Miki McLay

I am taking The 21 Challenge to raise money to support homeless and at-risk young people in Australia.  There are more than 32,000 young people who sleep on our streets every night and I want to help do something about it. The 21 Challenge supports Open Family Australia, an organisation that has been working with at-risk youth for more than 30 years. As a Criminology and Human Rights Theory double major, I feel very strongly about the issue of youth homelessness. It’s a cyclical and pervasive problem, and these are people in desperate need of support from the wider community. I figured I’d put my skills as a budding academic and music journalist to the test, by writing a blog post for each day of the challenge. Expect anything from social justice, crime and politics, dance music, and anything in between. By sponsoring me you’ll be supporting Open Family Australia’s outreach programs with vulnerable young people, ensuring they have the best chance to get the help they need to get off the streets.

Read my interview with Open Family Australia worker Wayne Nielsen through the link at the top of this post, and check out my fundraising profile here.

The vivid highs and crashing lows of using and abusing empathogenic substances, and its effects on the perception of reality and ability to form relationships is brought out in vivid, unreal detail during the film. The intensely immersive and visceral nature of Ecstasy is possibly the best example so far of Heydon’s talents as a versatile and forward-thinking director. “The concept from the start was not to make a classic Hollywood film, stylistically amazing to watch - what we wanted was use filmmaking techniques that shot are in ways like late fifties, late sixties cult-cinema - documentary filmmaking styles like handheld cameras, longer takes, on-location sound and incorporate that into the narrative, of how we wanted to tell the film,” he tells me. “How do you tell that story the audience will understand what it feels like, what it looks like and what it sounds like living within the electronic dance music scene in Scotland?”

There’s a reason Future Music is considered one of Melbourne’s biggest festivals – dance music’s grasp on Melbourne’s consciousness is undeniable and Future Entertainment have consistently delivered lineups that compete with those internationally. Future is a curiosity in that while it’s undoubtedly one of Melbourne’s biggest festivals in terms of numbers, it never felt like it – coordinating an event of this scale is no mean feat and that the festival was easy to navigate and never too crowded was a testament to the effort that went into organising the festival.

Orbital, veterans of the rave made up of brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll from Sevenoaks in the UK, have left an indelible imprint on the landscape of contemporary dance music - one of the key figures in its emergence into the mainstream consciousness of the music industry. Having gone underground at the end of 2004 after the release of veritable classics including Halcyon, Chime and Belfast, the two went underground seemingly at the height of their career, and nothing from the Orbital camp was heard for five years - leaving heartbroken children of the rave to believe that the legacy of the duo was conclude there. To much fanfare, they resurfaced in 2009 with a headline show celebrating twenty years after that first single Chime, and with a new album on the way and an extensive upcoming worldwide tour, Orbital continue to keep the dancefloor moving and I speak to one of the brothers, Paul Hartnoll, about their extended absence, assembling the new album, and returning to the live stage.

Who is Machinedrum? Despite a stellar ten-year track record of recording under the name, Travis Stewart’s many faces, names and records remain gratifyingly obscure. The New York resident has spent his years flitting between a number of well-respected labels that include Merck, Normrex and LuckyMe, and lately his musical palette has expanded to include an even wider array of sounds and projects. Having spent 2011 holed up in the studio involved in constructing some of the year’s most well-received releases, it seems an opportune time for the man to take the production gear down to Australia to show audiences exactly what he’s spent his time working on recently, and the questions I email off to Stewart in anticipation of such an event are received a week later, with decidedly short and to the point answers – nothing most wouldn’t have expected from one of the scene’s most industrious yet elusive producers.

The retrospective collection is frequently a worrying sign of age from artists whose careers are on an inevitable decline. After all, why bother coming up with anything new or original when you can make a shameless grab for cash with tried-and-tested material? It’s a cynical point of view, but one that has unfortunately been proven all too accurate many times before. However, given that 2012 heralds the most ambitious project Underworld have embarked on to late – taking on the role of music directors at the London Olympic games – as well as their twentieth year together, some sort of celebration is called for. The two-disc set spans the most recent output the duo have released of late, alongside the classics that propelled them into the mainstream consciousness of clubbers – but is A Collection a worthwhile addition to the extensive discography that Underworld have already released? It’s a difficult question to answer.

Having spent years kicking about on labels including Metalheadz, Frequency and Monitor, the duo that make up Kryptic Minds are no strangers to the forefront of dance music’s perpetually-evolving scenes and trends. Formed over ten years ago upon the release of Si’s underground anthem The Truth, the duo steadily got to work together, enjoying a number of years at the top of the drum and bass game. Yet unlike many whose relevance eventually comes to be no more after too many years in the business, Brett Bigden’s and Simon Shreeve’s output remains as boundary-pushing and original as ever. Demonstrating the importance of never getting too comfortable, with the release of their first full-length album One Of Us on Loefah DMZ’s label Swamp 81 – a surprising and entirely pleasing excursion into the realms of deep dubstep with a keen understanding of the tension that lies beneath its surfaces.

Yet the more discerning music consumers may point you towards the new wave of beatmakers emerging from the rainy cities of Scotland – remarkably young, yet as talented as many of their peers, figures like post-dubstep’s Koreless or hip hop hero Rustie seem to be changing minds about the sleepy country. Possibly one of the most exciting being Glasgow’s Hudson Mohawke (the production alias of Ross Birchard), immediately demanding attention when signed to Warp Records at the startlingly youthful age of 23. One of the genius children of the hip hop/electronica offshoot rapidly gaining attention at the moment, it was on the strength of two self-released EPs that he was picked up by the revered label, allowing him the opportunity to show the world the potential of these two worlds.

Notorious for claiming that “real DJs don’t have a tan”, Miami-based producer of everything from Detroit techno to Italo disco Danny Daze is a voice that stands out among the babble of DJs out there, in it for the lifestyle and the fame. In an industry where distinctively unique creative endeavours are steadily being superseded by the cult of personality and high-sheen, soulless tracks made for rapid consumption on commercial radio, Daze is proudly defiant – an uncompromising creative ethos bolstered by an incredible amount of success found at such a young age. One of 2011’s breakout producers and DJs, the self-professed studio nerd has suddenly found himself in high demand by audiences across the globe.