Let's Stick Together

"It's crazy to think it's been that long,” Hosken reflects as he chills on a couch in his apartment, beer in hand to celebrate the end of the week. “It basically just began because we had a lot of friends who were doing a lot of cool stuff, and we wanted to help promote them and change the stigma behind Perth creativity. Personally, my goal as an artist was just to be creative in multiple ways and there just happened to be people around who wanted to do the same thing.”

“I think we were trying to get gigs as well,” Mathieson chips in. “I can't actually remember why we decided to turn it into a collective. Diger was already doing street art stuff with his buddy at the time, who I've never actually met, but it was essentially about just trying to get gigs together because everyone we talked to about it were into hip hop and electronica, so we started doing gigs at the Moon, which was a bit of a piss-take on the restaurant license. The first one was New Year's Eve turning into 2004. It was the first gig I ever performed hip hop at in front of a crowd; I'd been in rock bands before that.”

Over the years, The Community has built to label status, the focus on hip hop and electronic acts within Perth, and is extending its reach to artists over east. While the goals in a business sense have had to change, the ideals behind The Community remain exactly that – about being a community. “On the business side we wanted to push our music into different territories. We had to begin focusing more on a brand, like how it should sound and how it should look,” Hosken explains.

“When you have a collective, you don't often have complete control over how it looks, so we had to try and steer it into a direction. We never tell people what they need to make, we just wanted to guide them with the idea of getting it to a level that's more professional; using social media, press releases, reaching out to other mediums in terms of national exposure, independent radio stations, and basically just informing people what they're doing. We want to be able to support people who support themselves – so people, with their creativity, they start and stop and wane, but we want to support people who are continually trying to evolve as artists.”

“We seriously just recruited mates,” Mathieson laughs. “It's a weird thing about Perth. There's just a really high consistency of creative people here and a real sense of camaraderie as well. People don't tend to be overly competitive here. We've had a lot of people attracted to The Community because of the sound and aesthetic coming out of it, and some people approach us, but most of the time it's like, 'Hey, I know this guy who has a brother who does music as well,' and it's like, 'Cool, we'll check it out.' It's all just come through friendship really, so if you say we're a label, I'd always say The Community is about the individuals first, collectivism second and the label third. Everybody in The Community is connected to somebody else in some way.”

The Community's tenth birthday event features a slew of local artists involved with the label, including Hosken and Mathieson. Both have won WAM awards, as has the label, and despite many people feeling pressured by expectations, both men feel the opposite. “Winning the awards was definitely a kick in the arse, but it just gave us more inspiration,” Mathieson suggests. “We've always been DIY, and everyone I know does it that way. We've never applied for any government funding, and it's not the fact that we don't want to; I reckon we will eventually when we start doing bigger projects, but at this stage I'm happy with what we're doing. Ten years is a long time, but we still feel like our best is yet to come.”

“The challenge any Perth musician faces is the barrier between us and pushing your music elsewhere because everyone's so busy, and that's why I've always believed in localisation first because that's where you're going to get your gigs first.” Hosken concludes. “There's a real push for bands to head over east, but we have so much ability to make music now, the currency and legitimacy of your music elsewhere takes a lot of cash, and you need to be involved in your local industry before you can do that.”