by Lyndon
People ask me what instruments I play, and usually, I respond with, “Whatever gets it out of my head.”
Music has been an outlet for me for more than half my life at this point. I come from Chesapeake, Virginia, a place where music (let alone any form of art or entertainment) is totally underrated, never even remotely appreciated.
Continue readingby Oly
My story starts with my Mexican parents. They eloped from Mexico City then had me in Los Angeles. Their early gift to me was a stand-up piano for kids. According to my mom, I spent most of my time on it, writing songs and playing them over and over. When I was a teenager, I was the frontwoman in a punk/indie cover band, then played in a few post-rock bands. I became obsessed with the label Thrill Jockey, and moved to Chicago because they were based there. My sister was my biggest champion—she accompanied me on the long drive. Even though she slept most of the time in the passenger seat, her love and support meant the world to me.
by jakson
I am jakson.
jakson is a musical project by me, jakson.
It first began in 2019 with the release of ‘guilt.’ There have been three releases since.
The latest release, ‘too artsy for the footy kids, too footy for the art ones,’ was released in February 2023.
It was written and recorded in my bedroom as I moved across Melbourne, Bendigo, and Canberra over the last three years. Its title comes from a line in its second song, ‘michael cera, serotonin.’ It references how I fit in socially, growing up in a country town with an interest in sports and art.
Continue readingby Ben VanBuskirk of Blackout Orchestra
I can’t talk about music.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I have the language. I can talk about what a particular song means to me, or I can talk about what that drummer is doing on the hi-hat that makes you know it’s them. Music history is an easy one – I’ve devoured all the rock bios, read all the critical analysis, seen all the interviews. I eat, sleep and breathe music. So why does it feel hard to talk about?
Not to sound all new-age about it, but music is elemental. Larger than life. When I was a kid, like most kids, I was into superheroes. The bright colors, the high stakes, the every moment of a story that meant something important to the larger narrative. As I grew up, music was the only “adult” thing that felt that exciting, that vital, that universal and yet intensely personal.
So of course I became a musician.
Continue readingby Tom Smith
For me the most important thing about music and song writing is creating community. I have spent periods of my life feeling quite isolated. In 2013 after 12 years in Brisbane having convinced myself I was excluded from the local music community, I realised I was in fact very lucky to know many musicians who turned out to be so generous and supportive they recorded versions of my songs for what became the ‘You Do It I Can’t Be Bothered’ project.
Music has always been said to be a universal language, but I don’t agree. Music has as many meanings as people who listen to it. What for us can be a sad melody, for someone from the other side of the world, it can be the happiest of songs, that’s why I refuse to believe that music is universal. However, I don’t think this is a problem, but an advantage to be able to communicate with ourselves. Art shows us the reality that we need to see.
Universe∞Man was born on earth.
It was a happy day; the universe gave him all its power and sent him to the planet called earth.
This is his favorite place, his home, where he lives and creates his music and universal stories.
My short 4 track EP, “2020”, first took form before the year it’s named after before all of this insanity took over. I often think it’s best to leave a song’s meaning up to the interpretation of the listener. But, if there were an outlet to air out my thoughts of my songs, it would be here. So I’ll go through each track in the lineage of which they’re recorded and break them down.
The album costs 3 euro, but took 18 years to make, of course, not continuous 18 years, but I wouldn’t record such music without living my life as I did since 2002 when I started recording cassette tapes with my friend in a high rise block in Poznań, Poland. The block’s address was 93-105. So, now you all know what „planet 93-105” means. And high rise blocks are really like separate planets, at least in Poland…
And cassettes are beautiful items, surviving years and owners, and „93-105” is now not only my block’s address, an imaginary planet, and album title, but also a beautiful cassette released with Illuminated Paths, USA, and this full circle of space and tapes, and my life April-July 2020 is what this story is all about a sound story. A sound story best experienced on cassette.
So go grab a copy of „93-105”, and feel like it’s 2002 in a Poznań, Poland high rise block, or elsewhere in the galaxy, wherever imagination takes you… this cassette is yours, not mine, now. And 18 years are gone, but it feels like light years…
Growing up as a Tempe child but switching places in the outskirts of SoCal or forced to go to church every Sunday, took its toll. I found myself at darker times and darker places of wanting to let go.
I may have seemed happy to some, but I wasn’t… I felt trapped and I didn’t like any of it. And it didn’t help that I had an attention problem or that I kept falling ill…