They’ve defined the local indie underground for decades. Now a Chapter closes

There have been countless eras, albums or gigs in the past half-century that have affirmed, to those in the scene or the room, that Melbourne is the centre of a musical universe. From the experimental Little Band scene of the late ’70s to the career-phobic dolewave crowd 30 years later, we can look back now on cultural moments that felt intimate and local at the time that, in retrospect, were bona-fide movements.

When you zoom in on the photos and check the faded stamps on wrists, you are likely to notice Chapter Music’s Guy Blackman and Ben O’Connor were in the room, nodding along from the corner or craning their neck to see a new band on stage.

For a “smallish indie label,” as Blackman describes it, Chapter long ago cemented itself as a vital and prophetic wellspring for generations of Australian artists. It gave us the new sounds of Twerps, Clamm and Laura Jean. It’s where multidisciplinary artist Darren Sylvester released his songs before the career retrospective that took over the NGV. It’s also the imprint that encouraged post-punks Primitive Calculators to release a record 30 years after they disbanded, that gave Australian riot grrrl group Little Ugly Girls its due, and introduced a new generation to the collectivist mentality of Essendon Airport.

“I grew up listening to Gold 104 and I certainly thought Australian music meant one thing,” says James Webster, the host of the NTS Radio show Great Southern Lands, which recently broadcast an episode dedicated to deep cuts from the Chapter archive. He says the label is “able to tell a story about the [history of the] Melbourne underground – and the Australian underground more broadly – that weaves newer bands that are coming through.”

But there’s only so long you can define the sound of an underground before realities catch up to you. Thirty-three years since Blackman released his label’s first compilation, Bright Lights, Small City (a teenager at the time, he needed a fake ID to get into the launch at a Perth pub), he and O’Connor, his partner in work and life with whom he’s run Chapter Music since 1995, will cease releasing new acts and albums on Chapter Music this year. It’s not the end of the label – they’ll be applying all their energy to reissuing the kinds of forgotten and underappreciated releases that have, in part, defined Chapter – but it is the end of an era.

When I meet the pair at their townhouse bordering Merri Creek in Melbourne’s north, they’re eager to reflect on the past three decades, hype up the final new releases coming out of their busy warehouse, celebrate all that they’ve done – something their followers will join in on at their farewell party as part of Rising’s Day Tripper event in June – and illustrate the reality for independent labels that meant this was their only option.

“We’ve always worked other jobs at the same time as doing Chapter, whether it’s DJing or teaching or music supervision or a bunch of different things,” O’Connor explains. “But in the last few years, it’s become so much harder to maintain the balance.” COVID was a line in the sand, they explain.

After 15 years of working to set up international distribution and touring plans for artists and “making people in the rest of the world feel like it was OK to take a gamble on an Australian band or pay attention to them, write about them, review them”, Blackman says, by 2019 it all seemed to click. It was happening. The bands had their passports in hand and tours booked. Chapter won AIR’s (Australian Independent Record Labels Association) best independent label award that same year. “All the stuff we’d worked towards was paying off. And then in 2020 the gates closed and the rest of the world became a lot further away again.”

While a combination of JobKeeper and a parochial sentiment to “support local!” meant music fans were spending money on releases by indie labels like Chapter in ways they’d rarely seen – “Some of our records sold more copies through mail order than they ever had,” Blackman marvels – since then, “the tyranny of distance” has returned.

There might be no better summation of Blackman and O’Connor’s shared mission, Catholic tastes and devotion to Melbourne’s local music scene than Chapter’s final three new releases. O’Connor heard genre-clashing rap duo Teether & Kuya Neil on 3RRR once and “got super obsessed”. They just released their debut album, Yearn IV, on Chapter, despite Blackman’s initial concern that “maybe they’re just going to think we’re weird old white guys, nerdy dags”.

Half the time I think I’ve discovered a surprising and worthwhile new act, O’Connor has probably beat me to the punch. “It’s crazy – you go to any show in Melbourne and Guy and Ben are both there,” agrees Webster.

“I spend a ridiculous amount of time searching for new music and it’s something I’ve had since I was a kid,” O’Connor says, grinning. “I have wondered before if it’s going to end, but I just don’t think it’s ever going to.”

Their infinite reservoir of energy and ear for new acts was typified by the night they discovered Npcede, an experimental and impressive noise act whose debut EP they just released. Blackman and O’Connor were, in trademark fashion, triple-booked. “There was something on at Capers and another show somewhere else,” O’Connor remembers of the night they happened to be at Npcede’s first live show, at a friend’s birthday party.

“I have just never seen a band change the energy in the room the way that they did at that show, especially a band that has never played before. Within a minute into the first song, the entire room was this teeming, roiling mosh pit. We were standing on chairs and we just kept turning to each other, slack-jawed, like, holy f---. I think that night we started talking about it being the last new thing we ever do.”

‘Let’s go out with a bang. Let’s do something surprising and show that we’ve still got great ears.’

Guy Blackman, Chapter Music

For one of their final releases to be one by a relatively unknown act, one whose sound challenges the idea that Chapter has any sonic biases towards, say, folk songwriters or jangly guitars, was an idea that tickled the label heads. “Let’s go out with a bang,” Blackman says. “Let’s do something surprising and let’s show that we’ve still got great ears.”

Fittingly, it’s Blackman’s new record, Out of Sight, that will be Chapter’s final release, and he’ll lead the line-up of artists at the Rising show. “I started the label basically to be able to document my immediate community, which involved me and my own music,” he says. He spent the past three years writing and recording his follow-up to 2008’s Adult Baby, which features collaborators including Julien Gasc of Stereolab. After devoting his time and energy to other artists’ music for 30 years, this is “a reminder for me personally that I’m an artist too.”

“Also, it’s a really incredible record,” O’Connor adds. “I’m really proud that that’s the last thing we’re putting out.”

Sitting in Blackman and O’Connor’s living room, sharing a plate of pink lamingtons and Tim Tams on ceramic plates, we’re surrounded by the evidence of their cultural obsessions. There are the IKEA cube shelves crammed with vinyl, the likes of which they pull from to build their sets at music festivals such as Golden Plains, where they’re billed as DJ People. The hundreds of paperbacks outgrew the available bookshelves long ago and have assembled themselves into new stacks on the floor.

On every flat surface is a piece of pottery in shimmering colours, matte glazes or cat shapes. I get a tour of their provenance, and the way O’Connor describes the places and communities his vases emerged from is not unlike his descriptions of outsider musicians and underappreciated artists. The thing that unites the 1990s polka-dotted jug from the woman-run pottery store on Brunswick Street and the collection of songs by Andrew Wilson, who had fans in Robert Forster and ties to the Triffids, is that they all eventually found a safe landing at Chapter. There are few more nurturing, appreciative hands than Blackman and O’Connor’s for art of any kind to end up in.

Without their encouragement, Mindy Mapp, bassist in legendary Hobart punk band Little Ugly Girls, isn’t certain their 2018 release would’ve even existed. “They were one of our biggest champions even before they wanted to sign us. Before we even had considered making a record!” she says. “Without Chapter, I think bands like us would just fade away.”

“A big part of the reissue stream of Chapter has been trying to redress that cultural amnesia Australia was really guilty of,” Blackman says. “There’s a bit less cringe [now]. Australia’s proud of a lot of the music it made back in the day that, for years, was just forgotten and neglected. I feel like we’ve helped in some ways.”

When he was a teenager in Perth, making fanzines and shopping at Dada Records, Blackman would clock the logo of a label like Creation or K Records on an unknown record sleeve and view it as a trademark of quality. It’s the same experience we’ve all had over the past 33 years, of spotting Chapter’s logo – once a cheerful book with eyes, who’s been rebranded recently to also have squiggly ears – and putting our trust and time and money and energy into the tastes of Blackman and O’Connor.

“Australia can forget or erase its history a lot, even its very immediate history,” O’Connor says. “I think we’ve tried to show another way of looking at the past. What we’re trying to do now is show another way of looking at the present”.

Key chapters of Chapter Music

Dick Diver, Calendar Days
By the time this second record arrived, the jangly four-piece who had a fan in Courtney Barnett had typified the lo-fi dolewave sound and come to represent a distinct era in Chapter’s history.

Twerps, Twerps
With just one record, the infectious project originated by then-couple Martin Frawley and Julia MacFarlane would capture a sound as inherently Melbourne as the ding of a tram or the thunder of the MCG after a goal.

The Goon Sax, Mirror II
On their third and final record, the short-lived Brisbane trio outgrew the early Go-Betweens comparisons and cemented themselves as among our best contemporary pop acts.

Little Ugly Girls, Little Ugly Girls
Almost 30 years since the Tasmanian punks first performed alongside Fugazi and Bikini Kill, Little Ugly Girls painstakingly recovered these singular, blistering songs from a broken hard drive. Thank god.

Laura Jean, Devotion
Your favourite artists’ favourite artist. The Sydney songwriter’s work is beloved by a cadre of weird girl artists, among them Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Jenny Hval and Aldous Harding.

Essendon Airport, Sonic Investigations of the Trivial
The post-punk band fronted by David Chesworth, co-ordinator of the anarchist collective the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, defined an era of experimental Melbourne music.

Guy Blackman, Adult Baby
The big-hearted ballads from Chapter Music’s founder manage to be both universal and intimate, theatrical and rooted in reality. Crying to Adult Baby is a rite of passage all must experience at some point in their life/week.

Yirinda, Yirinda
Vocals by Fred Leone, one of just three custodians of the endangered Butchulla language, meet experimental soundscapes by Samuel Pankhurst on one of 2024’s most striking releases. Listening to it is like witnessing history in real time.

Teether & Kuya Neil, Yearn IV
There’s a reason Chapter considers this the best Australian rap record of all time. Musical outsiders finding common ground in a sonic blender. It’s impossible to look away.

Chapter Music: End of an Era takes place at Melbourne’s Max Watts on June 7. The label’s final new release, Guy Blackman’s Out of Sight, is out on June 13.

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