reaching for the same handful of records when I want to feel like songwriting is still a private language between friends. The first three or four…

Every now and then, while I'm flicking through records on a Saturday arvo at the local record fair in Melbourne, I land on a Beatles album and the same thought…

A chance encounter with a street musician inspired my own songwriting in a way no writing exercise or carefully chosen reference track had managed to do. I was…

Few producers in modern music have reshaped the rhythm of a genre as thoroughly as James Dewitt Yancey, known universally as J Dilla. Working primarily out of…

For most listeners in Australia and overseas, Stevie Wonder begins and ends with a small cluster of records: Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life, maybe the…

When listeners in Sydney and Melbourne first heard the opening hum of "Airbag" in the winter of 1997, something fundamental shifted. The track's warped vocal…

Modern country radio in 2024 and beyond rarely sounds like Bill Monroe in a barn. The vocals are smoother, the drums are bigger, and the production often…

For years I chased clean. I wanted my demos to sound like finished records, my voice to sit perfectly in a mix, every guitar take edited into surgical…

Metal fans in Australia know the rhythm: certain records pass through the local scene without ever gaining the recognition they deserve. Maybe a promoter books…

I remember dropping the needle on a worn copy of Nick Cave's From Her to Eternity at a mate's share house in Brunswick. The room was full of people, someone…