with Justin Heazlewood
In 2014, my relationship with music was in a funk. I wasn’t discovering new stuff at all. I stopped listening to community radio; the talking got on my nerves. I gave up on magazines and wasn’t going out as much to bump T-shirts with my gig guzzling comrades.
Then along came Spotify. What an incredibly astute service, plugging a gap and injecting energy into a deeply personal part of my day.
Spotify and Shazam arrived simultaneously. I could be standing in the foyer of a cinema and, for once in my life, be able to glean the hard data on what the pretty people behind the counter were playing. What was the sound of flanged, Ween-like guitars combined with the laid-back grooves of JJ Cale? Oh, it was Mac De Marco.
Salad Days was my first ‘Spotify album’ if you like. I didn’t buy a copy. I hadn’t downloaded it to store awkwardly on my phone. There it was, in all its pushbutton glory; ready to be instantly accessed as the spiffy technology dictated.
Pretty soon after that, I had a breakdown.
I developed a myriad of intense abstract symptoms, including light and noise sensitivity. This coincided with my first shift living alone in a unit.
As a measure of protection from the clomping footsteps above, I bought a set of Bose QuietComfort, upon suggestion of my writer friend Paul Livingston who lived in a Sydney apartment. Life cancelling headphones. The next trophy in the pool room of my heart. What an emotional gift. The best present I can remember since the Rip Curl wetsuit in grade nine. The wraparound black material, shielding me from the harshness of the Antarctic ocean.
In 2015, with the flick of a switch I could paddle in an ambient birdbath of apricot sonics.
My headphones and headaches coincided with the discovery of new age ambient music on the streaming service. Perhaps it was Brian Eno’s Deep Blue Day which I first added to the ‘Chill’ playlist I frequent to this day. As a teenager, I would have ignored this gorgeous instrumental on the Trainspotting Soundtrack, but in my mid-30s, I was utterly intrigued by Eno’s Apollo album from whence it came.
Thanks to Spotify’s algorithm, (a clever copy of Pandora which had wowed me while visiting New York in 2011, wherein you could type in an Ariel Pink song and have it synthesise a station based on his music – I’m sure that’s where I first heard Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream, – especially pertinent as one of my favourite techno songs from childhood, Open Your Mind by Usura, consists almost entirely of a sample of it) the nebula of downtempo-electronica artists fanned the subtle colours of their soundscapes.
To this day, I am agog at the spectrum of intercontinental ambient synth-lords. In conjunction with television friend SBS Chill I’ve even pinpointed two Tasmanian-based acts: All India Radio and Leven Canyon (the latter I have since reached out to and met up for coffee with in Hobart).
Without Spotify and Shazam, there is almost no way known I would have compiled the five hours of instrumental shuffle which some days spares my nervous system from agitation. Music (and technology) has provided an incredible balm for seething, abstract maladies. I’m in some kind of perpetual, celebratory awe for the richness and depth of my relationship with these soundtracks – at complete odds with the spark-deficit greyness of a decade ago.
Spotify is constantly under attack. It’s a confronting conversation for a musician and music lover who outsources vast swathes of discovery and experience to this program. I try to keep politics and art separate. My internal headlines have nothing to do with royalties. I describe Spotify as the first app that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to hijack my soul (of course, it could chill out on those podcast recommendations.)
There are days when I now push myself to play a CD or a tape instead. I know the quality and experience is more wholesome.
Yet, if I’m on a bus trip, I know which playlist I’ll be reaching for.
Justin’s new book Dream Burnie is out now and available from Paperchain Bookstore or via www.dreamburnie.com. Check out his playlist ‘small night in.’