Decibels Records is a local government funded initiative designed to give young people in the Darebin Council area a leg up in the music industry. Claire Barley from Decibel isn’t absolutely certain how the change of government will affect her place of work, but is confident that they will be ok for the time being at least. “I’m not sure how it will affect us,” she admits, “but I think we’ve already secured our funding for the next year or so. So we’re good for a while I think.”
This coming Saturday September 21, Decibels Records are putting on a showcase event for a couple of its artists at the Northcote Town Hall as part of the Darebin Music Feast, and Claire was only too happy to give us some background about the initiative and tell us all about the upcoming event.
“We’re run by the Darebin Council, this is our third year,” she begins, “it’s basically a program, a youth led committee where we run a record label. All the members of the committee are about 16 to, I think, 22. It’s all young people who are interested in pursuing a career within the music industry. So throughout the year we run through the various aspects of running a record label, and each year we sign a few artists, and we work with them to record an EP, promote it for them and promote their EP launch.
“So everyone on the committee has a bit of a designated role, we break off into different groups, we have people working on media and communications, artwork and design, technical production and so on.”
And the event itself? “It’s our artist showcase launch,” she explains, “it’ll be the EP launch for both of our signed artists this year. This year we’ve got Yorque, who are a four piece band from NMIT, they’re pretty cool. And we’ve also got Miss Eileen and King Lear who are a brother and sister duo, and they’re a bit folky and cute, so that’ll be very exciting.
The event is annual, and is basically the climax of the year of the program, when everything comes together for the label and the artists.
“We hold this event towards the end of the program and it’s sort of a culmination of all our efforts throughout the year. It works well, because we meet once a week at the Northcote Town Hall, and then we’re able to host the event there every year.”
Claire strongly believes that programs and events like these, as well as art and music in general, are very important for the wellbeing of the young people of Australia. Both from the point of view of getting a start in the music industry and as a distraction from the stress of study and generally being a young person trying to make your way in the world today.
“I think they’re really really important,” she states with conviction, “it’s really great to have an outlet that is so practical. Especially trying to get a foot in the door of the music industry, it’s so hard. Practical experience is the best. You can sit in the classroom, there are so many degrees…most of the committee this year are Year 12, a few of us are at Uni.
“But it’s really good to have that practical experience, and we get various industry professionals to come in and help us out throughout the year. So we’ve had Jimi Maroudas the producer, Nick O’Byrne from AIR, so we’ve had some really great people come and help us. And I think it’s really great to have it integrated into the community, to meet other like minded young people is really important. Especially with people in the committee finding Year 12 stressful this year, it’s really nice to have something that is just completely separate from all your studies. It’s just a really positive environment.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
