Aussie music

Hello readers, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’ve been thinking a little about music recently. Essentially, I love music. I like to listen to it a lot, and I’m certain many people are in the same boat. The thing is though, I prefer Australian music to music from overseas. That isn’t to say I listen to only Aussie music, or that I only listen to Midnight Oil or The Veronicas, oh no.

There’s a wealth of excellent Australian music that I believe many people are unaware of, mostly because many of the thousands of great small Aussie bands simply don’t have the advertising budget that all the mainstreamers do.

In the same vein as the classic “Australian-made” advertisement, I believe I’m doing my part to keep great musicians on our shores producing great music by buying Aussie albums.

For those of you who may already be scoffing, shaking your heads or saying something along the lines of “there’s no such thing as Australian made insert your genre of choice here“, have I got a shock for you!

Firstly, checkout triplejunearthed.com; the latest incarnation of TripleJ’s Unearthed competition allowing bands from all over the country to submit a few songs to be judged by the Australian public at large and TripleJ, with the winner being given a grant and some studio time to record a debut album, allowing them to prove their worth and go on to spread their musical talent across the globe.

There’s almost 10,000 songs on the website that you can listen to anywhere, anytime; picking your favourites and rating each track. The good thing is though, there’s almost every conceivable genre available on the site: dance, electronic, hip-hop, indie, metal, pop, punk, rock, roots, and no doubt their respective sub-genres are included too.

Aside from TripleJ, MySpace Music is also a great place to find acts — hit the music search page, select Australia as the country, and search to your hearts’ content by a combination of genre, sounds like, influences, and everything else!

To get you started, here are a few Australian bands I think are top shit:

• pnau, dance-music duo, listen to Wild Strawberries
• Muscles, dance-music, listen to Ice Cream
• The Dirty Secrets, rock, listen to Five Feet of Snow
• Dead Letter Circus, rock, listen to The Mile
• Bushido, prog/rock, listen to Original

There are so many more artists I could add to the above list — but then, I’d be taking all the fun away from you, wouldn’t I?

Of course, once you’ve found yourselves some good Aussie artists to love, you can head over to TripleJ’s Gig guide to find out where they’re playing next!