Music For Small Audiences
Music
About
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.
Episodes
- MFSA126: The Weather Stopped
The weather here in Melbourne ground to a halt this past week. As the news put it, a blocking high parked itself in the Tasman Sea, and according to the forecasters it intends to stay there for a few more days yet. Some inland towns have b…
- MFSA125: Pack In The Morning
The Australian summer is here, and with it has come a series of getaways with friends and family – some just a weekend, some a few days longer. It can be hard to squeeze both fun and relaxation into the same trip, particularly when one see…
- MFSA124: Your Regularly Scheduled Program
We are a few days away from the first day of summer here in Australia as I write this, and while the real summer weather hasn’t arrived yet, there’s already a looseness in the air. As for me, I’m enjoying catching up with friends and famil…
- MFSA123: Strong Finish
For the past eighteen months I’ve been balancing a fair bit of study alongside fulltime work and daily existence. It has been a wild, life-changing ride. With nine modules down and one to go, the finish line is now in sight. With a rush an…
- MFSA122: You Always Meet Twice
There is a saying in Germany – Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben – that has baked into it a delightful ambiguity. Functioning simultaneously as both wistful sentiment and subtle warning, it acknowledges that goodbyes rarely mean foreve…
- MFSA121: Incrementalism
I read somewhere recently that ‘strategy is what you say no to’. We can’t be all things to all people, and we can’t take advantage of every opportunity that comes along. Time, money, and energy are all limited resources. And so it seems re…
- MFSA120: Put It In Gear
The Australian summer holiday period is winding to a close, and Melbourne is slowly gearing back up into its normal urban pace after a very sleepy four week period. While it can be difficult to unwind after a fast-paced year, it can be jus…
- MFSA119: A Long Way From Home
I have recently returned from a fair bit of solo travel that included time with friends, family, and some study. There is something special about travelling alone that is uniquely thought provoking. I am reminded of a quote that I’m not ab…
- MFSA118: Somewhere Along The Way
I played a really fun house party gig in the inner west last night, sharing the controls with two very good friends. We’ve played a lot of gigs together over the years, from sharing residencies here in Melbourne nearly twenty years ago thr…
- MFSA117: We Still Here
I celebrated a milestone recently. To mark the occasion, we spent a few days in sunny Brisbane. While it wasn’t a long trip, it was a relaxing trip, and an inspiring one, too. In such a context it is hard not to reflect with some depth on…
- MFSA116: Now The Hard Work Starts
Sometimes it’s important to play to your strengths. Sometimes it’s important to work on your weaknesses. For some reason the former always sounds much more appealing than the latter. After a nearly ten year break, I have returned to study.…
- MFSA115: A Thought Indoors
Never trust a thought that occurs indoors, the saying goes. We are into the final third of summer here in Australia, and at the risk of tempting the sun gods, I daresay the weather has started to stabilise – as far as Melbourne weather eve…
- MFSA114: The Present Future Dynamic
As the year comes to a close, it seems natural to reflect on the year that has passed, and where it has taken us. Are we where we intended to be? Where we wanted to be? Or are we somewhere else, somewhere better defined as the logical dest…
- MFSA113: Live At The Candy Factory
I have recently returned from a few weeks in Canada. The trip included a weekend with some very good friends, during which I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to play an extended set on what is probably my favourite pair of spea…
- MFSA112: Subclinical
I’ve long been intrigued by the end user experience of modern medicine, and what can at times feel to the layperson like a focus on only fixing what is broken. If we are unwell past a certain arbitrary threshold, we receive medical interve…
- MFSA111: Leaving The Right Things Undone
Much has been said about the importance of time management. When time is tight and competing priorities overlap, it can be easy to succumb to a sense of guilt that things may be missed or not prioritised appropriately. I had a bit of an ep…
- MFSA110: What If It All Works Out
Negativity can be seductive. As we get older, our awareness seems to build about just how much can go wrong at any given moment – personally, professionally, geopolitically, economically, and physically. It’s easy to be fearful, and the mo…
- MFSA109: Frame Of Reference
We all have our idiosyncrasies. Two of mine are closely related, in that I love a good quotation, and I am a sucker for a good cliché. In both cases, I like to think of them as bits of distilled wisdom that have stood the test of time. But…
- MFSA108: Why Not Both
A commonly accepted definition of sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. So how then to make a future worth waiting for, without shortchanging our ability to fully seize…
- MFSA107: Some Colours Have No Names
The summer holiday period is drawing to a close here in Australia, and we have just come back from a few weeks travelling through New Zealand’s South Island. The landscape is extraordinary to the point of being mind expanding, and every da…
- MFSA106: That Little Bit Further
There is something exciting about covering new ground. The transition from known to unknown brings with it a sense of renewal and energy, and it can be quite fun to explore that little bit further, and to cover a little bit of new ground a…
- MFSA105: Tin Roof Rusted
It has been an unusual weekend. It has been an unusual year. Springtime in Melbourne often brings a bit of rain. With another La Nina apparently on the horizon, we have seen quite a bit of rain already. So much so, in fact, that it has exp…
- MFSA104: Days Go By
Winter has arrived in Melbourne. To me that means short days, falling leaves, and the occasional smell of a wood stove across the city at night. It can be easy at this time of year to withdraw a little bit, to bunker down and count the day…
- MFSA103: Your Call Is Important To Us
Coordinating travel, as with coordinating a lot of things these days, involves a lot of time waiting on hold on the telephone. As such, I am becoming something of a hold music aficionado. On many recent calls the music has been punctuated…
- MFSA102: The Spirit Of Radio
As I grew up my two older sisters were a constant source of musical guidance and inspiration, taking me to concerts, bringing me records from overseas school trips and keeping me up to speed on the hottest bands across the genre that was t…
- MFSA101: A Soft Landing
Ah yes, life in a pandemic. I suppose every now and then life throws up a bit of turbulence, and so this is our time. But what is the difference between flying and falling, really? There are some parallels shared with the difference betwee…
- MFSA100: Gudaseya
As I write this I am just over three hundred kilometres from home. May not sound like much, but after an extended pandemic and all of the restrictions that come with, even a little bit of travel is a really big deal. The past few weeks hav…
- MFSA099: Too Late To Leave
Whether we are talking about social gatherings or impending natural disasters, there comes a point at which leaving is no longer an option. A point when, to paraphrase an old movie quote, there can be no turning back, and there is no choic…
- MFSA098: Second Shot
I love a good World War II documentary. While the world is today a very different place, there is still so much from that era that rings true, including the misplaced optimism in 1939 that suggested ‘the boys will be home by Christmas’. Si…
- MFSA097: Dark And Long
It is the start of the longest night of the year here in Melbourne as I write this. As you may infer from the titles of my podcast episodes over the years, I have a recurring interest in the pivot points, the transitions, the turning point…
- MFSA096: Push Hard But Go Easy On Yourself
I am not a fast runner, but I like to run. After so many cancelled events it was great to again run in an organised event last weekend. It was a road run along the Great Ocean Road on the southern coast of Australia. The weather was wet bu…
- MFSA095: Get The Balance Right
While the whole world may be going through a global pandemic, the experience of every country and every individual has been different. As my good friend Dan has put it, we may all be riding out the same storm, but we are definitely not all…
- MFSA094: Have To Get To
Fun means different things to different people. An activity that one person sees as an exciting adventure – say free solo rock climbing, slam poetry or building a ship in a bottle – another is just as likely to see as profoundly terrifying…
- MFSA093: A Place That May Not Exist
While the events of the past twelve months have provided plenty of reasons to be pensive, persnickety and petulant, I am feeling optimistic and inspired at the moment. It has been a year of limitations, worries, uncertainty and introspecti…
- MFSA092: Out And Back
I enjoy long distance running with good music as a physical and psychological release. In particular I like the out-and-back style run, heading out to a distant point and then turning around to head home. Running out, there is a sense of a…
- MFSA091: Renormalisation
In audio editing terms, normalisation is something you do to a recorded signal in order to proportionally recalibrate it, so that the loudest peak in the program material corresponds to the highest signal intensity possible without distort…
- MFSA090: Inbetween Days
Early November 2020. Not quite summer in Melbourne, but certainly not winter. Yesterday I wore a scarf over my sunburn. We are not quite free of restrictions here, but certainly not as held back either. We have spent more quality time with…
- MFSA089: It Happens Quickly
Hemingway once said that big things happen slowly at first, but then suddenly. Time itself has felt a little weird in recent weeks, a mix of slow and sudden that has felt more than a bit bananas. Hard to believe that our city has been in s…
- MFSA088: Symbolism
The first few days of spring have arrived here in Melbourne, and with it has come a sense of renewal and energy. The days are getting longer, minute by minute. Slowly but surely the weather is warming. The trees are starting to blossom. Th…
- MFSA087: Of Limitation And Possibility
Melbourne is in to a Stage 4 lockdown as I write this. This includes the closure of all nonessential businesses, an evening curfew, a heavy police presence and serious penalties for being anywhere other than home without a valid reason. It…
- MFSA086: Fool Me Twice
I keep a lot of lists. One of them is called Things I Already Know. It is reserved for things that I have very clearly learned, the hard way, and then seemingly forgotten, only to be reminded all over again the next time it happens. Nobody…
- MFSA085: A Welcome Distraction
The reticular activating system is a short, pencil-sized piece of the brain located just above where the spinal cord is attached to the brain. It acts as the gatekeeper of information between most sensory systems and the conscious mind. It…
- MFSA084: Tomorrow Is For A Lot Of Things
It has been a few months now that social engagement has been curtailed. Australia has managed things well by the look of things, with intergovernmental cooperation sustained, and policy decisions driven by science and fact, rather than ide…
- MFSA083: Stronger Where It Was Broken
After a bone breaks, there is a short period of time during the reparative stage of the healing process where the area around the fracture is stronger than it was before the injury. Having broken a few bones over the years, this period of…
- MFSA082: Bon Voyage
What an extraordinary time we are living through. With a global pandemic raging, it seems the whole world is focused precisely on a single little organic particle. I have high hopes that the collective undivided attention of the best and b…
- MFSA081: Mud From The Mallee
Melbourne summers seem to go on forever, with plenty of sunshine and long warm evenings. Unfortunately, the winters seem to go on forever too. Even before coming to Australia, I often thought that the length of a year felt like exactly the…
- MFSA080: Introduced Species
And so it is now 2020. It has been an interesting few weeks here in Melbourne. Australia has been making headlines around the world due to a particularly severe bushfire season, and there have been a few days of smoke across the city that…
- MFSA079: And Yet Somehow
Recent weeks have shown me just how much things can change quickly. From moves across the globe to changes in fortune and circumstance, it seems that for many people close to me, recent events have served up a decidedly different state of…
- MFSA078: What To Compare It To
In recent weeks we have been watching a thought provoking TV series focused on time travel, and how the choices we make set us on certain paths. Having finished the second season of the series, one line in particular sticks out – the obser…
- MFSA077: Where Things Are
I read once that being organised means that where things are suits what those things mean, so that each thing takes as little psychic energy as possible to find when it is needed, while not being in the way. With spring arriving to Melbour…