LOCALISM

“If you are to know this is a compilation of various popular musics from the happy city of Melbourne, Australia,” reads the cover text on this particular copy of The Warm Cupboard, an LP released on Michael Zulicki’s imprint Alberts Basement. Like many such DIY releases, The Warm Cupboard comes with one of various covers, some more colorful and intricate than others. This version is paired down to the barest essentials—-only an inner sleave stamped with the title and one lonely sentence.

This lonely sentence—-in syntax, word choice, and flowery typeface—-suggests a proverbial tongue sliding towards a proverbial cheek. Zulicki plays off the received attitude towards Melbourne, and Australia at large; as a place that many of his listeners (mainly the legions of DIY fanatics in other parts of the Western World) find distant, provincial, and even quaint. Other Australians share this self-awareness, which plays out with similar jocular cynicism. I was almost unsurprised to encounter two Australians squabbling drolly over whether Australia was the asshole or merely the ass of the world. Zulicki’s sentence encapsulates Australians’ tired response to the surprise that others have upon first hearing independent, progressive Australian music. Australia? Who knew?! They did.

But this same sentence also imparts the confidence and enthusiasm that many Australians share about their local scenes. Once encountered, the breadth and cohesion of Australia’s independent music cannot be denied. Before arriving in Melbourne, I knew that the city had plenty to offer in terms of tape culture and DIY music, but I never would have predicted such concentrated involvement. Everybody plays in a band, runs a tape label, DJs a radio show, and/or curates a weekly gig. Not a night has passed without multiple live music offerings. I often find myself sitting with person A watching person B perform, only to spend the following night with person B watching person A. Take the dizzying scope of The Warm Cupboard: 26 local acts, all from Melbourne. Suddenly the sarcastic tinge of “popular musics” and the “happy city” takes on profound honesty. This music is popular; here at least. And the practitioners appear happy in what others call their “provincialism”—-in playing for each other, with each other.

Such pride results from the curious tension between the strength of their local scene and its distance from others. Collections of Aussie underground releases proliferate. Many times, these musicians/music lovers even separate their Australian tape and LP collections from the rest of the lot, the non-Australian section usually left paltry in comparison. Australian tapes, like The Warm Cupboard, foreground this sense of community and collectivity. Jarrod Zlatic of Redundancy Tapes just released two cassettes of exclusively Australian music. One tape collects electronic covers of Erik Satie, the other compiles a broad swathe of Australian soft rock (here, our proverbial tongue is lodged more firmly). Sure, one can find a similar regional cohesion in the United States, but not on a national level. There are compilations of Detroit noise or Oregon free-folk, but most would find it more than a little ridiculous to have an American tape compilation. The nation’s hegemonic reputation would render any such compilation unnecessary and self-serving. There needs to be a threat of marginalization to lend collective action a certain significance.

Thus, Melbournians even harbor a certain warmth for their manufacturers. DEX audio and Lifeshaper, two cassette manufacturers/duplicators in the Melbourne suburbs seem to hold a special place for local labels (despite the limited quality of their stock). Lifeshaper, a tape manufacturer that also disseminates Christian recordings via “The Spirited Group” and an intriguingly vague juicing contraption entitled the “Angel Healthbank Juice Extractor”, has worked with many local labels. Its immediately recognizable off-white (read: very old) cassette shells and blue Norelco cases can be located immediately on any merch table. Lifeshaper’s very eccentricities—it’s limited quantities, odd sub-operations, and cultish undertones—are here found charming. Melbournians might even see a little of themselves in Lifeshaper: distant and provincial. Or at least know what it feels like to be labeled as such.