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Check Check

Music words for music nerds. 🎶

Welcome to Check Check - an Australian music page bringing you closer to the bands you love, bringing you new music you'll love, and taking you front row to the gigs and festivals that you love.

05/11/2025

Does the Australian Music Prize want to decontextualise music?

The Australian Music Prize recently announced its nine-album shortlist for 2025. I was relieved to see that Hayley Mary – whose latest record was one of 67 albums nominated for the prize – wasn’t on there.

But according to a social media post from the AMP, Mary’s exclusion wouldn’t be related to the fact she’s a MAGA supporter, a big fan of Charlie Kirk, and someone who won’t condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza – not to mention the Nakba – because, apparently, “it’s the oldest conflict ever”.

To what post do I refer? Punk and hip hop artist Mudrat, whose album Social Cohesion is on the AMP shortlist, has just recorded a video for the AMP socials. All the other shortlisted artists are doing the same. But Mudrat’s video is the only one with a caption attached about how the AMP’s judging criteria exclusively concerns “new music of excellence” – with all other factors irrelevant, including "political messaging."

03/11/2025

Feckload of tours coming up in November and December, including Crowded House, Addison Rae, Florist, Kendrick Lamar and rare shows for Carla dal Forno and Scattered Order.

Find all the details of every artist touring Australia in the last two months of 2025 via the link in the comments.

28/10/2025

In the months following Daniel Ek’s latest cash splash in military tech company Helsing, I became obsessed with Spotify. A Spotify user since 2014, I ditched my subscription and, in a classic display of red pill zealotry, began side-eyeing anyone still using it – including artists participating in Spotify’s art-washing marketing campaigns.

But crankiness is no solution to injustice. And although it’d be nice if comeuppance were meted out based on objective facts, we’re unlikely to see a substantial shift away from the big streamers until people are shown a better alternative – and not just ethically better, but culturally too.

So, in the midst of my ramblings about Spotify’s pernicious flattening of culture and dog s**t royalty payments, someone pointed me in the direction of Nina Protocol.

Nina is a US-based digital music store, streaming app, and music recommendation platform. It has been described as like the baby of Bandcamp and SoundCloud, but it also has a scrappy approachability reminiscent of the early blog era.

Learn more via the link in the comments

24/10/2025

The best Australian music of 2025.
There’s folk, soul, downtempo pop, experimental electronic, dub, and a fair bit of electronic groove.
There’s also “Bawuypawuy” by Yolngu musician Drifting Clouds, sung in the Yolngu Matha language Liyawulma’mirr-Djambarrpuyngu. It’s one of the best songs you will ever hear in your life.
Find it via the link in the comments.

21/10/2025

Why does every man in a band in Australia look the same?

At this year’s BIGSOUND, I was genuinely surprised by the number of acts composed entirely of men who looked like 1970s cricketers who’d just redeemed a skate shop gift voucher.

It’s not just a BIGSOUND thing: so many of the guitar bands to succeed in this country in recent years feature three or four men with longish hair and moustaches donning an anonymising mix of caps, jeans, oversized tees, skate shoes and the odd flanno. Where have all the weirdos gone?

Of course, judging people based on their appearance is a slippery slope. But it doesn’t help that these sorts of bands keep writing songs about beer. Nor that pretty much everyone in the Australian music industry knows about the abusive behaviour of a few successful musicians, and yet nothing is done.

Read more via the link in the comments.

15/10/2025

Golden Plains is turning eighteen and good lord what a lineup. A couple of duos are headlining: UK big beat crossover act Basement Jaxx and Norwegian/Danish savvy pop pair Smerz.

Smerz's new album, Big City Life, hits hard and soft. It actually doesn’t sound that dissimilar to Billie Eilish. Very keen to see Nourished By Time, a US musician who, to my knowledge, has never written a bad song.

The whole lineup is stupid good. François K? Go Bang. But will he play it? “Policy of Truth” would do. OK Williams on the lineup almost guarantees my life will again unravel in the weeks following Golden Plains. Keen.

full lineup via the link in the comments.

09/10/2025

Spring is here and I am ready to release my forearms from at least two layers of clothing at all times. There are also stacks of artists on tour in Australia.

Hitting the road this month: RONA., Leo Sayer, Floating Points, Crowded House, Gordi, Connan Mockasin, Burna Boy and many others.

Find all the details via the link in the comments.

08/10/2025

Finding Figaro hard launched spring at Fairfield Amphitheatre last weekend.

Brazilian DJ Omoloko, the agency’s latest touring guest and the owner of a truly magnificent smile, kick-started the birthday celebrations with a four-hour back-to-back alongside Mike Who of Sydney’s Planet Trip Records.

The event affirmed the merits of a lengthy DJ set. So many party lineups are rammed with names, which looks good on a poster, but leaves each selector with barely an hour to do their thing behind the decks.

But with three-plus hours at their disposal, DJs have time to modulate through various phases. To build rapport and ask the crowd, Do you trust me to go a little slow here? To take a few strange departures? To tuck into the same groove for 40-odd minutes?

That said, there weren’t many strange departures. After the sunshine, disco and MPB of Omoloko and Mike Who, Finding Figaro founders Liam and Nico went back-to-back with Adriana, giving us a selection of music ideal for a day on which t-shirts and shorts were getting their first run of the season.

Read more via the link in the comments.

05/10/2025

After several years of singles and EPs, support slots and festival bookings, proud Noongar woman BUMPY has released her debut album Kanana.

The album combines influences of soul, funk and jazz. It’s musically eloquent, but everything is rooted in Bumpy’s elemental singing voice.

The title translates from Noongar language as “land where the sun sets.” “It’s imperative we are preserving and keeping language alive by speaking and singing it,” Bumpy said.

Read more via the link in the comments.

02/10/2025

A handful of acts have been added to the lineup for the 33rd Meredith Music Festival, which returns to Wadawurrung Country in Victoria from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 December.

Chet Faker leads the second lineup announcement, along with US hip hop veteran Oddisee, and Chapter Music founder and pop aesthete Guy Blackman. Ninajirachi will cap off a banner year with a set in the Supernatural Amphitheatre on the festival’s opening night.

Find the fill lineup via the link in the comments.

01/10/2025

The strange diversions began as soon as you entered -TOPIA, a festival of live music, DJs and immersive art installations at Abbotsford Convent.

You had the option of getting a drink and some food, sitting down for a game of chess, or entering a rustic sensory deprivation maze that spilled out into a dark and smoky dancefloor.

Hidden to the right of the entrance was the Sirens stage, located inside a small chapel. Chairs were covered in austere white linens and the stage was overrun by a mound of candle wax that looked like it’d been forming since last century.

It might sound like -TOPIA was contriving quirkiness simply to prove it’s not like other festivals. But everything had a playful, homemade aesthetic, and suffused the festival site with an irregular pulse.

Read the full review via the link in the comments.

30/09/2025

CADENA is the antidote to your average, reductive Latin American arts and culture festival.

A collaboration between N0 R3PLY Collective and Chuleo Club, the four-day festival of contemporary Latinx arts spans film, photography, literature and dance music.

“There’s so much cool stuff coming out,” said Chuleo Club founder Lina Zabaleta. “We have amazing designers, artists, writers, filmmakers, producers, music. It’s not just ladies selling arepa. We’re more than that, you know?”

CADENA is on this Wed-Sat at a warehouse in Brunswick. It'll wrap up with the launch of Tina Disco's new EP, Sol, and a Chuleo Club afterparty.

Learn more through the link in the comments.

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