Music For Small Audiences
116 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago -Australian-Canadian DJ Matthew Belleghem brings to this podcast 35+ years of experience as a curator of engaging and eclectic electronic music.
Having spent time as a nightclub DJ, music producer, synthesizer salesperson, record shop clerk and dance music journalist, his tastes range from the underground progressive house music that Melbourne is world renowned for, through to ambient, new wave, nu disco, trip hop, trance, techno, downtempo and psychedelica. While new genre names seem to crop up each year, contemporary music journos might also use terms like 'organic house' or 'melodic techno'.
Talk free and 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 high fidelity headphone and living room listening.
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Episodes
MFSA066: The Past Is A Foreign Country
August 05, 2018 00:51 - 1 hour - 232 MBI read somewhere that our memories change every time we recall them. Each time we remember something it seems we are reassembling the story anew, distorting and reshaping the past through the influence of present day emotions and values. English philosopher John Locke posited that our identity only persists as far back as we can remember. But basing our idea of who we are on a foundation of distant, intangible, and evolving recollections is hardly a recipe for certain self identity. Perhap...
MFSA065: The Marshmallow Test
June 17, 2018 05:56 - 2 hours - 315 MBAs an experiment in delayed gratification, the marshmallow test pitted the willpower of young children against the tasty appeal of one or more marshmallows, with a stopwatch in between. Sometimes the children won, and sometimes the marshmallows won. Follow up studies suggested that the kids who were better able to control their desires were more likely to succeed in life. Sounds reasonable enough, if a bit disappointing for the impulsive types among us. More recent analysis casts a bit of s...
MFSA064: The Untethered Radio
May 13, 2018 20:50 - 1 hour - 198 MBBefore I was born, my father was a smoker. Giving up was not easy, and at one point during his effort to quit he was awoken in the middle of the night by a particularly vivid dream. The vision was of a radio plugged into the wall. The radio itself was struggling, trying to break free of the electric cord that both powered it and held it in place. If the distinction between habit and addiction is the extent to which one can stop at any time, then thinking is a serious addiction for many of u...
MFSA063: Do You See What I Mean
March 28, 2018 20:00 - 2 hours - 304 MBThere is a certain sense of permanence and seriousness associated with putting things in writing for others to see. An expectation, too, that what we write will be read and understood. But things do not always turn out as we had hoped. From illegible handwriting to errant postal workers to the odd unscheduled rainstorm, what gets put down in writing does not always get picked up by the other side. Sometimes the meaning is lost, and sometimes the whole message is lost too. If the medium is th...
MFSA062: Freedom Makes Me
February 23, 2018 10:38 - 3 hours - 478 MBIt is nice to have options. Paralysis by analysis is a real thing, and sometimes less is more when it comes to trying to make a decision. The more wide open the future appears, the more fearful we can become about what it all means and what we should do about it. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard suggests that freedom and possibility are the precursors of dread and fear, and in a lot of ways he is not wrong. Is anxiety really just the dizziness of freedom? The human body is easy enough to...
MFSA061: Dendrochronology
December 23, 2017 08:59 - 2 hours - 264 MBIt is halfway between the southern summer solstice and Christmas Day as I write this, with just a few days left in 2017. As such it feels natural to reflect on the year that has just passed. Years are curious units of measure. In some ways they seem to tick by quickly and blur together. Yet in recollection they stand as distinct layers, around which our character, worldview and sense of purpose are built. On trees, growth rings visibly tell the story of a series of annual atmospheric event...
MFSA060: A Dollar For Your Idea
November 12, 2017 10:18 - 2 hours - 233 MBAn awful lot has been said about the power of ideas. The visionaries, the dreamers, the entrepreneurs, the strategy setters, the creatives, and the big picture thinkers, all have brilliant ideas on how to change the world for the better. Ideas can be contagious, seductive, compelling and inspiring. The creation and sharing of ideas can sometimes even give off the feeling of real work being done. But in the words of Steve Jobs, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Day after day, early mo...
MFSA059: Familiar Stranger
October 21, 2017 06:22 - 2 hours - 261 MBWhile Stanley Milgram is best known for his experiments in convincing strangers to electrocute one another in the 1960s, he has also played a critical role in helping make sense of urban anonymity. In the early 1970s, through a series of surveys and experiments in public places such as train stations and university campuses, Milgram explored and refined the concept of the familiar stranger. If you have ever seen the same person repeatedly during your commute, in the gym, or in another public...
MFSA058: This Is Where You Belong
September 21, 2017 13:14 - 2 hours - 322 MBHome is a difficult subject. Are we from where we started? Or are we from where we have ended up? Can we really set ourselves up as locals whenever we come across a place and it grabs us, if we choose to stick around for a while? For some, there is comfort in familiarity. For others, there is comfort in discomfort. While it is both a blessing and curse, I think I have a bit of both elements in me. For while I enjoy the smell of fear and sweat that comes with travelling far beyond my comfort...
MFSA057: The Stories We Tell Ourselves
August 13, 2017 01:42 - 1 hour - 1 ByteAs the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius noted many years ago, the world itself is nothing but change, and our life is really just what our thoughts make it to be. Insofar as we have control over our thoughts, we have control over our lives. We may not always be able to control the stimulus, but from the perspective of the Stoic we should seek to control the response. This is not always easy. Words have meaning, events have consequences, and our internal dialogue does not ...
MFSA056: Left To My Own Devices
July 09, 2017 09:52 - 3 hours - 376 MBI had an interesting conversation recently with a musician friend about the relationship between creative process and creative output. We had just spent some time getting hands on with a vintage synth collection, and were reflecting on the extraordinary effort and patience required to get good sound and tight sync out of old analog hardware, compared to the ease with which software can do it all with a few clicks of the mouse today. Creativity requires both inspiration and perseverance, and...
MFSA055: Mind Like Water
May 28, 2017 08:06 - 2 hours - 312 MBI find a lot of value in lists, sticky notes, and scribbles on paper, in order to keep my headspace as free as possible from having to remember things that can instead be written down and recalled. David Allen, a productivity guru whose work I came across many years ago, has had a profound impact on my life, not least of which because of his aspirational state of mind, called Mind Like Water. As the common definition goes, it is a mental and emotional state in which your head is clear and ab...
MFSA054: Not How I Would Write It
April 23, 2017 03:35 - 2 hours - 227 MBEvents can at times unfold in an unexpected manner. There is surprise and novelty to be found in the gap between expectations and reality. Truth is indeed often stranger than fiction, if only because the bar for plausibility is so much lower in real life than it is in storytelling. At least in my experience, things that are hard to believe happen all the time, and usually when least expected. Do we get to write our own stories? To some extent perhaps we do, at least insofar as we are able t...
MFSA053: Maybe If I Heard It
March 19, 2017 09:49 - 2 hours - 255 MBFunny things, memories. Sometimes seeing a photo, hearing a song, or even reading the name of someone from another period of time can bring back recollections that otherwise remain buried. Funny too how important context can be. We may only remember something in detail when a specific sequence of reminding events lines up, like returning to a special place at sunset, or hearing a piece of music in a certain setting. While it feels good in the heat of the moment to think that a special momen...
MFSA052: The Answer Is Always Yes
February 01, 2017 11:28 - 3 hours - 361 MBHow do you make decisions? Do you go with your intuition, collect and assess information objectively, or solicit opinions from those you trust? For some, it seems that consciousness is a smoothly flowing river. For others, conscious thought seems to drift between an orderly committee meeting and a raucous debate between opposing parties. Some of these internal forces are inclined towards action, and they debate against others who would really rather stay in bed on any given morning. Like the...
MFSA051: Another Summer
December 22, 2016 19:54 - 2 hours - 415 MBToday marks the start of my southern summer holiday, with a two week break planned that will see some interstate travel, some time at the beach, some time working on music, and some time spent catching up with family and friends. For those of you in the northern hemisphere, the good news is that summer is now less than six months away. 2016 has been an interesting year for a lot of us, good in some ways, surprising in others. While on balance 2016 has been a pretty good year for me, it has ...
MFSA050: Love As An Iterative Process
November 28, 2016 18:53 - 1 hour - 232 MBWe do not always get it right the first time. Particularly where emotions and affections are involved, it can be easy to make mistakes, and hard to pick up the pieces afterwards. In love as in life, we sometimes need to try it a few times before things click in to place. But with proper perspective, there is a silver lined lesson in every cloud, and from every bag of lemons a decent glass of lemonade can be made. The key to being able to maintain perspective is having the right attitude, or...
MFSA049: Something Always Happens
October 26, 2016 19:37 - 2 hours - 387 MBSpring has returned to the southern hemisphere, and it brings with it the smell of new beginnings. From food festivals to inner city art exhibits to new restaurants, there is often so much to do that it can be hard to keep track of, let alone attend. With all of the options available in the city it seems one can feel spoiled for choice. Despite this, there is also value in getting away from it all, as a recent weekend getaway to the hills of Tasmania made clear. Sometimes it is the constrain...
MFSA048: The Square Wave Years
September 27, 2016 20:18 - 1 hour - 273 MBA square wave is a waveform consisting of instantaneous transitions between two levels. Fans of Fourier analyses argue a square wave can be made by summing a fundamental with an infinite series of odd-multiple frequency sine waves at diminishing amplitude, while audio engineers suggest familiarity with the tonality of a square wave helps identify symptoms of distortion, given the extent to which clipping squares a waveform. Visually speaking, the squared off duty cycle of a square wave sugg...
MFSA047: Resistance
August 25, 2016 21:27 - 2 hours - 258 MBWatching science fiction on television tends to put interesting ideas in my head. A recent program that has captured our interest explores the idea of resistance, suggesting that when things are not supposed to happen, reality can push back and present all sorts of obstacles and interferences in order to ensure that the correct chain of events is unbroken. Where it comes to the interpretation of subtle, recurring events there is a fine line between intuition and superstition, and while somet...
MFSA046: Signposts
July 31, 2016 07:53 - 2 hours - 340 MBFor reasons I am not entirely sure of, I enjoy taking pictures of signs. Some warn of danger, some announce the location of a place of significance, and some indicate a suggested path or direction. In every sign I see, I see a bit of certainty, and the chance to make an informed decision. I also like the idea of events as signposts in the metaphorical sense. When something happens, we take meaning and direction from our interpretation of the event. Sometimes an event says to us well done, k...
MFSA045: Danger Is Fun
June 26, 2016 11:19 - 2 hours - 325 MBInsofar as one can trust the attribution of quotes on the internet, Brian Tracy once observed that self esteem is the opposite of fear, and that the more we like ourselves, the less we fear anything. By this principle, it should follow that we take greater risks when we are feeling better about ourselves and our circumstances. Risk, particularly when taken by choice in the context of a positive state of mind, can be rewarding. The challenge, of course, is balancing the enjoyment of living o...
MFSA044: IDDQD
May 22, 2016 09:18 - 1 hour - 235 MBEverything old is new again. It has long been true with modern music and so too is it true with video games, with a reboot of the classic ultraviolent shooter DOOM having been released in recent weeks. Hard to believe it has been 23 years since the original, which I recall playing on my beloved 486 across a coax ARCnet LAN set up in my basement until the sun came up on many occasions. IDDQD, those of you of a particular vintage may recall, was a code that could be typed in to the 1993 versi...
MFSA043: The Illusion of Transparency
May 07, 2016 13:05 - 2 hours - 292 MBIn my experience, stress and boredom exist as opposite ends of a continuum. As such, professional development is the process by which we keep the goalposts apart – ensuring there is room to carve out a life between the things we find too boring to tolerate, and the things we find too difficult to deliver on. For those who experience stress as excitement, the world can be a very exciting place. And for those who carry the burden of self-awareness, pushing the envelope can mean running a gaun...
MFSA042: A Bit Of Atmosphere
April 22, 2016 09:33 - 2 hours - 290 BytesLighting, temperature, humidity, sound and smell. Ambiance. Mood. Vibe. Feel. Every space, every place has its own unique character and dynamic, the sum total of the sensory input of being there. To me the best nightclubs always have more than one room, so that you can leave without leaving, and come back without having left. At Altitude on Russell St here in Melbourne it was the balcony. At the Rhino in Calgary it was upstairs, or if you were upstairs, it was downstairs. At Seven in Calgary...
MFSA041: And Then What
March 25, 2016 02:37 - 2 hours - 300 MBPart of becoming an adult is learning impulse control. As we mature, we learn to fully consider the consequences of our actions. Over time we realise that what might feel good right now may not actually be in our best interest in the longer term, and that by spitting the dummy we may well be cutting off our nose to spite our face. Some of us learn this more readily than others, and some of us are better at defending against moments of weakness than others – but by and large, most of the time...
MFSA040: 709 One Hundred
February 26, 2016 10:32 - 1 hour - 145 MBI look back fondly on the 3+ years I spent living in Calgary, Canada. While I could write volumes on the many amazing people I met during my time there, Area709 patriarch Wes Straub stands out as someone who has really had a profound impact on my life. Without getting all misty eyed, lets just say he is a pretty good guy. I was honoured to contribute a one hour guest mix to the 100th episode of 709 Sessions, the radio show Wes mixes for Digitally Imported Radio. The mix was broadcast around...
MFSA039: Your Autumn Is My Spring
January 31, 2016 04:24 - 1 hour - 189 MBIn 1965 the Byrds released a song that, drawing heavily from the Book of Ecclesiastes, equated the changing of seasons to the changing phases and fortunes of life. It is an apt metaphor. As children we may have dreamed of being race car drivers or royalty. In our teenage years we wanted to be rock stars. Now as adult life brings forth its many opportunities and limitations, the goalposts and intended future paths shift further still. As a good friend returning home from a gig at 5AM a few w...
MFSA038: Back From McLaren Vale
December 28, 2015 06:37 - 1 hour - 179 MBAustralian wine country is truly spectacular. A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to spend a long weekend on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, in a little town called Willunga. Nestled in the hills of McLaren Vale about 45 minutes south of Adelaide, Willunga is within spitting distance of more than a hundred wineries, and just a few km away from a number of beautiful beaches. It is also home to a pretty good pizzeria. My kind of place. This mix was recorded a few days after our r...
MFSA037: Raz On Rogers
November 12, 2015 20:40 - 2 hours - 250 MBDespite the rise of social media, there really is no substitute for face to face engagement with friends and family. As mentioned in a few recent podcast episode writeups, the tyranny of distance is a recurring theme for all of us with our hearts in more than one part of the world. As we are not yet blessed with the clear calendars and fat wallets needed to see our friends and family for more than what seem to be very fleeting moments, when the stars align and friends from far away are in to...
MFSA036: Find The Time
October 02, 2015 23:49 - 2 hours - 233 MBSpring has finally arrived here in Melbourne. In fact, with temperatures forecast to rise above 35C in the coming days you could say that we have bypassed spring entirely and headed straight into summer. With the warmer weather comes the inclination to head out to the beach, and spend less time indoors. I recently shared lunch with my good friend Marsh in Flagstaff Gardens, a lovely inner city park. We talked through how we find it hard to spend as much time as we might like working on our ...
MFSA035: Simcoe Day
September 26, 2015 09:46 - 2 hours - 262 MBThere is something about catching up with old friends that puts the passage of time into perspective. Our circumstances, locations, and priorities evolve as our lives move from one stage to the next, but I would like to think that our essential character remains the same. For this reason, there is a special magic in catching up with the wow-we-have-been-friends-for-a-while crew that is both irreplaceable and priceless. Having moved halfway around the world, I do not get the chance to see my...
MFSA034: Live At Habitat
August 26, 2015 12:10 - 2 hours - 235 MBFor three and a half years I lived in Calgary, Canada. Tucked into the foothills of the sunny side of the Rocky Mountains, its a city full of lovely people, and a city with a buzzing dance music scene. Returning for a visit a few weeks ago I was honoured to be given the opportunity to play a two hour set on a Saturday night at my favourite place in town. With an incredible sound system, positive bar staff and a clued up clientele, Habitat Living Sound has for years been a centrepoint of the ...
MFSA033: And Then There Were Two
July 24, 2015 10:04 - 2 hours - 266 MBJust seven days until I fly back to Canada for two weeks. A week in Toronto with friends and family, a weekend gig in Calgary, and then the better part of the week in the mountains. Looking forward to the break and the upcoming adventure! A guy named Max once told me that every record I fall in love with changes my sound as a DJ. As my music collection continues to grow and expand, I continue to fall in love with records, which is why I have invested in a new Stanton ST150 turntable. Along ...
MFSA032: One More Before You Go
June 11, 2015 21:37 - 2 hours - 271 MBThere is something uniquely interesting about preparing to embark on international travel. The combination of project planning, packing, social arrangements, and general getting-in-order-of-things prior to departure provides a structured timeframe and sense of urgency that is sometimes missing from every day life. We may be OK being late for work now and then, but no one wants to miss a flight. This mix was recorded in the spirit (and context) of preparing for an international trip. As befi...
MFSA031: With A Little Help From My Friends
May 30, 2015 06:25 - 3 hours - 351 MBMy good friend Kevin once explained that one of the secrets to success is having smart friends. Along similar lines, the secret to good podcasts is having friends with excellent taste in music. This mix contains more than a few gems that have found their way to me via the collections of others. From suggestions made during social get-togethers and mixes exchanged through to emailed promo links and folders left on my desktop, I am blessed with a pipeline full of amazing music. It gives me no...
MFSA030: The Only Way Out Is The Only Way In
April 27, 2015 21:47 - 2 hours - 229 MBIt has been said that just as art is used to decorate space, music is used to decorate time. Having just moved into a new place in Richmond six weeks ago, I am surrounded by a number of undecorated walls, with frames leaning up against the walls in proposed locations. We have yet to get up the courage to take hammer and nail to wall, but I suspect the time is coming soon. Thankfully we have not been as delayed in setting up our sound system. As such, Episode 030 of MFSA is the first mix rec...
MFSA029: Shoebox In The Sky
April 10, 2015 10:31 - 1 hour - 224 MBFrom early 2012 to early 2015, I lived by myself in a tiny-but-beautiful apartment high above the South Yarra railway station. Nineteen stories up and facing straight west across Port Phillip Bay, it offered panoramic views of the city and a regular rotation of the sort of slow-motion sunsets you read about in photography books. For three years my best friends were a king-size bed, a lazy leather couch and ten well-placed speakers. While I have recently moved into bigger digs and am pumped ...
MFSA028: In Defence Of Earplugs
March 05, 2015 19:57 - 3 hours - 358 MBUrban living and travel means noise is never far away – and while we cant close our ears as easily as we can close our eyes, we can still find pockets of silence through mechanical means when we have the right equipment. My favourite earbuds block out so much ambient noise that I can have the volume on nearly zero even in a crowded city street. This lends an air of surreality to the surroundings, as if I have injected a soundtrack into a silent film. And when sleep is needed on a school-nig...
MFSA027: Cover Your Tracks
February 11, 2015 09:25 - 2 hours - 286 MBThere is the theory of the Moebius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop – but I cant say that I have experienced it personally. In my experience time is linear, and the further things recede into the distance in either direction, the fuzzier they become. They say it does not matter where you come from, it only matters where you are going. If this is true, then does it matter how much we remember how we got to where we are? As we move from one moment to the next, should ...
MFSA026: The Rise And Fall Of Beautiful Music
January 05, 2015 10:29 - 1 hour - 208 MBWhen I was a kid growing up, we would often spend weekends in what we called cottage country. We were a few hours north of the city, and seemingly a million miles from Torontonian suburbia. One of the few FM stations available on the radio dial was 93.1 CHAY-FM. It played elevator music, musak, terribly saccharin instrumental versions of popular songs with soprano saxophones in place of vocals, and plenty of electric pianos and jazz guitars wrapped into a big hairy cheese sandwich. Many mome...
MFSA025: The Sixth Rule
December 30, 2014 04:24 - 2 hours - 301 MBThe end of 2014 is here – and so is Episode 025 of Music For Small Audiences. This mix takes its name from an astute observation made by a good friend (and very good DJ) by the name of Andrew Campbell. As Andrew sees it, the likelihood of any rule being enforced is inversely proportional to how far down on the list of rules the actual rule in question is. The first few rules? OK, those we may need to pay attention to… but by the time you get past the first few, bah, if they were important th...
MFSA024: Soap And A Burr Grinder
November 26, 2014 18:44 - 2 hours - 291 MBPacking up for a weekend away is always a mixture of emotions. Excitement for the adventure to come is mixed with anticipation and sometimes a bit of stress. Do I have time to do everything I need to do to get ready? What if I forget something? As we get older we learn a few tricks and techniques to help get out of our own way – post-it notes on the bathroom mirror, items we must not forget left blocking the exit, cloud-based list managers (that, like Santa, we remember to check twice!), and...
MFSA023: Love In Traffic
November 20, 2014 09:03 - 1 hour - 174 MBWhat is it about being stuck in a sea of traffic that puts us on edge? Is it the uncertainty of the stop-and-start? The inability to control the actions of others? The paradox of being alone in a crowd? From The Spoons to Satoshi Tomiie, musicians have long seen parallels between romance and gridlock, and so I hope you will forgive me for again pointing them out. One thing I will say, whether you are in love, in traffic, or in both, good music does seem to ease the angst when things start to...
MFSA022: Honeycomb Drum
October 31, 2014 09:57 - 2 hours - 220 MBPerspective is a funny thing. As humans I think we are conditioned to always want more. Louis CK has an insightful take on this, which you can find by Googling Everything Is Amazing, And Nobody Is Happy. In some respects our desire to constantly self-improve is to be commended as having driven our survival as a species. With that said, aspiration for the future need not come at the expense of acknowledging the abundance of the present. Sometimes good enough is good enough – and what we alre...
MFSA021: Inner City Life
September 15, 2014 22:23 - 2 hours - 277 MBI have often been struck by the curiously polite silence of a packed early morning commuter train, where people are pressed closely together yet rarely speak to one another. As the city flickers by in the morning sunlight we share our physical space yet remain alone with our thoughts – at least until the silence is broken. As a soundtrack to urban living and exploration this mix is largely instrumental, with just a few carefully selected vocal cuts. In deference to the 20 year old drum and ...
MFSA020: Earth Tones
September 06, 2014 12:32 - 1 hour - 198 MBEpisode 020 of Music For Small Audiences is called Earth Tones. The title comes from a few different places. First, the recent expansion of my wardrobe. Melburnians are known for wearing plenty of black and dark grey, and I am no exception. I have however recently expanded my palette, returning to a few browns and greens. Similarly, I have been exploring very earthy sonic palettes, such as you will hear in this mix. Well grounded in terra firma, this mix keeps the tempo pulled back and the e...
MFSA019: Tomorrows Nostalgia Today
August 18, 2014 12:57 - 2 hours - 271 MBSome 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 Nost...
MFSA018: Remembering Directions
August 03, 2014 08:02 - 2 hours - 334 MBThis 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 ...
MFSA017: Decompression Expression
July 14, 2014 09:31 - 1 hour - 220 MBIf 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 (m...