Australian Electronica: A Brief History

Electronic music has played an important role in Australian

popular music since the early to mid-1980s. It also has played a
singular role in the transformation of Australian culture, including
but not exclusively restricted to youth culture. It is
surrounded by an enormous amount of cultural noise and loosely
documented and ephemeral literature found in street magazines,
fan and musician websites, CD stores and a handful of
publications. In recent years, there has been a growing body of
academic work concerning the cultures of electronica (e.g.
Brookman 2001, Gibson 1999, Gibson and Pagan 2001, Luckman
2001, Murphie and Scheer 1992, St John 2001), and yet there has
been very little in the way of a historical overview of Australian
electronic popular music and its role within the attached cultures
of electronica. This chapter gives one pathway through this
history, leading into a discussion of the contemporary state of
electronica in Australia. Although there is not sufficient space in
this chapter to detail all the significant features of this evolution,
we hope to provide an overview that will be helpful for others
who seek to expand, challenge or develop our introductory
groundwork.

Pathways

We begin with a brief outline of some significant Australian

precursors to the growth of electronica, including composer Percy
Grainger, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, who developed the Fairlight
digital music sampler in the mid-1970s (which was followed by
the Fairlight video synthesiser in the 1980s). We then discuss the
rise of electronic music in Australia from the late 1970s on: the
early intrusion of synthesisers into rock music in the early 1980s;
the first electronica artists and labels; the RAT (recreational art
team) parties, dance parties, gay parties and raves of the late
1980s to mid-1990s that changed music culture forever; the rise
of clubbing and the role of DJ-as-producer; producers such as
Robert Racic and Ollie Olsen, and the new music labels, such as
Volition and Psy Harmonics that arose during this period in most
major Australian cities; the crisis of the big party scene in Sydney
in 1995; the paradoxical flowering of diversity in Australian
electronic music after the crisis that accompanied post-rave
electronicas such as IDM (intelligent dance music) and doof.

We should note before we begin that there are at least two other
pathways through a history of Australian electronic music that we
shall only gesture towards. The first pathway is a history that
follows what can only be called serious electronic music. This
would be a history following the experiments and compositions
using electronic instruments by the likes of
composers/musicians/instrument inventors Warren Burt, Greg
Schiemer, Carl Vine, Ros Bandt, Rik Rue, Rainer Linz, Jon Rose and
many more. It might also discuss artists who use electronic audio
in a significant and innovative way in their work (artists such as
Joan Brassil, Nigel Helyer, Joyce Hinterding, David Haines, Philip
Samartzis and many others). Indeed, there is much crossover
between serious electronic music, the electronic arts, and the
music that interests us here. For example, Severed Heads Tom
Ellard has always been more interested in the experimental
development of electronic music than its dancibility (despite
international success with the latter). The most noteworthy
example of such a crossover between serious electronic music
and its other is probably David Chesworth, formerly of the
Melbourne experimental pop group Essendon Airport.

Another pathway we will not be able to follow here would be that

involving the highly successful artists who often use electronica
to produce commercial dance music (such as Kylie) or techno-pop
(Savage Garden). This is another story that has been told
extensively elsewhere.

Music Production and Social Contexts A Brief Framework

We shall also be concerned with the following questions. In the

light of a relatively extensive body of academic work surrounding
the Australian cultures of raves, doofs and so on, and the
relatively scant analysis of Australian electronic music, how can
we define the relations between music and the broader cultural
activities produced alongside it? How do we give an account of
the production of the music that acknowledges its social contexts
without completely subsuming the music itself into these
contexts? As Nicholas Gebhardt writes, in following a cultural
process from a source to a consequence, how do we avoid
making

the mistake of reducing music to an elaborate cry of either

ecstasy (in both senses of the word) or, if linked to
subsistence or alienation, a cry of pain (in the usual
sense) ... a musical event is ... a symbol system in its own
right, existing within the complexities of the larger system
or structure ... (Gebhardt 2003 - our emphasis)

For Gebhardt, this means that the question of how underground

techno, hip hop, drumnbass, etc, and social events are related
has to be treated as an ideological one.

However, instead of discussing the ideological relations to be

found within music when it is taken as "symbol system in its own
right", we shall provide a slightly different, less ideological
account of a possible framework for understanding both music
production and music's role in the formation of cultural events.
This is a framework based on the interweaving of musical
rhythms with other rhythms of everyday life. It combines related
concepts taken from four French thinkers. From Henri Lefebvre
and Catherine Rgulier (Lefebvre 2004) we take the idea of
rhythmanalysis. Rhythmanalysis was meant to be a new
science of rhythms. Rhythms are seen as entirely central to the
way that culture organises itself. Lefebvre and Rgulier conceived
of a whole criss-crossing (we might say a polyrhythmic)
engagement of different rhythms that, although we tend to ignore
them, are in fact at the centre of everyday life. This is not only a
question of obviously cultural rhythms, but of technical rhythms,
social rhythms, bodily rhythms, and cyclic rhythms (such as the
relation between night and day). Of course, musical rhythms
and particularly the rhythms of electronic music can be seen to
play a key role in the production of the complexity of life as it is
lived.

From Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari we take the related idea of
the interweaving of musical and existential refrains (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 310ff., Stivale 2003, Murphie 1996, Tagg 1994). In
this context, a refrain is "any kind of rhythmic pattern any
repetition, musical or otherwise that stakes out a territory"
(Bogue 2003: 17). Refrains and the mixing of refrains not
only produce new musics but at the same moment produce new
cultural territories, holding them together (or dismantling old
ones). We shall return to these ideas at the end of this chapter.

Electronica's Australian Precursors

Australian innovation has often been a question of necessity as

much as desire, and significantly to do with the necessity of
overcoming distance not only within Australia, but between
Australia and the rest of the world (a recurring theme in the
development of Australian electronica). As with electronica
everywhere, there are three pools of significant precursors that
produce a milieu for electronic innovation: 1) ideas and musical
techniques to do with serious musical composition; 2)
innovative instruments or musical technologies, created either by
artists or commercial engineers (although in electronica the
difference between artist and engineer is often blurred); and 3)
what might be called innovative cultural desires expressed
through music. Of course, these three are often found in
combination.

There have been many innovative musical techniques and

technologies developed in Australia (Bebbington 1997: 195-196).
Two of these in particular deserve mention here.

The first is an example where ideas about composition merge

with the creation of new instruments. Australian composer Percy
Grainger (often working with scientist Burnett Cross) invented a
number of experimental musical instruments, and while working
in the United States, developed the notion of Free Music
machines (developed from 1945-1961). These were machines
that worked largely with sine waves (Bebbington 1997: 195; Linz
2003) the basis of analogue synthesisers. In what could be
seen as a kind of combination of contemporary software
packages and analogue synthesis, they assembled such things as
perforated or cut-and-shaped paper rolls (precursors perhaps to
the flexible sequencer panels of contemporary music software
packages), sewing machines, hand drills, piano rolls and, of
course, various oscillators (see Linz 2003 for details, or the
Grainger Museum, online at
http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/grainger/index.html).
Recording sine-wave-based material onto acetate discs created
the worlds first pieces made with these materials (Bebbington
1997: 195). Consequently, Grainger not only worked with new
means of composition but also of necessity with new means of
recording and distribution. Significantly, in what is a constant
theme in electronica, these arose out of a new concept of what
music could be and more particularly, from the idea that music
should be more open to "non-classical" sounds and rhythms than
it was. Grainger had been thinking about new techniques of
composition in music since he was very young. Rainer Linz writes
that

Grainger first conceived his idea of Free Music as a boy of

11 or 12. It was suggested to him by the undulating
movements of the sea, and by observing the waves on
Albert Park Lake in Melbourne. These experiences
eventually led him to conclude that the future of music lay
in freeing up rhythmic procedures and in the subtle
variation of pitch, producing glissando-like movement.
These ideas were to remain with him throughout his life,
and he spent a great deal of his time in later years
developing machines to realise his conception. (Linz 2003)

Grainger was especially interested in incorporating random

events, chance, and noise into music, in ideas that significantly
predated the more famous work of American composer John Cage
(often cited as a seminal electronica influence). At the same time,
Grainger had an interest in folk music so even here we see this
crossover between the serious and the popular that continues
to the present.

The second example of Australian innovation was to come at

electronica from a very different direction to Grainger's analogue
Free Music machines. We are referring to the invention and
development of the Fairlight CMI, the worlds first digital sampler
(1979). Though the initial motivation came not so much from
music as from engineering, the Fairlight gave rise to the mass use
of digital sampling. It was enormously expensive, yet, initially at
least, commercially successful. It also found its way quite early
into art schools, which, then as now, were bastions of electronica
experiments (and therefore the cradle of many electronica
artists). Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie were the engineers credited
with the development of the Fairlight CMI (and its
commercialisation) but they built it on the basis of the Qasar
synthesiser developed from 1972-1978 by the engineer Anthony
Furse under advise given by Don Banks, who founded the
Canberra School of Musics studio in 1972 (Callaway and Tunley
1978: 95) (Banks was also an accomplished modernist who
incorporated the lessons of Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez into
film scores and music for cartoons and television. He is
sometimes described as "the most distinguished living Australian
composer, though perhaps not the most popular" [Callaway and
Tunley 1978: 97]). Despite its expense, the Fairlight was quickly
embraced by a number of artists who could afford it (such as
mainstream rock giant, Peter Gabriel). It changed the sound of
popular music, and is often claimed to be as significant as Robert
Moogs synthesiser.

Instruments such as the Fairlight also rekindled the desire of

musicians to work with the new electronic means of musical
production. This question of desire, or perhaps of social will-to-
work within electronica, brings us to the final pool of innovations
necessary for the development of electronica. It is impossible to
conceive of electronica without a wide avariety of developments
in individual and cultural formations of desire. These would
obviously include the beginnings of Australian rocknroll in the
1950s; and 1970s psychedelia in music, graphics and culture (it is
no accident, for example, the North Eastern corner of New South
Wales has contained both a significant outbreak of counter-
culture in the 1970s and a significant and idiosyncratic series of
electronica cultures and musics in the 1990s). They would
include, famously, the shift in popular music and dance cultures
occasioned by the high numbers of American servicemen on rest
and recreation leave in Australia during the Vietnam War. They
would, perhaps more importantly, include Australian punk and
post-punk, and the rise of the gay and lesbian movement
(particularly in Sydney and Melbourne parties and clubs
although this has also been significant to the more recent
electronica events surrounding Byron Bay). They would include
important shifts regarding gender, music, dance and the nature
of venues and the kinds of activities that might occur in various
venues (Homan 2003), and perhaps also to the development of
significant inner city alternative cultures from the late 1970s. An
important part of these cultures, even if it is often seen as
antagonist to electronica and dance music initially, was pub
culture. Finally, they would include what we might call link
cultures and link individuals. By the latter we might mean the
likes of figures such as English migrant Andrew Penhallow, who
moved from managing bands to founding Volition Records in
Sydney, linking Australian music with Factory Records in
Manchester and to other labels elsewhere in the process. By
the former, we mean link cultures such as the (mostly European)
backpackers who became entrepreneurs within the explosion of
rave culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The initial intrusion into rock and the beginnings of electronica

The mid-1980s saw many changes in the composition of the

electronic music scene, internationally, which was preceded by
another extremely fertile period within popular music cultures
during the late 1970s. This period presents a very significant
break within the history of popular music, and is often portrayed
(in a restricted manner) as the punk rejection of the pseudo-
baroque complexity (many would say pretentiousness) of musical
fusions that arose in the mid-1970s (such as jazz- and
progressive-rock). Examples of the latter include Australian bands
Spectrum, Ariel and perhaps even Blackfeather although, like
much music of the 1970s, some of this found a uniquely
Australian flavour in its tinges of blues and boogie. Australia has
often seemed happier to mix musical styles than many other
places. This might suggest that much of the punk ethic was
imported, even if there did seem to be many instances of
"authentic" Australian punk music.

Wherever it came from, the punk ethic was liberating. This was in
part because the rejection of overly slick production methods
which had the advantage of taking popular music out of the
hands of the record companies and "their" bands (who could
afford the studios). At the same time, the situation was more
complex than this suggests. Punk did play a significant role in
Australia via bands such as The Saints, The Boys Next Door,
Radio Birdman and many other groups that emerged in the late
1970s in reaction to the stilted nature of the rock establishment.
Yet the events of the late 1970s in Australia were much more
diverse than this particular punk reaction.
Other mutant musics and structural innovations were also
emerging. All these together lay the ground for what was to
come. So it is important to note that punk was accompanied by
several other emergent musics. One of these musics was found in
rap and hip hop (which in Australia found purchase early, if
somewhat invisibly, away from the inner cities, radio playlists and
recording contracts). Punk was also accompanied by the
beginnings of another, very different version of the do-it-yourself
music ethic electronica. Indeed, punk, hip hop and electronica
were mutually enabling at a structural level. They shared an ethic
of DIY self-production that could be turned towards musical
experimentation by those able to create their own electronic
devices and sounds in a manner not premised on traditional
musical abilities. They opened popular music more to the joy of
playing with "noise". They often worked against the mainstream
reception (and use) of popular music in favour of diverse minority
groups or simply the disaffected. Again, the significant role
that punk did play for these other musics was that it made a
break with major labels possible. This allowed the development of
'independent labels more able to release local and experimental
deviations from mainstream music. Bruce Milne's Au Go Go label
in Melbourne, Phantom Records, and Steven Stavrakis's
Waterfront Records in Sydney were among the most successful.
As we shall see, significant early electronic labels such as
Innocent Records in Melbourne and Volition in Sydney provided
the model for producing and selling electronica that has
proliferated into the present. That the late 1970s contained all
these tendencies is perhaps best seen in post-punk's immediate
embrace of excess even if in a somewhat ironic manner in
groups such as Essendon Airport, Makers Of The Dead Travel Fast,
Tch Tch Tch, and Scattered Order. Indeed, this was the moment
when electronic music (that is, music that began to foreground
synthetic sounds) made its first incursions into mainstream and
alternative rock in Australia via many bands, such as Not
Drowning Waving, the Reels, INXS and Brendan Perry's Marching
Girls (and later Dead Can Dance).

So the cradle of electronica in Australia is found to have a diverse

number of hands rocking it. Soon, however, it was to assert its
independence. Here we shall give a brief overview of Severed
Heads and the label which eventually promoted them (Volition) as
a key instance of Australian electronica in the 1980s, and follow
this with a more detailed description of some of the more
important figures, events and labels that have emerged in the
last 10 years.

Audio-Visual Electronica: the case of Severed Heads

Severed Heads were formed in 1979 by Tom Ellard, school friend

Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright. Their story is typical of many
groups who emerged out of punk into an underground
experimental scene. They made music by playing around with
tape loops, synthesisers, rhythm machines, and anything electro-
mechanical that made a noise. Like many groups who work in the
same lineage, their music has been made for small "intelligent"
audiences, who are uninterested in the excesses and commercial
styles of the popular rock ethos. At the same time that their
music is "serious", many individuals and groups working in this
niche exhibit an acerbic sense of humour that permeates their
entire approach, from the qualities of the sound through to the
critical humour often exhibited in song titles and lyrical content.

From the outset, Severed Heads made and sold their material
independently, and (like many in the early 1980s and indeed
many in the present), showed no interest in the trappings of
major record labels, fancy studios and expensive equipment.
Their brash and noisy musical offerings were, in Ellard's opinion,
made palatable for the music industry that distributed their work
"not because we were experimental, but because the record
company could get a dance single out of us" (Harley 1994: 62).
Although Ellard used pretty much the same gear that techno
outfits started to utilise in the 1990s (an old 808 drum machine,
an SH-1 sequencer, a Prophet-1 and an old Korg polysynth), the
music created by the Severed Heads was far from easily-
consumable electro-pop. Like the music of groups associated with
the M-Squared label (eg Scattered Order and Makers of the Dead
Travel Fast), the "progressive" qualities of the music were about
advancing the aesthetics, style and purpose of contemporary
music.

Though the group has been through many transformations, the

mainstay has been Ellard. In 1982 he worked with Gary Bradbury
(who remains a key figure in the Sydney experimental music
scene, and a frequent collaborator with Ellard), while in 1984 the
pioneering video artist Stephen Jones joined the band. It was the
duo of Ellard producing music and Jones on visuals that toured
England for three months in 1985, attracting the interest of
Ink/Virgin Records in London, and Vancouver's Nettwerk label. It
was also during this same period that the group signed with
Volition Records in Australia, forming what Ellard joking refers to
as the "Ink/Nettwerk/Volition Axis", which helped the band's
profile in the European, North American and Australian markets.

The identity of the band was from this point on strongly grounded
in a visual culture that was produced and managed by the group.
The work of Stephen Jones in live performances ensured that the
videographic image was more than ambient wallpaper. There was
an inherent relationship between the architecture of the sound
and the shape of the kinetic image. The pulse, tone, colour,
rhythm and design of the live video mixing created an electronic
performance style that would soon become almost ubiquitous in
the club scene (which was beginning to be spurned by the rise of
dance music and electronica in the more mainstream venues). In
collaboration with other important experimental
videomaker/musicians such as Gary Bradbury and Jason Gee,
Severed Heads videos gained notoriety for their often audacious
(and always playful) use of the music video format. Volition label-
mates such as Vision Four Five (founded by Tim Gruchy, who
earlier had worked on many RAT parties) were also part of this
same trajectory, as were a number of other key figures from this
period who continue to experiment with the cutting, mixing and
collision of audio and video in challenging works. Ian Andrews
cross-media performances and scratch-video work with
Subvertigo and later Clan Analogue represents another trajectory
in the use of electro image/sound. The image sound work of Philip
Brophy and Ian Haig also stand as important early examples of
experimental audio-visual works that employ electronically
produced sounds and images at live performances and for
distribution on disc or tape. Many of the strategies and
experiments in mixing live video with electronically produced
sounds have been adapted for broader cultural contexts such as
dance parties, raves and clubs that came to the fore in the 1980s.
Parties and raves from the late-1980s to 1995

It is in the parties and raves of the mid- to late-1980s to the

present that we see the full flowering of electronica culture en
masse. This began with the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and
Sleaze parties (from 1980 and 1982 respectively to the present).
These were soon accompanied by the RAT (Recreational Art
Team) parties from the mid-1980s in inner-city Sydney. Huge rave
events followed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as
Madchester, Sweatbox, Dance Delirium, and a small but vibrant
Summer of Love in Melbourne (Mittmann and Flavell 2003). At
their peak in Sydney, the events involved many British
entrepreneurs (see Luckman in this book for a more detailed
discussion of rave cultures, as well as Murphie and Scheer 1992,
Gibson and Pagan 2001, St John 2001, Luckman 2003 and
Brookman 2001).

There is some debate as to whether this rise of electronica

cultures is quite the same as the development of Australian
electronica musics (Murphie and Scheer 1992). The music in
raves was eclectic but largely international. For example, in the
early 1990s there were many DJs who played mostly imported
dance music from Europe and North America. Indeed it is
arguable that, although Australian music was played at these
events, there was more innovation within Australian electronic
music before these huge events took place in the work of groups
like Severed Heads, Tsch Tsch Tsch and Essendon Airport. At the
same time, these big events did provide the impetus and
inspiration, not to mention the employment, for many electronic
artists to prosper creatively and to survive financially. They also,
of course, gave massive credence to the role of the DJ-as-
producer and subsequently, to the art of mixing and turntablism.
Most importantly, these events provided the critical mass via
which electronica entered mainstream popular music culture, the
fertile ground for a sophisticated culture of DJs and producers,
and a potential market to be tapped by a proliferation of labels
and artists in the second half of the 1990s. The development of
this culture was important in part because it was no simple
matter for electronica to receive airplay on mainstream radio.
There were tensions surrounding the national youth broadcaster,
Triple-J, throughout this period, as it began to play an increasing
amount of electronica, and rock and indie music listeners felt
threatened. Most commercial stations, such as 2MMM-FM, simply
refused to play electronica or dance music, and it was largely left
to alternative and community radio stations (such as 2-SER in
Sydney and RRR in Melbourne) to take up the slack. The positive
side of this was that community radio provided an opportunity for
the young DJs and other electronica artists both to develop their
skills and to promote electronic music in new and more
experimental ways (and often to much smaller but more
dedicated, even "serious", audiences).

There are still large dance events, yet as early as 1990, the
death of the dance party was being proclaimed. Prominent DJs
of the time such as Tim Ritchie declared in that year that they
really stopped being riveting a year ago (Murphie and Scheer
1992: 179) and governments at all levels began to re-regulate
venues in an attempt to reign in the dance events (174).
However, the parties continued to grow in Sydney and
Melbourne, especially with the rise of techno music (where
promoters included Richie Rich) until at least 1995. However,
with the sad death of party-goer Anna Wood in 1995 at Sydneys
Phoenician Club (Homan 2003: 137), the State government
stepped in, and the subsequent mess culminated in a police
baton charge at a dance event at Sydney Park in 1995. This
changed the scene in Sydney once and for all. However, as
Sebastian Chan comments (Mittmann and Flavell 2003), it also
freed things up a little. Some electronica groups split up and
moved on elsewhere (notably to Byron Bay where a new
electronica scene was to develop). It is also perhaps the case that
Sydney (and maybe Melbourne to a lesser extent) lost their
significance as the Australian centres of electronica
especially as the popularisation of the World Wide Web was
starting to allow for new forms of virtual community (which were
often very friendly to cultural forms such as electronica).

Techno was indeed the dominant music in the early 1990s, but
perhaps the most novel local style of music that clearly has
emerged from the progeny of these large events more recently
has been doof (see Luckman in this book, St John 2001). Doof's
uniqueness perhaps arises via a particular conjunction of musical,
cultural and environmental refrains and rhythms. Their setting is
often outdoors. They have an even more ritual nature than
usual, and they are often attached to several unique sub-cultures,
and, most significantly, to environmental politics. Other notable
high profile events such the experimental music stage, E.A.R.,
presented as part of the annual Big day Out Festival (organised
by Gary Bradbury) have also provided an ongoing venue for local
electronica artists.

The Rise of Clubbing, the New DJs, New Networks

Like now, theres virtually nothing on, but theres heaps and
heaps of people making tracks (Seb Chan, 2003 [in
Mittmann and Flavell 2003])

It is arguable that, as the large "events lost their punch, local

electronicas found much more of their own voices once again, in
parallel with the rise of techno and its spread throughout a much
wider community than the inner cities. Local clubs, always
present alongside the larger and higher profile dance events,
became more prominent (for example, the first techno club in
Melbourne, the Commerce Club, with DJs such as Jason Rudeboy,
another export from the British Summer of Love [Mittmann and
Flavell 2003]). Clubs also became much more diverse as
electronica matured, and its many sub-species found their own
micro-ecologies. At the same time, clubs began to be found in
more unlikely places (more recent examples are Mad Racket, a DJ
collective formed in 1998, which soon began running events at
the suburban Marrickville Bowling Club, or the establishment of
the Frequency Lab in privately run studio warehouse space in
Sydney's Redfern district). From the beginning of the 1990s, DJs
began opening their own record shops, such as Outpost
Incorporated in Adelaide (Mittmann and Flavell 2003). So two
trends can be detected from the early- to the mid-1990s until the
present. The first trend is that Australian electronica artists and
DJs settled down to make to their own mixes, their own musics,
start up their own community radio shows, and sell their own
music. This led to a quite different flourishing of electronic artists,
labels and events usually on a smaller scale, but immensely
eclectic. Perhaps the eclecticism that emerged during this period,
and which dominates to this day, is due in part to the fact that
electronica by this time had such a strong history. This is
reflected in the description of DJ Simon Caldwell on the Mad
Racket web site:
 Simon Caldwell is one of a handful of DJ's whose name adds
a certain integrity to an event. Throughout the 12 years he's
been playing records to beer drinkers, bum shakers and
radio listeners alike, he has managed to avoid the stifling
'style' classification so many other DJ's trap themselves
into, keeping himself free to draw on his varied loves of
deep, soulful house, techno, funk, jazz, electro, booty, hip
hop and anything else which catches his ear. (Mad Racket
n.d.)

The second trend is that in some ways mimicking the early

global/local networks formed by electronica pioneers such as
Severed Heads and Volition on a more local scale the newer
artists quickly acted to form complex webs of
networks/collectives and regular events via which electronic
music (and usually not only their own music) could be promoted
and enjoyed.

These webs of eclecticism have persisted and flourished to this

day, developed by a wide inter-network of networks across
Australia and linked up with international artists and labels, made
up of still not quite mainstream artists and promoters of
electronica. As we have begun to suggest above, the artists and
promoters (and sometimes labels) often involve the same people.
An example can be found in the work of Sebastian Chan and Luke
Bearnley, of Sub Bass Snarl. As decks and effects artists, they
have worked at many gigs since 1991, but they have also run the
Paradigm Shift radio programme on community radio station 2-
SER since 1995. Chan is also an editor of what is probably the
best contemporary resource concerning Australian electronic
music, the online and offline magazine, Cyclic Defrost. They also
run Frigid, a regular night of electronic music that has been held
since 1996. Another example of this local networking by
electronic artists is DJ Sveta, who regularly DJs at Mardi Gras and
elsewhere, and has been actively involved with community radio
stations such as 2-SER and FBI for over a decade. A third example
is slightly different that of Clan Analogue, which we shall
discuss shortly.

Many of these networks, collectives, and their related labels can

now be found online indeed the internet has enabled many of
the new musics to position themselves more successfully within
the global markets and electronica communities.

Contemporary Australian electronic artists and labels in an

international setting

The last ten years may have been difficult for proponents of the
various kinds of electronicas that have emerged in Australia, but
this time has also seen the successful establishment of new
networks of production, distribution, and debate and
communication. Largely enabled by web-based technologies,
individual artists and small independent labels have begun to find
new audiences at both the local and international levels. Many of
these websites are run by small but dedicated groups, who have
an interest in making available a wide range of material produced
by significant (and not so well-known) figures in the local scene.
Though these small businesses do not make much money (for
either the distributors or the artists), they have solved some of
the problems of distribution that have often plagued the
independents.

Though it is not possible to do a complete survey of these groups

and services, we can give an indication of some of the better
known labels, sites and collectives. Couchblip Records
(http://www.couchblip.com/) and Crispy Disc
(http://www.crispydisc.com/) are two instances of the way in
which electronic music is sold and distributed to alternative niche
markets around the world. Couchblip started in 2001 with a
compilation release featuring tracks by its founders, Melinda
Taylor (Robokoneko), Luke Killen (Disjunction Reunion) and Jim
Dodd (Bloq). Crispy Disc is a Sydney-based online distribution
service for locally produced small-scale releases and CD-Rs. It
was established as joint venture between Adam and Bea Pierce
and Jasper Russel (a.k.a. 5000 Fingers of Dr T and Chocolate
Jelly). Serving as a "shopfront" for many different independent
labels and acting as distributor for small-run editions (often
burned to CD-R on an order-by-order basis), these initiatives have
extended the geographical function of the record shop to a trans-
national context. They have operated as service-based sites that
distribute small to micro-run editions, reissues of hard to get
material, as well as providing cultural context and useful
description of the musical material on offer.

Room 40 is good example of the new labels that have emerged in

recent years and made available in the company of other
independent labels on Couchblip. Based in Brisbane and
established by sound artist Lawrence English, the label emerged
at the same time new music and electronica started to flourish in
local venues such as Rics Caf, the Small Black Box at Metro Arts
and at events such as Fabrique or REV at the Brisbane
Powerhouse. The range of the label's work however is much wider
than the Brisbane region itself, as the label releases a wide
variety of electronic and experimental music from Australia, the
UK and Japan. Many of its CDs represent the crossover of
experimentalists from around the world on various individual and
compilation releases, providing an aural map of interconnections
from Melbourne to New York, Tokyo and Brisbane. Artists include
Japan's avant pop queen Tujiko Noriko, British turntablists and
improvisors Scanner and David Toop, Melbourne's Philip
Samartzis, DJ Olive, Ben Frost, Zane Trow, Erik Griswold, Matt
Rosner, and Burrum Heads "globe-scapers" IO.

Clan Analogue and its large database of artists bios and

discographies is an excellent example of how electronica
collectives have organised themselves across geographic spaces
far wider than the innercity realm they may have grown from.
Representing a huge roster of artists of various styles and
ideologies, the website is the public face of a large and vibrant
community of producers and fans of electronica. Formed in 1992,
Clan Analogue was started in Sydney by a small group of people
who were interested and active in electronic sound It was
largely fuelled by the sore lack of live venues in Australia for
electronic music and a lack of options for releasing recorded
material and thus " was born out of necessity ... from a small
group who were eager to swap tapes of each others'
compositions at meetings". Significantly, Clan Analogue is now a
national organisation with active members in Sydney and
Melbourne, associated artists in Albury, Brisbane and Perth. The
Clan very much sees itself as underground with a DIY
philosophy that encourages the direct transmission of the
artist's works to the listener without filtering it via label
mediation (all quotes Clan Analogue n.d.). The long line-up in the
collective includes important groups and artists such as 5000
Fingers of Dr T, B(if)tek, Boo Boo and Mace, Deepchild, Ian
Andrews, Meem, Scott McPhee, Prettyboy Crossover, Sub Bass
Snarl, Telemetry Orchestra and Terra Nine.

Similarly, the Psy-Harmonics label in Melbourne is a who's who of

electronica, representing the work of Black Lung, Shoalin Wooden
Men, Snog, All India Radio, Decoder Ring and Zen Paradox. While
it is beyond the scope of this article to go into further detail, any
future research into Australian electronica would start with an
analysis and review of the recording, links and connections
between the artists, groups and labels mentioned above.

As we have said earlier, much of this detailed work has been

done over the past five years in the excellent criticism and
chronicling of electronica in the specialist electronic music
publication Cyclic Defrost (available free in both hard copy and
online versions [http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/]). They also
provide a music sampling/subscription service, where customers
who have given up trying to find the music they want at record
stores can receive (via snail-mail) a selection of recent music
compiled to CD each month. These compilations mix a variety of
locally-produced material with other related sounds from around
the world.

Refrains and Rhythmanalysis

Throughout this chapter we have attempted to describe a

specificity to Australian electronic music which is at the same
time only a specific mix taking place within a global series of
interactions. How then are we to understand the Australian-
ness of Australian electronican (on this and related issues see
also the work of Chris Gibson Gibson 1999, Connell and Gibson
2002, Murphie and Scheer 1992 and Luckman 2003)? In fact,
there is very little in this context that could be fully labelled
Australian, although there are specific mixes of music, visuals
and cultures that we might label as inner- city Sydney, Byron Bay,
Melbourne club scene, and so on. To answer such questions by
way of a conclusion, we might return to our brief framing of this
short account with the ideas of rhythms and refrains. This will
enable us to understand the use to which electronica has been
put within Australian culture (to enable a breakout from the
overdetermined Australian perhaps), and the changes that
electronica might have made within Australian culture more
generally.

Firstly, as we suggested at the start, there is the very useful idea

of "rhythmanalysis, taken from the work of French sociologist,
Henri Lefebvre (2004). Lefebvre proposed a science of rhythms
that, taking rhythm as an organising principle, structuring both
time and space, and their varying repetitions, would allow the
"rhythmanalyst" to listen "to a house, a street, a town, as one
listens to a symphony, an opera" (87). In this, as in all
electronica, there is little separation "between the scientific and
the poetic", between, we might say, engineering and dancing.
Lefebvres concept of rhythmanalysis gives us the basis for a
possible understanding of how it is that the rhythms of
electronica enter into specific engagements, not only with each
other, but also with the inner city party scenes or the bush. Just
as importantly, such an idea might allow for the power of
electronic invention to literally change culture by changing its
rhythms.

Secondly, there is the idea of the "refrain, taken from the work
of French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari. A refrain is
something we repeat in order to build up our own (individual or
collective) existential territory. This is a territory, perhaps at odds
with the chaos that surrounds it, in which we can exist more
successfully and perhaps also find our own little freedoms. As an
idea, the refrain explains several things: why the links between
electronicas music and electronica's culture territories are so
tight; why a dynamic and responsive form of repetition (that is
one able to maintain states while incorporating variations) is so
important to electronica both musically and culturally, and why
electronicas music is so tightly tied to the movement of the body.
There are three moves to the refrain, which are in fact never
quite separate. First, there are the beginnings. The example they
give is when "a child, gripped with fear" makes themselves feel a
little better by singing a little song as they walk along. Here the
refrain involves a jump "from chaos to the beginnings of order in
chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment"
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 310). We could see this as the
beginning of electronica or new moment in electronica, the
formation of new musics such as that of Severed Heads and
Essendon Airport, or unusual takes on electronica such as that of
B(if)tek, Clan Analogue, or Lawrence English. It also might
describe the fragility of new machines, especially those home-
grown and often hacked machines of music and visuals found in
much of the early electronica scenes, or new labels such as Room
40, Couchblip, Crispy Disc or Psy-Harmonics. Perhaps more
insistently, it describes those moments when one begins to dance
to electronic music, to take it on oneself in order to cut out ones
own little bit of existential territory. In the second move of the
refrain "we are at home" (a common sentiment describing the
feeling of being at a party or rave). But as Deleuze and Guattari
point out, "home does not preexist" the refrain, "it was necessary
to draw a circle around that uncertain and fragile center, to
organize a limited space" (1987: 310). Here the refrain is
powerful but closed, exactly perhaps as at a rave, or, historically,
as in the late 1980s to mid-1990s peak of a confident rave
culture, or perhaps as when a new label finds some ground, or
the composition of electronic musics with refrains takes hold. In
the third move of the refrain, "one opens the circle a crack, opens
it all the way, lets someone in, calls someone, or else goes out
oneself, launches forth". The rave scene may break down but as
it fragments it becomes so much else launched into the world. Or,
new labels take their local strengths into a global market. Or the
refrains of electronic music allow for new political movements
(see Gibson 1999, Luckman 2003, St John 2001, Poschardt 1998:
340ff.).

In all these moves, the refrain shows us how specific territories

are created, and opened out the world. These might not be
"Australian" in any full sense. They might instead be a territory
stretched between Sydney, Vancouver and Manchester, between
Volition and Factory records, surrounding the specific multiple
forms of existence surrounding Byron Bay in Northeast NSW, or
between dancers or other specific and ephemeral subcultures.

It is at this point that we can only gesture to the research that

needs to be done on Australian electronica - research that
perhaps more carefully begins with the musical rhythms as not
only reflecting cultural shifts, but also powerfully engaged within,
perhaps even in part producing these cultural shifts, through their
very play with new rhythms.
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