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Jimmy Trash<\/a><\/p>\n \u00b7 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the end of 2018, Aboriginal Australian rapper, dancer, artist, and actor Neil Morris, aka DRMNGNOW<\/a>, was the first person ever to fill the role of First People\u2019s Business Manager at the Victorian Music Development Office. For him, his goal there was simple: \u201cI was trying to break down barriers around Indigenous artists,\u201d he says. \u201c[Labels] are not going to get an economic benefit from them\u2014they\u2019re multi-million dollar businesses that want to make 200k per year for every single artist. Instead, I wanted to make a space for them to create an intrinsic cultural value.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the quickest look into the history of Indigenous acts in the Australian Billboard charts reveal how great that need was. From the 1980s until the serious rise of First Nations hip-hop in the 2010s,<\/a> First Nations artists seem to only get an industry push once every five years or so\u2014Yothu Yindi\u2019s breakthrough 1991 dance hit \u201cTreaty<\/a>\u201d; Christine Anu<\/a> in 1995; Shakaya<\/a> and Stiff Gins<\/a> in the early \u201800s; Jessica Mauboy\u2019s platforming on Australian Idol<\/a> in 2006. And that\u2019s just mainstream pop music. Given this fleeting support for accessible music, how could Aboriginal artists in the fields of punk, lo-fi, avant-garde music, or noise hope to gain traction?<\/p>\n \u201cThere was quite a bit of work around that,\u201d says Morris. \u201cI did an artist development program that [sought to answer] questions like, \u2018How do you take an artist who, before 2015 couldn\u2019t even get a gig in Melbourne, and set them up with the best [press] photographers? How do you get some of the top-of-the town PR firms to work with them? How do you make sure that Melbourne Music Week programs these kinds of artists? I was speaking with [Australia\u2019s youth-focused radio station] Triple J about why they should have a First Nations-dedicated show, and they\u2019ve gone on to do that<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In the last few years, these kinds of positive steps have helped shine a spotlight on the wealth of Indigenous voices working in new music genres. In 2022, Kaldor Public Art Projects, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, hosted an event<\/a> celebrating American artist Sol LeWitt\u2019s admiration for Central Australian Anmatyerr artists Emily Kame Kngwarreye<\/a> and Gloria Tamerre Petyarre<\/a>. The exhibition fostered three separate collaborations between Aboriginal Australian musicians and American musicians\u2014JWPATON with Chuck Johnson,<\/a> Tahlia Palmer\u2014aka amby downs\u2014with Steve Gunn<\/a>, and e fishpool with Claire Rousay.<\/a> This series was released on legendary, (now-defunct label) Longform Editions<\/a> to critical success.<\/p>\n Several other Australian labels and institutions have also dedicated resources to platforming new Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists\u2014significantly, Sydney label Trackwork<\/a>, Lawrence English\u2019s Room 40<\/a>, and Stu Buchanan<\/a>, tastemaker behind the pioneering experimental music initiative New Weird Australia<\/a>. Upon his promotion to Head of Screen for Sydney Opera House, Buchanan has used his position to elevate many Indigenous artists, like dubby field remixer Salllvage<\/a> and anticolonial ambient-noise audiovisual artist amby downs, who presented the sound and film collage work Look Intruder<\/em><\/a> (2024), <\/em>which confronted Australian national identity from the viewpoint of a First Nations person. That it was broadcast directly from one of Australia\u2019s most prominent tourism landmarks would have been unthinkable in the political climate of previous years.<\/p>\n Before diving into this incredible sample of noise, punk, lo-fi, and hip-hop from the new generation of Australian First Nations musicians, it\u2019s important to heed these words from Morris: \u201cIt\u2019s still a very Western way, to just include one Indigenous voice [in our cultural activities]. We need to always think about the cultural fabric and make sure that all voices are represented. We can include First Peoples in these spaces till the cows come home, but it\u2019s not going to lead to a decolonized and healed future. We need to build new spaces from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n For these artists, merely being invited to play is just the beginning. The end goal is spaces and platforms that are owned, promoted, and controlled by First Nations people. What follows is a selection of new music by musicians who fuse their own politics, history, and desires into the music they make.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sludgy, aggressive punks Backhand<\/a> are part of a strong contingent of hardcore bands hailing from Eora Nation\/Sydney, a movement that also includes Curses<\/a> and Homesick<\/a>. \u201cThrough all the despair and war in the world, I find myself clinging onto small bouts of hope,\u201d says vocalist Kristy Preston. \u201cNot just through the lens of someone in the punk scene, but as a mother, a partner, and a human. I enjoy being in a band\u2014that creativity alone takes me away from my own day-to-day struggles\u2014but it\u2019s nice when someone comes up and tells me they got goosebumps from our set, or when some big, bald, badass old-school punk guy says they were nearly in tears during one of our songs.\u201d \u201cNothing Ever Changes\u201d is a desperate anthem, diverting punk\u2019s trademark anger from suburban boredom to First Nations causes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cFor any artist trying to lead with cultural integrity at the heart of their work,\u201d says Local Woman<\/a>, aka Murwillumbah, New South Wale\u2019s Kalyani Ellis, \u201cit\u2019s tough in this industry. It\u2019s tough to be in a world that doesn\u2019t inherently recognize the sacredness of music. But if you can protect your music, which is your heart and your spirituality and your story\u2014that\u2019s the most rewarding thing.\u201d She explores the emotional ramifications of that statement on \u201cMoving to Melbourne,\u201d her first single and a bedroom punk masterpiece. \u201cThe song is an electronic emo anthem for chasing your dreams, and what you have to leave behind in the process,\u201d Ellis says. \u201cThe girl you fell in love with that no one knew about, \u2018cause you weren\u2019t out yet. All the pieces of your heart that break when you\u2019re someone who wants to achieve \u2018bigger things.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n E fishpool\u2019s compositions sound like chopped and screwed versions of early DIY industrial bands like SMERSH<\/a>\u2014harsh, but with something tender on the inside. \u201cI guess the way my music sounds ultimately has always reflected what\u2019s around me,\u201d she says. \u201cI am pretty vocal, and am usually making up random songs to soundtrack what I\u2019m doing. I have no professional training and can\u2019t read music, so it is all very interpretive. Everything comes from the sounds in my head.\u201d Her new album, MothGirl<\/em><\/a>, was written during a period of mourning over a close friend, \u201cI had a lot of pent-up energy and emotion, and lots of time alone at a really special place in Gariwerd. Everything kinda came out at once\u2014joy and grief and anger.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Palmer\u2019s work is intentionally confrontational\u2014even when it\u2019s an acoustic track, as \u201ccampfire_______\u201d is. The haunting and violent piece was composed alongside a VR animation <\/a>\u00a0which, in her own words, is intended to \u201cinvoke a sense of home-base during a time of early European invasion on this continent, a moment experienced by women, a moment that came before the chaotic violence of the men around them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, ambient\/collage work is one of the better ways to communicate the complexities of knowing our histories, our past, and our stories,\u201d she continues, \u201cas well as the difficulties of not<\/em> knowing those things. Experimenting with non-linear, non-speaking based storytelling was fundamental in my personal journey of unlearning white Western thinking and re-connecting to Indigenous ways of thinking and being.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Salllvage<\/a> cut his teeth in Warrang\u2019s ballroom scenes\u2014as a dancer, DJ, and producer under the name Guy Ruin\u2014before wandering into a space known as \u201cIndigenous futurism.\u201d His electronic pieces, which are partly composed with AI, are thumping and challenging, yet organic and trance-like, dipping a toe into folktronica waters. \u201c\u2018Autochthonic Sensory Meridian Response\u2019 sums up a lot of what I\u2019m about,\u201d he explains. \u201cAs an artist, a lot of my work has a haunted or melancholy feel, which I think is basically about living in the \u2018after colonial.\u2019 I think there\u2019s something about the sadness and the trauma of that that bleeds into a lot of the music that I make, even as that music itself is reparative.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n JWPaton<\/a>\u2019s musical career was preceded by work in graphic design, which makes sense when you hear his sunburnt soundscapes. Of the track \u201cWest Sydney Sunset,\u201d he says, \u201cIt makes me think of driving home after work. I\u2019m heading towards the Blue Mountains, the sun kind of breaks over the top and has this crazy red, pink sky. It\u2019s super beautiful, but West Sydney is not so glamorous. I love that tension, between a place that has so much trouble and beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sumn Conduit<\/a> is an incredibly tense, dynamically evolving, improvisational duo consisting of vocalist Sonya Holowell and modular synth player Ben Carey. Their fully improvised work glides between jazz and new classical, with \u201cEffervesce\u201d being a particularly phenomenal display of Sonya\u2019s vocal talents. As an improviser, Sonya is committed to the importance of deep listening for First Nations Australian people. \u201cEach performance is imbued with the information of the space that you\u2019re in, and that includes all of the living entities that are there sharing that moment with you. [Deep listening] helps to constitute the sense of who you are and who you\u2019re accountable to and connected to. It helps to form your identity.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trackwork<\/a> label head Utility\u2019s editing and mixing on this T Breezy x Walkerboy album<\/a> traverses the full range of hip-hop sounds, from immaculate early grime to the best \u201800s Dirty South. It\u2019s is kept fresh with the incorporation of local twists and turns in the lyrics, and by the delivery of the two Gamilaraay men, who were born and raised in semi-rural Inverell and bonded through music. The result is lyrical structures that are incredibly distinct. According to the album notes, the tune \u201cCLAP\u201d is \u201cchanneling a similar \u2018Dirt Off Your Shoulder\u2019 stance to the naysayers as [the track of the same name on] Jay-Z\u2019s triumphant The Black Album<\/em>\u201d\u2014which is a very complicated way of saying: This song slaps hard!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/mplayer-artist><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cPray\u201d is the final work from DRMNGNOW\u2019s<\/a> project Ngarwu<\/em>, which consists of five audiovisual pieces released over the span of a year. These heavily lyrical rap songs, ambitious and poetic, explore themes of resilience, healing, and global injustice through Neil\u2019s charismatic storytelling. The confrontational tone of his first hit, \u201cAustralia Does Not Exist<\/a>,\u201d takes a backseat here as he sings in his Yorta Yorta dialect, with \u201can intention of giving people something that\u2019s connected to thousands of years of culture.\u201d His earlier career as an R&B crooner gives way to a spoken-word style, designed to help \u201c[non-Native Australians] be nourished by the awareness of the sacredness of the land on which they stand.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source daily.bandcamp.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SCENE REPORT The Radical New Voices of First Nations Australian Music By Jimmy Trash \u00b7 November 03, 2025 At the end of 2018, Aboriginal Australian rapper, dancer, artist, and actor Neil Morris, aka DRMNGNOW, was the first person ever to fill the role of First People\u2019s Business Manager at the Victorian Music Development Office. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2133455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2133454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Radical-New-Voices-of-First-Nations-Australian-Music.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2133456,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133454\/revisions\/2133456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2133455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n November 03, 2025
\n <\/article-credits>\nBackhand
\u201cNothing Ever Changes<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Local Woman
\u201cMoving to Melbourne<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
e fishpool
\u201cmothgirl1<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
amby downs
\u201ccampfire_______<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Salllvage
\u201cAutochthonic Sensory Meridian Response<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
JWPaton
\u201cWest Sydney Sunset<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
Sumn Conduit
\u201cEffervesce<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
T Breezy x Walkerboy
\u201cClap<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
DRMNGNOW
\u201cPray<\/a>\u201d<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n