Home Page of Canberra Electronic Music Blog
This blog is a draft for a forthcoming site at:
www.CanberraElectronicMusic.com
The main article here is:
A History of Canberra Electronic Music Artists
That article lists events year by year like: the formation of electronic music projects in Canberra; some of the major gigs; and most of all it lists the releases by the music projects - the cassette-tapes, vinyl 12"s, EPs, CD albums, tracks on various-artist compilations.
The article links to audio files for a large number of tracks.
I was inspired to write that article because of an event in February 2024 that was about "Canberra Electronic Music". It appeared that the people involved with that - seems to be 'MusicACT' - had little to zero knowledge about the 35+ year history of electronic music projects that had formed, produced and released music, built the early scenes and been part of scenes in Canberra; long before the past 5-10 years.
As I've been a DJ in Canberra for 30+ years I'm familiar with how it is with knowledge in scenes; of the turnover of people every several years, with waves of people coming and going; that when new/young people join a scene they learn only a portion of the history known by the scene-people who are a bit older than them; and that they only know a portion of what the people just before them knew.
Within 10 years a great deal of knowledge is lost.
Hence people in 2024, who range from teens to mid-30s, may not know much if anything about the projects and people who were doing similar things - electronic music - in the 1990s or even the 2000s.
This is especially so regards projects who did not [seek to] achieve major massive commercial success with a song that's popular 20-30 years later. And we know that all around the world, only a very small % of artists achieve that!
And the internet as we know it now, has only been a thing since the mid-2000s; noting that sites like youtube and facebook launched then.
Hence artists of the 90s and early 00s have not been able to make a large online footprint. Even those who were popular on radio in the 90s or early 00s, they are little known after 5-10 years.
And the artists who made music before the last 15 years, prior to about 2010, society didn't have the fancy pocket technology gadgets that everyone now takes for granted - smartphones that take quality photos, audio, video.
So there isn't even much history of photos let alone video, prior to 2005. As for the 1990s few photos were ever taken. Taking and making video was almost unheard of; seemed like rocket science.
Add to that a lot of independently-made music has not been released online. And for what has, it was uploaded quietly without fanfare. It hasn't received significant promotions online because the promotional buzz for their music release was decades ago when it was new. That buzz was usually done on radio and in the print press. And what internet coverage there was, so much has gone as so many sites die and go offline after 5-10 years. On top of all that, the artists and promoters have long-ago moved on to other life things ...
So the music that was made decades ago, independently, it gets covered in the dust of time.
It is difficult to learn about it unless someone has compiled the history in one place ...
So, having grown up with the scene from the late 80s and having promoted the artists on radio for ~20 years, this is my effort to document this part of Canberra history, as best I can. I reckon I can do it better than anyone else because in the 90s and 00s it seemed I was the only person who was really eager to know what electronic music was being by Canberrans. I sought out and found artists and their productions; and did what I could to promote them - mostly via airplay on my 2XX radio shows.
So this site is my effort to brush off the dust; to bring information together and make it easier to find; to pay respect to the many people who embarked early upon the electronic music journey when it was very expensive and therefore difficult to do; also when it was difficult because electronic music was 'looked down upon' and even mocked by the overall music industry and by a lot of the general public in the 1980s and 1990s.
The people who made and promoted electronic music - in that more challenging social climate of the 1980s to the mid-2000s - side-noting that most of them burnt out after years of activity - they paved the way to create a broad social acceptance and appreciation for electronic music. Their efforts made things vastly easier for the later waves of artists to achieve what they have, which includes commercial success and recognition.
Over time, as I build the site, I plan to add interviews and more compilations to cover time periods and artists that weren't covered in the "ElectriCity" CD compilation series of 2003-2004.
For now, you can hear and download those compilations via the links below, for free ... Around 3 hours of Canberra electronic music on Bandcamp:
You can find links to more music via the notes for different tracks and artists on those bandcamp pages; and also on this blog's main article:
A History of Canberra Electronic Music Artists
:)
The rambler of the notes:
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Copyright notice - this site and the articles are copyrighted to the human entity behind the 'robot citizen' name. These articles are based on experience and connections made across 35+ years. I've experienced too many scenarios of younger people stealing/copying my work and attempting to present it as their own. Don't do that because if you do, it looks real bad to everyone else and that will damage you long-term; also you will have me as a major long-term thorn-in-your-side. You don't want that problem. I'm a friendly helpful humanoid if you're good. So be good. :)
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