Future Classic - Label Feature

Alongside Modular, Future Classic is the ultimate Australian electronic music success story. The Sydney collective has been as equally devoted to unearthing local talent, as it has been to establishing an international music brand with a unique visual identity. Having Started in 2004 with branded club nights and 12” releases by Deepchild, Future Classic now encompasses licensing, touring, two weekly club nights - Adult Disco and Sunhaze -, a record label, and a monthly podcast. Christine Kakaire met with Nathan McLay, Chad Gillard and James McInnes at the home of Adult Disco, Civic Underground, in what was a bumper week for them: preceded by two Toro Y Moi gigs, Adult Disco with guests Ame and Dixon and a Sunhaze slot from Ewan Pearson, followed by two sold out Mount Kimbie shows.

Pulse: So how typical is a month like this for Future Classic?

Nathan McLay: It's pretty normal now we've got more people. James is working with us full time, we've got another girl, Fiona, who's working with us part time, so there are a few more hands on deck now, and we're doing a club every week and live shows.

Chad Gillard: We've got two weekly things now, Adult Disco on Saturdays and Sunhaze on Sundays.
 

"it's nice to see New Young Pony Club and Cut Copy vibing out to super gay disco!"

 
Sydney doesn't have such a well-established tradition of Sunday afternoon clubbing, so how is Sunhaze faring?

NM: Sunhaze is going really good. We keep it pretty low profile, and when we have guests it's a bigger deal.

CG: Last week was Ewan Pearson, and it's nice that it was that busy. We had a few people say, ‘we saw you across the crowd.’ We launched it with Alex Barck of Jazzanova, and we'll probably have semi-regular internationals to keep it on everyone's radar. A big part of the challenge, because it's not an essential venue, is that a lot of people would never have been there otherwise, so it's nice that they all come and they're like, "wow, we didn't even know this place existed." It's a really nice beer garden, so that's pretty cool, just broadening this audience a bit.

Take me back to the beginning; how did Future Classic first come about? Was it the club nights or the label that kicked things off?

NM: It was 2004 that we did Deepchild's What's Going Wrong 12", but we were doing weekly nights as well. Then we did his album after that. It was just a fun thing at the start, and then it kind of became broader. We took it on board, and artists would come out and maybe their promotion wasn't that good here so it would effect our shows; so we would have to do more promotion. And then, more recently, artists would be putting albums out and maybe they wouldn't be getting the care or attention that we would have hoped they would. So now those artists are coming to us and asking if we'd like to put their music out in Australia, and sometimes the artists in return give us demos that we'd want to put out on vinyl. So it's all been fairly organic, it just has evolved through working and talking to all the people rather than being, ‘This is what we're set out to do.’ I'm doing a lot more on the publishing side now so that's been a case of record shops shutting, and we want to still be involved in commissioning new work, and supporting artists to create new work, so we're trying to find new ways to finance those through finding placements in film and TV. So, that's kind of been reactive to the way things have changed.

CG: We were initially doings shows like Fat Freddy's Drop and Quantic. People knew the brand Future Classic more for that than they did from the records, but then now what we do with our club nights – it makes a lot more sense when you've got the label associated with the regular events we do, it speaks to an audience that will understand that.

Pulse: You’ve had some high profile international artists like Trickski and Wareika involved with the label, are you continuing with the Australian artists who have been attached to the label from the beginning?

NM: They're all different. For a lot of artists, it's a personal challenge to make a career out of their music. For example, there’s Mako, who is great and really talented. He's been writing music for games for the last four years and he has a family, so he hasn't had a chance to really do any new Mako material. Having said that he always threatens to leave his job and write an album and we'd love him to! But yeah, we're friends with them all still and I guess everyone's kind of got different objectives personally. Like, Deepchild went to Europe and so his career is more about making 12”s and releasing with lots of labels and building up a lot of contacts, rather than having one home label. Whereas when we worked with him we were more about doing albums together, which was interesting to us at the time. Jamie Lloyd has done a number of albums, and this week I'm seeing what he's thinking in terms of what we'd like to do with him as well as what he'd like to do with us. I always thought that Jamie was a great album artist, so that's really what motivates me when I'm working with him. But yeah, there's lots of new artists like the Loin Brothers and Luke Million and Sidwho? from Adelaide who is doing singles amongst his obligations for The Swiss and Empire of the Sun. Then the next record, it's the 53rd release from a duo from LA called Poolside, which has probably got the most hype for a record that we've done to date. It's at 20,000 Youtube views and it's added to Triple J and it's number one at NME Buzz Chart this week, so that's exciting. And that was just a random demo.

Pulse: Is that normal for music to find it's way to you through demos?

NM: Yeah we really like getting demos. Good ones [laughs]. We've got a project coming up soon, which is going to be talking to people and encouraging people to send music, because a lot of people don't know how that works, or find that there's barriers, or think that you have to know someone.
 

"I bumped into Chad at the Jacques Renault gig here, and I was like, 'Chad! Can I get in for free?' and he was like, 'No.'"

 
Pulse: How has the decline of record shops in Australia affected the label’s operations?

NM: We don't really sell much vinyl locally. It's 85 percent in Europe...

CG: I remember there was a point a couple years ago, like, ‘Don't end up sending those records back to Sydney, or we'll just end up giving them away.’ But that said, Spank Records have been super good dudes to us.

Pulse: So when did Future Classic begin to expand beyond the core crew of Nathan, Chad and (Nathan’s wife) Jay?

NM: It just happened gradually. Chad was working full-time and I was doing work for Inertia and IODA and then Jay came onboard from the Museum of Contemporary Art and Penguin to do design. I started doing Future Classic work all the time and James came onboard a year and a half ago.

CG: James and I actually came to radio training together at FBI radio, so we did a little radio together.

JM: And then I think I bumped into Chad at the Jacques Renault gig here, and I was like, "Chad! Can I get in for free?" and he was like, "No." [laughs]

CG: That sounds like me.

NM: And James said, "Half price." [laughs]

CG: Probably.

Pulse: Was there any specific tour or artist you can pinpoint as the definitive moment for you guys? Like ‘OK, this is viable, this business is going to work.’

NM: It's a little bit viable, [laughs]. It's pretty hard, you know, we work really long hours...

CG: Seven day weeks.

NM: …everyone's working super hard and often there's projects that don't break even, but get good reactions and people think that they've done well financially, but they often haven't. But having said that, there have been enough things working that we've managed to keep everyone paid and pay all our bills and have managed to keep the office going. We've never really gone in and done anything massively risky like put on a festival. So it feels like it's taken longer that way, but at the same time it's been a bit more risk-adverse and a bit more organic.

Pulse: Speaking of festivals, how restrictive is it in terms of having access to artists who are often tied to national touring festivals when they’re in Australia?

CG: That's a good question to ask right now because we're coming to the end of the festival season. Generally with Adult Disco, we'd like to have a good four week lead up to promote things. We don't do every week ourselves, we bring-in co-promoters and we lend them the space. It's still under the banner of Adult Disco, and something that we think is cool and we're happy to have in our club. But during festival period, there's been a lot of things we've done which have been one or two weekends out, which makes getting the info out to a good solid audience difficult. So it is pretty restrictive, we had Dixon play the same night as Playground Weekender, which was a solid night in terms of the crowd, but that same bill any other weekend, if there weren’t a festival on, would have been twice as big. It definitely makes it harder.

NM: We work with the festival, so they ask us to choose acts and bring acts to them and then we will do side shows, but obviously the festivals market really early and really competitively. Unlike Europe, for example, or the US where you have bands doing headline shows all the time because the transport costs aren't that bad and they can just get to a show and play a room and you can book it directly. That happens much less out here, which is sad in a way, I think it's nice to see bands in venues, not only in festivals. Festivals tend to have bigger budgets to make offers to tour bands and often restrict them from playing those sideshows, but that's just the way it is.

CG: In winter it goes quiet, so there are no festivals really to go to, and that's why we started Adult Disco. We're coming up to a year now. The last three months we've come up against the festival period on the Saturday nights so there's definitely been a few nights where it's been harder, but at the same time it's just about smart curating and booking it in a smart way. We have some really deep underground sort of niche club stuff that your younger club audience would never have heard of and wouldn't understand. But then we have some other acts like Holy Ghost! and Aeroplane that that audience totally vibes for. We're trying to talk to a fairly broad club audience weekly.

NM: it's a long way away from the rest of the world, but we're kind of doing a bit of everything. Like we represent DFA for licensing and helping sound out their music to agencies and film producers and directors, which is very much behind the scenes. Then we might have Holy Ghost! touring and we'll be inviting some people to come along to the show and check it out. They're not paying for tickets, but hopefully they'll come back and become fans of Holy Ghost! and say, "Hey look, we're doing a project and would like to use their music." I guess It's becoming a lot more holistic in the way we're looking at it.

CG: And we've been doing some more extra-curricular non-club stuff as well like Toro Y Moi and Mount Kimbie, so it all fits in nicely with what we're listening to as well.

NM: We've always liked that stuff, we always wanted to do that stuff. It wasn't possible with a label with very limited resources to do more than just your core stuff. And so now I think we've got a little bit more leeway to work on all our projects and do different things.

CG: It's fun as well, doing different things keeps us all interested and on our game.

NM: It's good that bands are coming back.

Pulse: How is that shift being reflected in the label?

CG: Our 50th twelve inch was a live band from Brisbane called Mitzi. We've also got Bon Chat, Bon Rat and Moon Holiday, there's a bit of a division between 12" artists and sort of more EP or album kind of things happening at the moment.

NM: Album artists are really exciting because they write lots of different stuff, but it's not really going to turn on an Adult Disco crowd necessarily.

Pulse: Who have been some of the standouts of Adult Disco in its first year?

NM: Pantha du Prince was very good because that was at the end of the year, it was just a week before Christmas. I think everyone's uptight around that time of year even though they're drinking and partying pretty heavily. There's a lot of emotion around family and end of the year and all of that stuff, and he played quite a bleak set that was very emotional and it had a good energy, it was quite experimental. Tensnake was on the second of January, and he was good.

CG: We did the Holy Ghost! party which was pretty nutty, that was following on from Parklife...

JM: He took other artists down as well.

CG: Yeah it's nice to see New Young Pony Club and Cut Copy vibing out to super gay disco! It was fun, but also nice to see all the kids were there because they've heard Hold On or I Will Come Back by Holy Ghost!, and what Holy Ghost! played in that set was mostly old stuff that they would have ripped off wax. It was a disco diggers set, so that's fun when you have an act that brings in all the kids and they play a set which sort of...

NM: Is not what they would expect. But the smaller ones are pretty fun as well.

JM: Todd Terje was my favourite.

CG: Yeah that was pretty nutty, that was like five hours.

NM: In his socks.

CG: Yeah.

JM: I think he played til 6 or 7.

NM: He just loves to play.

CG: We're spoiled here, we have very nice audio at the Civic for Adult Disco, it's like a showcase venue for Kipsch speakers and Allen & Heath. We have a Valve rotary mixer, which is really nice. It's like a gauntlet; we throw it down to the artists, like, "You have to use it otherwise..."

Pulse: Has anyone ever freaked out about having to use the rotary mixer?

CG: Well the first time we did something at the Civic, it was Todd Terje in 2008 and he kind of backed away from it, so the last time he came he used it, and this time he played for five hours so he obviously enjoyed that one. We're one of the only promoters that use it regularly.

NM: But it is sort of the thing that if you play every week, you have to love it. Whereas if you come in off the street and you've never used a rotary, it's scary.

JM: And when Ame and Dixon were here, Dixon was sitting in the corner next to the speaker, arms folded...

CG: He told us, "This is where it sounds best in the room, right here." And we were like, "OK," and at the end of the night he said, "We need to buy one of these," and we said, "I don't think they make them anymore, but go for it." I don't really know any other set up venues in Sydney that have a rotary mixer. It's cool. It's just a good sounding room.

Pulse: How did Future Classic come together with the CIvic? It’s been around as a pub for a long time, but I don’t think its been seriously used as a venue until you started.

CG: We used to run the Future Classic label night three years ago, but basically we didn't have a venue, it was too small, and it wasn't working the way we wanted it to work. We ran through this list of places that we thought might work and hadn't really thought about the Civic, then we came down and met with them and were like, "Oh, it looks alright." So we started with a monthly Future Classic label night here, with guests like Todd Terje, Trickski, Aeroplane, Joachim and Mock & Toof. That was pretty fun, and that led to us booking the whole venue. After a while of doing that we were like, ‘actually we'd like our own night’, rather than booking an R&B night or a trance night every so often when a promoter came to us. I mean its such a great space and there was no continuity in it. One night we'd have Todd Terje and the next night they might have some terrible trance thing. We were getting a lot of feedback that the Civic doesn't really have an audience, but lately it has. It’s s great seeing the regular faces on Saturday. It's still not a huge audience that's regular, but we do have regulars and locals that come each week.

Pulse: And who would be your dream artist to book that you've not been able to get?

NM: We kind of get them all [all laugh].

Christine Kakaire