There are some among us who fondly cherish the memory of the dearly departed Central Station Records (OK, it’s not technically dead – it exists, albeit swallowed up into Universal Music Australia, so best to keep those rose-tints on).
Remembered for its landmark Central Station Records stores in Sydney (eventually laid to rest in what is now Oxford Art Factory, and formerly of Pitt Street), Melbourne and across the country, this was a label synonymous with dance music in Australia for decades.
Central Station was to become an essential Australian conduit for the dance music circulating around Europe and the United States, with the charting success of 1994’s ‘Here’s Johnny’ by Dutch doof duo Hocus Pocus in particular catapulting the label into the greater public conscience.
Intrinsically tied in with community broadcasting and the establishment of clubs and other music institutions, Central Station was a defining social and musical foundation in Australia. Its seed, pregnant with the sounds and influences of foreign music movements, quickly germinated across the country, enabling thousands of DJs, dancers, collectors and the general public to be exposed to a hitherto largely unexplored area of music.
Perhaps most importantly, it enabled a generation with alternate avenues of expression, cultivating positivity and openness, whether musically, socially, physically or sexually. Though you’d barely find a whiff of its tradition these days, these were the foundations set into motion by the eccentric Joe Palumbo and enterprising Morgan Williams.
Like many, I’m extremely partial to nostalgia. Around about the age ‘Young Adult’ fiction was apparently relevant, I was rifling through CD racks at department stores, constantly confronted with crappy compilations that effectively put radio hits direct-to-disc (So Fresh was, in fact, a bit rotten). So it was hard not to notice the violently outdated (even then!) Windows 95 mythology-meets-fantasy graphic adorning the latest Skitzmix (it’s all in a name) or the citric neon glare of Wild FM CD covers.
These were to be my introductions to Central Station, in its distilling of dance music’s many guises into readily consumed mixes. While I might have missed the boat on Hithouse and the sound of the underground, I was finely curating a hot mess of Vengaboys, Barbara Tucker, Deep Dish and Eiffel 65…
Ten years on from the occasionally embarrassing (but absolutely necessary) retrospective documentary 30 Years Of Central Station, and I’m still waxing lyrical about a national music institution that was a formative entry point into trance, vocal house, Eurotrash and the world beyond.
But where do we go from here? As far as Central Station is concerned, the train’s pretty much pulled into the terminal, with dozens of record labels now shouldering the many-headed hydra of genre and subgenre. While we are unlikely to ever experience anything quite as encompassing, the future looks very promising for Australian electronic music, and we’ll be looking at a few of its brightest-burning stars in the months to come.
Best releases this week:
Check out DJ Xanax’s EDR004, with its heavy, bleak overtone, and its dense, juicy breakbeat, while Vol. 3 from the Rhythms Of The Pacific label offers up four slices of jazzy, airy house with a hint of acid. And in case you missed it, Paso’s We Can See That EP from earlier this year is house steadily fed on jazz and hip hop, or ‘low-slung’, as the cool kids call it.
Recommended:
FRIDAYNOVEMBER 11
Fantastic Man @ Peoples Club @Goodbar
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12
Reggae Carnival Market Day, Marrickville @Fraser Park
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12
Tom Trago @Burdekin Hotel
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13
Harvey Sutherland, Andy Hart, Youandewan @Cake Wines Cellar Door
FRIDAYNOVEMBER 18
De La Soul @Greenwood Hotel
FRIDAYNOVEMBER 25
Max Graef @Peoples Club @Goodbar
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27
Move D, Discodromo & Wonky @Cruise Bar
TUESDAYJANUARY 3
Chance The Rapper @Big Top Sydney, Luna Park
SATURDAY JANUARY 14
Moses Sumney @St. Stephen’s Uniting Church
SUNDAYJANUARY 22
Pantha Du Prince @Oxford Art Factory
