2024 - The Year in Review

What a year it's been. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that Noise Levels was started just over 12 months ago. When I think back to the genesis of this project it now seems so long ago. 

Picture this - it was 2023 and a lot of things had finally settled in my life after a very eventful and (frankly) traumatic decade. It seemed like it was a good time to start being a person again, however, I'd been looking online for some of the old local bands I loved and simply couldn't find anything. The internet had proven itself to not be the sacred record of all knowledge that we'd been promised 25 years ago. Myspace had been purged of a lot of pre-2016 music in the Great Myspace Data Wipe. Other sites such as MP3.com.au had been superseded by streaming technology and maintaining a band website seemed like a thing of the past in the age of social media. So I wondered... perhaps an archive could be created and maybe some other people would be interested?

I started Noise Levels as a closed Facebook group, which has in many ways remained the core of the Noise Levels community. The description of this group initially read:

Sharing and collecting the oral histories of punk/metal/alternative music from Western Sydney and surrounding areas, circa 1980s to the late 2000s. Creating an archive of flyers, photos, music.

Amongst the first people to join the group and like the post was my former bandmate and friend Nigel Maher. He's sadly no longer with us but I still find myself thinking of him after his passing earlier this year. His interest in the group, his love of music, and the influence he had on me all those years ago all sit within my thoughts about Noise Levels and what it means. 

Back in April, spurred on by Tim Walter, I organised a Noise Levels get-together at the Henry Lawson Club in Werrington County. The club was kind enough to provide the function space for free after I told them it was for mental health. That sounds a little funny on reflection but I truly do believe that this project has a role to play in that sense. As we get older we can find our social circles shrinking and I've realised how much I needed to socially feel like I was more than just my job. I've always liked the idea of feeling like I was part of a community and it's one of the things I missed most about playing in a band when I was younger. In talking to hundreds of people over the last year it's become clear that a lot of other people valued this too. 

ABC journalist Daniel Johnson had twigged to this before I was even really aware of it myself. He reached out to me at the start of the project with an idea for a mental health-related article on the ABC News website and this helped solidify what Noise Levels has come to be.

The article was about a recording project that I was embarking on with close friend Colden 'Bundy' Locke, who had approached me with the idea of doing a Noise Levels podcast. I mean, it wasn't that hard for him to approach me, he only lives five doors down from me and we've stayed in fairly constant contact since we first met back in Year 5. The article can be read here, and I couldn't be more thankful to Dan Johnson for the chat that led to this as it helped to put the fire into me to push this project as far as I could take it.

So it's now been 14 months since this project started and I have to say I've enjoyed every aspect of it. Here's some of the other highlights!

• The Facebook Group - which has led to us tracking down and making available long-lost and never-before heard music from the '90s and '00s.
  

• The Podcast - five episodes recorded and presented on the Noise Levels YouTube channel. These take a long time to put together due to the research involved and the time needed to track down people for interview.

• The Bandcamp - which has allowed for music to be preserved and documented and made available to people again, 99% of the time with permission from the bands who made it. More than 100 CDs, cassettes, 7"s, and unreleased music has now been made available or mirrored on this site as part of the efforts to document and archive NSW's alt-music heritage.
  

• This Blog - the centralised suppository of everything I've collected. My initial idea was always to document these bands and create a wiki or online database of some sort. Everything else sort of just grew around this website as a way to facilitate the collecting of this information. As I mentioned before and elsewhere, Noise Levels simply wouldn't be possible without the collaboration of hundreds of other people. 

• The Instagram Account - suggested by Chloe Keeble (of Little More Than You). The Noise Levels Instagram account has grown well beyond the size of anything I could have expected.
  

• The Zine - the first issue of which has just been distributed to 14 stores across Australia. I'm already working on Issues #2 and #3. 
  

• National Beer Day 2024 - after years of being asked if there'll ever be another National Beer Day, Noise Levels seemed like the perfect excuse to bring it back. This wouldn't have happened without the enthusiasm of Mitchy McLennan, co-owner of the Moshpit and the brains behind the original National Beer Day parties. It was amazing to see so many familiar faces again and to watch sets performed by a great collection of re-formed bands such as The Brazen Hearts, Steppin' Razor, Save Some For Daddy, and Sunshine Winnebago, as well as Western Sydney/National Beer Day alumni in newer bands The Bottlers, Modus Fire, and Leuras. 

• And last but not least, Spilt Milk. Hearing more music from '90s Western Sydney punk band Spilt Milk has always been one of my white whales. I tried to track down their second demo 15 years ago without much luck so the uncovering of both this demo and a whole cache of previously unreleased recordings (thanks to Chris 'Goonie' Duckworth) was also a huge highlight. To then actually get to see Spilt Milk reform and play a show in Penrith this year, and for my very first band The Shenanigans to also reform and get asked to play support for this show at Elton Chong? Absolutely amazing. What a gift to my teenage self, haha. 

 Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the support and chats. Looking forward to a great 2025.