“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” Gore Vidal’s vicious quip contains an essential human truth and yet whenever I reflect on the rise of Future Classic, a label set up by people I very much consider friends, it does not apply.
The Australian electronic music label was set up by Nathan McLay and his wife Jay Ryves in 2004 and they were swiftly joined by Chad Gillard soon after. Around this time Nathan was also setting up the online shop for indie-outfit Inertia as I was sitting next to him busily setting up and running their touring division.
I had no clue what I was doing but Nathan, still beginning Future Classic, had a much firmer view of success. So, in our windowless office in a Waterloo industrial estate in Sydney, we’d talk about the things we wanted our new ventures to do – and music.
One of the things that immediately struck me about Nathan’s vision was the terrific attention to detail. He wanted to get it all absolutely right, on every level. Future Classic started out dealing in super-cool underground house and slightly left-of-centre techno 12-inches with these amazing sleeves. It turned out they were all designed by Jay, whose graphic design studio had (I suspect) a great deal more liquidity then than the European-distributed 12-inch business.
The music was precise and gorgeous and its packaging looked the same, which appealed, for a couple of reasons. The first is that firm grip on the imagination that Factory Records holds for any self-respecting music geek of a certain age.
Factory had the masterful designer Peter Saville on their board and played with the concept of the “mass secret” – coded design work that pulled down any shouting about the band name and album title to vanishing levels, but was instantly recognisable to anyone browsing through the racks looking for the latest New Order 12-inch. I could see this same confidence in the look and art direction of each Future Classic release and admired it greatly.
Of course, this was married to my love of the slightly art-house end of electronic music – tunes that remain danceable. Growing up in Perth in the 1990s, the ripple of the UK’s summer of love that reached us was, essentially, rave. It was my sole experience of the form.
Studying in London in 1996 and discovering the Blue Note club – where everyone from Andrew Weatherall, Metalheadz, Ninja Tune, Mo’ Wax et al had a night – had an electric effect, galvanising me and leading to everything else that’s happened in my music life. Here was classy, considered, adventurous electronic music that was also an enormous amount of fun to party to. This attitude seemed to be writ large in what Future Classic were attempting, too – the better the music, the better the party.
As the label grew, it was careful to keep a foot in the cultural world as well as the commercial, presenting some amazing bar nights at the Sydney festival (Whitest Boy Alive remains seared into my brain) alongside a killer fifth anniversary party at the Civic, Sydney in 2009 featuring DJ Henrick Schwarz. I kept up with releases as they moved from Deepchild to Jamie Lloyd to Cadillac to Mitizi and still remember how stoked I was when they secured a Luomo remix back at the start.
I’m taking a long time to mention the names everyone now associates with Future Classic – the mighty Flume and Chet Faker – but those are stories everyone who’s interested already (and rightly) knows. The reason I invited Nathan, Jay and Chad into the Vivid Live program this year was because I felt we should shout as loudly as possible that they’ve now been going for 10 years.
A decade! Entire ecosystems of microglitchwitchhouse have come and gone in the fickle biosphere of electronic music. That’s EDM to anyone under 20, I suppose – resistance to the term betrays my fulsome age. Savvy yet understated marketers, Future Classic need no help from me in communicating with their audience, so I’ll draw a veil of modesty over proceedings with my full disclosure – I have no tickets left to sell to our FCX evening at Vivid Live. Watch Flume’s newest video, recorded in the lungs of the Sydney Opera House, instead.
Success in music is not inevitable for anyone – it’s more like one long knock-out tournament than a normal career – and I know there have been more twists and turns than can be summed up in a blogpost. But, still, a little something in me thrives whenever I contemplate this particular story
Ben Marshall is head of contemporary music at Sydney Opera House and curator of Vivid Live
- FCX: 10 Years of Future Classic is at Sydney Opera House on 29 May
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