2025 - The Year in Review

Bleeding Face at The Moshpit this year.

I thought 2025 would have just been more of the same for Noise Levels but our second year turned out to be even more eventful than the first. My initial plan for 2025 was to keep doing band profiles, keep archiving music online where people could hear it, and to put out a new zine every two months. 

Then, in about February, my computer crashed.

It crashed hard.

It's a long and dreadfully boring story but, with the help of a few people (thanks Matt, Gaby, and George), I eventually got connected with a data recovery specialist company who charged me a motza to get about 70% of the Noise Levels archive back. 

It was an expensive lesson to learn but things are more secure now! 

My plans for 2025 changed after that point. I couldn't bring myself to wade into gofundme territory so I figured the best way to recoup costs would be to offer something back to people who wanted to help out. Thus, Rare Cuts was born. The idea was to do a compilation of previously unreleased stuff from some of the great bands I'd been profiling on the site. I put the idea out there to see if it had legs and I was blown away by the generosity of those who came forward with offers to supply songs. In addition to this, Jay Blurter put me onto a great CD pressing company, Darryl Russell (Tocata) was kind enough to do the design of the CD, and Koby Geddes helped out with the mastering. The CD became a double CD with an accompanying zine, and sales have been helping me to keep this project going. 

Notable moments of 2025:

• The Zine - Three more issues of the Noise Levels zine came out in February, October, and November. February was Issue 2: The Hassle Brigade, October was the Rare Cuts issue, and November was Issue 4: a mini-zine focused on the Blue Mountains music scene of the '90s and '00s. 

• Show: In December 2024, I reached out to Dave from Nintendo Police and asked if they'd be open to a reunion show in July 2025. I'm still amused by his reply of "Hey Luke, what are you cooking up?" I don't think of myself as a wheeler-and-dealer but pulling together the Noise Levels July 27th show was a mission-and-a-half! Nintendo Police put me onto Bleeding Face, which created a fantastic late '90s double-bill of northern suburbs hardcore magic, with supports from Fur Brain (my new band with Noise Levels co-podcaster Colden 'Bundy' Locke), Snitch Trial, and Exit Mould (who I've interviewed for the next issue of the Noise Levels zine). We booked The Moshpit and sold it out. It was amazing. Such a great night, and I can't thank the bands enough.  

• Social Media: I briefly attempted to engage with Reddit by creating a Noise Levels subreddit but I just don't know enough about Reddit to make it work plus it was just time and energy I don't have. The Facebook group is still a great private community and remains the genesis point for all things Noise Levels. The Instagram account really took off in a big way after I realised what sort of content works on it. And YouTube has been great for the project too as more and more people have been sending me videos that fit the concept. 

• The Podcast: We worked on four podcasts this year but only one episode was completed - and this episode, the one focused on Tutti Parze, was a year in the making on its own. Suffice to say, I'm proud of the work we did on this one as it was a band before my time and the level of research involved went far beyond anything I'd done before for Noise Levels. It turned out great too - with huge thanks those who agreed to do interviews for it.

• Rare Cuts: I already mentioned this double-CD but I'll mention it again here. The following locations are carrying copies (unless they've sold out already): Rocky Road Records (Artarmon), Beatdisc (Parramatta), Prop Records (Ashfield), Red Eye Records (Sydney), and Hat Hill Records (Blackheath). Hit me if you want a copy.

• National Beer Day/The Rare Cuts Launch show: We were gonna do a second National Beer Day show but I just couldn't get things to align. There was an attempt to shift dates and locations to try and make it work for the best possible combination of bands but I felt this one slipping through my fingers and I had to cancel it a month out from the show because there were too many factors against it. 

• The Noise Levels archive: The Noise Levels blog and bandcamp continues to grow. I tend to work on about 10 band profiles at a time as they can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a whole year to complete. In the background, I've created a chronology of shows and flyers - currently sitting at 4500+ shows (1980-2010, or thereabouts). These are slowly all getting uploaded to the Noise Levels website, with the hope that this will become the largest online archive of alt-music show flyers in Australia. The website currently has entries for: approximately 1000 shows, 298 profiles of individual band members, 50 zine titles documented (with about 200 individual issues scanned and archived), 196 digitised cassettes and other recordings archived on bandcamp for free download, and 178 band profiles. 

• Radio Guest Spot: One last little surprise was a guest programming spot I did on D.I.R.E. Radio at the beginning of December. I'm not even sure if anyone heard it but I had fun pulling together a two hour playlist for this online broadcast - I chucked in some rarities and completely unheard stuff that hasn't gone up anywhere before. I think this might be available for listening next month.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped and continues to help make Noise Levels a reality. It's been a blast - here's to 2026!