Preparation is a funny thing. It’s easy to put off, particularly when there are more fun things to do – and whether it’s the night before heading off or the last night before heading home, the liminal energy of the moment doesn’t always lend itself to careful administrative attention. Yet taking those few extra minutes to really dial things in can make a world of difference. As the holiday period fades and the real work returns, the principle remains – preparation is easy to intend, but hard in the moment to consistently do.

We are a few days away from the first day of summer here in Australia as I write this, and while the real summer weather hasn’t arrived yet, there’s already a looseness in the air. As for me, I’m enjoying catching up with friends and family, getting a bit of fresh air, and settling back into something like normalcy after a few years of balancing study alongside everything else.

This is episode 124 of Music For Small Audiences, and as a whole it’s a fair reflection of what I’ve been playing over the past 20+ years. Recorded live on a recent Saturday night, the mix is laid back and groove-driven, and kicks off with a trio of twenty-year-old tunes. While largely instrumental, the lyrics that do appear speak to themes I return to often – impermanence, introspection, continuity, the complexity of separating thought from feeling, and the small salvation of the commitment-free weekend.

As befits my current state of mind there’s plenty of energy in this extended mix. Recorded late at night just before my recent trip to Berkeley, California in support of said study, it features a number of high quality alternate remixes of time-tested tunes that some of you will surely recognise, along with plenty of great new stuff from Melbourne and beyond.

There is a saying in Germany – Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben – that has baked into it a delightful ambiguity. Functioning simultaneously as both wistful sentiment and subtle warning, it acknowledges that goodbyes rarely mean forever. It speaks to the interconnectedness of social relationships, and of the cyclical nature of life.

Whether you’ve enjoyed someone’s company and feel they’re leaving too soon, or you feel that they’ve wronged you (and that you might welcome a future opportunity to settle the score), this expression reminds us not to assume any departure is permanent. I must admit I’m not entirely certain how our German host meant it, but as the saying itself suggests, time will tell.

This is Episode 122 of Music For Small Audiences. As befits the title and writeup, it contains a few references to prior episodes, themes and epochs, as well as a few refreshed takes on some timeless classics. There is of course a whole bunch of groovy new stuff mixed in too. Wherever you are on the cycle of hello, goodbye, and oh hey, I hope it brings you peace, resilience and joy.

That said, it’s also too easy to slip into the habit of ‘just this once’ – and to be seduced by the power of marginal thinking that leads us to take individually justifiable actions in the short term that are in opposition to our longer term interests. After all, no single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood, right?

This is episode 121 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded in the leadup to a trip I’m really looking forward to – a weeklong study exchange in Germany, coming at a very interesting time for future European historians to consider. The mix has been put together as the soundtrack to that multinational voyage, which begins in a few days.

Much as I envy those who can easily nap during the day – falling asleep quickly, and then jolting back into action on waking – I envy those who are able to dial it up and down from work to relaxion quickly when circumstances suggest. Perhaps the skill to develop is just that. Lots to work on in this regard.

This is episode 120 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded early in the new year, on a decidedly relaxed summer evening. There is a fair bit of high quality made-in-Melbourne progressive house in here too (including the intro track) – so much good stuff coming out of Melbourne these days. Enjoy!

This mix was recorded live in Vancouver on the first weekend of the trip at my good friend Dan’s groovy inner city pad. It carries throughout a couple of relevant thematic elements, and served as my soundtrack for the rest of the journey. With a DJ booth facing the outdoor terrace, and the terrace offering an elevated view of Gastown, Chinatown and surrounds with all of its urban grit and energy, Dan’s place was a really fun space to catch up with friends and reconnect.

It’s amazing to reflect on just how quickly twenty years can go by – and who we have each become in the process. Somewhere along the way we’ve each turned into actual adults. Hard to say where or when it happened, even with the benefit of hindsight. Thankfully, we have stayed connected to each other, and I’d like to think we’ve stayed true to ourselves.

While we’re each indubitably twenty years older than we were twenty years ago, and we’ve each added a few wrinkles and grey hairs since those heady nights of the noughties, nights like last night really reinforce the power and importance of enduring good friendships. It’s also a friendly reminder of just how timeless shared musical bonds can be. While it’s true that many of the ‘old school classics’ we played last night were our up front and fresh new catches twenty years ago, it also goes to show that a good tune is a good tune is a good tune. As the old John Digweed saying goes, the only thing that matters is what comes out of the speakers.

This is episode 118 of MFSA. There is some sensational music contained within, including a couple of bits of wax that I had been checking the post for regularly prior to their arrival. Enjoy.

In such a context it is hard not to reflect with some depth on one’s mortality and one’s time and place in the world. Thankfully, the trip involved plenty of walking, plenty of time in nature, plenty of time in the ocean, and plenty of time doing not-very-much. Good for the soul, I suspect.

This is episode 117 of Music For Small Audiences. Recorded live the weekend before the trip, it’s a laid back look at some of the more reflective music in my collection, including a few modern takes on some classics, and a few groovy tunes that have been stuck in my head for weeks. It builds from a gentle start, and is exactly the sort of set I’d play for a lazy late-afternoon-into-early-evening subtropical sunset poolside get together. Enjoy.

After a nearly ten year break, I have returned to study. I am hoping some of the topics covered will be within my existing areas of knowledge. At the same time, I both look forward to and fear the parts that are at the moment completely foreign to me. Time will tell I suppose.

This is the 116th installment of Music For Small Audiences. At just under four hours, it was recorded live on March 2024. As befits my current headspace, it contains within at least one unveiled reference to the connection between effort and reward. As always, perspective is everything. I hope you enjoy.

We are into the final third of summer here in Australia, and at the risk of tempting the sun gods, I daresay the weather has started to stabilise – as far as Melbourne weather ever does, anyways. The combination of pleasant weather and still-long-enough evenings makes for plenty of time to be outdoors and introspective, while the ever-shortening days also serve as a reminder that soon enough we’ll be back to heaters and scarves.

Some quality tunes in this one. I hope you enjoy.

As the year comes to a close, it seems natural to reflect on the year that has passed, and where it has taken us. Are we where we intended to be? Where we wanted to be? Or are we somewhere else, somewhere better defined as the logical destination given the decisions we made over the course of the year?

So I suppose too that it’s natural to cast a critical eye to the year ahead. What needs to change – and what needs to continue – if we are to hit closer to the mark of optimistic intent, come twelve months from now? As always, the answer (for me at least) lies in balancing the needs and wants of those two eternally uneasy acquaintances – my present and future self.

In line with the spirit of reflection and relaxation that is generally intended to accompany one’s summer holiday, this is an extended, exploratory mix. In its latter half it has a number of modern takes on some timeless clubland classics that I hope spark some positive nostalgic memories for you as they do for me. Enjoy, and here’s to our 2024.

I have recently returned from a few weeks in Canada. The trip included a weekend with some very good friends, during which I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to play an extended set on what is probably my favourite pair of speakers in the world.

Set up well in a great sounding loft conversion in Toronto’s inner west, it was a chance to reconnect, recharge, and recycle the same stories that seem to get funnier each time they are told.

This is the live recording of the set that I played on that Friday night a few weeks ago. It includes a few of the vinyl records I took as gifts, a record I was given in return, a few classics both original and reworked, and a lot of the music that kept me company on the 32,000km round trip.

As always, good friends with good records makes for a good weekend indeed.

I’ve long been intrigued by the end user experience of modern medicine, and what can at times feel to the layperson like a focus on only fixing what is broken. If we are unwell past a certain arbitrary threshold, we receive medical intervention until we are back to baseline. We heal, we rehabilitate, we repair, and we focus on eliminating the negative to bring things back to where they should be, wherever ‘should’ is, and that’s it. If the symptoms aren’t serious enough to warrant intervention, we ride them out.

But there is an argument to be made that health – both physical and mental – exists on a continuum. At any given moment we’re neither well nor unwell, but somewhere in between, doing the best we can. As such, we take in stride the odd intermittent symptom or mood that shows up while we are trying to get through the day in one piece. In that regard, I reckon both Seal and Gnarls Barkley had it right with their take on things – that we’re all a bit not-quite-right at times, just to varying degrees.

This is Episode 112 of Music For Small Audiences. Recorded a few days ago on the last weekend of the southern winter, it leans heavily on a few bits of vinyl that have recently arrived in the post, and contains much of the music that has been keeping my boat afloat in recent weeks.

Much has been said about the importance of time management. When time is tight and competing priorities overlap, it can be easy to succumb to a sense of guilt that things may be missed or not prioritised appropriately.

I had a bit of an epiphany from an article I read a few years ago – a lightbulb moment after years of reflecting on how to best manage my time, where I realised that it was just as much my energy that I needed to better manage.

Doing stuff is hard, and is made harder by not being in the right headspace for the task or project at hand. Determining what needs to be done against both objective priority and in-the-moment capacity is as much art as it is science, and the reality of knowledge work is that there is never enough time or energy to get everything done to the standard it deserves. Sometimes all we can do is work to the moment as best we can, and hope we are leaving the right things undone.

Negativity can be seductive. As we get older, our awareness seems to build about just how much can go wrong at any given moment – personally, professionally, geopolitically, economically, and physically. It’s easy to be fearful, and the more acutely aware we are of the worst case scenario, the more tempting it can be to jump at shadows or assume the worst.

Having taken a month long break from running on account of a strange feeling in my left knee, it was a huge relief to get back out in recent days to find the pain gone. The last time I had an issue with my knee I ended up needing surgery, and so the wave of optimism I felt with the realisation I was back on track was palpable.

On an administrative note, I’ve recently updated a few back end settings on my podcast feed. If you have found this episode in your subscription alongside the previous episodes and are none the wiser as to this change, then I have set things up correctly! If you have had to unsubscribe and resubscribe, or if previous episodes are not showing up prior to this one, then my apologies, I’ll keep on it. As always, every episode of MFSA is available for streaming and direct download in high quality MP3 format at mbelleghem.com.

Thanks for sticking with me.

We all have our idiosyncrasies. Two of mine are closely related, in that I love a good quotation, and I am a sucker for a good cliché. In both cases, I like to think of them as bits of distilled wisdom that have stood the test of time. But as Abraham Lincoln once dryly noted, the problem with looking up old quotes on the internet is that you can never be too sure if they have been attributed correctly.

With that said, it has been a really interesting couple of weeks, both for me and for some of those I am closest to. For some, new beginnings and new hope. For others, closure and completion after a period of turbulence and difficulty. It is a strange thing to see so much change clustered around the late April and early May period. As Alexander Graham Bell may or may not have opined, when one door closes, another one opens.

This is Episode 109 of Music For Small Audiences. An extended set, it evolves over a series of distinctly different phases, each with its own energy and emotional content. I hope you enjoy.

A commonly accepted definition of sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. So how then to make a future worth waiting for, without shortchanging our ability to fully seize the present moment?

There are many tradeoffs and worse in daily life as we try to ensure that today is OK while not robbing ourselves of tomorrow. Stay up late or get up early? Smash the fun button, or play it safe? Keep your eye on the prize, or sit back and enjoy the spectacle? Focus on the destination, or enjoy the ride? Recent weeks have given me a newly refreshed appreciation for both sides of that balancing act – leading in turn to the inevitable question, why not both?

The summer holiday period is drawing to a close here in Australia, and we have just come back from a few weeks travelling through New Zealand’s South Island. The landscape is extraordinary to the point of being mind expanding, and every day was a reminder of just how beautiful the world can be. We were fortunate to have had excellent weather, meaning plenty of time to hike and bike and further explore a very special corner of the world.

Travel is often an opportunity for personal growth. In this case it also provided a catalyst for a bit of longer term, whole life planning and reflection. Thinking at these longer time horizons leads to some existential reflection, and the realisation when trying to talk it out that not every emotion has a name.

As the old Hans Christian Andersen quote goes – and with due credit to Eelke Kleijn who duly reminds us at the start of each of his podcast episodes – where words fail, music speaks.

This is episode 107 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded live just a few hours before Santa’s anticipated arrival down the proverbial chimney on Christmas Eve, marking the first day of my summer holiday break. It has some very new tunes, some timeless classics, and some very new reworks of some even older timeless classics. As befits a proper end of year celebration it is again an extended affair, best enjoyed wherever you happen to be.

There is something exciting about covering new ground. The transition from known to unknown brings with it a sense of renewal and energy, and it can be quite fun to explore that little bit further, and to cover a little bit of new ground at the edge of a previously understood boundary.

One of the things I quite like about Melbourne is the quiet sense of perpetual renewal I feel when exploring it. While the city’s infrastructure is not perfect, it gets incrementally better each year. The paths get a little bit wider and more clearly marked, the streetscapes and amenities are refreshed and the structures and signage are rebuilt, meaning that even familiar territory is constantly evolving.

Sometimes when I’m out on foot on one of my usual routes, I even find a well-worn path has a new addition at the end of it – adding a little bit of unknown at the end of a well-trodden familiarity. New can be challenging, but new can also be invigorating.

It has been an unusual weekend. It has been an unusual year.

Springtime in Melbourne often brings a bit of rain. With another La Nina apparently on the horizon, we have seen quite a bit of rain already. So much so, in fact, that it has exposed the failings of our second story roof drainage system. Not a fun way to spend the weekend.

While there is plenty of truth in the old adage that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, there is an added element of excitement and uncertainty when the task involved requires working at heights.

Even still, if 2022 has taught me anything, it has taught me that life is short. As such, there is a balance to be struck between getting things done and staying alive. The joys of home ownership indeed.

This is episode 105 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded live the evening of a belated birthday celebration, and at four hours and twenty two minutes long, it represents a bit of a catching up with regards to some of the music I have been enjoying in recent times. Having spent a few months overseas this year the episodes have come a bit more slowly, but the good news is that the travels have introduced me to some fantastic new tunes, some of which are here, and some of which I will be showcasing in the episodes to come.

Winter has arrived in Melbourne. To me that means short days, falling leaves, and the occasional smell of a wood stove across the city at night. It can be easy at this time of year to withdraw a little bit, to bunker down and count the days off until warmer weather returns.

Of course winter here means summer somewhere else. As is the case with many things, where one is experiencing the sunset, another is experiencing the sunrise. Nothing lasts forever, and we all get only as long as we get. Soon enough the winds change, the cycle repeats and things begin anew.

This is Episode 104 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded on a lovely winter evening in warm surrounds.

For more than two years, it has felt that relationships with friends and family overseas have been on hold. As such it was great to reconnect during a recent return trip to Canada, and to spend some quality time with loved ones. While telephone and video connections are valuable, they do not fully replace the magic of real human connection.

Following on from high school some years later, I managed to convince a local synthesizer shop to give me a job in sales. The shop owner became a dear friend, and the shop was quite popular with local dance music makers, in part because of the owners incredible collection of vintage synths. Channeling my paternally inherited passion for all things beeping and flashing, I got quite into learning every bit of gear I could get my hands on, with my mother eternally patient while an endless parade of boxes, wires and devices began to take over more and more rooms of our house.

As luck would have it, one day the Roland product rep called, asking if I could demo their new DJ oriented stereo sampler to one of CFNYs on air crew, by bringing it to demo live on air during their midnight to 6AM weekend dance music broadcasts. At a time when the Toronto rave scene was exploding and so many new genres emerging, there was no shortage of amazing music to be played each week. To make a long story short the experience up close was eye opening. In the process I learned a lot about how to build and shape a six hour set through the wee hours to sunrise.

This is episode 102 of Music For Small Audiences. A suitably extended set, it reflects to me the free spirit and genre exploration of those all night radio broadcast sets thirty years ago.

Ah yes, life in a pandemic. I suppose every now and then life throws up a bit of turbulence, and so this is our time. But what is the difference between flying and falling, really? There are some parallels shared with the difference between drowning and waving. Beyond that, falling also carries with it a sense of inevitability, of a ballistic trajectory, of a future impact. No wonder that dreams of falling are so common, or so confronting.

At a time when friends and family can feel so very far away, and as humanity fights a pitched battle with the everchanging swathe of infectious agents that seem so determined to further postpone our return to normality, who knows what lies ahead, or what comes next? Sometimes the best one can hope for is a soft landing.

As I write this I am just over three hundred kilometres from home. May not sound like much, but after an extended pandemic and all of the restrictions that come with, even a little bit of travel is a really big deal.

The past few weeks have been a reawakening of sorts. Social reconnections, the relaxation of restrictions, and a new sense of freedom and possibility for space and place. Seeing old friends in person again. Travelling to the places that we had always meant to see. Revisiting the places that we have been away from for far too long. Meeting new people. Booking overseas travel, and planning new adventures abroad. Hard to believe this is the furthest I have been from home in more than two years.

This is of course episode 100 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded in one take a few weeks ago on the first weekend of social reconnection after many months apart. A special double length set filled with sparkling musical gems, it celebrates both the recent reconnections with friends and family close by, and the promise of seeing again those who we have been away from for far too long.

As befits the context, it has more than a few nods to musical memories of years gone by. As a mix it is a fairly stretched out, groove driven affair, perfect for popping onto the hifi in the background while reconnecting with your own friends and family.

Whether bunkering down or busting a move, once the decision to stay is made, the die has been cast. Once those present have made the commitment to stick it out and see where it all ends up, there is a bit of peace provided, because there is no longer a decision to be made. One way or another, things are in motion. Batten down the hatches and settle in, as the end game is underway.

So too it has been with the Australian response to the pandemic. In recent weeks the strategy has shifted from one of elimination to one of accommodation, with the assumption that anyone still in Australia was going to have to make peace with things washing through to a certain extent. In hearing the announced shift in strategy, and in reading the emotions of those communicating it, there felt somewhat a parallel with that pivot point in natural disaster emergency broadcasts where the messaging shifts from strongly encouraging immediate evacuation, to advising that evacuation was no longer possible and that come what may, the only option remaining was to shelter in place.

This mix was recorded during the time of this strategic shift. As such it reflects equal parts encouragement, relief and nostalgia, and is well suited to settling into a well protected place for an extended start to finish listen.

As children in the back seat during road trips of interminable length – as they all were – we would too often and too soon ask the adults in charge ‘are we there yet?’. To the extent there are adults in charge of getting us to the end point of this interminable worldwide trip, those adults are in the laboratories, in the manufacturing facilities, and in the supply chains supporting the design and delivery of our global vaccine program.

Waiting for time to pass is difficult. As anyone who has ever sat on the tarmac waiting for takeoff for longer than expected will tell you, it is doubly difficult when we are not quite sure how long we are meant to wait for. From Blaise Pascal’s timeless observation that humanity’s inability to sit quietly is the root of its collective misfortune, to the painful existential grind of Samuel Beckett’s no-show Godot, it seems at times that the only thing worse than a deadline is no deadline.

For all these reasons and so many more, it sure was nice to get my second shot. This mix was recorded the evening following. As befits the mood of the evening, it touches a few different nerves of past, present and future.

As you may infer from the titles of my podcast episodes over the years, I have a recurring interest in the pivot points, the transitions, the turning points, the fulcrums, the thresholds, the apexes, the zeniths and the nadirs, and the point at which ebb becomes flow.

Raised as I was with equal-tempered reverence for astronomy and astrology, the solstices hold a particular mystique for me. For many years, I took to playing the classic James Holden track Solstice on the summer and winter solstices. Close listeners will no doubt have heard the tune sneaking its way into the closing minutes of MFSA094 recorded a few months ago (admittedly closer to the equinox).

Perhaps my fascination with turning points comes from some innate need for stimulation, change or newness. Perhaps it is a natural fascination with contrast, and the sense of fresh and different that comes from taking a new direction. Whatever its origins, I have learned to embrace it.

This mix is a three hour set filled with plenty of changes in flow and tack. It was recorded live on a cozy Saturday winter evening just a few days shy of the winter solstice, in patient anticipation of the sunshine and spring soon to return to the southern hemisphere.

I am not a fast runner, but I like to run. After so many cancelled events it was great to again run in an organised event last weekend. It was a road run along the Great Ocean Road on the southern coast of Australia. The weather was wet but not rainy, with the run highlighted by an improbable number of seaside rainbows. Fittingly, the pub in which I had my celebratory post run beer bills itself as the southernmost pub on the Australian mainland.

Running long distances has a way of letting the mind run free, safe in the knowledge that nothing can be actioned, and that we are exactly where we need to be. For a longer run there is also this balance to be struck, between pushing hard enough to chase a personal best, while also keeping enough in the tank to make it through to the finish line and the shower and pub beyond. While I firmly believe that pushing oneself is the best way to get good enough to make things easy, I also feel it is important not to beat oneself up too much. One can only do what one can do.

I am fortunate enough to know some exceptionally hard workers. In getting to know them it has been refreshing and inspiring to learn that those that push themselves the hardest are often also those most adept at loosening up and letting things go when the finish line has been crossed, the project has been sorted, the deliverable has been sent, and the deal has been done. At the risk of repeating myself, balance is key.

For me, keeping things on an even keel over the past twelve months meant making quite a few suboptimal dietary choices, with the collective result leading to a recent reckoning as I now confront the reality of having to fit back into my work suits and shirts. As I assess the consequences of the last year and develop a course of behaviour to right the ship, I am struck again by the importance of balancing hedonic and eudaimonic priorities. Bad food feels good, but so too does being healthy.

Fun means different things to different people. An activity that one person sees as an exciting adventure – say free solo rock climbing, slam poetry or building a ship in a bottle – another is just as likely to see as profoundly terrifying, unpleasantly fiddly, or excruciatingly boring, with each the others nightmare. The extent to which a given commitment is seen as an opportunity or an obligation is really just a function of perspective, appetite and appreciation. Even the most arduous journey or pedantic detour can be seen as an odyssey or rite of passage with a strong enough rose tinting to the glasses.

I am reading a book in which the author suggests that success in life is driven in part by the extent to which we are able to make peace with boredom, and to stay engaged with a habit, task or body of work even when our interest level wanes. The author suggests that the mark of whether you are made for a task is not just whether you love it, but rather whether you can handle the unpleasant parts of the task more easily than most people. Find a task that you enjoy that others complain about, he suggests, and you will have found an activity worth focusing on as a hobby or vocation.

This mix was recorded live a few weeks ago. It starts and ends with two lovely bits of vinyl I recently picked up, and has some very groovy tunes mixed in from start to finish. I hope you enjoy it.

While the events of the past twelve months have provided plenty of reasons to be pensive, persnickety and petulant, I am feeling optimistic and inspired at the moment. It has been a year of limitations, worries, uncertainty and introspection, but as the calendar year ticks over and we try to imagine a new post-pandemic normal, I cannot help but feel a sense of optimism for what urban professional living and working will look like if and when we get to the other side of all of this.

As a white collar office worker – a knowledge worker, as Peter Drucker would describe me – I need to be near a computer and a telephone to do my job. In the before times, this meant long days in the city, and daily commuting from home to work and back again. I guess I had always accepted that the price of full time employment was daily tripping to the city and back. But 2020, and the hundred day hard lockdown that Melbourne endured in the name of ensuring a public health victory, rewrote a lot of these rules by proving what was possible.

Reconnecting with my colleagues at work over the past few weeks, we have had some boundary-pushing discussions about what work really needs to look like, and what our future workplace can be as a result of all of this. Rather than going back to work as we knew it, we may well be going somewhere new, where work is less about where you are, and more about what you do. As a circadian slave often energised at weird hours, the idea of being able to fully flex both time and space is truly mind expanding. Here is hoping the adventurous vision holds.

I enjoy long distance running with good music as a physical and psychological release. In particular I like the out-and-back style run, heading out to a distant point and then turning around to head home. Running out, there is a sense of adventure and commitment, knowing that every km out is a km that will need to be covered again on the way back home. More often than I should probably admit, I make a bit of a banking airplane figure with outstretched hands and some verbal sound effects as I make the turnaround. As the way out becomes the way in, the mindset shifts, from exploration to recovery.

There is of course a global pandemic raging. It has been going on for a while now. With the reintroduction of community transmission here in Victoria just announced as I write this, we are clearly nowhere near the end, or even anywhere near the beginning of the end. However, with multiple vaccines approved and in the process of being deployed, my hope is that we are at least coming to the end of the beginning. With any luck we are turning the corner for the return trip home to some semblance of normalcy, even as we accept that things on our return may not be how we left them.

With our very last active COVID case here in Victoria given a clean bill of health and released from the hospital this morning, the second wave of the pandemic has now completely subsided in Australia. As the freedoms return, we are performing a similar reset. It is a recalibration towards a new normal, a reconsideration of what the best and worst case scenarios are, a relook at what we can reasonably roll with, and a rethink as to what our acceptable maximums and minimums really are going to be across a range of different variables at the end of all of this. Having seen through a challenging winter, we are now preparing for a cautious southern summer of comparative freedom and warmth.

Have we normalised the impossible, or merely the incredibly difficult? Without the benefit of hindsight it is hard to say. What I do know is that all around the world, every country, every city, every family is at their own point of the pendulum that seems to endlessly swing between triumph and disaster. Each is doing the best they can with the knowledge and beliefs they have, each finding their own path towards their own new understanding of normal.

Early November 2020. Not quite summer in Melbourne, but certainly not winter. Yesterday I wore a scarf over my sunburn.

We are not quite free of restrictions here, but certainly not as held back either. We have spent more quality time with friends over the past week than we did during the six months prior, but while things are improving they are far from normal. There are still no jet planes in the sky.

The counting of votes from an American election has been going on for a number of days, with no clear result quite at the moment.

In time, all of these things will come to resolution.

Hard to believe that our city has been in some stage of restriction or lockdown for seven months now. Thankfully, daylight savings changes have bought us an extra hour of evening sunshine here in Melbourne, and as the days continue to lengthen I feel like we have finally returned to the stage where there are more hours of daylight than work in the average white collar WFH workday.

At a global level, I have been riveted to what seems like a spiralling finale to a very weird and drawn out American leadership story. The time zone difference between North America and Australia is such that the headlines come thick and fast in the middle of the night, which does not help the already disrupted sleep cycles and disorienting rhythms of pandemic lockdown life.

As befits the stretchy sense of time and timelessness we have felt these recent weeks, this mix starts off very slow before stepping through some of the deeper, more emotive tracks I have been listening to on repeat in recent weeks, along with a few timeless classics and some very groovy techno. It was recorded live as a therapeutic session in our locked down living room a few weeks ago. Wherever you are on the continuum between ‘time flies like an arrow’ and ‘fruit flies like a banana’, let these tunes bring you a bit of peace and perspective while we ride things out.

The first few days of spring have arrived here in Melbourne, and with it has come a sense of renewal and energy. The days are getting longer, minute by minute. Slowly but surely the weather is warming. The trees are starting to blossom. The birds are busily staking out their territory for the coming summer, while the city itself starts to slowly awaken and lockdown restrictions begin to relax.

When movement is restricted, it is easy to draw deep meaning and morals from the sorts of things that have perhaps always been going on but have never before been noticed. The sights and sounds of our neighbourhood, from the soap operas of the skies to the secluded alleyways we have passed many times and are only just now noticing, have in recent months amplified our senses, our empathy, and our connection to place.

More concretely, I have also taken the opportunity presented by our second lockdown to rebuild and upgrade my DJ booth. This mix is the first mix recorded with my new S4 MKIII controller. As always, it reflects the mood of the day. While you may not be able to hear the newly tidied wiring in the recording itself, the mise en place of a well configured booth is inspiring.

Melbourne is in to a Stage 4 lockdown as I write this. This includes the closure of all nonessential businesses, an evening curfew, a heavy police presence and serious penalties for being anywhere other than home without a valid reason. It seems to be making the news worldwide, based on the condolences and words of support that are coming through. There are pretty clear restrictions as to what we can do, and where we can do it. Limiting, yes, but also inspiring in a way because it gives us such a clearly defined space to exist in over the weeks to come.

I have always been fascinated by the possibilities that restriction creates. In music, often the most memorable melodies and vocal lines are those kept to a few notes and based around repeating motifs. Techno as a genre is based in its entirety around repetitive, slowly evolving loops and subtle sonic tweaks. Haiku and limericks require steadfast adherence to structure and meter, while charcoal sketches and watercolour paintings leverage a limited palette to better involve the imagination in artistic appreciation.

I suppose it might be a tad optimistic to suggest that constraints are usually advantages in disguise, but I do think that constraints eliminate the paralysis of choice. With respect to Henry Ford, it is not hard to pick a colour when black is the only option.

I keep a lot of lists. One of them is called Things I Already Know. It is reserved for things that I have very clearly learned, the hard way, and then seemingly forgotten, only to be reminded all over again the next time it happens. Nobody likes to step on a rake or slip on a banana peel twice.

I have recently made a new addition to the list as a result of unexpected household events. This new entry reminds me that where it comes to household plumbing, while preventative maintenance may be less exciting than waiting for things to burst, preventative maintenance is also a lot cheaper and more convenient than dealing with an unexpected midweek 3am water pipe disaster. Check your flexi hoses.

Circumstances here in Melbourne are similarly coming back around a second time, with the city having just entered a second period of extended lockdown as of this morning. As a city, it seems we knew what to do, then we forgot, and now we are being reminded again of what we once already knew.

This mix is a three hour set, mixed live and livestreamed into the cars and living rooms of a few close friends the weekend before last. It contains a number of recently released songs that I have been eagerly waiting to get my hands on, as well as a few fresh revisits to a few classic tunes from a simpler time. As befits the current state of things, it is in equal parts comforting, moody, wistful and relaxed. Whatever level of freedom you are able to enjoy, I hope it brings you a bit of peace and calm for the road ahead.

The reticular activating system is a short, pencil-sized piece of the brain located just above where the spinal cord is attached to the brain. It acts as the gatekeeper of information between most sensory systems and the conscious mind. It decides what needs our attention and what can be safely ignored, and highlights the things in our universe that align with its priorities and concerns. Fight or flight, when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, and all that sort of stuff.

With all that is going on in the world, it can be easy to get drawn into focusing on far away events, and to lose perspective on the many peaceful mysteries unfolding in our more immediate vicinity. At the risk of stating the obvious, recent weeks have reminded me that shifting focus and stepping away from the stimulus even just for a little bit can work small wonders in resetting the sensors towards a more positive heading.

It has been a few months now that social engagement has been curtailed. Australia has managed things well by the look of things, with intergovernmental cooperation sustained, and policy decisions driven by science and fact, rather than ideology or ignorance.

For the moment, we remain in a state of suspended in home animation, ready to take flight when the moment is right, but happy to chill in the meantime. While we are not out of the woods yet, there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. Nonetheless, as I write this on the eve of Mothers Day, it seems the backlog is growing of family to embrace, friends to see, things to do, and places to go.

This mix was recorded live last weekend, and livestreamed to a few of the people that, if I had my way, would have instead been in my living room that night. As with all my mixes, the lyrics paint a picture across the arc of the set, and set a bit of context for the mood of the day. While we may be locked down safe at home, we can still connect, reflect, and enjoy putting together plans for the not too distant future. Look forward to seeing you all again soon.

After a bone breaks, there is a short period of time during the reparative stage of the healing process where the area around the fracture is stronger than it was before the injury. Having broken a few bones over the years, this period of extended staying at home feels a bit like a period of recovery after an injury. There is reduced movement, a focus on wellness, and a paradoxical sense of both peace and impatience towards an anticipated return to something approaching normalcy, while also recognising that things may never quite be the same even once the healing is over.

The political, economic, social and public health ramifications of all of this will undoubtedly be profound. As such, it is both a turning point and a time for reflection. With luck, the path forward will see us strengthen, rehabilitate and rebuild to a future state that is stronger, more resilient and more supportive than that which we leave behind.

What an extraordinary time we are living through. With a global pandemic raging, it seems the whole world is focused precisely on a single little organic particle. I have high hopes that the collective undivided attention of the best and brightest minds on earth will bring us through the current storm of uncertainty, despite what feels at the moment like considerable turbulence and disruption.

While settling in to close quarters for an extended period of time with limited provisions may not be universally seen as a good time, I can think of at least one group of people who pay large sums of money for the experience, with some even seeing it as the height of minimalist luxury. I am of course talking about bluewater sailing. And so with necessity the mother of invention, we have through the combined power of imagination and technology recently embarked on a transoceanic journey, plotted out on an oversize world map on our dining room wall, and supported by the realtime sailing simulator Sailaway.

Leaving behind the empty parties and strung out streets of lockup life, we set sail from Rodd Island in Sydney a week ago. Having worked our way up the NSW and Queensland coast with favourable winds, we are scheduled to arrive in New Caledonia this evening. Hard to say where this journey will end, but while we are on it we will do the best we can to make use of the time, sense of the circumstances, and see some sights along the way. Bon voyage!

As the old saying goes, what goes up must come down. It certainly seems to have been true through the summer of strangely intense weather we have had here in Australia, from fires to rain to hail to record breaking heatwaves. Yet just when we thought we had seen it all an entirely new meteorological marvel arrived, in the form a torrential rainstorm filled with mud. It started as blowing sand, then turned to rain, and by the time it was done the entire city was coated with a thin film of red dusty grit. Truly something for everyone these past few months. What a summer indeed.

And so it is now 2020. It has been an interesting few weeks here in Melbourne. Australia has been making headlines around the world due to a particularly severe bushfire season, and there have been a few days of smoke across the city that made things all feel a bit surreal. On a personal level, multiple overseas visitors have helped see the local sights through a fresh lens, while a minor knee injury has meant a bit less movement than might have originally been anticipated.

Recent weeks have also seen us gain a bit more familiarity with the local wildlife, too. Perhaps it is the time off that has allowed us to stop and look up for a bit, and to take a bit more accountability for nature and our surrounds. Wherever the shift in perspective has come from, it has been a welcome addition to our world.

Is time precious? Is life short? Where does one differentiate between an experience endured and an experience enjoyed? Does knowing one will look back on a set of circumstances positively in future, make any difference to our ability to endure it in the present?

Wherever you happen to be on the seemingly circuitous trail that loops us all between enduring, persevering, prospering and panicking at this particular moment, godspeed, and may good spirits, good music and good companions help light the way.

When in the thick of things with a given set of circumstances it can be easy to feel limited, constrained or stuck on a track towards an unintended destination. Sometimes a good bit of television is all we need to be reminded that we always have choices, and that as often as not inevitability is just a state of mind.

This mix is built around some of the music that was played that night by the rotating cast of characters that took the controls over the course of the evening. It was recorded a few weeks after our return to Australia, and it owes a lot to the musical suggestions and impressions made over the course of that memorable summer evening in Toronto.

Settling in to South Yarra, we have yet to settle on a place that we can call our own to such an extent. There are plenty to choose from, from traditional to stylish to upmarket to wowzers, and perhaps it is the incredible range of choice that has led us to be unable to pick a new favourite. The London, for all of its faults, was really our only choice and so we loved it, flaws and all.

This mix was recorded live on the Saturday night before my birthday, having returned from a celebratory dinner at one of the many local options. An unassuming place with a French name and a Carlton Draught beer sign lit up on the roof, it is mix between gastropub and fine dining, and it was a great place to ring in a quiet birthday celebration. I suspect we will be back there many more times in the months and years to come.

The questions raised are both economic and philosophical. How much is it worth to be comfortable? Is it better to rug up, or to shell out? And just how do you decide where to draw the line? Hopefully a new programmable thermostat will help us zero in on a reasonable balance between comfort and cost.

For every road trip I can remember, music was a big part of the experience. There is nothing like a big chunk of seat time with good tunes and good scenery to stimulate conversation, introspection, perspective and reflection. The nature of road trips is that they often represent (or in hindsight end up as) turning points in the broader journey of life. As such, the car stereo ends up providing the soundtrack to an important period of change and growth.

We have been spending the past few weeks planning a road trip in the mountains in the coming months, and it feels like it is coming together well. Maybe that is what has me all nostalgic. Either way, this mix was recorded with mileage in mind. It starts slow, covers a fair bit of ground, picks up speed towards the end, and ultimately ends up far from where it started. It was recorded live in South Yarra in early April 2019.

On a personal level, at least in terms of living arrangements the future has finally arrived, and looking at it in detail it is for the moment pretty alright. This is Episode 072 of Music For Small Audiences, and it was the first mix recorded in the living room of our new home in South Yarra.

This mix also came hot on the heels of a fantastic New Years Eve party, and a bit of a send off of our current place of residence in Richmond. After four years we are packing up and moving out, and we were chuffed to have had a group of beautiful people come help us say goodbye to our lovely little yellow house on the hill. For one last night the crew came together, talking old times and planning further adventures for the months to come. This mix accordingly contains a few unique tunes, some inspired by the 90s theme of the evening, and some brought around as special treats from those in the know. 

The party was fantastic, and the setup superlative, from the lamb on a spit through to the top range Pioneer hardware set up in the DJ booth. As a get together it was one we had been looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. From a musical perspective I had a chance to play exactly the set I wanted, from early afternoon trip hop through to some rather large late evening tunes. It was also a chance to make new friends, and to share a booth with two solid blokes across ten plus hours.

In DJing as in life, good preparation is key. This mix was recorded the weekend previously, as a test run through many of the songs I hoped I would be playing at the housewarming. It represents a fairly accurate snapshot of the set I played once the sun went down, the crowd moved indoors, and the lighting rig came out.

With that in mind, I am exceptionally excited to be moving back to South Yarra in 2019, to call our new house our new home. As a suburb South Yarra has a bit of everything, close to the city but with plenty of parks and quiet pockets, while our new home has everything we need for the years to come. While Richmond has been good to us, the timing is right for us to move on, to settle down, to settle in and to set ourselves up on the south side of the river.

This mix was recorded live on the Friday night before the auction that found us our new home. Feeling vaguely guilty for not making it to Sasha on the night, we settled for revisiting a couple of classic tunes, presented here alongside some of the newer material that has risen its way to the top of my record collection in recent weeks.

So too it is with relationships. What starts as a single moment can grow over time into something special and significant. It certainly has in my case. We returned to Castlemaine in recent weeks, and on a very special day made a very special commitment to one another, marking a milestone for us both and sparking cause for significant celebration.

My mother has long espoused travel as a catalyst for personal growth. While we were not away long and were not especially far from home, the distance and experience was enough to help drive a meaningful shift in perspective. It also served as a helpful reminder of just how much fun a morning at the markets or an afternoon on a bicycle can be.

English philosopher John Locke posited that our identity only persists as far back as we can remember. But basing our idea of who we are on a foundation of distant, intangible, and evolving recollections is hardly a recipe for certain self identity.

Perhaps ambiguity is to be embraced, then, while history gently rewrites itself in each of us.

More recent analysis casts a bit of shadow on the marshmallow model, however. As is the case with a lot of famous social science studies, it turns out the key findings are hard to replicate, and that the predictive relationship between self control and success may not actually be measurable in marshmallow minutes.

Do the savers really have the edge over the eaters? Does struggling against desire really build character? Or are we just as well going with the flow, picking up the marshmallows as they come, and letting the chips fall where they may? Hard to say. Depends how much you like marshmallows I guess.

If the distinction between habit and addiction is the extent to which one can stop at any time, then thinking is a serious addiction for many of us. There are many ways to get the brain to shhhhhh, from yoga to exercise, creative expression, meditation, medication, and my personal favourite, music. For those of us accustomed to an occasionally over caffeinated internal monologue, learning to live with, love, and selectively break free from the dialogue inside is tough, but rewarding too.

The human body is easy enough to understand, at least in the basic mechanical sense. The mind is a bit more difficult to come to terms with, at least partially because of its inherent inability to get out of its own way. The spirit is harder still to understand. An ambiguous power, the spirit links mind and body for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.

Making it worse, thinking, feeling and doing are each very different things. It is not enough to know what to do, even though knowing what to do is hard enough. We must also do. For this reason, a bit of nervous energy as a motivator is a good thing.

Years are curious units of measure. In some ways they seem to tick by quickly and blur together. Yet in recollection they stand as distinct layers, around which our character, worldview and sense of purpose are built.

On trees, growth rings visibly tell the story of a series of annual atmospheric events. As humans our layers are not so easily visible, but for us too each year adds additional colour and depth.

In some ways the trees live as we do. Some years we face fires, some we suffer drought, and some we just pass. While Nietzsche probably oversimplified in suggesting that the path to growth is through trauma, I do agree that when the going gets hard, those still standing get good. Maybe I am an optimist. Either way, the good news is that we get to give it all another go in 2018.

But in the words of Steve Jobs, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Day after day, early morning after early morning, meal after meal, meeting after meeting and phone call after phone call, whatever the domain the path from idea to reality points in the same direction, and is laid through a mixture of grit, resilience, focus and determination. This has been a hard lesson to learn for those of us who are quite content with our head in the clouds and our feet up on the couch. For while it may be nice to slack off or space out every now and then, there is no denying that ultimately the world is run by those who show up. The only way to make things be is to make things happen.

The concept is not well studied, but as cities grow and social networks evolve, the familiar stranger is increasingly of interest to everyone from transport planners to epidemiologists to dating coaches. It turns out that even people we have never spoken to and know nothing about can provide us with feelings of grounding and community, while our unacknowledged presence does the same for them.

For some, there is comfort in familiarity. For others, there is comfort in discomfort. While it is both a blessing and curse, I think I have a bit of both elements in me. For while I enjoy the smell of fear and sweat that comes with travelling far beyond my comfort zone, I also see the value in hiding underneath the covers longer than often, particularly on weekdays. As they say, wherever you go, there you are.

This is not always easy. Words have meaning, events have consequences, and our internal dialogue does not always follow the path we might intend for it. Like a dog let off leash in a park, or a bear finding its way into a populated village while in search of food, our minds can at times follow their instincts to strange and unfamiliar places with little provocation.

Creativity requires both inspiration and perseverance, and sometimes the creative process is nowhere near as enjoyable as we might hope, particularly where the tools used to create are unfamiliar, unwieldy, or unreliable. Hard drives the world over are filled with half finished works of musical genius, and every day funerals are held for those who died with much of their music still in them. Beginning is hard, but finishing is harder.

On one hand, it can be tempting to mistake effort for output, spending a lot of time twiddling knobs with little to show for it in terms of completed work. On the other hand, if music is therapy rather than vocation, maybe it is okay to enjoy the journey for what it is, rather than worrying too much about the destination in terms of end product. In either case, music is a voyage of self discovery, both for the maker and for the listener.

The challenge, of course, is being diligent with it all, not just in dumping things out of your head whenever you can, but also in remembering to check your lists and notes regularly once you have made them. My assumption is that children would hardly be afraid of a Santa Claus that made detailed notes of their behaviour, but never bothered to return to those notes before coming to town. As with many things, keeping the discipline is easier said than done.

Do we get to write our own stories? To some extent perhaps we do, at least insofar as we are able to control our interpretations of events. Psychologists speak of the locus of control, referring to the degree to which we believe we have control over the outcome of events in our lives. The thinking goes in part that those of us who recognise that we largely control our own circumstances are less likely to stress and freak out than those who feel their lives are largely at the mercy of external forces.

But what about those stranger-than-fiction sequences of events over which we truly have no control? For those times when disbelief must be overcome rather than suspended, it can helpful to think about how one might tell the story to others in future, in a manner that will not create disbelief at the time of its retelling.

While it feels good in the heat of the moment to think that a special moment will never be forgotten, the reality seems to be rather different. At least from my experience, there are many special memories waiting to be rediscovered when precisely the right combination of sensory inputs is provided. Nostalgia can at times be a pleasant surprise.

While I have not yet seen the Pixar animated film that explores this concept, I am learning over the years more and more about the values and motivations of the various vote holders within my internal decision making committee. While I have not yet fully defined each one of their roles and voting patterns, I can say with confidence that there is at least one permanent committee member for whom, for better or for worse, the answer is always yes.

2016 has been an interesting year for a lot of us, good in some ways, surprising in others. While on balance 2016 has been a pretty good year for me, it has not been without its challenges. Here is hoping 2017 brings both the challenges to keep life interesting, and the successes, mercies and peace needed to keep it enjoyable.

The key to being able to maintain perspective is having the right attitude, or even better, having someone close who can offer wisdom, compassion and positivity when the going gets tough. For as long as I can remember, I have been fortunate to have someone just like this to lean on. Unflappable, resilient and encouraging in oversight, consistent in belief, and unwavering in support.

Visually speaking, the squared off duty cycle of a square wave suggests both balance and maximised utility, based on equal oscillation between full expression in an upwards or positive direction, and an equally full expression in a downwards or negative direction. Experientially speaking, the rapid and repetitive cycle between full exertion and deep rest can similarly distort perspectives and bring out the higher harmonics. In life as in music, there is both magic and mayhem in going repeatedly back and forth at full blast.

I also like the idea of events as signposts in the metaphorical sense. When something happens, we take meaning and direction from our interpretation of the event. Sometimes an event says to us well done, keep going.  Sometimes it says wrong way, go back. Sometimes it suggests we may want to hang a left before we run out of petrol. Unlike the more physical type of sign, though, metaphorical signs are often a lot more open to interpretation. Our read of them can change with the passing of time, too.  Maybe thats why I like the idea of capturing signposts on camera. To rewind, reflect and revisit the decisions made along the way.

Risk, particularly when taken by choice in the context of a positive state of mind, can be rewarding. The challenge, of course, is balancing the enjoyment of living on the edge against the very real life requirement to not go head first over the handlebars any more often than is necessary.

IDDQD, those of you of a particular vintage may recall, was a code that could be typed in to the 1993 version of DOOM that would enter what was called god mode, whereby the player did not take damage from enemy fire or hazards, and could play the entire game through to the end without dying once. While astounding and immensely rewarding at first, IDDQD had the effect of stripping all of the risk, and therefore all of the fun, out of the game.

Real life is like that too. While there is a little voice in everyone that tries to talk us out of trying things that we might fail at, stripping away the challenge and possibility of failure also strips away the opportunity to truly enjoy a well fought victory. As Brickman et al figured out in the 1970s, winning the lottery is likely to make you miserable, while becoming a paraplegic in many ways makes life surprisingly enjoyable. Life, like DOOM, needs to be hard to be rewarding, even if sometimes we might lose a few men in the process.

For those who experience stress as excitement, the world can be a very exciting place. And for those who carry the burden of self-awareness, pushing the envelope can mean running a gauntlet of self-doubt. Thankfully, we tend to overestimate the extent to which others can perceive our state of mind. We are assessed not on our thoughts, but on our words and our actions. Managing the inner dialogue may be difficult, but it is truly a personal problem.

The place I live now also has its own separate spaces. The balcony is just a few steps away from the DJ booth, but it is a different space and feel entirely. And when the weather and neighbourhood cooperate, it really does provide us with an amazing bit of atmosphere.

With that said, there is something cathartic about giving in to impulse. The immediate payoff of immediate action, and the thrill of the risk associated with taking action in the heat of the moment are both pretty compelling, even if not always for the right reasons. This pleasure was reinforced recently during a series of arguments I had with a small kitchen appliance. Everyone has a breaking point.

I was honoured to contribute a one hour guest mix to the 100th episode of 709 Sessions, the radio show Wes mixes for Digitally Imported Radio. The mix was broadcast around the world last month. Unlike most of the rest of my podcasts, this mix has been sequenced in Ableton Live, and so contains a number of edits and layers beyond what I could be able to mix live. Those with an ear for detail will appreciate that the first few minutes of the track include synced and processed audio captured during my most recent New Years party, where I road tested the rework that starts the mix off. Enjoy!

As children we may have dreamed of being race car drivers or royalty. In our teenage years we wanted to be rock stars. Now as adult life brings forth its many opportunities and limitations, the goalposts and intended future paths shift further still. As a good friend returning home from a gig at 5AM a few weeks ago found out from his cab driver, everyone has their own opinion on what is age-appropriate when it comes to career and life choices.

Whether you are looking to leave your mark, live your dreams or leave it all behind and start again, decisions to change direction are never easy to make. At the same time, perseverance in the face of difficulty and doubt is critical to any long term success. Sometimes you need the courage to stick it out, sometimes you need the courage to make a change, and determining which path will pan out best is rarely easy. Perhaps The Clash had it right after all.

This mix was recorded a few days after our return.

This mix is exactly that. An impromptu celebration of a very brief visit of a very good friend. It was mixed live on a lovely spring evening as the backdrop to spirited conversation and a long overdue reconnection.

I recently shared lunch with my good friend Marsh in Flagstaff Gardens, a lovely inner city park. We talked through how we find it hard to spend as much time as we might like working on our music. As a part of that conversation, we talked through how finding the time to do things is really about priorities.

In both our professional lives and our personal lives, there is never enough time to tick off everything on the extended to-do list – and so prioritisation becomes about trying to leave the right things undone. We may not have time to do everything we want, but as long as we can say we did what we felt was best at the time, then we should be at peace with the things we never got around to.

Having moved halfway around the world, I do not get the chance to see my good friends in the northern hemisphere very often. As such when we are able to get together, we try to make the most of it.

This mix was recorded in Toronto on the last day of the August long weekend. I recently learned this holiday is called Simcoe Day. Four DJs, a high end sound system, friends from three continents and sweeping views of the Toronto skyline on a warm summer night made for a very special evening indeed.

This mix is the live recording of that set, recorded from the booth on Saturday, August 8.  Regular listeners will likely recognise a few of these tunes, with this set pulled together to showcase for my Calgary friends the sort of music that has been stuck in my head since my last trip through town. Thanks again to Cary, Isis, and Cowtown. To many happy returns!

A guy named Max once told me that every record I fall in love with changes my sound as a DJ. As my music collection continues to grow and expand, I continue to fall in love with records, which is why I have invested in a new Stanton ST150 turntable. Along with the latest edition of my favourite elliptical stylus and some impressive record cleaner, my return to the ST150 has a bit of a nostalgic vibe to it. It is a great turntable to mix on physically, and in a dark room it is very easy on the eyes.

This mix is equal parts modern and nostalgic. With bits of vinyl both new and old, it has plenty of introspective melodic grooves for your next intercontinental trip.

This mix was recorded in the spirit (and context) of preparing for an international trip. As befits the mode of transport, this mix is fast-paced, serious and energetic. It is as equally suitable for flying high above the clouds as it is for wistful contemplation at the beginning or end of your next adventure.

It gives me no small amount of pleasure to explore these many suggested musical directions – so please keep them coming. At three hours long, this mix is the bounty of my most recent tune hunting expedition. Enjoy.

Thankfully we have not been as delayed in setting up our sound system. As such, Episode 030 of MFSA is the first mix recorded in the new place. Recorded at a time of year when those here in the southern hemisphere are feeling the chill of autumn while those in the northern hemisphere are yet to fully feel the warmth of the summer, it has a bit of a cool weather theme happening. (DA in Dubai and J+S in India, you may need to sit in front of an air conditioner!)

For three years my best friends were a king-size bed, a lazy leather couch and ten well-placed speakers. While I have recently moved into bigger digs and am pumped about what the future has in store, I will never forget the sights, sounds and solitude of my shoebox in the sky.

And when sleep is needed on a school-night, there are few things as reassuring of rest as sliding in a couple of bright orange industrial earplugs and killing the lights as soon as the sun has set. Sometimes its OK not to know what the neighbours are up to.

There are more than a few moments of silence in this live mix. At just over three hours long, it is intended to provide an evolving and emotive soundtrack for your own silent movie, whatever your sound source.

They say it does not matter where you come from, it only matters where you are going. If this is true, then does it matter how much we remember how we got to where we are? As we move from one moment to the next, should we blaze a trail? Should we leave signposts or breadcrumbs for ourselves or for others? At what point does the mystery of obscurity become a defining feature?

This mix was recorded live in January 2015. At just over two-and-a-half hours long, it runs long enough to provide the soundtrack to a walk from one town to the next.

I now know that people who think better of this music than I do have a name for it. They call it Beautiful Music, and on further investigation it seems that in many cities it ruled the airwaves for many years before its eventual decline. The history of it as a genre is an interesting story.

This mix is what I loosely call melodic progressive house. To me, it too is beautiful music. It was mixed live in December of 2014.

This episode was mixed live the day after returning from a three day trip to an outdoor electronic music festival many miles from civilisation. It was inspired by the music, people and experiences of that incredible adventure.

This mix is just on two hours long. Mixed live, it is imperfect.

As a soundtrack to urban living and exploration this mix is largely instrumental, with just a few carefully selected vocal cuts. In deference to the 20 year old drum and bass record from which it takes its name, it is is both atmospheric and polyrhythm-driven.

I remember a time before such technology existed, when directions were vital in order to reach an intended destination, and deviations from the directed path were fraught with peril. Nowadays we can go where we like with a clear head and an open mind, knowing (flat batteries notwithstanding) we will be able to find our way to our intended destination.

This mix is Episode 017 of Music For Small Audiences, and it is the product of a recent decompression session – a moment of clarity after the end of another semester of study (my second last). At just under two hours long, it provides a suitable soundtrack to kick back, dial it up, and take a deep dive into that part of you that defends the balance between work and play in your life.

I have had my horizons expanded in recent weeks, thanks to the arrival as a birthday gift of a Hario coffee syphon (complete with cloth filter). This episode was mixed as the soundtrack to its arrival, during a Friday night adventure the night before my 40th birthday party. Three hours long, it is a laid-back nod to new friends, new tunes, and a new way to make my very favourite beverage.

I have spent most of the past week feeling very much like I had been thrown in the deep end (mostly in a good way), and this mix was the Friday night decompression session that came at the end of it. As the name suggests, it is a dive into some of the deeper tracks I have been digging lately. However under the pump, out of your depth, or up the creek you find yourself, may this mix fill your ears with happy thoughts.

Mixed live in Richmond, Australia in the heat of the southern summer.

The inspiration for this mix can be traced to four events: a long week in Denmark for my good friend Dan’s 40th birthday in June, a Stampede week set at Habitat in Calgary in July, a marathon mix-up with superstar DJ Andrew Campbell (aka Soups) in early December, and a house party on New Years Eve celebrating Luke Porter’s return to Melbourne. Many of the songs in this mix featured in those sets, and it has been good fun putting them all into one place. Unlike my previous podcasts this mix has been crafted in Ableton Live, with some parts played live and others arranged by hand and tweaked until they sit just right. There is a lot going on, so if you have a good pair of headphones or quality speakers, dial it up, kick back and enjoy.

Happy Australia Day!

Episode 009 of Music For Small Audiences is called Don’t Forget The Vouchers, and it is a collection of beautiful melodies – some simple, and some complex.

For as long as I’ve been listening to music my preference has been for beat-driven melodies (as my family, who will readily recall my favourite marching band records note for note, will attest). To me, the vast majority of dance music has always seemed devoid of deeply emotive melody. Too much of it seems to lean either towards saccharine hooks and musical cliches, or towards bleeps, bloops, boring beats, and over-reliance on the build-up/breakdown tension/release cycle.

On this mix you’ll find a thorough exploration of many types of deep and emotive melodic moments. From the simple, such as a single note melody backed by suspended chords or hypnotic and evolving one-chord grooves, through to radio friendly vocal tracks and epic instrumental progressive trance, there’s a bit of something in here for everyone, with the big melodies and the small framed against each other across a two-and-a-bit hour mix. It was mixed live late last year.

May your thoughts breathe deeply and easily, and I hope you have a happy new year.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes on the order of 10,000 hours of proper effort in order to master a given area of expertise. Given how many hours each of us is allotted to spend here on earth in a single lifetime, I guess that means you can only get so good at so many things. Does that mean we should choose our hobbies carefully? Or merely that we are what we repeatedly do?

This mix is 83 minutes long in total. The first hour or so is deep and melodic progressive house. There are some big names in here, and some little ones, some new tunes and some old ones, with a bit of a twist at the end. Enjoy, and whatever you are up to, peace.

Spring in Melbourne being what it is, the weather changes quickly. ‘Four seasons in a day’ is a well-worn cliche that actually describes the variability pretty well. One of the more unusual weather phenomena we seem to see during the spring is rain falling while it is sunny. It is not something I am used to seeing, and I find it special every time it happens. This mix starts out with the sounds of rain, and works through four seasons of its own from house to ambient and back again, over the course of two hours and two minutes. I hope it brightens and brings a refreshing change to your day wherever you are.

My intention in making these podcasts available was to showcase a broader side to my musical tastes. This mix covers a lot of ground in this regard, starting with laid-back electronica and working its way through some downtempo grooves of varying intensity for the first forty minutes or so, before settling into a deep groove that builds and bubbles away over the course of the ninety minutes that follows. It was mixed live.

I have always enjoyed the interplay between electronic and acoustic instruments, and particularly the less-than-perfect timing and tuning that any ‘real’ instrument has as a result of its real-ness. To me, some of the real creativity in electronic music production is found in creatively modulating pitch and groove in a manner similar to that which one might expect to hear from an acoustic instrument. Rather than being stifled by rhythms locked down to millisecond-perfect grids and tuning left pitch-perfect to the exact cent, the songs in this mix breathe and wander, combining both the warmth of real instruments and the precision of modern technology. Mixed live on a cold southern spring evening, this mix should bring a warm change to your ears whatever your weather.