Brisbane’s hip hop scene has changed immensely over the past one and a half decades, and watching over it all have been DJ Katch and Dave Atkins.

Katch and Atkins are the men behind both the Resin Dogs and Hydrofunk Records. The Dogs, as a loose collective, have been carving up the national hip hop scene since 1996. But it’s arguably under the banner of Hydrofunk Records that these local godfathers have had a greater influence on Australian rap music.

Before the internet, before Elefant Traks and long before Obese, Hydrofunk were picking up the sounds of the artists they loved and offering to release them on record. The way Katch tells it, this was never anything to do with money or a business plan, but about getting involved and giving a leg up to those they perceived as having the talent to take on Australia.

“We just like putting out music that we like,” he explains. “Because there’s no artist development anymore, and that’s something we really like doing, and helping people out – our record deals are almost like mentor programs!

“We were never expecting [the label] to go like it did. We were just wanting to play a few shows and press some vinyl … We didn’t focus on three-year contracts or budgets or anything like that – we just let the artist do what they felt.”

But Hydrofunk grew, ending up under the distribution wing of Virgin/ EMI. No small feat in the late ‘90s, when operating out of Brisbane often meant operating out of the industry loop. “There are a lot of meetings that go on down south that you miss out on,” Katch says. “If you’re not in that circle of people, it’s harder – unless you’ve already cracked it. There are so many more avenues down there, because you’ve gotta be in their face or they forget about you. It’s like putting out Resin Dogs music these days: we do an album every five to seven years, so [every time] there’s a whole new generation of people to say, ‘Who are you cats?’”

The Brisbane disconnect flowed in the other direction as well, with both international and up-and-coming artists from the south often choosing to ignore Queensland altogether.

“When it came to tours and things like that, they used to go Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. This little triangular thing. Which was fine; that’s all good. But I remember going to a Run-D.M.C. concert down in New South Wales and there was a massive breaking circle. Four of us from Brisbane took on pretty much the whole Sydney collective, and we beat them. They didn’t know who the hell we were.”

With the isolation came a relaxed innovation, the Brisbane hip hop crews growing independently of the southern states and developing their own way of doing things. “From breaking, we always had a different style to everybody else,” Katch says. “A lot of moves got invented in Brisbane. A lot of the headspins you see these days worldwide are what we designed and came up with out of Brisbane, and just doing it in our backyards. It’s the same with MCing – we’ve always had a different style. You have a look at a lot of dudes around the country: many are trying to rap like Lazy Grey. He’s been there since dot. We definitely have a different style.”

Not that Hydrofunk’s influence didn’t reach young rappers in other cities. Melbourne MC Mantra remembers catching the Resin Dogs on a tour of his home town and being blown away by the power of their live shows. “It wasn't until I had already started making hip hop music that I really investigated the Australian scene. Their passion for the music is obvious,” Mantra says. “I met Dave and Katch a few years later and it was evident that this passion was always there, it wasn't just something they enacted on the stage. That's what I love most about the Hydrofunk crew.” 

Hydrofunk’s output would wax and wane over the years, partly in reflection of the ebb and flow of talent coming out of Queensland, but also because of the heads’ other projects. Atkins would do a stint behind the kit for Wolfmother, while Katch rediscovered his gleefully right-angled DJ sets, performing in and around Brisbane on a regular basis. Now, with Hydrofunk’s 15-year anniversary upon them the duo are looking to rebuild some lost momentum, although Katch admits it’s a very different environment from that of the late ‘90s, when electronic distribution barely existed at all.

“We don’t have the big team like we used to,” he says. “It’s just been about setting that up again, and a lot more learning. We’re working out the lay of the land of the industry, because CD sales are down, digital sales are slowly picking up, and just finding that common ground – especially with not having a massive team, where we actually do it ourselves and don’t have anyone in the office doing it for us. It’s a bit of a shock going on tour and then coming home and saying, ‘That’s right, we don’t have a team’.”

Still, Hydrofunk started out as a series of hip hop parties in the early to mid ‘90s, and that’s how Katch, Atkins, and the rest of the Resin Dogs plan to celebrate a decade and a half in the industry this coming weekend. Joining them will be an eclectic mix of established names as well as impressive up-and-comers, including Mantra, Bankrupt Billionaires, Tigermoth and Fort Kilsby.

“We’ll start off slow, take it easy,” Katch says, laughing. “There are a few acts on there that we haven’t signed. It’s just about artists that we like: Bankrupt Billionaires, Tigermoth and Thavy – she’s a young singer that we just came across. We’re going to do a Two Dogs DJ set, Resin Dogs live, and I think I’m gonna spin. We’ve got a VJ putting together some visuals and all that stuff. It’s just going to be a big party: come and have a dance, come and have a boogie. And we’ll act as the in-house band for everyone, like we often have. We’ve created a little mix EP of some of the artists performing on the night, which will be available via digital download. It’s free with entry. We’re bringing in some old vinyl stock to have a little store there: what we’ve done, where we’ve been, where we’re going.”

Katch talks about the year ahead as being one of online consolidation, before ramping up the Hydrofunk presence in earnest. When asked the secret to his label’s longevity, Katch, as always, takes the humble route, talking about “timing” and the periods he and Atkins have taken away from the coalface. Mantra, though, is in no doubt about what keeps Hydrofunk alive and kicking.

“They've worked with amazing artists from all over the world and had great success, but for them it's still just about the music,” he says. “They live for making music, which is how they've managed to have such longevity and credibility as artists, and as a label.”

THE HYDROFUNK RECORDS 15 YEAR BIRTHDAY BASH TAKES OVER CONISTON LANE SATURDAY MAY 12.

With Evidence, it’s not so much a case of starting his story from the beginning, but figuring out which beginning you want to start with.

The Venice Beach-based rapper has had, in a sense, three careers. Most well known is his work with Dilated Peoples, the trio Evidence formed with Rakaa Iriscience and DJ Babu to record a slew of well-regarded longplayers around the turn of the millennium. More recently there’s been a solo career, which last year saw the release of ‘Cats & Dogs’, one of the better US rap LPs in recent memory.

But before Evidence had even thought about laying some vocals down on record, he was out and about as a Los Angeles teen in 1992, attending open mic nights at the infamous Troubadour and harassing producer and future collaborator the Alchemist about getting up onstage.

“I was just hungry. It was new to me, and I was probably a little overzealous,” he says, laughing. “That’s why now I never put down on anybody trying to get on – I understand the concept of it. I’d heard there was an open mic and I was there really just to dance at that time – dancing was what everyone did – and the DJ threw on an instrumental and people could get up to rap. That was dope. This was real early.”

It was through those open mic nights that Evidence would eventually meet Rakaa and Babu, but at the time he had little idea that something special was brewing. After all, as he points out, he was barely 14 years old.

“I wasn’t really up on it, to be honest – professionally. I was kinda just in my own little world. I couldn’t even go out that much. I couldn’t even stay out that late, you know.”

By the turn of the millennium, Dilated Peoples were darlings of the west coast underground, their album ‘The Platform’ attracting the eye of pundits as well as listeners looking to make a break with the region’s gangster rap past. Still, Evidence as an MC would remain a smaller cog in the machine until he struck out on his own in 2007 with his first true solo album, ‘The Weatherman LP’. Now, with the release of ‘Cats & Dogs’ under his belt, the rapper has been introduced to his first dose of major blogosphere exposure.

“Some people think I’m a new artist, which is a real interesting dynamic in itself,” he says. “But then there are those who know me; I’m an artist who’s been around. So there’s this weird duality … But I think it would be real different if I’d just come out in 2000 as a solo artist, instead of 2006 or whenever it was that I did. I think all the experience and all the knowledge and all the ups and downs I’d been through prepared me much more for this.”

Part of the exposure he’s now experiencing is down to Evidence’s hook-up with Rhymesayers, the mid-western indie powerhouse that seems to be thriving in the brave new world of the internet. Evidence jokes self-deprecatingly that he caught label bosses Slug and Siddiq’s attention by holding a gun to their heads, but it was really the quality and distinctive nature of his work that saw him invited into the Rhymesayers inner sanctum.

“I don’t know if they were aware of my full vision or not. Either way, I thank them for giving me a shot on it, because it’s definitely been successful for me. At a time when things have been going down, I’ve been fortunate enough to have some things going back up, so it would be good to keep it going.

“I like the way they work. Obviously, they’re successful. And then they don’t have much on the roster that sounds like me, which is great. It’s a place where you can have your own lane and I feel like a lot of us share the same ideals and the same thoughts and the same goals, but we all spit our rhymes differently and that’s great … When I signed up there I was considering making music in a style that leaned towards what some of their own artists were already doing. But after a conversation with certain people they were like, ‘Please don’t. We signed you for what you do.’ That was great to hear.”

Of course, in the age of the 360 record deal, Evidence has also been doing plenty of touring through Rhymesayers as well. And this coming weekend, he hits local shores in the company of Atmosphere for a string of dates around the country. With a new album to ply and a successful 2010 Australian tour with Total Eclipse under his belt, he’s very much looking forward to it.

“Yeah, yeah. Definitely,” he enthuses, before deadpanning: “So long as there’s some weed.”

EVIDENCE SUPPORTS ATMOSPHERE AT THE HI-FI THIS SATURDAY, MAY 5.

Local music fans aren’t afraid to argue passionately for the quality of bands that have been pouring out of Brisbane in recent times. But what about the Gold Coast?

Long regarded as a cultural backwater, bands on the coast would usually pack their bags and travel up the M1 in order to have their music heard. These days, however, you more and more hear the Gold Coast referred to as a ‘city’, and perhaps certain preconceptions turn on such a tag.

“It’s definitely evolving,” says Paul George, lead singer of Tijuana Cartel, who, like Bleeding Knees Club alongside them, are capturing ears both nationally and internationally. “Actually, a friend of mine said this just earlier: it’s such a concrete jungle and it can be a little superficial, but in that environment you always get a few weeds growing up in-between. We kinda like that … There is a nice little thing going on at the Gold Coast. But what I find funny is that every band that comes out seems to have a completely different style. I don’t think it’s really developed a scene, as such, it’s just that certain people are coming up with their own sounds and getting out there.”

Tijuana Cartel certainly pack a sound of their very own. As we talk about the coast, George mentions strip-staple Swingin’ Safari, and it’s a great way to sum up the Tijuana MO – a heady mix of influences from around the world presented via block-rocking beats and bowel-moving basslines. It’s addictive and it’s distinctive, and came to a head recently on the Tijuanas’ third longplayer, ‘M1’.

“We have been happy with the album, in the sense that we’ve sold more of this album than we have any others,” George explains. “At first it was a bit hard, because we had a lot of people saying that they liked our old stuff better than our new stuff. And we could see that because it was quite a leap from what we were doing. But I think over time people got used to it and the songs seem to be growing and people request songs off that album. It’s worked out in the end.”

But what about artistically? Does the band now reflect upon the six months since the album’s release and think about things they’d do differently?

“Yeah. I like to say I don’t, but I think I do that with all our songs and albums. It’s very rare that I can actually put it on and enjoy it – now and then I can, I just switch off to it – but I think it’s also the fact that we know exactly what went into it: with each guitar bit or synthesizer you think, ‘I could have turned that up a bit,’ or, ‘We should have tried this or that’. I find it hard to let things go and move on.”

Regardless of what George thinks, ‘M1’ paced strongly both critically and commercially and – as albums are often designed to do these days – lit a fire under the Tijuanas’ electric live performances. Late last year, the five-piece ripped through 32 dates around the country. It was a watershed tour, confirming the band’s live prowess to a heap of fresh fans while introducing their unique sound to many more again.

“I think we’re such a word of mouth band,” George says. “We kind of need to tour a lot, because it seems that people will tell their friends that they saw this great band that others have got to come and check out next time. And for the fact that they know it’s a bit of a party band, we can come back regularly. We can do three or four tours a year and get away with it, whereas other bands have to pull back. It definitely pays off.

“I mean, we’re all looking about ten years older because it is a hard slog and you don’t sleep much and you tend to party harder than you really should – all that kind of stuff — but it’s definitely worth it and we love it too. I think it takes a certain sort of person to do it. We’ve gone through quite a few members because that slog of touring gets to people. Unless you really love it, it really takes its toll.”

Now the band are looking to hit the road again, with 12 dates pencilled in around the country during May and June. This time, though, other than taking it a little easier, they’re also mixing up the show, bringing in new live elements via an extra percussionist and a clutch of trumpet players.

“We still have our own percussionist,” George says. “But we’re also taking along a Middle Eastern guy from Byron who’s quite phenomenal. We’re also going to be packing a few different trumpet players as well, and on top of that we have a lot of new songs. So we’re mixing it up and bringing on some special guests and really working with different aspects in terms of lighting and different sound engineers. We’ve tried to give it more impact and a greater stadium vibe.

“We’re also trying to get it a little closer to a DJ set. We want it to be more seamless, focussed on getting people dancing and having a good time. We used to chop and change beats-per-minute quite often and I think it’s better to get people – at least for three or four songs in a row – into one groove and have them dancing that way.”

The tour is to support Tijuana Cartel’s latest single, ‘Offer Yourself’. It’s the first cut from the band’s latest studio sessions, this time with EMI A&R boss and producer, Scott Horscroft. Horscroft has worked behind the boards for Empire Of The Sun, The Presets and 360, and helps bring the Tijuanas back to a more organic sound  – something that perhaps balances the intricacy of the band’s early work with the raw power of ‘M1’.

“We’ve sort of gone back to a bit more of a Middle Eastern vibe, I think. Also, we’ve learned a lot about songwriting and how to fit vocals in more and also to get the instruments back in. So we’ve definitely progressed a lot since doing – and by doing – the last album. So yeah, we’re feeling pretty confident at the moment.”

And undoubtedly contributing to their confidence is the announcement of Tijuana Cartel’s addition to the line-up for Splendour In The Grass. It’s bound to be the festival’s most electric showing in years, a 45 minute sell-out vindicating the organisers’ decision to take it all back to Belongil Fields in Byron Bay.

“I think any band that gets to be part of Splendour must be pretty stoked,” George says, laughing. “It’s our first year on the main stage there and we’ve always wanted to do that, so we’re all very stoked about that, to be honest.”

TIJUANA CARTEL PLAY THE SOUNDLOUNGE, CURRUMBIN, MAY 18 AND THE GREAT NORTHERN, BYRON BAY, MAY 19. SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS TAKES PLACE AT BELONGIL FIELDS JULY 27-29. SPLENDOURINTHEGRASS.COM

It would be easy to look upon Atmosphere’s work in simple terms: an MC and a producer, seven albums, and an intimidating tour schedule. But this is a narrative that runs much deeper than essential statistics. There’s struggle and triumph; unrelenting hard work and artistic reinvention. Perhaps most of all, though, the Atmosphere story is about the creation of a record label and the fostering of a hip hop movement that would grow into one of the most artistically vibrant in the United States.

In the early ‘90s, hip hop had hardly shifted beyond the east and the west coasts; if you didn’t fit into one of those two scenes, you didn’t exist. Which made it hard for a bunch of budding Minneapolis MCs and producers to find their place in rap culture. Slap bang in the middle between the two coasts but shoved right up against the Canadian border, Minneapolis, the capital of Minnesota — or Minnesnowta, as it’s often known colloquially – was a long way from the Bronx’s block parties or the sunny turf wars of California.

“In the early to mid-’90s, I like to say that we were all crabs in a barrel,” explains Sean Daley, who in the guise of Slug provides Atmosphere’s biting lyrical content. “There were so many of us who were trying to get our voices heard. But we didn’t know how to, so we were just mimicking what we saw coming from the coasts. It was kinda like, ‘Okay! Okay! Record labels are evil!’ We learned that from listening to New York rap. And, ‘Okay! You gotta be a little bit hardcore!’ We knew that from listening to LA rap.”

But the amount of talent floating about the city meant it was only a matter of time before Minneapolis found a distinctive voice. A major part of the solution was for Slug and a bunch of collaborators – including Ant, Atmosphere’s producer – to start a record label. The result was Rhymesayers. You’d think kicking off a rap label in the snowy Midwest would have attracted cries of derision from family and friends, but Slug insists that the worst it got was a simple lack of understanding.

“Either that, or they thought it was a great idea,” he says. “By no means did we reinvent the wheel. There had been indie labels in rap since Sugar Hill. Not only that, but we were actually at the tail end of when independent labels could make vinyl and 12”s and that could be your main force of promotion.
“It was a different era; the DJs that spun on mixtapes and radio were kinda the internet, if you know what I mean. They were where people heard about music, so as long as you gave somebody a song that they’d be interested in playing, word of mouth would take care of a lot of the rest. It’s interesting, because it’s still all about word of mouth; it’s just that now that word of mouth is 100 billion times faster. It’s on wi-fi, on the satellite. But it’s the same concept.”
What Slug finds interesting to consider is the idea that had Rhymesayers kicked off today, one of the most well-regarded indie labels in the United States might not have made the cut.

“Because there was a timing involved,” Slug says. “I got to watch tonnes and tonnes of talented artists come after us and never quite make it, because everything started to move faster and develop quicker. Let’s take Atmosphere, for example: we might not be the most cutting edge when it comes to utilising the internet. If you look at a group like Odd Future, and you see how they’ve managed to utilise the internet in a way that’s not only intelligent but also breaking down barriers; we don’t really break down any internet barriers, but we’re lucky we got in before you had to learn how to do that. We built an audience before that level came into it. It’s just really interesting to think about that.”

You suspect Slug is being a little unforgiving on his own operation. Because where every artist to ever appear on the Rhymesayers roster is indeed very similar to Odd Future is in his or her work ethic. It’s become something of a calling card for the label, along with conscious lyrics mixed with the often grimy reality of (sub)urban life. In this respect, Atmosphere paved the way for their labelmates, developing what became known as the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) sound and backing it up with a phenomenal release schedule, which has seen Slug and Ant barely take more than an 18 month break over the last decade and a half.

“From my angle, I just think that if I don’t stay busy, then I’m exploiting my position,” Slug says. “That’s the quickest way to get fired – if you start taking it for granted. And I don’t want to get fired. I love this job, man – it’s the best job I’ve ever had. So when you look at it like that you’re going to put eight hours a day into it … regardless of whether or not I have a very productive, amazing day, I still put in the work, and it just continues that cycle of energy, you know.”
Slug may reference the fact that he wrote two songs the morning before our interview as evidence of that work ethic – “which probably suck,” he adds with a laugh – but where Atmosphere were true pioneers was a willingness to take their sound on the road. Whether Slug and Ant love to tour, they do it regardless.
“It’s funny, because when I started touring, rappers didn’t tour,” Slug says. “Maybe if you were Jay-Z, you did a big tour with other big name acts, or if you were a Run-DMC, you did a big tour with other old school acts. But on the independent side of rap, we were the guys who wrote the book on how to tour independently without label help. I think we stole most of that shit from the punk rock groups: the whole idea of getting in the van and sleeping on people’s floors – punk rockers had been doing that for 25 years already.”

Australia remains one of Atmosphere’s major destinations. When asked, Slug reckons their upcoming tour will be the duo’s sixth visit to these shores, although this time they’ll be bringing along both a keyboardist and a drummer in the form of regular collaborators Erick Anderson and Nate Collis, respectively. And while Slug hasn’t noticed a change in Australian attitudes towards rap music per se, he has noticed a difference in the crowds that come to Atmosphere shows.
“When we first started playing in Australia it was for a Big Day Out, and I met a lot of kids who were only there to see us. But as time went on, we didn’t have so many people who were like, ‘Underground or death!’ We started getting more people who just love music and all types of music. That’s where we’re at now.”

Atmosphere, supported by Evidence, play the HI-FI Saturday May 5.

The original ‘StreetDance 3D’ hit like a hurricane.

Released just on two years ago, it beat franchise rival ‘Step Up’ to the 3D punch by a good four months, and reinvigorated the dance film genre with its straightforward style and British sensibility. It remains one of the most successful independent UK films ever made.

So how do you follow-up such a raging success? For producer James Richardson, the original film was a passion project, and something completely different to anything he’d ever attempted before. While it made sense to do another, he and his fellow filmmakers knew they’d have to top the first instalment in every conceivable way.

“It’s quite a daunting prospect trying to make a sequel, particularly as the first was so successful,” Richardson says. “But the process was really organic, and what really helped is that we sat down and asked ourselves what made ‘StreetDance’ as a film, and we all agreed that it was this fusion of dance styles.”

The first film crossed hip hop and ballet to create a riotous hybrid which bounced about the screen. So, the challenge was on to push the idea even further and find a new and exciting combination. When director Dania Pasquini sent Richardson footage of people doing salsa in a boxing ring, he knew they were onto something.

“Salsa to me was ballroom dancing and long sequined dresses and that kind of stuff,” he says. “But these guys had their tops off and the girls were looking incredibly cool, and they were doing a kind of battle between them. I thought, ‘That’s it; this is totally what we have to do!’”

Pasquini adds: “With the first ‘StreetDance’ film we talked about the whole essence of it and we felt it was very much about introducing different dance styles to a young audience. So for myself and Max [Giwa, the film’s co-director] it was really vital to create another fusion and because we had been working together for so long we knew it was going to be Latin.”

The modus operandi for ‘StreetDance 2 3D’ seems to be to make everything bigger and better. Whereas the first film flipped its way around London, acting as something of an advertisement for the UK capital, this time the filmmakers wanted to take on the European mainland.

“We thought, ‘Let’s look at the rest of Europe and some of the key places’,” Richardson says. “We decided on Paris as a romantic city and so we decided that our lead guy was going to get the best of the best around Europe … This gave us an opportunity to go to Italy, Germany, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris and all these places. It’s all been about picking a place and to show the rest of the world what dance is outside of the US.”

A cynic would argue that it’s also a fine way to broaden your pool of dancing talent, and they’d be right. Pasquini openly admits to cherry picking the best dancers from around Europe.

“We always knew that we wanted to showcase … a wider talent base,” she says, “so that's why we hit Europe. Because in ‘StreetDance 1’ we wanted to show the raft of talent in the UK, and then in ‘StreetDance 2’ we wanted to open it up to the whole world, and Europe especially.”

Leading this Euro ensemble are Falk Hentschel and Sofia Boutella. Hentschel began his professional life as a back-up dancer for Britney Spears and Mariah Carey before branching out into acting, appearing on cable shows ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘The Closer’ as well as taking on a major role in the 2009 Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz vehicle, ‘Knight And Day’. Boutella, meanwhile, is well known in the street dance world: she's a Nike athlete, a renowned hip hop dancer and tours regularly with Madonna. For the filmmakers, the duo were a natural choice, although no small amount of luck played a part in their casting.

“‘You would think there would be a raft of actors who can dance in LA, wouldn’t you?” Giwa says. “Well, there aren’t. But we got lucky with Falk. He came in towards the end of the last round of castings in LA … We spoke to our casting director and when he came in and read on tape we just thought there was something special about him. Fortunately as well he has a Latin [dance] background, which is something that’s very hard to find … He had the complete package.”

“Sofia is a very well known dancer within the street dance world,” Pasquini adds. “So we’d been aware of her extraordinary talents for quite some time and knew we wanted to work with her. It was just a case of getting her excited about this project. We flew to LA to meet her and we were very lucky because she’d been doing acting lessons there for a couple years, so it was perfect timing for her in terms of her career.”

For his part, Hentschel doesn’t hold back when he talks about the level of commitment required of both him and Boutella once on set.

“It is definitely the hardest work I have ever done,” Hentschel says. “Especially the first four weeks [when] it was just Sofia and I, so the focus was just zoomed in on us. If we did something wrong or something wasn’t gelling in general … the pressure was on.  Also, we couldn’t take any breaks because it was just the two of us, so we did it again and again and again. We were sort of crash test dummies and at the same time we didn’t really know what this whole ‘Latin-street fusion' was, so we tried every single lift and even though some of them didn’t end up in the movie, we did them over and over.”

Of course, a ‘StreetDance’ film wouldn’t be complete without some stunt casting to add a bit of gravitas to the project. In the first instalment it was the enigmatic Charlotte Rampling, playing a mentor to the struggling protagonists. This time, the filmmakers have once again confirmed their love of everything indie by nabbing the great Tom Conti, best known for his role in the Lewis Gilbert comedy-drama, ‘Shirley Valentine’.

“Tom was very enthusiastic about his character and wanted to make it light and humorous so we let him go with it,” Richardson explains. “There was more comedy to him and we wanted to push that … Tom is an incredibly funny guy and his timing is extraordinary, so every time the camera was on him you just knew that something funny was going to happen.”

So, ‘StreetDance 2’ is set to be bigger, badder, and more ambitious than its plucky predecessor. Now, audiences need only wait to see what proof will be in the pudding. Regardless, the filmmakers are proud of their achievement.

“We brought together a group of great individual dancers,” Giwa says. “None of them had done a film before, but they’re all individual champions in their own field so we were so privileged to have them … Hopefully this film will reach a wider audience. As well as fans of the first film they’ll be the fans of the individual dancers and an audience with a specific interest in what we’ve done with Latin styles.”

‘STREETDANCE 2 3D’ HITS CINEMAS NATIONALLY, APRIL 19.

Kerser is hustling personified. Barely three weeks would have gone by in the past year where the Campbelltown MC hasn’t pumped out some sort of release, whether it be a single, free cut or YouTube clip.

“I try to keep my fans entertained,” he explains down the line from Sydney where – funnily enough – he’s laying down a bunch of new tracks. “That’s how I am: pretty much constantly working … I think about it constantly. [My passion for] rapping is genuine and I want it to work that much that it comes before everything else.”

It’s an approach that has seen Kerser convert thousands of hip hop heads to his cause. This is a new form of unrefined rap, one that eschews what he sees as the local genre’s middle class leanings.

“Man, there’s some good Aussie hip hop, but to be 100 percent honest with you, I find a lot of it boring and too similar. A lot of artists sound the same and attract the same market. I think what I’ve done, and the people I’m rapping with have done, is put a whole new spin on it. There were a lot of uni students and shit in it before. It’s like the street’s coming up now.

“I wouldn’t say [what I’m doing] is necessarily something street. But it’s definitely different to what anyone else in Australia is doing – I see it as that, anyway. And I think that’s why I get a lot of fans coming up to me saying that I’m the only Aussie hip hop that they’re listening to. I think that’s the reason: it’s so different to what they’ve heard on the radio. They find it and think, ‘There is a different side to it’.”

Confirming Kerser’s presence on the pop cultural landscape was his much-hyped battle with Melbourne MC, 360 – arguably Australia’s biggest hip hop artist right now – in January of this year. The internet still rages with arguments over who came out of the battle victorious, and it goes to highlight how much life has changed for Kerser over the past year.

“Yeah, I still get comments on it and people still talk about it, so it’s still massive,” he says. “It’s had over a million views. It’s just crazy, bro – definitely the biggest Aussie battle that’s ever happened. I’m proud to have been a part of that … And life is so different from a year ago. I’ve got an album in stores. I’m actually living off my music. I toured the country. So, it’s a massive change. I get noticed pretty much anywhere I go in Australia. So, still getting used to it, man.

“I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. Now I’m hoping that ball just keeps rolling. But yeah, it was definitely a goal to live off music, and now it’s gone beyond that.”

Part of the growing mythology surrounding Kerser is his emergence from Campbelltown – renowned for being one of Sydney’s more rough and tumble suburbs. It’s important to Kerser to represent where he comes from, but he also chats about the area being a little misunderstood.

“It’s hard to explain, man. In Campbelltown people get into shit a lot younger: alcohol and drugs. There’s heaps of kids out on the street and there’s a lot of public housing. People say it’s rough, but there are nice areas. I suppose it’s like any other place; it’s just that there’s a lot of crime. But I do think people misunderstand Campbelltown. I’m really proud of it, and I’m cheering, man, how far I’ve gotten. And it all started in Campbelltown. So I don’t want to forget my roots. It still is home to me, so I try to take it everywhere I go.”

Kerser’s certainly taking a lot of Campbelltown with him on his brand new Do The Kers tour. Travelling with him will be younger brother and hypeman, Rates, along with Kerser’s regular DJ, Skeamo, and Skeamo’s younger brother, Nter.

“They’re going to be pretty crazy shows, man, and you’ll see a different side to Australian hip hop,” Kerser says. “‘Do The Kers’ is one of the most popular songs on my album. It’s the most downloaded on iTunes. I get people at the concert holding up placards asking me to do it. And we didn’t do it at all on the recent Nebulizer tour. I thought, ‘Fuck it. This tour we’re going to call it Do The Kers.’ If we left it out now, I think there’d be riots!”

KERSER PLAYS THE SPRING LAKES HOTEL APRIL 19, TEMPO HOTEL APRIL 20 AND RUNAWAY BAY TAVERN APRIL 21.

It’s odd to hear a DJ talk about not listening to dance music, a genre that seems to require from its exponents an almost pathological dedication to staying ahead of the curve.

But then Spenda C isn’t your average DJ. Not for him the techniques of deep or harmonic mixing – skills that some in the industry take years to master. The Spenda modus operandi is more concerned with the ends rather than the means. “I’ve never really been a DJ’s DJ,” he says, laughing. “I was just interested in having fun, you know.”

Perhaps it’s because dance music has been a slow progression for Spenda C – a destination he never particularly set out to reach. Punk and ska were his first loves when, over ten years ago, he was more commonly known as Steve Lind and sat behind the drum kit for a variety of bands in his native Mackay.

“I still listen to a lot of punk and ska,” Lind says. “That’s predominantly what I listen to if I’m not listening to my own tunes when I’m working on them. It’s music that I’ve always enjoyed. I’ve actually been back collecting these Jamaican dancehall 45”s: my turntables are digital these days, so I can just buy whatever I actually like, which is really nice, actually,” he laughs.

When Lind did get behind the decks, it was spinning hip hop – and often to an audience that wasn’t necessarily attuned to cutting edge Stateside rap music. It meant he’d work hard to find the obscure records that would instantly engage with a party crowd, something that has since become a calling card for the now Sydney-based DJ.

“It sounds cheesy, but it’s always that balance between education and entertainment. You want to give people something new, but at the same time if they’re not entertained, no one’s going to dance and no one’s going to give a shit. So you’ve got to hit that balance. Also, I’m a victim of my environment. In Sydney, you’ve got to play accessible stuff if you want to get regular gigs; that’s just the truth … but at the same time I’ve got to satisfy my own urge of pushing the underground stuff.”

That instinct to balance musicology with the good times has now led Lind to the latest bass music to spread across dancefloors worldwide: moombahton.

Invented by Dave Nada of US-based duo, Nadastrom, moombahton came into existence when Nada slowed an Afrojack remix of the Silvio Ecomo and DJ Chuckie song ‘Moombah’ to a reggaeton-like 108 beats per minute. 

“I think what appealed about moombahton was that the mixing style is very similar to hip hop,” he explains. “So when I was playing hip hop I was doing that nice quick mixing and I think it’s the same with moombahton. They’re short, sharp records and they mix in really quickly, which suits me. Musically they’re really different, but stylistically, the way you mix them as a DJ is pretty similar … You can throw in all these different elements too: all those hip hop elements, all those dubstep elements, and all those sounds and slower tempos, which is really cool. It’s a really versatile tempo.”
The moombahton tip has seen Lind make it all the way to the national youth broadcaster, taking over Triple J’s Friday afternoon DJ slot earlier this year. It was a great experience, but an even better promotional tool.

“That was really good, and it did spike interest for my music and my gigs. Even if people don’t listen to it, you put it in your package that you send off and promoters think, ‘Oh yeah, he must be alright’.” Lind says, laughing. “The whole thing was my edits and my remixes and a few original tunes as well.”

At the same time, he feels a little bit awkward about being pegged a champion of moombahton. “I wasn’t the first to push it in Australia. When somebody asks you if you’re one of the champions of moombahton you’ve gotta roll with it, but actually it was the Scatterblog guys in Melbourne doing it a few months before I did it.”

Either way, Lind is making waves. He just released the first Spenda C EP via Kid Kenobi’s Klub Kids label, and is now looking to blow into Brisbane for Woodland Bar’s last ever weekend of shows. “It’ll be great,” he says. “A whole lot of the local guys I’m playing with spin this great ghetto-funk and breaks stuff, so it should be a really cool and fun party, and it’ll be bass orientated so it should sit well with my stuff. But it’s interesting: Brisbane’s got this great environment. There’s a real community feel. The guys looking after you at gigs aren’t afraid to take you round to other spots. It’s a great place to come and play.”

SPENDA C PLAYS WHITE RABBIT AT WOODLAND BAR EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 8. HIS DEBUT EP, ‘GETTING DUMB’, IS OUT NOW.

Reading a bio that includes both the terms ‘model’ and ‘DJ’ can be enough to have your eyes glazing over. The fad of those better looking than you and I – both male and female – getting behind the decks and spinning tunes is a long and not altogether successful one.

But those keeping a close watch on Australia’s busy club scene will know that you underestimate Sarah Robertson at your peril. A model she may have once been, but her biography features other words and phrases that tend to poke you in the eye. Take ‘classical music training’, for example.

“Yeah, I played the violin for maybe 14 years; I started when I was 5 years old,” says a breezy Robertson down the phone line from her Gold Coast home. “I added it up at one stage, and other than school there’s maybe an extra 10 to 15 hours a week of music, whether it be music trio, quartet, or orchestras. I would have been in Brisbane at the Old Museum with the Queensland Youth Orchestra every Saturday for maybe 8 or 9 years. It was pretty crazy. Music ruled my life through my schooling years and my classical music background is one of the fundamentals of my life.”

Robertson still has the violin, an antique German model, stowed in the back of her car. “Yeah!” she admits, laughing. “It’s this German antique violin where the humidity has to be measured all the time – and it’s in the back of my car. But I could never give it away.”

It was this love of music that got Robertson behind the turntables, rather than a cheap offer from a club operator. Indeed, the modelling was only ever a diversion: something to work on the side as Robertson hustled her way through university. “I haven’t done a pure modelling shoot for two years now. And I don’t want to be seen as a model-turned-DJ – that fad that’s been coming through. It’s almost 100 percent DJing now. The modelling was just to earn income while I was studying. It went from promotions to modelling and escalated from there.”

Indeed, Robertson’s modelling credits are intimidating. She’s walked the catwalk for Versace, Calvin Klein, G-STAR, Veve Swimwear, Maneater and Fressh Clothing, and graced the pages of both FHM and Ralph Magazine. An undercurrent of cynicism from club goers might be understandable, then, but Robertson says that these days she encounters few doubters.

“It was a problem for me a while ago, but now that I’ve been around for a little bit, people are starting to know what I’m capable of. I feel I’ve earned my credibility in the industry.”

In a little over two years Robertson’s progression has been breathtaking. She’s held down residencies at the Playboy Club in China and exclusive Hong Kong hot spot, Republik, guested at the Hed Kandi Pool Party in Macau alongside Stuart Ojelay, and toured throughout the Asia-Pacific region with the Stafford Brothers and Timmy Trumpet. Perhaps most impressively, Robertson recently spun a set of banging electro house for a Grammys Post Party at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

“That was surreal. I was a bit star-struck, to be honest. I had to walk the red carpet and this gig that I played: halfway through my set the other DJ would come up to me and say, ‘Pamela Anderson’s just arrived,’ and I’d be just like, ‘Wow!’ Then for Paris Hilton, Afrojack, Chris Brown and Busta Rhymes to arrive halfway through my set was pretty surreal. That would be the word for it: surreal.”

As if to drive home her credibility, Robertson was a finalist in last year’s She Can DJ competition, an A&R project from EMI Australasia that was launched as part of a new dance strategy for the region. “Definitely,” Robertson says. “Involvement in music that I like to play and She Can DJ – that was very important to me. Just to be able to share the stage with such talented DJs who have been around for so long. Amber Savage: I think I used to pay however much to go to raves when I was 16 and watch her DJ. But credibility in the industry is much more to me than any image or any paycheque.”

Most importantly, Robertson’s realised in the last year that she can make a career out of playing what she wants to play, rather than what the commercial industry would like to hear. It’s given her the impetus to tackle what was always her ultimate goal: production.

“That’s been fantastic. I’ve been working with a friend of mine – Paul DeLuxe – he’s such an amazing DJ and producer. I’m in awe of him. So we’ve been working together: we both have the same sound that we like and we’re probably halfway through a track. But because I was in India for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been itching to get back and get in the studio with him again. So I’m back in the studio tomorrow with him producing an underground house track that I think will open some people’s eyes to what I’m really about.

“It helps having that background in music, and also the experience I gained through the She Can DJ finals week – just being in the studio with the guys at EMI. Now, I’ve been quite surprised in myself and not at all disappointed with the results we’re getting out of the process as well.”

Robertson’s also been itching to get back to Brisbane for Blaque Friday, Electric Playground’s launch party for brand new event, Girls4Girls. A night for women, hosted by women, Robertson will be joined at the party by New Zealand’s Disko Diva, as well as local talent Dollypop and JaneDoe.

“It’s just going to be my sounds: whatever you hear in my set represents me and my personality and what I like,” Robertson explains. “People seem to really like to share that with me. It’s going to be a great night; I’m playing a longer set than usual. But that’s fine: my sets can be quite versatile. I’ll slip the crowd into it and then maybe push the tempo up quite a bit towards the end into what I want to be banging out on a regular basis.

“I’m looking forward to it because I’m from Brisbane. I grew up in Brisbane. I’m looking forward to getting back and playing somewhere where I used to party and used to look up to the DJs. I don’t want to be famous, I just want to make the music and the sounds that I like and then share it with people.”

SARAH ROBERTSON PLAYS BLAQUE FRIDAY AT ELECTRIC PLAYGROUND FRIDAY, APRIL 13. HER LATEST MIX CD IS INCLUDED ON ‘PUMP IT: VOLUME 5’, RELEASED APRIL 5.

Take a look at Royal Baths’ touring schedule and you begin to wonder if they’ve ever spent any time at home.

Guitarist and vocalist Jeremy Cox shares the same notion, openly pondering how long he and his bandmates have been on tour.

“We’re always on the road, it seems,” he sighs from a tour bus that’s snaking its way through the woods north of Baltimore, Maryland. “Actually, when we finish our Australian tour we’ll be flying directly to Italy, where we’ll be for six weeks. After that, I think we’ll probably just go to sleep for a couple of months,” he laughs.

The ceaseless moving about – country-to-country, city-to-city, hotel room-to-hotel room – is part and parcel of supporting the band’s latest release, ‘Better Luck Next Life’, but it makes it harder for Royal Baths to settle into their new home in Brooklyn.

Originally from San Francisco, Cox and Jigmae Baer, the group’s second core member, made the move cross-coast late last year, searching for a larger scene and more receptive audience for their lo-fi, psychedelic garage punk.

“I think we’ll be based there for a while. As home as home gets, New York will be that. When we came to New York it seemed like people really saw what we were doing for the first time, more so than I feel they were in San Francisco. At least, there just seemed, obviously, to be more people in New York and I also think that since we were on a New York label we already had our name out there. San Francisco is a relatively small scene, and if anything people became more interested in us because they saw that we were pursuing this further and have since started flying us back over more and more.

“I’ve met a lot of very friendly people,” Cox says, “and it should be noted that most of the people in the New York scene are transplants themselves: kids from Florida, kids from Chicago, just everywhere, anywhere and everywhere. It’s fast-paced and in a sense could be considered cutthroat, but I think a lot of people come to New York when they have a vision and they know what they want to do, and that’s very exciting.”

Among other things, it would be easy to think that the city had an impact on ‘Better Luck Next Life’, which was released just over a month ago. But this intense new longplayer was recorded in Portland almost a year ago, and was actually recorded back in sunny California.

“That delay was frustrating," Cox says. “We really wanted to get this material out there. We recorded it on two-inch tape, which is very difficult to mix with, so our initial mixes were a complete failure and we had to come in and redo those. It was really a matter of being too broke to pay for anything and waiting a couple of months to see if we could scrape together some money to fix it up and get the sounds that we wanted to out of the recordings that we made. I hate to play the broke artist all the time, but that’s kind of the reality of it, you know?”

Almost as a mark of the delay, the band have already recorded their follow-up record. “That’s true. It’s just in its infancy. We finished recording just before we went on tour, and we’re still mixing that right now. But we’re waiting nervously to see what we can get out of it.”

Cox and the rest of Royal Baths will have to wait a while longer, as they continue on their extended tour. Next up is Australia – their first visit – and Cox is excited.

“Definitely. We’ve heard a lot of good things, and most of the bands that we’ve meet who have been from Australia have been really awesome. As people, they’ve been very, very cool, so I’m really excited. Also, it’ll just be great to get out of the cold of the United States and find some warmth,” he says, laughing.

“But when we play live, we usually like to keep it exciting for our ears and I feel like that comes through. If you’ve been playing the same show over and over and you’ve become bored with it, audiences will be aware of that. So we like to change the set list as much as we can to keep it interesting to our ears. It’s going to be the four of us, absolutely, so you’ll be getting the full show.”

ROYAL BATHS PLAY WOODLAND BAR THURSDAY MARCH 29.

Sitting somewhere between Jurassic 5 and Rob Zombie would seem a disingenuous way to describe your band, but for the sonic ambitions of Quorum Consensus it fits just about perfectly.

“Yeah,” laughs MC and producer, Aeon. “That’s just what we were told by some guy at a party. I was as surprised by that analogy as anyone, really. I thought it was pretty good, though.”

The tag has stuck for the Brisbane-based six-piece, and why not: Quorum Consensus bend genres like few others dare, swerving wildly between funk, electro, hip hop, metal, blues and even jazz influences.

At the group’s heart are Aeon and his fellow producer and MC, Non Official Cover – or NOC, as Aeon calls him during our quarter-hour interview. QC may only be two years’ young, but these two go way back, coming together almost a decade ago over a mutual love of music in the New South Wales north coast town of Coffs Harbour.

“I was raised in Coffs and ended up back there for about a year in 2000, and that’s when I met NOC. We’d just keep running into each other over the course of a year in a number of different places, meeting through different people. We’ve been writing together almost ten years now.”

Once based permanently in Brisbane, Aeon and NOC slowly worked their way into the local music scene, and over a period of time began to accumulate the remaining members of the band.

“There wasn’t any particular concept that brought us together. It was more just NOC and I doing the music that we wanted to do,” Aeon says. “And to achieve the sounds that we wanted to get we had to look for these people. Luckily we knew them already and it was like, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta get [vocalist] Teach to do this. And it would sound awesome if [vocalist and frontman] Seabass came and sung this.’ It started out working with them on single tracks, and then it just became a conglomerate.”

Quorum Consensus are now gearing up to release their debut EP, 'Scourge Of The Third Rock From The UV’, taking over the Beetle Bar later this month specifically for the task. It’s been a long process getting the record to this point, but finally the band are happy with it.

“It’s just been a total progression in that regard. When we first started writing I was a bit of a shoot first, ask questions later kinda guy, but NOC’s always been the level-headed one and he used to say, ‘Nup. Nup. It’s not good enough. We’re not putting it out.’ So I’ve learnt quite a lot to restrain my excitement levels, I guess. The EP’s just a direction we wanted to go in, and to hell with the consequences. It was more about creating something new and creating something worthwhile, really.

“We’ve always been pushed lyrically by Sage Francis and Aesop Rock and El-P. They’re probably the three influences that really came in whilst we were making the record. A lot of Nine Inch Nails, and obviously some Rob Zombie! It is truly a myriad of influences being poured into this sieve: we work with so many different options until we get something that feels right and we all agree on. Which is the definition of a quorum, I guess.”
Now Quorum Consensus are busy getting their ducks in a row for the EP launch, something that Aeon talks about with excitement. But there’s also a larger purpose being served by the night, with the band’s focus in 2012 shifting slightly from the studio to the live show.

“In the past I think it was more of a recorded group,” Aeon explains, “but with the live preparations and the rehearsals for the launch and everything else, it’s turned into being much more about the live show. Just trying to get across the energy of the music and not being just a bunch of shoegazers, really,” he laughs.

“I guess a Quorum Consensus show could be described as being dark, twisted but then a little comical at the same time. It’s just this collision of a million different things. We’ve got a lot of people performing with us that night too who have helped out on the EP. We’ve got your classic hip hop for the night with Co-Accused and Megalomaniac Crew, then we’ll change it up a bit with Morgomega and give it some electro dance hop with a different twist. It’s going to be a great night. Really, what these guys do is so hard to describe, and that in a sense is inspirational for us.”

QUORUM CONSENSUS LAUNCH THEIR DEBUT EP AT THE BEETLE BAR MARCH 24.