Articles tagged with ‘Media, labels and releases’

• Mark Pollard

  We met with Stealth magazine editor Mark Pollard in September of 2005. His knowledge, passion and diplomacy in discussing a huge variety of issues within and around Australian hip-hop was a demonstration of the crucial role he has played in fostering the culture. Mark spoke about his early teens, making tapes with friends in summer and doing gigs at under-18 shows around town. He spoke about he entry into the scene as an 18-year-old through the Cell Block Youth Centre and the 2ser radio program The Mothership Connection, which he took over from Miguel D’Souza. Mark talked about what he considered to be the most significant moments in Australian hip-hop in the last few years, including the solidification of Obese Records, triple j’s Hip-hop Show and the success of The Hilltop Hoods. Mark also had many salient points to make about identity and music, the issue of accent and American mimicry, over-ocker Australian vernacular and the connections between gansta rap and rural Aboriginal Australia. Mark also told us about the distribution of Stealth globally and the feedback he gets from kids in the country as well as the focus of giving coverage to little known scenes overseas.

  Tags: Indigenous hip-hop, Mark Pollard, Stealth magazine, triple j, politics, 2SER, Obese, Sydney, Hilltop Hoods, Interviews

• MC Que

  We met up with MC Que on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy for dinner and an interview whilst we were in Melbourne in 2005. Que told us about the way she first heard hip-hop through the tapes her sister’s brought back from trips to the city, and then plugging into the underground Australian scene through radio and going to gigs. She spoke about the genesis of the film All the Ladies, and her 15-member crew Ladies Love Hip-hop, as well as a much more broad-ranging discussion about being a woman in a male-dominated hip-hop culture, dealing with discrimination and supporting women in hip-hop. Que also spoke about the strong link between her ethnicity, marginalisation and her connection to hip-hop as an alternative to the Anglo-centric mainstream pop scene.

  Tags: cultural identity, breakdancing, MC Que, Ladies Love Hip-hop, DJing, workshops, women in hip-hop, Melbourne, All The Ladies, graffiti, Interviews

• Monkey Marc

  Local Noise met with Combat Wombat producer and Lab Rats member Monkey Marc after he had finished running a workshop on altering engines from petrol to vegetable oil at TINA (This is Not Art) festival in Newcastle 2005. Marc spoke about the beginnings of Lab Rats at the Jabiluka protests in 1998, where he met Izzy Brown (Combat Wombat MC and other half of Lab Rats) and how initially the Lab Rats were a traveling sound system that went to the front of protests and blockades, running huge parties with solar- and wind-powered sound system and cinema. Marc talked about the evolution of Lab Rats into a mobile hip-hop, circus, video production and performance workshop that tours to the most remote Indigenous communities in the country. Marc spoke about this work, the idea of cultural preservation and continuation of Indigenous languages, recording songs all across the desert and the issues of mimicking American hip-hop. Marc also talked about the recently released album Unsound $ystem, hip-hop as a form ripe for political expression and being written off as a left-wing extremist hip-hop group by the hip-hop ‘mainstream’.

  Tags: Combat Wombat, Monkey Marc, Lab Rats, community work, eco hip-hop, Indigenous hip-hop, politics, Melbourne, Curse ov Dialect, Elefant Traks, workshops, Interviews

• Muphin

  When Local Noise was in Melbourne we caught the train to Prahan to visit the Obese Records store, where we met up with Muphin and interviewed him in his lunch break. In a long discussion, Muph spoke about being on Obese, working in the store four days a week and seeing it’s growth from the inside. Muph also told us about his childhood in Eltham, the early influences of US hip-hop and being introduced to Australian scene through DJ FX. He talked about the influences of everyday conversation and experiences on his lyrical style, honesty in rapping, as well as the fight hip-hop has had to be accepted in Australia, and the misunderstanding of it by the industry. In a widely ranging interview, Muph also touched on the making if the video ‘Heaps Good’, graffiti culture in Melbourne, the TV show The Heavyweights on Channel 31 in Melbourne and the degeneration of the battling since the release of the Eminem film 8 Mile.

  Tags: Muphin, Muph n Plutonic, Plutonic Lab, The Heavyweights, battling, freestyling, Obese, Melbourne, graffiti, Interviews

• One Step Ahead (Review)

  A review of Reason’s LP One Step Ahead published in Music Forum

  Tags: multiculturalism, environment, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, masculinity, vernacular, Obese, politics, cultural identity, patriotism, Press & Media

• Pasobionic

  Local Noise spoke to Pasobionic at the Sydney launch of his solo album Empty Beats For Lonely Rappers at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills. In a relatively short interview, the softly-spoken producer talked to us about the origins of the name Pasobionic from his graffiti tag Paso, and getting into hip-hop via graffiti in primary school in the 80s. He also mentioned the marked separation in his life between hip-hop and Islam. He spoke about the diverse sampling practices of Curse ov Dialect, the intricacies of sampling in general and the differences of producing with TZU and Curse. Other points touched upon included his CD duplication business, working with Elefant Traks and instrumental and live hip-hop in Australia.

  Tags: TZU, instrumental hip-hop, DJing, production, Ant Farm Aphids, Elefant Traks, sampling, Melbourne, graffiti, Curse ov Dialect, Pasobionic, Interviews

• PM: Rapper Snoop Dogg Refused Australian Visa

  On the 26th of April, 2007 the ABC radio program PM discussed the refusal of a visa for U.S. rapper Snoop Dogg, and contacted Tony to comment of the issue. A transcript of the program can be viewed on the ABC’s PM website.

  Tags: ABC, external media, Tony Mitchell, Press & Media

• Position Correction (Review)

  A review of TZU’s first LP Position Correction published in Music Forum.

  Tags: Music Forum reviews, Media, labels and releases, Tony Mitchell, Melbourne, Press & Media

• Reason

  Local Noise met up with Melbourne MC, Australian hip-hop stalwart, radio DJ and high school teacher Reason in Melbourne in 2004. In a long and in depth discussion, the voluble Reason touches on most of the central discussions surrounding Australian hip-hop, including identity, locality, women in hip-hop, indigenous hip-hop, the diversity of styles in Australian hip-hop and living it everyday. Reason also spoke about juggling hats of being both a teacher and a rapper. He also gave some great historical background to the Melbourne hip-hop scene, the key players in the early days, the origin of Obese Records as well as the relationships between the music industry and Australian hip-hop.

  Tags: community work, Reason, patriotism, politics, Obese, workshops, Interviews

• Sereck

  Paul Westgate, also known as Sereck from Def Wish Cast and as the graffiti writer Unique, has been involved in the hip-hop scene in Australia since 1983. He was a key figure in the western Sydney hip hop scene, and Def Wish cast produced what is acknowledged as the first Australian hip-hop album in 1993,Knights of the Round Table, which included the track ‘A.U.S.T. Down Under Comin’ Upper’, the video clip of which has become an anthem of early Australian hip-hop. Sereck also narrated the first Australian hip hop documentary, Basic Equipment, in 1996, and later formed a record label named after the program. After going their separate ways in the two crews Celsius and Kilawattz, Def Wish Cast reformed in 2001 and released their second album, The Legacy Continues, in 2006.

  In this interview Sereck reminisces about the early days of western Sydney hip-hop, the emergence of Def Wish Cast, their style and the people they represented. He also talks about his interconnection, via train travel and graffiti, with all the others local scenes in Sydney (Burwood, Campsie, Ryde, Redfern, etc).

  Tags: MCing, self expression, independent record labels, Hip-Hopera, Interview Transcript, Stealth magazine, production, graffiti, Western Sydney, cultural identity, vernacular, masculinity, Interviews

• Smiling at Strangers (Review)

  A review of TZU second LP Smiling at Strangerspublished in Music Forum.

  Tags: Music Forum reviews, Media, labels and releases, Tony Mitchell, Melbourne, Press & Media

• Sounds From Our Town: Tasmanian Hip-Hop

  “Music emanating from Tasmania has generally been pretty much off the radar in terms of mainstream or even underground success or acknowledgment in Australia.” On a trip to Tasmania in April 2007, Tony Mitchell went forraging through fragments of the Tasmanian music scene in search of the underground traces of Hobart hip-hop. This piece - published as a feature in Music Forum - is a result of a forraging which included an interview with Hobart-based porducer Crytearia (this interview can be viewed at the website also).

  Tags: globalisation, Tony Mitchell, Hobart, independent record labels, production, instrumental hip-hop, Somalia, Press & Media

• Sydney-centrism, Parochialism and Popular Music Studies: a review of Ian Maxwell’s book “Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes”

  A review of Ian Maxwell’s book Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip-hop Down Under Comin’ Upper (Middletown, CT:Wesleyan University Press), 2003, 294 pp. ISBN 0-8195-6638-1), published in the UTS Cultural Studies Review.

  Tags: subcultural theory, Ian Maxwell, four elements, Tony Mitchell, Music Forum reviews, Place, localising hip-hop, hip-hop and academia, Sydney, Western Sydney, 2SER, cultural identity, self expression, masculinity, Press & Media

• Terra Firma

  Another group we spoke to backstage during the Park Jam gig at Luna Park was Terra Firma, and their MC/producer Simplex and DJ Dyems. The guys spoke about their LP Waking The Past, and Dyems talked also about the Culture of Kings releases that he had compiled in conjunction with Obese, and what this did for Obese and the exposure of different parts of the scene. The both talked about Adelaide, the history and growth of the scene there, about its close-knit nature and some of the figures upon whom the scene was built.

  Tags: DJ Dyems, Adelaide, Culture of Kings, Simplex, Terra Firma, Obese, graffiti, Interviews

• The DIY Habitus of Australian Hip-hop: Embodied Histories, Community and Scene

  If habitus is regarded as ‘deep seated generative principles of thought, perception, appreciation, and action’, this ‘fit’ seems eminently applicable to the ‘embodied history’ of hip-hop subcultures and the expression of their ‘objectified history’ in practices such as recording, performing, internet interaction, music journalism, and independent radio and television broadcasting.

  This paper, originally published in Media International Australia, looks at the Australian hip-hop culture in terms of its do-it-yourself ethos, which is, in part, a result of a lack of support from the commerical record labels. Tony Mitchell here discusses the artists, groups and independent labels that have championed this DIY ethos and have built a community of practice outside the mainstream industry.

  Tags: localising hip-hop, community radio, authenticity, independent record labels, Tony Mitchell, Aboriginal language hip-hop, DIY ethos, Pegz, Elefant Traks, Obese, Hilltop Hoods, Koolism, Reason, Indigenous hip-hop, Conference Papers