Chris Yates, Journalist

“It’s basically everything I find amusing squeezed into an hour. There’s some stuff with a loopstation, some visual stuff, a lot of audience interactions and then stuff with just a microphone. It’s a whole mishmash of all the different facets of me as an entertainer I guess.”

"So I’m actually kind of toying with the idea of doing a solo album of Screamfeeder songs. A lot of the songs actually worked way better really, really quietly than I imagined they might, so that was pretty interesting.”

Love’s Shadow is a proudly Australian album, void of nationalistic pride but reveling in the landscape and its people. It’s also a very strong introduction to Toby Martin as a solo artist.

While clearly the band has been heavily influenced by post-punk and no wave, there’s a million other influences that have been distilled into the very dense mix.

The album has some misfires due to his extremely experimental nature and enthusiasm for embracing pop and soul and funk and disco and hip hop and easy-listening classic hits, but considering this, it’s really just seamless.

Ray Bourne – aka Brisbane MC Rainman – tells Chris Yates that he knows when not to push his luck with the Queensland Police Force, sorry, Queensland Police Service.

“I was just looking at my little library of shit today... and probably in terms of like fleshed-out songs, there’s over 100. But there’s also about 400 ideas of stuff. I’ve got a ton of shit!”

The passing of Dilla, real name James Yancey, created a massive hole in the global hip hop community. In a world of ridiculous egos Dilla kept his remarkably in-check, quietly producing classics for the big names in hip hop from the mid-‘90s right up until the tragedy of his early death a decade later.

"Financially it’s a real fucking struggle. It’s fine to release stuff for free, but it costs money to produce. You hope people are gonna return the favour by coming to see you at shows and buying merch."