From early 2012 to early 2015, I lived by myself in a tiny-but-beautiful apartment high above the South Yarra railway station. Nineteen stories up and facing straight west across Port Phillip Bay, it offered panoramic views of the city and a regular rotation of the sort of slow-motion sunsets you read about in photography books.
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.
Urban living and travel means noise is never far away – and while we cant close our ears as easily as we can close our eyes, we can still find pockets of silence through mechanical means when we have the right equipment. My favourite earbuds block out so much ambient noise that I can have the volume on nearly zero even in a crowded city street. This lends an air of surreality to the surroundings, as if I have injected a soundtrack into a silent film.
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.
There is the theory of the Moebius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop – but I cant say that I have experienced it personally. In my experience time is linear, and the further things recede into the distance in either direction, the fuzzier they become.
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.
When I was a kid growing up, we would often spend weekends in what we called cottage country. We were a few hours north of the city, and seemingly a million miles from Torontonian suburbia. One of the few FM stations available on the radio dial was 93.1 CHAY-FM. It played elevator music, musak, terribly saccharin instrumental versions of popular songs with soprano saxophones in place of vocals, and plenty of electric pianos and jazz guitars wrapped into a big hairy cheese sandwich. Many moments of peaceful childhood contemplation were interrupted by the wail of that soprano sax. I learned quickly that not everyone has the same taste in music.
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.
The end of 2014 is here – and so is Episode 025 of Music For Small Audiences. This mix takes its name from an astute observation made by a good friend (and very good DJ) by the name of Andrew Campbell. As Andrew sees it, the likelihood of any rule being enforced is inversely proportional to how far down on the list of rules the actual rule in question is. The first few rules? OK, those we may need to pay attention to… but by the time you get past the first few, bah, if they were important they would have put them at the top of the list!
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.
Packing up for a weekend away is always a mixture of emotions. Excitement for the adventure to come is mixed with anticipation and sometimes a bit of stress. Do I have time to do everything I need to do to get ready? What if I forget something? As we get older we learn a few tricks and techniques to help get out of our own way – post-it notes on the bathroom mirror, items we must not forget left blocking the exit, cloud-based list managers (that, like Santa, we remember to check twice!), and if all else fails, a publicly-posted mix named after the two things that seem to always be forgotten. A dirty weekend is one thing, but a weekend with no soap something else entirely. Safe travels!
What is it about being stuck in a sea of traffic that puts us on edge? Is it the uncertainty of the stop-and-start? The inability to control the actions of others? The paradox of being alone in a crowd? From The Spoons to Satoshi Tomiie, musicians have long seen parallels between romance and gridlock, and so I hope you will forgive me for again pointing them out. One thing I will say, whether you are in love, in traffic, or in both, good music does seem to ease the angst when things start to jam up. Recorded on a day when companions on two continents both found themselves trapped in traffic, this mix is an easy detour through some of the music that I have been digging in recent weeks. Whichever side of the road you drive on keep it rubber side down, and may all your lights be green.
Perspective is a funny thing. As humans I think we are conditioned to always want more. Louis CK has an insightful take on this, which you can find by Googling Everything Is Amazing, And Nobody Is Happy. In some respects our desire to constantly self-improve is to be commended as having driven our survival as a species. With that said, aspiration for the future need not come at the expense of acknowledging the abundance of the present. Sometimes good enough is good enough – and what we already have is amazing enough as it is.
This mix is just on two hours long. Mixed live, it is imperfect.
I have often been struck by the curiously polite silence of a packed early morning commuter train, where people are pressed closely together yet rarely speak to one another. As the city flickers by in the morning sunlight we share our physical space yet remain alone with our thoughts – at least until the silence is broken.
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.
Episode 020 of Music For Small Audiences is called Earth Tones. The title comes from a few different places. First, the recent expansion of my wardrobe. Melburnians are known for wearing plenty of black and dark grey, and I am no exception. I have however recently expanded my palette, returning to a few browns and greens. Similarly, I have been exploring very earthy sonic palettes, such as you will hear in this mix. Well grounded in terra firma, this mix keeps the tempo pulled back and the energy in check, relying on melody and groove to get the job done. It runs an hour and forty-five minutes, and it was mixed live for a small audience on a recent Friday evening.
Some memories can be called restorative nostalgia, where we long to return to a favoured place. Other memories are better described as reflective nostalgia, in which we focus on irreparable loss. In both cases, the memory of the past is a positive one. Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut had it right when he urged us – “please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Episode 019 of Music For Small Audiences is called Tomorrows Nostalgia Today. It is a deep and emotive mix, and it runs just a bit under two and a half hours.
This is Episode 018 of Music For Small Audiences. It gets its name from a recent weekend trip I took through South Australia with friends, relying heavily on the GPS and mapping features of my mobile phone and tablet in order to explore the world one spontaneous turn at a time.
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.
If we are to maintain balance, then for every period of tension there must be a release. But if life is about growth, about finding your limits and pushing beyond them, and building new settlements beyond ones existing barriers, then must we not also dig ever deeper into ourselves when it comes time to take a break?
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.
Where to start? I spent a lot of quality time with a Sony Playstation during my undergraduate days. The James Bond-esque spy shooter Syphon Filter was a brilliant game, but I always wondered about where they came up with the name for the Syphon Filter virus around which the game was built. I suspected it was something a Japanese game designer came up with having seen the words syphon and filter together in the context of coffee making techniques.
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.
A wise man once said that the real purpose of setting a goal is what it makes you while you are pursuing it. We become our future selves through the challenges we encounter – which in many cases are the challenges we set up for ourselves. Per aspera ad astra et cetera, right? Sometimes being thrown in the deep end is the only way to fly, if you will excuse the mangled metaphor.
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.
From early 2012 to early 2015, I lived by myself in a tiny-but-beautiful apartment high above the South Yarra railway station. Nineteen stories up and facing straight west across Port Phillip Bay, it offered panoramic views of the city and a regular rotation of the sort of slow-motion sunsets you read about in photography books.
There is the theory of the Moebius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop – but I cant say that I have experienced it personally. In my experience time is linear, and the further things recede into the distance in either direction, the fuzzier they become.
What is it about being stuck in a sea of traffic that puts us on edge? Is it the uncertainty of the stop-and-start? The inability to control the actions of others? The paradox of being alone in a crowd? From The Spoons to Satoshi Tomiie, musicians have long seen parallels between romance and gridlock, and so I hope you will forgive me for again pointing them out. One thing I will say, whether you are in love, in traffic, or in both, good music does seem to ease the angst when things start to jam up. Recorded on a day when companions on two continents both found themselves trapped in traffic, this mix is an easy detour through some of the music that I have been digging in recent weeks. Whichever side of the road you drive on keep it rubber side down, and may all your lights be green.
Perspective is a funny thing. As humans I think we are conditioned to always want more. Louis CK has an insightful take on this, which you can find by Googling Everything Is Amazing, And Nobody Is Happy. In some respects our desire to constantly self-improve is to be commended as having driven our survival as a species. With that said, aspiration for the future need not come at the expense of acknowledging the abundance of the present. Sometimes good enough is good enough – and what we already have is amazing enough as it is.
Episode 020 of Music For Small Audiences is called Earth Tones. The title comes from a few different places. First, the recent expansion of my wardrobe. Melburnians are known for wearing plenty of black and dark grey, and I am no exception. I have however recently expanded my palette, returning to a few browns and greens. Similarly, I have been exploring very earthy sonic palettes, such as you will hear in this mix. Well grounded in terra firma, this mix keeps the tempo pulled back and the energy in check, relying on melody and groove to get the job done. It runs an hour and forty-five minutes, and it was mixed live for a small audience on a recent Friday evening.
Some memories can be called restorative nostalgia, where we long to return to a favoured place. Other memories are better described as reflective nostalgia, in which we focus on irreparable loss. In both cases, the memory of the past is a positive one. Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut had it right when he urged us – “please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Episode 019 of Music For Small Audiences is called Tomorrows Nostalgia Today. It is a deep and emotive mix, and it runs just a bit under two and a half hours.
This is Episode 018 of Music For Small Audiences. It gets its name from a recent weekend trip I took through South Australia with friends, relying heavily on the GPS and mapping features of my mobile phone and tablet in order to explore the world one spontaneous turn at a time.
If we are to maintain balance, then for every period of tension there must be a release. But if life is about growth, about finding your limits and pushing beyond them, and building new settlements beyond ones existing barriers, then must we not also dig ever deeper into ourselves when it comes time to take a break?
Where to start? I spent a lot of quality time with a Sony Playstation during my undergraduate days. The James Bond-esque spy shooter Syphon Filter was a brilliant game, but I always wondered about where they came up with the name for the Syphon Filter virus around which the game was built. I suspected it was something a Japanese game designer came up with having seen the words syphon and filter together in the context of coffee making techniques.