This might be a controversial one. Records are having a huge resurgence – people get genuinely excited about them. They talk about the warmth, the sound, the ritual, the experience. Record stores are thriving again. New albums are being released on vinyl and some people seem convinced it’s...
This is how we started in the early ’90s. Back then, we knew we’d really made it when we managed to buy a secondhand eight-track recorder. An old Fostex A80, I think it was. To us, it felt like a professional studio. This little reel of quarter-inch tape...
If you’re building a studio, buy good speakers, or they are better known near-field studio monitors, first. I’ve got a pair of cheap speakers in the studio that I refuse to get rid of. They’re not here because they sound amazing, they’re here because they look cool. I...
Microphones are funny things. This one sitting in front of me is about 25 years old. It’s an original Rode NT1 and, from memory, it cost around $500 when I bought it. Back then, that felt like a serious investment. Newer versions of the NT1 are a similar...
My hearing is shot, so how do I still mix music? My hearing isn’t great. Years of making music, standing near loud things, and congenital degradation have all taken their toll. There are frequencies I don’t hear particularly well anymore, and if I sat down and really thought...
In the age of streaming, where musicians get paid bugger all for a play, I thought it might be worth talking about royalties. I don’t know the exact figure these days, but it feels like something ridiculous — three-tenths of a thousandth of a cent per stream. Whatever...
People occasionally ask musicians about their best gigs. That’s easy enough – the packed venues, the great audiences, the nights when everything clicks and you walk off stage thinking, “Yes, that’s why we do this.” The more interesting question is this: What’s the worst gig you’ve ever done?...
People can get surprisingly passionate about guitars. The wood, pickups, brand, country it was made in, year it was built, shape of the headstock, its pedigree – the list seems endless. Me? I own two. One is a Yamaha Pacifica that cost me about $700. I’ve had it...
I saw an interesting post recently from a musician who had spent the best part of 30 years making music independently. They started out as DIY and, decades later, still proudly described themselves that way. It got me thinking… Technically, I’m a professional musician. Over the years I’ve...
One of my absolute favourite parts of being in OLDER is playing bass, which ought to be the case as I am primarily a bass player! Not writing songs, not mixing, not even releasing the album. There’s something about finally plugging the Rickenbacker in after months of ideas...
There’s a funny thing about instruments. Sometimes the one that’s technically better for you isn’t the one your heart chooses. I’m a bass player and I love basses. Over the years I’ve owned a few, played plenty more, and admired even more from afar at music shops, in...
One of the things I love most about being in OLDER is Julie’s vocals. Not just the lead vocals, which are fantastic in themselves, but her ability to harmonise. The layers, textures and emotion that is created once those extra voices start weaving into the song is pure...
35 years of songs finally escaping the hard drive… Selfie, released in 2025, was a very different kind of OLDER album. Unlike Human+ or Unmasked, which both had very clear themes and concepts running through them, Selfie was more like opening every cupboard, drawer and dusty old hard...
Unmasked was our third OLDER album, released in 2024, and like our previous album HUMAN+, it was written with theme in mind. Before writing it, we had both been diagnosed with adult ADHD in our 50s, and suddenly our entire lives were viewed through a completely different lens....
There comes a point in recording vocals where excitement can actually become a bit dangerous. You finish the mix, chuck the headphones on, turn it up loud and think, “Yes. That’s it, brilliant – release it now!” And sometimes it is ready. But more often than not, I’ve...
I was talking to a fella once about music and he was telling me about this fairly famous local band he absolutely loved – the sort of band he’d follow from one end of the country to the other. You could tell he was genuinely passionate about them...
When you meet new people around our age the conversation eventually gets to the standard question: “So, what do you do?” When we say, “We’re musicians,” the conversation almost always just… ends. “Oh.” And then silence. No one really asks anything further. No one says, “Would I know...
Human+ was our second OLDER album, released in 2021, and looking back now it feels tied to one of the strangest periods most of us have lived through. When we started writing it, the world hadn’t fully tipped upside down yet. The album wasn’t intended as a “lock-down...
This is the record equivalent of a ‘shelfie’. There’s probably three or four hundred albums sitting there – vinyl, proper vinyl. It’s having a bit of a revival these days, a bit of a comeback. Many moons ago we bought 500 records for $500 as a random job-lot....
There’s always that one piece of gear, isn’t there? The one that sits in the back of your mind for years… a bit of a dream. For me, it was a Rickenbacker bass. I’ve been playing bass for a long time now. Forty-five years, give or take. Started...