Troy Mutton, Journalist

“It’s been a while since I last performed as/with Slum Dogz, we usually just try and get the crowd hyped up! My own sets have a bit more of a dancey feel.”

“The mix is reflecting more of what I personally like and what many of my influences are. It doesn’t represent what I do as an artist. There’s lots of soul and hip hop influences, which in a tiny way reflects my productions.”

“We were painfully aware of the expectation that we needed to fulfill and it made it real difficult at times. Because we’d often cock-block ourselves and it took a while for us to say, ‘Hang on a second we need to just do something, we need to do what we’ve always done and just be true to ourselves’...And this is the new era for us.”

Reggae royalty Gramps Morgan is currently on a world tour to showcase his second solo album Reggae Music Lives. Troy Mutton finds out about Gramps' love for his family and his passion for meaningful music.

“I don’t want to be in any genre-based discussion, I want people to listen to my music and say it’s a song by Boy Kid Cloud and end there. Like I said before, I make exactly what I want, so how can you pigeonhole that!”

"The music scene [in Cairns] is… not non-existent, but there’s really a lot of cover bands and there’s a lot of metal bands. Don’t get me wrong, some of the metal bands there are okay, but there’s just not a whole lot of places to play."

One half of bangin’ electro-house duo Bodyrox, Jon Pearn plays Newport Hotel this coming Wednesday, and Troy Mutton chats to the DJ/producer about new Bodyrox material and America’s new-found EDM infatuation.

"I think that booking the Parklife festival was the big one for me. It was incredible to me that just over one year after playing our first show, we’ll be playing a travelling festival in Australia. Unreal!"

“I am at the beginning stages of founding a bad-ass girl art collective. Watch out for that one.”

Forward-thinking local label Paper Chain is calling it a day, and Troy Mutton gets a few final words from founder Justin Elwin, aka Kit Pop.