Music For Small Audiences

Some memories can be called restorative nostalgia, where we long to return to a favoured place. Other memories are better described as reflective nostalgia, in which we focus on irreparable loss. In both cases, the memory of the past is a positive one. Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut had it right when he urged us - "please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." Episode 019 of Music For Small Audiences is called Tomorrows Nostalgia Today. It is a deep and emotive mix, and it runs just a bit under two and a half hours.

This is Episode 018 of Music For Small Audiences. It gets its name from a recent weekend trip I took through South Australia with friends, relying heavily on the GPS and mapping features of my mobile phone and tablet in order to explore the world one spontaneous turn at a time. I remember a time before such technology existed, when directions were vital in order to reach an intended destination, and deviations from the directed path were fraught with peril. Nowadays we can go where we like with a clear head and an open mind, knowing (flat batteries notwithstanding) we will be able to find our way to our intended destination.

If we are to maintain balance, then for every period of tension there must be a release. But if life is about growth, about finding your limits and pushing beyond them, and building new settlements beyond ones existing barriers, then must we not also dig ever deeper into ourselves when it comes time to take a break? This mix is Episode 017 of Music For Small Audiences, and it is the product of a recent decompression session - a moment of clarity after the end of another semester of study (my second last). At just under two hours long, it provides a suitable soundtrack to kick back, dial it up, and take a deep dive into that part of you that defends the balance between work and play in your life.

Where to start? I spent a lot of quality time with a Sony Playstation during my undergraduate days. The James Bond-esque spy shooter Syphon Filter was a brilliant game, but I always wondered about where they came up with the name for the Syphon Filter virus around which the game was built. I suspected it was something a Japanese game designer came up with having seen the words syphon and filter together in the context of coffee making techniques. I have had my horizons expanded in recent weeks, thanks to the arrival as a birthday gift of a Hario coffee syphon (complete with cloth filter). This episode was mixed as the soundtrack to its arrival, during a Friday night adventure the night before my 40th birthday party. Three hours long, it is a laid-back nod to new friends, new tunes, and a new way to make my very favourite beverage.

A wise man once said that the real purpose of setting a goal is what it makes you while you are pursuing it. We become our future selves through the challenges we encounter - which in many cases are the challenges we set up for ourselves. Per aspera ad astra et cetera, right? Sometimes being thrown in the deep end is the only way to fly, if you will excuse the mangled metaphor. I have spent most of the past week feeling very much like I had been thrown in the deep end (mostly in a good way), and this mix was the Friday night decompression session that came at the end of it. As the name suggests, it is a dive into some of the deeper tracks I have been digging lately. However under the pump, out of your depth, or up the creek you find yourself, may this mix fill your ears with happy thoughts.

I have often thought aloud that I would rather be busy than bored. In that context, the past few weeks have been quite enjoyable. Work and school are both meters-pegged-to-the-red in terms of workload as I write this, but as I see it you are never too busy to celebrate successes when and where they come along. Episode 014 of Music For Small Audiences is the fruit of a little celebration, a Friday night in with a bottle of French bubbles and a box of new tunes. Deep and groovy with a positive vibe, this two-hour live mix is a soundtrack both for getting busy, and for celebrations well-earned through perseverance.

Some things in life get more interesting the further away you get from them. Other things move so quickly that if you blink you can miss them. Perspective is everything - and while we all view the world through our own unique lenses, I think most would agree that there is an exciting and ephemeral magic in getting up close and personal with a fast-moving thing, be it a bird, plane, or person. Fleeting moments strung together make a story - and as a recently reformed dynamic duo once observed, tricky time never slows. This mix is for those who use repetitive melodic music the way I do, to freeze time and crawl into a moment from a distance. It is called The Romance Of The Telescope, and it is Episode 013 of Music For Small Audiences.

Sometimes just a little bit is enough - and sometimes too much is OK too. It is true with hot sauce, and it is true with life. Episode 012 of Music For Small Audiences is deep and moody mix. It gets its name in part from my ability to sometimes go hard on capsaicin-based condiments, and in part from the string of very warm late summer days we enjoyed here in Melbourne during the week this mix was put together. It runs two hours and twelve minutes long, and if you have enjoyed my podcasts so far then you should be just fine settling in for a proper listen with this one.

And so it is that Episode 011 of Music For Small Audiences is upon us. Here we have a two-and-a-half hour mix of melodic grooves - at once both sparse and emotive, with an easy beginning, a bouncy middle, and a thought-provoking exit. In here you'll hear a bit of progressive house, a little bit of the more mainstream stuff, and a whole lot of love. Mixed live in Richmond, Australia in the heat of the southern summer.

This is Episode 010 of Music For Small Audiences. Here in Australia, we are in the middle of a long weekend, thanks to a statutory holiday called Australia Day. It is a long-running tradition that the radio station triple j counts down its "hottest 100" every Australia Day counting down the hundred biggest tunes of the year. With that in mind, to celebrate having made it to ten podcasts, I thought I would pull together a bit of a hit parade of my own. It's not really a countdown, but a trip through some of the songs that have been putting a spring in my step over the past twelve months. The inspiration for this mix can be traced to four events: a long week in Denmark for my good friend Dan's 40th birthday in June, a Stampede week set at Habitat in Calgary in July, a marathon mix-up with superstar DJ Andrew Campbell (aka Soups) in early December, and a house party on New Years Eve celebrating Luke Porter's return to Melbourne. Many of the songs in this mix featured in those sets, and it has been good fun putting them all into one place. Unlike my previous podcasts this mix has been crafted in Ableton Live, with some parts played live and others arranged by hand and tweaked until they sit just right. There is a lot going on, so if you have a good pair of headphones or quality speakers, dial it up, kick back and enjoy. Happy Australia Day!

Summer is well and truly here in Melbourne, with today being the start of a forecast four day heat wave with temperatures in the 40C+ range. Here's hoping my air conditioner can cope. Episode 009 of Music For Small Audiences is called Don't Forget The Vouchers, and it is a collection of beautiful melodies - some simple, and some complex. For as long as I've been listening to music my preference has been for beat-driven melodies (as my family, who will readily recall my favourite marching band records note for note, will attest). To me, the vast majority of dance music has always seemed devoid of deeply emotive melody. Too much of it seems to lean either towards saccharine hooks and musical cliches, or towards bleeps, bloops, boring beats, and over-reliance on the build-up/breakdown tension/release cycle. On this mix you'll find a thorough exploration of many types of deep and emotive melodic moments. From the simple, such as a single note melody backed by suspended chords or hypnotic and evolving one-chord grooves, through to radio friendly vocal tracks and epic instrumental progressive trance, there's a bit of something in here for everyone, with the big melodies and the small framed against each other across a two-and-a-bit hour mix. It was mixed live late last year.

Happy new year! The start of a new calendar year is always an exciting time. The past twelve months have been exceptionally pleasant for me, and hopefully they've been pretty good for you too. This is Episode 008 of Music For Small Audiences, and it's called How Many Watts Is That Lightbulb? It's just over two hours long, and it's a largely instrumental mix of groove-driven progressive house and melodic techno, punctuated with regular deep dives down to the slow-and-low and a couple of very energetic high points. I like instrumental mixes - they give thoughts room to breathe. May your thoughts breathe deeply and easily, and I hope you have a happy new year.

This is Episode 007 of Music For Small Audiences. It's a two hour and twelve minute mix, and it gets its name from the fact that, well, I like the idea of a girl with a bicycle. Bicycles are a unique form of transportation - fun and practical, they give you both independence and fitness. I like both of these traits in people. Hope you enjoy the mix!

Episode 006 of Music For Small Audiences is called Six Dishes Beats Four Decks. It's a 90-minute mix of groovy tunes. The name comes from the acknowledgement that we are all good at different things, and from the understanding that anything we put our mind to and practice consistently, we will get at least passably good at. There are times - such as when I am hungry - that I wonder how much better I would eat if I put as much time in to learning to cook as I have in to learning to mix music together. Having seen someone juggle six dishes, I must say I am impressed. I have enough trouble BBQing a steak and pan-frying cheese at the same time. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes on the order of 10,000 hours of proper effort in order to master a given area of expertise. Given how many hours each of us is allotted to spend here on earth in a single lifetime, I guess that means you can only get so good at so many things. Does that mean we should choose our hobbies carefully? Or merely that we are what we repeatedly do?

Australian-Canadian DJ Matthew Belleghem brings to this podcast 30+ years of experience as a curator of engaging and eclectic electronic music. Having spent time as a club DJ, music producer, synthesizer salesperson, record shop clerk and dance music journalist, his tastes range from underground progressive house music through to ambient, new wave, nu disco, trip hop, trance, techno, downtempo and psychedelica. Mixed live in Melbourne, Music For Small Audiences is a guided exploration through the most colourful corners of his music collection, and is perfect for headphone and living room listening.