I hit on Five Dollar Day when a CD appeared in my mailbag from the guys at Stylus. It was hidden amongst a bunch of leftfield electronic beats, mostly second rate indie rock and sound art. Minimal information by way of sleeve notes, I couldn’t even tell whether the artist was Five Dollar Day or Black Bears, turns out it’s the former and the latter is the latest album from New Jersey-based 27 year old Lt (Lucas True) Lloyd. The album itself was a lovely, messy mix of alt-country twanging goodness, indie rock hooks and reflective moments and it’s been stuck in my CD player for a few weeks.

I just got back from a 12 hour overnight train trip from hell, sorry Beijing, complete with the roar of a violent snorer in the berth above. For various reasons I haven’t slept in a couple of days, so you’ll have to bare with my brevity. Here’s Lloyd on a few of my questions.

Why the band name? Five Dollar Day, really into Henry Ford?

Actually a friend came up with it. He and I were going to work on songs when it started, but he lived in London at the time and I lived in PA. Henry Ford was an ass.

How did you get into music?

My father always had guitars lying around the house, I messed around with them, but realized his were righty, and I played lefty. I finally got a left-handed acoustic right before college and spent more time fiddling with that than with my classes. I actually blame Pearl Jam for opening my eyes to music and the energy it can contain and express.

Five Dollar Day’s been going 6 years, but it looks as though it was an actual band in the past - why did you pare it back to just you?

Actually, it never was a band. I wish it were. I’ve played very few shows and always recruited a couple of friends to play. Five Dollar Day has been a project of mine for about 6 years. I’ve probably written over 200 songs… most of which you’ll never find anywhere other than on my small blue box and on various tapes. Most of them are terrible concepts that seemed adequate at the moment they were recorded.

What’s this blue box?

Good question. Some digital recording device. It’s a nifty treat, but I still don’t understand how to operate 90% of its capabilities.

What sort of things do you write about? Why bury your vocals so far down in the mix?

I usually write about real events or feelings. Most of my songs are missing a verse or two, which might clarify their meaning for the listener. I just get tired of the music and believe the song would be too long if I included the entire set of lyrics. Often times I’m told that my songs make no sense. I sometimes use current events & history to create a song. The vocals are buried because I can’t sing!

I can’t find much mention of your first three CDs anywhere except your site - were they just released locally or is there info elsewhere? How do you release your music now?

The first three CDs were merely compilations for a few friends who expressed interest. I don’t think they are bad songs, I was just a terrible musician/producer when they were written and recorded and have no intention of sharing them with anyone…again. I don’t/haven’t released my music. Not sure I have enough confidence in any of it. I’ve only sent out a handful to various review sites and magazines. I make it available to anyone who asks for a copy of an album.

Is music a job or a hobby to you?

Hobby. If it’s ever a job I will quit.

What do you think of filesharing, legal downloads, basically the influence of the internet on music?

I’m fine with it. Share and be shared. I suppose that’s easy to say when you’re not relying on sales for a paycheck. I might be angry if I were Metallica.

Read my review of Black Bears by Five Dollar Day at Stylusmagazine.com.

The album’s not readily available, but you can download a few songs (including the lovely Cold Hands and a cover of Elton’s Rocket Man) from Lloyd’s myspace page… He does say somewhere above that he’ll make the album available to anyone who’s interested. Chase him up via myspace.

My interview with Boris Mezga (aka Comfort Fit) and Marc Wallowy (aka DJ Prymer) is in the latest Cyclic Defrost.

Wallowy’s Berlin-based Tokyo Dawn is one of my favourite netlabels - on release quality, quantity and consistency - so it was fascinating to get his point of view on some of the issues around music and technology. Mezga’s second release as Comfort Fit, and first for Tokyo Dawn, was pretty special especially when you consider it was available as a free download.

I’ve been too busy (slack?) too get around to writing about it so far, but I have given the latest release from Tokyo Dawn plenty of listening - killer tracks from big names like Maddslinky and Wu Tang affiliate 4th Disciple & Hell Razah, but the more exciting stuff is from new names. Obscure producers making beautiful smoky hip hop and broken beat, peeps like Saine, Causes & Forces, Brownsville. I’ll have to write this thing up properly soon. In the meantime…

Read: my interview with Mezga/Comfort Fit & Wallowy/DJ Prymer at Cyclic Defrost

Download: Comfort Fit - Forget & Remember (MP3) or (OGG)

My interview with Rene Pawlowitz, aka Berlin-based broken techno producer Shed, is up at Speakers Push The Air.

Fat Planet has fast become an essential filter on the world of music. Run by Stuart Buchanan, 35, of Marrickville, Sydney, the MP3 blog grew out of his weekly radio show on Sydney’s FBI 94.5 FM. The radio show (and site) aspire to a wider definition of ‘world music’. Hence the name. Typical of the best MP3 blogs, Stuart has an individual take on music, an elegant way with words and a workaholic’s list of RSS feeds, blogs, artist and label websites. Stuart and his wife run a web design shop – they’ve done sites for Depeche Mode, Gronland Records and Goldfrapp, and won the MTV Europe web award – so the simple effective website comes as no surprise. His background in writing - he edited the local student rag at uni - and a huge record collection fire the site with the passion of a music fan. He was kind enough to answer a few bounced questions on MP3 blogs and the state of music.

Why did you start your blog and what did you hope to get out of it?

The blog started as a natural extension of the radio show that I do on Sydney’s FBi 94.5FM. The idea of the show is to feature new alternative & contemporary music from around the world, to give an alternative view of what ‘world music’ is. That might be baile funk from Brazil, dancehall from Jamaica, hip-hop from Senegal, psych rock from Japan, electronica from Iceland etc. The show’s been running for two years, the blog started not long after that, basically as a recognition that much of the music I was playing were MP3s sourced from artist and label web sites and not from CDs.

Do you source your own music? Do you find it a challenge to keep your own musical vision/taste intact while filtering through so much music?

Labels send a few promos, but not as many as you might think – many labels are still nervous about allowing even one of their tracks to be posted as a free MP3. I respect that decision, but it’s becoming abundantly clear that a blog visitor hearing one MP3 can lead directly to an album sale – I hear it all the time from comments on the blog. Most of the music I source however comes via my own research, I have a long list of RSS feeds that I visit daily and make connections via articles, reviews and – of course – other members of the blog community. I never tire of hearing new music, but the long list of sites, CDs and mp3s can sometimes start to morph into a large elephant shitting in the corner of the room.

What decisions do you make when you’re thinking of hosting a song?

There’s a few – how easy is it to find this music elsewhere (if it’s readily available or well known, I may not post it); does it offer anything new or original; where is it from? Generally, I don’t post Anglo-American (also true of the radio show), but occasionally I like to post a few Australian tracks as the majority of readers are actually from overseas.

What sort of feedback do you get?

All very positive, people seem to appreciate the time and effort that goes into it and even a little ‘nice post!’ comment can work wonders on a Monday morning. I’ve yet to have any negative comments from any corner of the industry. I cover my ass by only posting mp3s from artist or label sites, or from other legitimate sources – i.e. that which is legally available for free elsewhere.

How many unique visitors do you get to the site? How many return?

I’m around 50,000 page impressions a month, and approx 12,000 users

What are bandwidth costs like? Do you host your own music or just link to others?

That’s where third party linking comes in handy – I’m conscious though of not just posting a link to an MP3 on a label site, but also posting links to the artist page, artist site or (as I’m sometimes asked to do) to online stores or to iTunes store too.

What do you think about file-sharing, p2p and so on?

I’ve used P2P to source music, yes – but generally for music that is no longer available for sale (out of print etc). It can definitely enhance and broaden your appreciation of music, however I think every P2P user will know when they’ve crossed the line. If you consciously use P2P to download an entire new album, then I’m absolutely opposed to that.

What do you think of the recent case in Australia, where mp3s4free.net went down for linking to music hosted elsewhere? Do you see any precedent for MP3 blogs in general?

Think of MP3 blogs like a combination of radio and music press – they work as a sampler for new music in exactly the same way as radio, and come bundled with the kind of critical appraisal that you’d expect from your favourite music magazine. Smarter labels and artists recognise that and work with blogs to promote their artists. It’s only a matter a time before the practice becomes more wide-spread, by which point the music industry itself may well be supporting the blog movement, rather than trying to attack at it as the bogeyman. Perhaps blogs will start to ‘licence’ free MP3s from artists and labels, I know this is starting to happen with some of the more successful American blogs, although it could potentially limit your posting options. The vast majority of blog editors do it because they love music and they want to spread the word about the artists they love – what does it say about the commercial end of the music industry that they want to stop this practice, and cut off this avenue for breaking new music?

What do you think of the impact of technology on the music industry? Do you think it is set for a shakeup? Or will the current players get everything under control?

I don’t have any faith in the major players to get it under control. For example, many of the majors use Windows as their download format, thus ensuring that iPod owners – who essentially kick-started the market for downloadable music - cannot buy the files. I can’t fathom that decision at all – it’s like trying to flog cassettes to owners of CD players. It’s the independent sector and the smaller operators who have grasped technology well. With digitial technology, means of distribution is now feasibly back in the hands of the artists, which surely has to be a good thing.

What do you think are the biggest issues at the moment?

Convincing people that digital distribution is here to stay, and not to be nervous or anxious about the implications.

Are there any really radical options being put forward? Eg. MP3 blogs, netlabels, vinyl, pay per download, free downloads, cottage industry. Do you think the music industry needs a shakeup and what do you think are good ideas or workable new models for the industry?

I think we’re already in the middle of that shake-up. There’s a lot of old school industry people sitting around talking, thinking about the future – while on the ground, the revolution has already happened. Crucially, an artist having their own means of distribution could alter the agreements that they enter into with their labels, management etc. It’s back to the ‘balance of power’ again.

I first came across Dave in late 2003 at the This Is Not Art festival, Australia. He was playing an early set at the weekend’s finale, filling the large Newcastle Panthers ballroom with heavy dub soundscapes, syncopated minimal house rhythms and layers and layers of glitch.

Jump forward almost two years and Dave has finally released a debut album, Mitchell’s Racolta. Its feel is set from the first track. And even though it moves around dramatically, it is extremely cohesive. It’s been more than two years since his first EPs, but he’s back on the musical wagon. He’s finished albums with fellow West Australian Fiam (to be released on UK label Expanding), another with Laurence Pike (Triosk/Pivot) and Phil Slater (Band of Five Names); and he’s moved to London for a while – so if you’re interested in catching him in Europe, do. Here’s Dave answering a few bounced email questions.

What are you up to in London now?

Just making a penny, and making some music as well. Enjoying the wealth of live music here, and the four weeks of summer before the 11 months of winter kicks in, hah. I just needed a change of scenery for a while, I don’t know how long it will last, we’ll see. It’s also handy in regards to live shows - if people want to book me for a show in Europe now they can anytime they want, rather than me having to organize a tour around certain dates.

What sort of music inspires you to make music?

Music that inspires my music? Er, well I guess most things I buy have some sort of influence. You can’t deny that - even if it’s on a subconscious level, it still does to some degree. I listen to a reasonably broad range of music - ambient, hip-hop, house, dub, folk-esque things, electronica, instrumental rock stuff, jazz, noise, dancehall, pop, and all the sub-genres that meld that stuff.

As far as the most inspiring things goes, I think that can be split into two for me - live shows and records. At the moment the live shows that I have dug the most have been those that are dynamic that you can see and hear flow throughout the set/song. Acts that I have seen over the past year like The Necks, Battles, Radian, Jamie Lidell and Greg Davis have all done this really well. Inspiring albums for me I think are harder to pin down, I guess I would say they are the ones that I feel are the most innovative and emotive - that is the combination that always makes me go ‘wow’.

You’re not musically trained, are you? How do you navigate your way through the kind of sounds you record?

No, not musically trained at all. It’s all sample-based music, so it’s just a matter of relying on your ear. I make a bunch of sounds that a feel work together, and work on them for a while. Sometimes it happens, sometimes they get trashed…

How do you find working with people like Laurence Pike?

You mean working with people who play acoustic instruments really well? It’s great. It makes sense to me as most of my source sounds through some way or another came from acoustic instruments. Whenever I have worked with instrumentalists it’s been in an improvised manner, so we kind of just feed off each other in a musical sense to try to create something fresh and cohesive. I also tend to include as much live sampling of their instruments as I can as well - I find that really exciting to digitally mess with live acoustics.

Your press release bills Mitchell’s Racolta as ‘minimal broken beat’. Is that how you see the album?

For some tracks, yeh, I think it uses similar rhythms that broken-beat music is known for. And the fact that it is essentially minimal music people can put the terms together, it makes sense. And yes, I did create it with that aim - I was really getting tired of the minimal house-tempo four-to-the-floor stuff, so I wanted to challenge myself into creating different rhythm structures. I think it worked reasonably well - I got a few drummers tell me they dug it, so that’s a compliment. There was also a number of ‘I only listen to minimal dance music’ people who were so used to hearing just straight-ahead-beats that found it difficult to understand.

Do you feel that the minimal thing has lost steam?

In some ways, yes. The number of house-tempo minimal dancefloor records has dropped significantly, so I guess that’s a pretty good sign that things have ‘lost steam’. That said, the faster, more techno-orientated records seem to have had a resurgence. For me, I am digging a lot of minimal beatless records that have come out over the past year more than anything.

How important has the broken beat scene been to you musically, do you listen to much of the West London stuff (Domu, Bugz, IG, etc)? There’s not much of a scene for broken beat in Australia, as far as I know, how did you come across it?

In Perth, broken beat stuff doesn’t get played out much by DJs - they are too scared people will stop dancing. People buy it, they might play it on radio or in bars, but never to a dancefloor. I don’t really buy much of the stuff - even though I dig the beats, I have found that so many these days have vocals/lyrics that I don’t feel, hence wrecking the track for me.

I was mainly introduced to the sound by friends and radio. At the time, Perth was getting all of that stuff into the import record store there so you could hear/buy pretty fresh stuff which was cool - we may have at the other side of the world from the scene that was developing, but at least we could hear/buy the output.

What’s it like making music like you do in Australia, especially in the most isolated city there (and anywhere)?

It has its pros and cons. It good in that you don’t get influenced by the new hype genre that comes and goes from big cities in a matter of months. The fact that we don’t get a great deal of good live music there also means that you spend more time making your own beats as opposed to listening to others. This has a bit of a downside as well because you don’t get to see a broad range of acts perform, which of course is a bummer.

Is that why you ended up with an overseas label?

There really weren’t any labels that were into the music that I was making at the time, so I was forced to go overseas. Not a great deal of Australian labels have very good European distribution, so it would have been silly of me to put it on a label that doesn’t reach the audience that seems to appreciate it the most.

That said, I am releasing a EP later in 2005 on a very promising label out of Perth - Meupe. It features 4 remixes by Perth producers of tracks from Mitchells Raccolta. I am very happy with the way the artists have freaked with the sounds. It’s a limited edition thing, so it’s a bit of a collectable.

Have you found a receptive audience in Australia?

A small, but receptive audience, yes.

Track down new releases, streams and downloads from Meupe, Expanding and Background. For more information, check out Dave’s site the Bodyraft for streams, gig details and so on. Read my review of Mitchell’s Racolta at Stylusmagazine.com.

Dave Miller - Live at Dachkantine in Zurich, May 2005 (Streamed by Anti-Matter Plant).

I was already a regular at Simon’s Friday night sessions at the Cricketer’s Arms in Sydney, when one Easter long weekend he converted this through and through indie kid to house music.
Raw jacking beats to the most soulful funk, hip hop and dub, there’s always a weird contrast between the stark beauty and this kernel of sleazy sexiness. His radio sets are actually even better… I’ve long since worn through my Caldwell mixtapes from 2SER’s annual Mosaic Mix. Anyway, a three hour mix set from Hi Jinks in Sydney prompted me to dig up some comments from an old interview with him.

How important is your eclectic taste in music to your enthusiasm for DJing?
SC: Well I’ve always had eclectic tastes, originating from my love for ’60s and ’70s soul, jazz and funk, which is still the binding thread of all dance music in my opinion. Dance music is almost built on its own genres and sub-genres now. Producers and DJs are quick to jump on a “new sound” (usually one record which sounds a bit different) and within a month or two you have a whole bunch of copycat tracks and a whole bunch of DJs flogging the same tunes for a little while until the next “sound” comes along. That, for me, leads to lots of boring music. Once you listen to a few bars you know what a track is going to do, which is not very fun. I can’t really understand people who say they love “breaks” (whatever that sounds like this month) but hate “house” or “hip hop”. They all used to be the same thing, or at least played side by side in a club. The narrow definitions of dance music are a marketing tool more than anything reflecting musical reality. It’s all just an arrangement of noise… That said, I’ve never really been a great lover of “rave” music, much of which seems to be an exercise in messing with people’s minds in a fairly mindless way. It’s effects for the sake of effect if you know what I mean. I think psychedelic trance is the ultimate as far as this goes. I can appreciate that it’s clever to be able to do that, but personally I don’t like being under mind control.
So, what I guess I mean about my music is that I try to play music which has an emotional effect on me, not just a physiological one. Hopefully that emotion carries over to people who are listening. I buy and listen to and play music which I like, whatever the “style”, and try and fit it into a situation.

You’re best known for DJing clubs, but from my experience you seem to really gel best on radio?
SC: Club sets offer the challenge of playing to a dance floor and give you instant response, which can be exciting and instantly satisfying. Radio gives me a chance to play more of a soundscape of different old and new music and incorporating spoken word and other weird stuff to hopefully end up with a 90 minute sound journey. Strange juxtapositions can be interesting. I don’t talk much because I want people to concentrate on the music.

With international politics and Australia’s position getting more and more cliched, how do you see the role of the DJ or music maker?
SC: I am interested in politics on many levels, but I see a distinct lack of ethics in much of this industry, being as it is, based on money, ego and drugs. There is less and less talk about dance music as an “alternative culture” and more about it as a “lifestyle choice” or “emergent market”. I think that the horse has long bolted in many ways, though, and that people (punters) generally have themselves to blame. People burn themselves out while they are still new to a scene, so how can that scene develop over time? I think hip hop is an exception, and the recent renaissance of Sydney’s scene is a great thing. I think DJs have something of a responsibility to encourage scenes to develop and push things forward. Unfortunately, most DJs seem to be more interested in the size of their fees and other less altruistic things. It’s easier that way.

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 1 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 2 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 3 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Listening to Simon play is a smooth rush of excitement that starts with hearing Disco D, Bola, Bobbi Humphries, Eugene McDaniels or McFadden & Whitehead and ends with me hunched over crates of records for days on end. Beautiful.

Bec Paton doesn’t have management. She’s never put out a press release, and even struggles to promote herself in interviews. Still she’s one of Canberra’s best loved DJs and since moving to Sydney has rapidly moved up the ranks to play several high profile gigs (Cockatoo Island, Wired for Sound) as well as picking up a couple of residencies.

I first met Bec 3 years ago. I had just breezed in from Sydney and was struggling to find my feet in a new city. As I worked out who was who in Canberra, I kept seeing her name on flyers and posters. Every time she played it would be a different set, from house to slamming drum’n’bass.

Since then, her musical knowledge and technical wizardry behind the turntables (and increasingly CD players) has matured, to the point where now rather than playing a multitude of different sounds in discrete sets, she is now able to blend them all into an intoxicating rhythm.

She’s a phenomenonally hard worker. At the same time as DJing, she studied full time (first as an engineer, and later degrees in graphic design and economics in parallel at UC and ANU respectively), worked flat out as a tax agent. A true renaissance woman of the noughties then. Now she’s designing covers for books.

I interviewed her last year for the Canberra Times (don’t bother looking there, it’s hard to see why they bother with the site! It was also published in 3D World), check a favourite tracks rundown at Cyclic Defrost too. But here’s the transcript, I think it was interesting enough to put online.

Why’d you get into music?

BP: Always a been a music head. Like I played classical piano as a young girl. And I was just discovering electronic and deciding it was cool after thinking it was incredibly heinous and was living with a guy who had two belt-driven decks and they were awful, but I just got caught up in it all I guess through him. But since then the more I learn the more I love it, because your perception of what’s out there is shifting and expanding, it just gets better and better.

What keeps you going?

BP: I don’t know, I really don’t. it’s cool like in the public sphere, like I’d always listen to music there’s nothing that could stop that, but probably the only thing that keeps me going, playing in front of people is when you see people just react in an amazing way to what you’re playing, like you’re sharing all these sounds with them and you’re putting them in a new context for them by the way you superimpose the sounds. And you know when someone gets switched on as a result of that, comes up raves, hands in the air, that’s cool.

For such a small city, Canberra has a lot of people doing interesting stuff (and they’re good at what they do).

BP: It’s got a high education level, so people are a little more switched on. But also the place is incredibly sterile, especially in its design and I think to humanise everything, it needs, like people make that themselves, people need to make their own culture and because it’s relatively isolated, I mean Sydney’s fairly close, but you have to make an effort to go there, you’re always working in a vacuum, so stuff that comes out of here is innovative and is fresh, because it’s created fairly much from scratch.

How has DJing affected the way you listen to music?

BP: Playing records does change the way you listen to music in a sense. Because you go what can I do with this. Whereas you’re not just absorbing for your own sake, you’re actually like how can I do something cool with this to communicate it to other people and I’d be really sad to not have that anymore. Because it has been rewarding. I’m scared about that and not finding a job down there! But I’m also excited because I’m comfortable here and I need to be put out of my element, I want to be surprised, shocked and feel a little nervous every now and then.

You never describe music by genre or style, it’s always colour or movement. Rather than just listening, how do you approach records?

BP: Any track, no matter how stunning it is, there’s always something you’d want to change or add, and you do it in the mix. It is musical collage. You go I’m going to take this bassline and rip it in with this crazy synth line coming out of this track, or I’m going to use the texture of this track, but fill it out with the melody of this or the sentiment of this. Tracks have different feels, so you go this is the kind of emotional space you’re in with this, but we can shift it just slightly and it just puts a whole different tweak on everything, so it’s really about recognising where each track’s coming from, how it feels, also the musical elements that you can use and pick up on and do stuff with and yeah.

How do you do that?

BP: I just dissect it. I’ll be listening to a track and first do the really scientific, the beat structure’s like this, the key change’s going like this it’s got a transition to a bridge section that does this and is different to this bit. But then I’ll think, it’s got a wistful feeling as though you’re wandering through a park in autumn or it makes me feel like I’m in a dirty dingy underground club with red lighting and smoke in the air.

As well there’ll be a pure overall feeling to any track, it’s like if you’ve got two fabrics sitting next to each other and you touch one and you touch the other it’s kind of like that overall kind of thing. So all those different parts and you can pick out which parts you want to interact with the next track or whatever sample you’re messing about with.

You seem to be all about colours and texture, the cover art rather than the name of the artist or the label, and especially ornate, layered sounds?

BP: Yeah totally. Like I’ll pick up on artists if I totally admire them and I want to seek out more, but otherwise I don’t really care who wrote it, because it’s a personal thing, it’s not about me saying oh you’re so great, it’s about me going cool this is this experience for me and these other people.

I get bored really easily. I can get caught up in an aesthetic, especially with house music, like if it’s incredibly dubbed out and the beats are really solid with the pure house feel, yeah I can get caught up in that. But most of the time I like to have variation and change and something a bit interesting happening that you weren’t quite expecting. Also like it when people push the sounds they’ve chosen instead of the default sound libraries and normal electronic music instruments, actually going and sampling a gamelan from Indonesia and doing something with that, and making it into something new. That’s exciting, and that’s cool.

Tell me when you first realised there was something special about music?

BP: Probably the first time that I actually gave it credit as a true legitimate form of music and creative expression, was at a Sabotage party up at Heaven. Up until then all I’d heard was trance, which I’d never liked, found it really jarring and full on and kind of ugly in its synthetic-ness. I’d heard funky house, it was cool, inoffensive, bit of a beat you could have a bit of a wiggle. Other than that I hadn’t really been exposed to much else. Went to this tweakin party and it was all sort of chunky tech house. It was ken cloud and simon Caldwell actually, yeah I heard all the sounds kind of sifting past me and I was having kind of an animal reaction to it. Like it was resonant on some level, I just went hang on, I can see a possibility for this to be awesome stuff. That’s when I really started actually going out and going so what else is there.

Before I was really into bands, I mean I still am. The thing about electronic music is that anyone can be involved as long as they’ve got an idea. You don’t need a whole band to make something amazing and it’s so accessible now, like if you’ve got a pc you can do anything, so for the first time you don’t need musical training you’ve just got to have the ear and a really good idea and the patience to make it. That’s awesome, that’s the first time in history, that I’m aware of, that people can so easily express their ideas and so fluently express them, it’s empowering.

Before the blues, people felt the same way, and then the blues really revolutionised things, just sitting there with a guitar and singing. Things have changed again in the last little while where you really need to make CDs and produce, etc.

BP: You can make something that sounds like there might be 20 musicians jamming if you want to and it’s your idea. Whereas if you were actually to orchestrate that , everyone would have their own interpretation even if you gave them the exact music to play they’d put their own timbre and spin on it. That’s great, but there’s something really lovely about you going this is my world, this is what I wish was real, and brnging that out. The Ammoncontact album is like that. He’s just gone this is my concept and made it, it’s so fresh because before hearing it you would expect that was possible.

Big faith no more fan, beastie boys. Sepultura. I was into metal, it was pretty dark stuff, bordering on industrial a lot of it, but also stuff like, I love Primus – les claypool is the best bass player I’ve ever heard, I love that stuff. Also I was really into local bands as well, we were really lucky at that point in time, we had some really fantastic local bands like Befuddle and Three. Three were really the best. That’s Ben Green, who lives in Melbourne now, and is part of High Pass Filter. That stuff is really fresh, it’s got a hip hop edge bringing electronic edge in and even folk and rock sentiments. It’s a mish mash of sound, but he brings it together in a really cool way.

They sound like comparisons to the music you’re playing now. Obviously the music is made differently but fundamentally the ways of describing it sound similar.

BP: I think a lot of musicians and electronic producers kind of go I’m going to make a track in this genre, in this style, and it’s almost like a synthesis problem where they’ve gotta get the right sound, gotta put it together with the right song structure. Whereas I’m more interested in stuff that’s like OK so previous to this here’s what’s gone down, maybe we can take elements of this and that and make something new. It’s like the art world, it’s constantly evolving according to what people have been exposed to and filtered in their own way, and the new materials and things that are available to them.

What do you think of Canberra at the moment?

BP: It’s so commercialised now. I think the sense of community has really suffered. If you go back two to four years ago, the way things worked was that the artists initiated most of the things that happened. So bands or DJs would say, we’ll get our mates and put on a night. Whereas now promoters actually orchestrate a lot of it, and because they’re not musicians, cause they want to make their money back, it’s become commercialised and things are branded really strongly and it’s been almost reduced to a consumer choice. What will I consume tonight. Rather than based on the experience.

How do you reconcile your commercial possibilities as a designer/economics grad with your creative aims as a musician/DJ?

BP: With music I pretty much let it all go, I don’t need to be the biggest most famous DJ in the world. I’m happy to play and share my music with people on the terms that that happens. But at the same time that’s not the way it works at all. You do have to make the effort to project yourself with an image and everything, you have to be consistent. The way you get gigs in this town isn’t by playing really well, it’s by talking to people and going ‘Yeah, you should get me for your night’which I find really strange because I think if I was a promoter I’d just pick the coolest music that was out there rather than thinking ‘oh this person has talked to me and they really want the gig’ so I find it all a bit confusing and I’m not very good at dealing with it all, but I guess to some extent I am managing somehow and I’m not sure how. That’s the thing I’m worst at. I have big ethical issues with the way things work, I just don’t understand how it can be like that. Music’s good or it’s not. I don’t see how you can just pick people on the basis that they seem nice or they bought you a beer or something.

There’s a serious amount of people who really dig music, and listen to music and seek it out. Most people just want background music, something with a beat, something with a beat to dance to, something they recognise so they can sing along to it, it’s a totally different world to the one I’m operating in. I’m not anti-popular music at all. If it’s great, that’s fantastic. But at the same time, I can’t imagine wanting to get the latest compilation of ‘What’s hot now’ because that’ll do.

There’s two different purposes for music. There’s really soulful, fulfilling human interaction experience. But then there’s also this is an entertainment experience that I’ll consume and it’s not that important to me so I am willing to let other people decide what I am going to listen to.
It’s so emotive, you can hear a track that you haven’t heard for five years, but you’ll remember exactly where you were when you heard it last, how you felt, your state of mind at the time, you might even get a waft of the smell that was on the wind that day. It’s emotive stuff. My record collection is more like a photo album than my photo albums, because I have such better recall of what was going on at that time from that than I would from looking at a photo.

Bec Paton - Broken Beat Brat (hosted by Southern Steppa)

Bec Paton - Mixed for ITM (hosted by inthemix.com.au)

Bec’s current top 10:

Tipper - Ruck (Just Music)
Luke Vibert - Gwithian (Planet Mu)
Bruno Pronsato - Live in Cascadia (Orac)
Si Begg - Muchacha (Noodles)
Idjut Boys - Easy Amigo (Bearfunk)
I:Cube - Tokyo Uno (Versatile)
Stephen Robinson - Lord Lucan is Still Missing (12 Apostles)
Funkstorung - AP1105 (!K7)
Slope - Want’Choo Longa (Sonar Kollectiv)
Tomboy - Player, Playon (Gomma)

If you’re in Sydney you can catch Bec playing Saturdays at @Newtown and at plenty of other nights around town including the upcoming Amnesty fundraisers in Canberra and Sydney. at various parties around town.