I started writing about music at the start of COVID -- long past the death throes of the blog era. Social media had nuclear-exploded the firmly established dynamics we once maintained around the cultural intermediation of music. Some argued that it was for the better: artists now had direct access to audiences and in that interaction, no need for the pesky idiolect of blogs, street press, and those thankless institutions/gatekeepers of local music.

Yet one is rarely afforded autonomy for nuffin, despite what the DIY goobs might tell ya. It’s reassuring to see many come to terms with the fact that these social media platforms have simply replaced grassroots structures with their own exploitative form of hypermediation. We get “direct access” but it’s always foreclosed around the commerical logics of big tech (and perhaps concealing the absence of deeper connections).

In the last year I’ve been inspired by a handful of websites (recommended above) that have cropped up in resistant fashion against the de facto monopoly platforms like Instagram hold over the relationships we maintain in local music scenes. Following their lead, I’ve cobbled together this website as an (a)live repository for Stew’s writing and curation. This entire thing was vibe coded and the irony of it being possible entirely due to advancements in AI and LLM's is not lost on me. Hopefully it gets more people to read Asha's writing. It's some of the finest you'll see as far as contemporary Australian music musings go.

This site has been created with the intention of remaining online for as long as possible — even if only for the one or two rabbitholing people that seek to uncover a random bit of context, or the odd folk that finds value in a relatively ordered presentation of interesting Australian music.

It was also a good excuse to delete my previous email and get off all those horrendous and annoying PR mailing lists.

— Max