Underground Audio

19/08/2024

Happy .costin day! So proud of this dear friend and excited this little banger is out in the world, thanks to / for drums and to Al at for mastering.

29/07/2024

Sunday funday w .ufer Lexi and May cutting some parts for a vision!

25/07/2024

Excellent mail day! New is out in the world and also happens to be album of the week. Fans of minimalist heart on the sleeve sounds assemble! Thanks to and and thank you for supporting local artists and their handmade efforts.

23/07/2024

Some words at thru link in our bio.

“(Steve) gave himself to everyone that allowed it. He helped people who helped people make records and document meaningful culture while never losing grip on his own tools.”

14/07/2024

04/07/2024

Happy new single release day! disconnect is off the new upcoming record Memory Loss which will be out in less than a month, head to their bandcamp to tune in drop out

04/07/2024

A beautiful week to be something in this reality when release a record. You can grab Mantra from their bandcamp right now, via their link. So gratifying and joyous to work on this chaos again. Diploid forever

26/06/2024

Mic of the week #2 is an original Russian MK012 from the time of A.S.M distribution that I found in a New York thrift store for pennies. Utilitarian microphone that is handy for any percussive or stringed instruments, often as good as any more exorbitantly expensive SDC. I’ve used the Chinese remakes and they also sound great.

20/06/2024

New LP Mantra up for preorder now thru their page/bandcamp plus a new song streaming, submit to chaos!

13/06/2024

New sounds out today in the form of their new single titled “Dwelling”. Very happy to of contributed to this one. Vinyl preorders for their upcoming LP “shooting stars in my blind spot” are up via their link tree in their bio!

11/06/2024

MICROPHONE OF THE WEEK #1

The iso max 2 is a weird lil lav mic that is handy for when you want maximum isolation and rejection without lobes that are evidenced like a bunch of bananas. Sometimes useful for the batter side of a bass drum but more commonly utilised round here in this position. Not the first choice for capturing stringed instruments but when vocals are occurring at the same time you need to get crafty.

06/06/2024

New lil EP by old friends out today on the telephone! Enquire via the link in bio for this glorious offering from and !!!

28/05/2024

Supremely fun day with .costin and / as usual, cutting new things at all times!

21/05/2024

New big sound maker alert!

16/05/2024

New words up at via their page or our bio, talkin bout competitive listening and blind testing!

06/05/2024

Beyond devastated off the back of last week's absolutely gutting news from the Zoo, who will be closing their doors soon. The Zoo was not only vital to bands, but to promoters, crew, staff and community. Some of the greatest and most formative shows of my life were experienced inside that sweaty building and it was an integral and vital space for this city.

“The end of live music as we know it” seems to be the current headline. Other sentiments being thrown around at the moment are of a broken model cited due to general inflation cost, excise tax amongst other contentions. You don’t need a steep financial literacy to be able to break down how difficult it must be to operate a venue. It’s only sensical that more spaces will be shutting down soon and though there doesn’t seem to be a solution, I am cautiously optimistic about the next iteration of how things evolve in this city. How could one be optimistic you ask? Well, the landscape has been changing for decades now and young people have always had a nose for opportunity and resourcefulness. I was once one of them and when I was, there were a bunch of old men that told me everything sucked now, show attendance was down, things weren’t wild anymore and legislation and bureaucracy has damaged live music permanently. I remember thinking, “who cares we will make our own s**t happen”. And we did, things entered a rejuvenation. With this in mind, the sentiment “The end of live music as we know it” probably isn’t something that is nourishing the ardor of the next gen and we should probably stop saying it.

This is something I recognise more the older I get. When I glance sideways at the septuagenarian engineers I know, they aren’t too worried and they have been around for tenfold landscape changes than I. This is my long term attitude. On a timeline viewed with a larger lens the culture always finds its sea legs in some form, whether it's in the face of a cost of living crisis, the police, our own council or a virus.

So how do we be idealist in the short term with what is happening right at this moment? This is increasingly difficult. It's clear that attendance is down and things are a bit lifeless. You can blame a few things, of course covid, but there is also a clear shift in how we interact with and within music communities in comparison to the previous decades.

When I was an early teenager the way I participated in music was through a recording studio at a friend's house. We used to make records, have large cookups, host shows and we even built a halfpipe on the property. It was the place you had to be. If you weren’t there you simply didn’t have access to the cornucopia of art, music, skateboarding and community and you would be left behind. Then came my late teenage years in which file sharing reshaped the internet into an unprecedented conduit. Soulseek, myspace and forums became the larger players in which different scenes across the country (and world) connected and there was a paroxysm of ideas, language and identity that infected every little music scene. In my 20’s it was community spaces such as Ahimsa house, Burst City, 199, The Waiting Room, Between the Walls, Blackwire, Jura Books to name a small fraction, plus the space myself and friends ran for some time.

The way that we interact with sub culture and community now is through a select few social media apps accessed through a rectangle in our pockets, controlled by tech giants pursuing attention for ad revenue. However negatively or positively you want to view this (a much larger and intricate conversation) it has to be said that this has had a huge influence on how shows are attended.

I still remember when 150 people in an all ages community space on a Thursday night meant stapling a bunch of poorly made posters around town and relying largely on word of mouth. Entry was $8 and the venue took $2 per head. The shows always did well because there simply wasn’t anything else of substance to do and there was no way to connect with other people. These days getting 30 people to a free local show at a bar on a Friday appears to be a huge undertaking that involves a curated social media rollout over a period of months.
These are somewhat extreme examples but they demonstrate that the effort to reward ratio isn’t what it was and trying to pretend or force a prior situation is not a viable idea.

All of this says to me that we need to continue to find ways to get together, much like we did in our formative years. We need to find our community and cultivate it, however large or small and in whichever way is possible. Maybe even, start a band? I try my best to look at the state of the scene like I do the weather, this has helped me navigate the recording space as much as the live environment. Things can feel vapid, stale or devalued but it's always temporary. I don’t have the brain power or stamina anymore to open a DIY space, but I know how to put on a raincoat when the weather is s**t. If things are small and difficult, try to make the most of it.

This mentality is something I adopted after 2014, a time when the council swept through and shut down every community space. People got hit hard emotionally, to the point that some are no longer with us. Losing a sense of community that is vital and cherished is a vicious blow and one that needs to be met with positive action however large or small.

For anyone that is feeling uninspired, listless and frustrated, just remember that music is no joke. It predates language, agriculture and industry and it's not going to go anywhere. Things may be bleak but we will bounce back in some form.

In the meantime I’m going to try to be open to how the next cohort are forming and nourishing the scene, even if it is with ideas, technology or practices I don’t entirely understand or feel familiar with. This will no doubt result in smaller spaces that need to be sustained whilst our beloved 2-300 cap spaces can find a way to be viable businesses again and hopefully be a part of the next decade.

I’m so proud of the Zoo for weathering the storm as long as they did, and I’m so grateful to all of the spaces in the country that are still trying to make it work.

27/04/2024

Lil ‘merican (?) style thing made on Gadigal land played by with and

23/04/2024

One year on since the release of the latest rekkid and the gang is back w at the helm for a couple songs for your attention soon! Praise hanuman for such beautiful friends making such a sweet racket ❤️

21/04/2024

Very beautiful w + the other day 🙏🏽

10/04/2024

800grams but sounds like an anvil. Might have to obtain the rest of the fam.

04/04/2024

I’m seein double here! 4 cans of Pepsi!

02/04/2024

New Notes from the Underground up now at ! Link in bio, talking bout an incredibly powerful band called

01/04/2024

Anyone got their hand around re-ribboning an M160 no one in so called Australia wants to touch it! Removing Le grill from the armature in itself appears to be NASA level.. or caveman. Email us if this is your thing and you don’t live in Germany or the North America

26/03/2024

Every drummer in this town is named Ben and they all rip the tubs

25/03/2024

Hammond M100, same

06/03/2024

New words at all about the process of the new record. Touching on some non routine things! Link in bio!

03/03/2024

Some wide guitar, forgot to document the front end which comprised of a and

21/02/2024

Thinking back to when the first thing you would look at on a studio website was what guitar pedals they have.. an absurd notion now as all of ours collect dust due to most people having a plethora of options dialled on their board. An old fantasy!