by Phyllis Sinclair Years back, I attended my late cousin’s funeral in the core of the inner city where she lived. One could call the area run-down, poor, and even scary. It was the kind of place where taking to the street at night was risky, let alone by day. Many of the shops were closed down, and the upkeep on the surrounding buildings was minimal, to say the least. My cousin had been renting a three-room apartment over a dingy hotel where she lived a hand-to-mouth existence due to childhood traumas. Every time I went to this city, I made a point of stopping in on her for a visit because ..read more

by Jamie Hutchings Photo by Jared Harrison Hi, my name’s Jamie Hutchings; I’m a singer, songwriter, guitarist, percussionist, and sometime improviser and producer. I’m based in Sydney, Australia. Music was a given in my family household as my dad was a woodwind session cat. He’s 83 now, but he still gigs here and there, but as kids, it was his bread and butter. So all of us inherited his musicality in some form, but still (particularly with my brother and I), we found ourselves gravitating more and more towards rawness and originality over professionalism and technique. I was looking through ..read more

by Andrew Barnum Lissa and I began performing and recording together in Los Angeles in 1980. Our first band was called ‘Live Nude Girl’ formed during the post-punk era. Angular, with arcane drum-machines, synths, guitars, and theatrical graphic visuals. I am an American-born Australian, who grew up in Sydney, went to design school in Melbourne, then after starting my career in visual communication design, relocated to the USA to freelance in design and get serious about song writing. To find collaborators, starting bands, and doing solo singer-songwriter spots around LA, while designing in t ..read more

by Nick Stevens a.k.a. The Eighty Six Seas The most vivid artwork I’ve ever seen was a series of blank frames. The first time I walked into the Dutch Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, I was gobsmacked. This room was the site of the most notorious art heist in history, where thirty-three years ago, two thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum and stole half a billion dollars worth of masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. I’ve never witnessed such a visceral display of the absence of art. Listen to the song while reading the text. I could just im ..read more

by Stian Fjelldal aka Birds Are Better In January 2022, I released my fifth studio album, “Hus.” It felt okay, but not particularly great, despite all the work I had put into it. I was taken aback by my own lack of enthusiasm at the time, but I wasn’t particularly surprised either. Three years had passed since I started a side project, which began with a writer’s block. I had become tired of myself and felt trapped in my own image. A question sneaked up on me. Did I actually like my own music? Or, more specifically: would I listen to it if it were made by someone else? No, probably not. The ..read more

by Alison Eales I have just released my first solo album. It is called Mox Nox, a sundial motto that means ‘night, shortly’, and the theme running through the record is the passing of time, particularly the transition from day to night. Rather than writing songs specifically for the album, I looked through my songbook for things I had already written that fit this theme, and one of them (now called The Broken Song) jumped out at me as being a bit of a curiosity. I’ve always been a night owl. I can be absolutely exhausted at 10pm, but by 11 my head will be racing with ideas. The Broken Song b ..read more

by Pete Hobbs aka Diving At Dawn In October 2022, I made Diving At Dawn’s 2010 debut single A Lot Like Love available on Spotify for the first time. I pitched the track to some playlists via a site called Groover and was surprised and pleased with the response; it started getting plays and picking up some fans. This modest interest in the song got me thinking about recording and releasing some new material. Diving At Dawn has always been a frustrating stop-start affair for me. I’ve never been able to be genuinely productive and build momentum with it because I find working alone so tricky. As ..read more

by jakson I am jakson. jakson is a musical project by me, jakson. It first began in 2019 with the release of ‘guilt.’ There have been three releases since. The latest release, ‘too artsy for the footy kids, too footy for the art ones,’ was released in February 2023. It was written and recorded in my bedroom as I moved across Melbourne, Bendigo, and Canberra over the last three years. Its title comes from a line in its second song, ‘michael cera, serotonin.’ It references how I fit in socially, growing up in a country town with an interest in sports and art. Listen to the song while reading t ..read more

by Pedro Alsama My mother used to say that when I was 2 or 3 years old, I was a little pest, but when music was on the television, it was silent; it was peaceful at home. I was absorbed in what I was wanting to do forever. Music. I started my sound adventure learning sounds; I created them around me with a k7s recorder. I walked around the house reporting where I went, something like: “And now this is the sound of water, and let’s all listen…” turned on the bathroom faucet “listen, it’s the water singing…” Listen to the album while reading the text. Origins In my first musical recording, whi ..read more

by Jake Harper Music is more than chords and percussion and isolated tunes. If there’s one thing that music in films teaches us, it’s that any sound can inspire an emotion, and that’s what lies at the core of musicianship. Listen to the album while reading the text. When I picked up the guitar at 16, I wanted to be Paul McCartney. My English teacher was showing me open chords and I was running home to use those and play whatever Beatles songs I could. I started a band with friends, “The Socks,” and played Paul’s bass model. Obviously this wasn’t a project built for longevity, but what I didn ..read more