Music

Cover design by Daniel Baragwanath Earlier this month, Orphan Records released a various artists compilation titled Or.VA1 for Mental Health Awareness Day on October 10. I took part with a new track from my Tuff Sherm project called 'Ska Console' (coming in at number 6, as you can see above on the release's excellent cover by Daniel Baragwanath). The lineup of artists is really excellent and all the tracks are worth a look. The release can be streamed via this specially designed mini-site before heading over to Bandcamp to buy. Proceeds from digital sales will support the Child Mind Institute. Ska Console was completed

More news on the return of Tuff Sherm – last seen on the Squire's Skull 12" for Normals Welcome in 2017 – coming up soon. In the meantime I wanted to provide some links (some with wav-quality options) to a selection of past DJ mixes, since some of these are now hard to find. Time period for these is about 2014 - 2017.   Tuff Sherm - Pure Space on FBi mp3 / wav Tuff Sherm - Taxx on FBi Click mp3 / wav Tuff Sherm - FSLRadio on DDR mp3 / wav Tuff Sherm - Hot Haus Radio 15 on NTS mp3 / wav Tuff Sherm - Set It

    Above you can hear my most recent Dro Carey single 'Atmosphere' and its remix, courtesy of Strict Face, both released last year.   Atmosphere first came about during a session here in Sydney with Kwame and Raj Mahal. Going away from that session with Kwame's hook and Raj's verse, I restructured and added some new elements before getting in touch with London MC Renz. Renz really impressed me in a freestyle video I saw on Instagram and on radio sets alongside fellow Mob Set members. The three artists I collaborated with on this tune have gone from strength to strength and it

  Near the end of January Soothsayer released this track from my Dro Carey project, a dance/R&B song created in collaboration with artists Taliwhoah and Genesis Owusu. I'm pleased to say it's been getting a great amount of support from Triple J here in Australia, appearing as a Spot Add on its week of release and being bumped up to full rotation yesterday, close to 6 weeks later. I know not everyone keenly follows the Triple J adds - but basically to summarise - the timing of those two things is kind of exciting, because it shows that there is a

  DDD, a Paris record store and label, recently released a reissue of a 1984 album by the experimental ensemble Un Drame Musical Instantané. As you can see from the artwork scan, it comes packaged with a nude, transparent 12" featuring some newly produced remixes. I produced a Tuff Sherm remix for this project. It was solicited quite mysteriously from Xavier Ehretsmann of DDD so it was a nice surprise when the packaging and other remixers' names emerged.   The other remixes and re-workings come from Thurston Moore, Jorge Velez and Eltron John. Appropriately it was Moore's famous list of favourite free jazz and

Header image - Good Manners Melbourne Music Week Closing Party at the Victoria State Library (Photo - Finding Figaro)     Edit: Looks like the Brunswick Sound mix series has moved or been removed - so please enjoy the other two mixes in this post!   If you've already listened through all the Triple J Residency mixes and find yourself wanting to hear some more Dro mixes, here are some recent sets recorded for three different mix series.   They're all on the shorter side, which means they get to showcase quite different genres and energies (compared to the type of tracks that work for longer mixes).

Edit/update December 2017: Despite my praise about the platform, the third week's mix from the residency has been removed from Mixcloud! I've sent an email to their support team to try and find out why - will report back if I hear anything. Enjoy weeks 1 and 2 below.   In August I was invited to host Triple J's Mix Up show as their monthly resident DJ, which also included an hour long Dro Carey mix each Saturday over 3 weeks. It was a lot of fun hanging with Lewi McKirdy and getting to showcase a bunch of interesting tracks. If you

  You can grab Elevate (Feat. Cadell & Chocolate) as a free download here   Following the release of the 'Dark Zoo' EP earlier this year on Soothsayer, which touched mainly on house and UK Garage modes, I wanted to do something that tapped back into the genre that got things started as far as 'Dro Carey' productions - grime.   I produced this beat at the beginning of July, in the midst of some of the Australian Dark Zoo tour shows. From the morning I wrote it, up to getting the verses in and everything mixed, the whole track was finished about a month

  This is a free download track that I released late last year. 2015 was a productive year for the Tuff Sherm project, however, the majority of tracks that came out under the TS banner that year were collaborations with Patch Free (The EPs on Butter Sessions and Hot Haus). So I wanted to do something to indicate where I felt the mood of the Tuff Sherm solo material was heading. I guess I recorded this track as a kind of 'update' on the project. That's the vaguely strategic rationale behind it. The creative impetus was that as soon as the

  Lullabies For Insomniacs was a radio show on Melbourne's PBS 106.7 FM. It remains an ongoing mix series and website run by the show's host Izabel Caligiore. Izabel invited me to contribute a mix for the series so I decided to take the opportunity to spotlight some of the Paint en Pointe pieces that were not included on the Where to Now? album release. Apart from the footage of the actual shows these pieces haven't been heard anywhere before. (And in the case of one of them, it's not even available that way as we did not get sufficient coverage