'We Truly Believe People Are Hungry For A Space Where The Music Doesn’t Have To Stop’: How Miramar Are Filling The Gap For Clubs In Sydney

Eora electronic outfit Miramar are no strangers to the groove. As if part of their DNA, the three-piece’s growing discography is a placeholder for a delicate mesh of electronic and pop elements that captivate and compel you into deep euphoria. 

Made up of Rosh Yau, Sam Langley and Matt Sampson, Miramar have always aimed to revitalise the small, tight-knit music communities within their regional towns that birthed them. Once relocating to Sydney and meeting through University, they discovered just how they could foster that sense of community in the big city: Club Miramar. 

Club Miramar is the group’s own live-electronic series that puts the emerging live scene of Sydney on display. Hosting a safe space for creativity, limb-flailing and musical connection, Club Miramar has successfully sold hundreds of tickets across multiple club nights, residences and DJ sets, proving that there is a space for live-electronic acts to flourish amongst the bustle of Sydney. It almost seems purposeful for Miramar to start their own club nights given their knack to create club-ready songs like EAST, which catapults you straight in the middle of a jampacked dancefloor, body-to-body with fellow punters surrendering to the breakbeats in the speakers. At the same time, their latest single Work It Out places you at a Sunday sesh in Summer, a cold drink in one hand and the fingers of your lover intertwined with yours on the other.

The rush of listening to Miramar is well translated into the experience of being at Club Miramar. The future of Sydney’s night life amid the cost of living crisis is unpredictable, but Club Miramar are doing whatever they can to keep the lights on. So, what exactly goes into making your own party? We sat down with the group to find out.

How did Club Miramar begin? What thoughts/experiences triggered the process of creating Club Miramar?

Sydney's live music scene thrives in pubs and venues where you can catch a band playing in one corner while the footy plays in the other. Naturally, we adapted our set to this atmosphere, but we really wanted a space where we could go wild and really unleash our electronic side. We saw other artists around as well who faced the same thing, not being able to create the right vibe in the live venues but also not being able to fully express themselves in the clubs, so we decided to create a space where anything was possible - Club Miramar.

Our goal was to create an immersive experience that captivates you from the moment you step through the doors until the moment you leave. From seamless transitions with DJs between live acts to keeping the bar within easy reach and curating lighting, every detail was designed to elevate the experience for the crowd and artists alike.

What does Club Miramar answer to, if anything? What space/subcultures does it provide for?

Post COVID, it feels like the Australian music scene is slowly becoming more siloed than ever, with a very DJ-centric dance music scene, a distinctly coastal indie rock scene and increasing international popstar hysteria. Our dream is to create a space where fans of all of these scenes can unite and have a great time, and support high quality grass-roots artists while doing it.

In addition to that , Club Miramar is also dedicated to fostering a strong community within Sydney’s live electronic scene, with a focus on supporting other upcoming artists. In particular, we look for electronic artists who don’t necessarily fit in with the current spaces on offer in the city. It could be that they’re a DJ with a slightly different taste to the established clubs, or live-electronic acts who can’t quite create the vibe they want in your average Sydney corner pub or live music venue. As long as they can make people dance or provide an interesting live experience, we want to give them a platform.

Looking at Sydney’s club/party scene, what do you think we need more of in order to keep the scene fresh and alive?

We need more late night live music venues! Our music is best enjoyed late at night, getting lost in the moment and next thing you know you have danced into the early hours of the morning. Electronic music thrives on immersive, unforgettable experiences, yet by the time the sun sets, we’re left with only a few hours before most venues shut their doors at midnight.

To keep this vibrant scene alive, we need more venues with late-night licenses. The demand is there, and we truly believe people are hungry for a space where the music doesn’t have to stop.

What goes into curating your own live show series, what are the essentials? How meticulous do you get? 

For Club Miramar, we’re meticulous about every detail when curating our live shows. As I mentioned before, little things like having the bar within the room so you never have to step away from the music, even for a drink, are crucial when choosing the right venue.

For our performances, we dedicate hundreds of hours to crafting a set that takes the audience on a journey, building moments of tension and release to keep everyone locked in and dancing. Having seen thousands of live shows between each member of the band, we have a pretty good idea of moments in a set that really get a crowd going. So, we look at our discography and think of ways we can use our songs to create those moments and then build the set out from there, rather than just playing songs one after the other. 

Lighting also plays a huge role in creating those moments and sustaining the energy in the set. We’ve designed a custom light rig, perfectly programmed to sync with our set, creating a seamless fusion of sound and visuals that elevates the experience. The lights have become a signature element of our shows. Oh and the smoke machine… if the venue doesn't allow smoke, it's pretty much a no go for Club Miramar

Is it a collaborative effort curating the shows, or does each member cater to a certain aspect of the shows?

It’s incredibly collaborative. While each of us brings unique strengths to spearhead certain aspects, allowing us to divide and conquer, we’re all hands-on with every element of curating the night. From start to finish, we’re deeply involved in shaping the experience together. None of us are particularly good at pre-planning though, so it usually gets to the week of the event and we have to pull a few all-nighters.

Since its inception, what’s been the biggest highlight of the parties? On the other hand, what’s been the biggest challenge?

One of our highlights was a Club Miramar residency, where we hosted weekly parties every Friday for an entire month. Each week featured a fresh line-up and a brand-new set, requiring an immense amount of preparation, but it was absolutely worth it. This residency generated a lot of motivation and momentum for us, allowing us to connect with new artists and discover new music week after week. For that month, we were fully immersed in the electronic scene, living and breathing it. By the end, we were exhausted but energised to create even more.

Our biggest challenge is sustaining the energy to keep pursuing our passion. It’s been tricky over the last 12 months as ticket sales across the board have dropped, likely due to cost of living. However, connecting with the crowd and other grassroots artists and realising we’re not alone on this journey is the ultimate source of inspiration, and we’re eager to get back into it and keep things growing and we know the tickets will come back in time.

What’s your favourite thing about running the show series?

Our favourite part of Club Miramar is, without a doubt, the sense of community it fosters, both among the artists and the people who come to our shows. It’s a great excuse to hang out with like-minded artists and connect with people who enjoy the kind of music we do, it’s pretty much just a big party. Plus we usually haven’t slept in a week when we run them so the party aspect usually hits pretty hard, and we always have so much fun ourselves.

How do you hope to see Club Miramar expand or elevate in the future? What’s to come for Club Miramar?

We’d love to get to a point where we can host it in some bigger venues and give a bigger platform to more local artists and provide a unique live music experience to more people. We also hope to grow the brand to the point where maybe we don’t have to play every time, but we can bring in other amazing acts to headline and maybe set them up with our lightshow and get them in front of our community.

Even if Club Miramar doesn’t continue to grow to that level, we’re really just hoping we can do our part to grow the spirit that makes Club Miramar - raising each other up, providing a unique live music experience and creating a safe space for artists and punters to come together and express themselves however they like.

How would you encourage other grassroots acts to create their own spaces in the Sydney music scene?

A good place to start would be to look at your own friends and community and ask yourself how you could do something special for them. If you’re trying to do something that you really think they’ll love, then that is the most important thing. For us, once we knew what we wanted to do and saw how much the people we love were excited by it, we found ways to bring it to life. We bought all our lights for a few hundred dollars and built them into proper fixtures and programmed them with our friends. We found venues that were open minded to the kind of space we wanted to create and flexible to our needs. We knew lots of fellow small artists who had absolutely amazing music and were looking for a platform to showcase it. But in the end, without our friends and community, we never would have been able to make it work.

Dates for Miramar’s upcoming shows can be found below. Check out more information here.

Sunday 16th March - Hamilton Station Hotel - Newcastle, NSW

Saturday 22nd March - Pleasure Club - Newtown, NSW

Friday 28th March - The Landsdowne w/ Mickey Kojack - Chippendale, NSW