OVER the past three years a minor musical revolution has been occurring in the confines of a small rehearsal space within Hamilton North's Clyde Street Studios.
Inside the grungey black-painted walls, music collective and label New Brain Communications have taken their DIY approach to the nth degree.
Almost every day of the week one of the label's various acts - which include Fungas, The Med Heads, Soy, Brainbyte, Dipodium, Arachnids, Dog Fite, Scarlet Johanson, Sheena Dali's Swedish Magazines, Simba Mnre, Beta Max Royale, Proselenes, Skin Factory, Toyota Hills and Pocket Robot DTCA - can be found rehearsing and recording in NBC's studio.
It's resulted in a flurry of creativity and more than 50 releases, ranging from punk, psych-rock, experimental and minimalist electronica, drum and bass and acoustic.
Some of the music has been released on lathe vinyl, produced by PhonoLab, situated next door to NBC's studio.
While it's an eclectic batch of material, the bands are united by a common DIY ethos for producing unconventional music.
"It started off as a rehearsal space and a semi-community thing, but it takes on a record label thing as well," New Brain Communications co-founder and Med Heads bassist Dhare Labbe says.
"It's mutated into its own sustainable form of what music could mean for the future."
New Brain Communications' musical output is also getting noticed outside of Newcastle.
Last Saturday Soy, fresh from the release of their new single Utgang, performed at Central Coast music festival Rolling Sets alongside DMA'S, The Hilltop Hoods and Dune Rats.
Meanwhile Fungas were invited to support surf-punk band Skegss last Saturday at Coffs Harbour's Hoey Moey.
The nucleus of NBC began in late 2019 when Labbe and fellow co-founder and Med Heads member Mark Sumner, aka Sim, were becoming increasingly frustrated with the cost of hiring studio time for rehearsals and recording.
They began hiring a studio and booth in Clyde Street with fellow underground bands Fungas and Soy.
From there other like-minded bands joined NBC, paying a small weekly membership fee to cover the rent for the studio.
"It's not a very cost-effective way to run a group," Sumner says of recording in traditional studios.
"You end up paying $25 to $35 an hour to rehearse somewhere and finally you get good enough after a million rehearsals to go record it and that costs a couple of k and you end up going, 'I'm not making any money'."
Labbe says he often ended up mixing Med Heads' recordings from professional studios anyway, so it made financial sense to buy his own equipment complete the whole process himself.
"We were trying to find a model outside of the old generation of music recording and more towards a DIY movement, but across multiple bands to create a new platform for music," he says.
Both Labbe and Sumner agree the NBC scene at Hamilton North has led to the bands positively influencing each other's sound.
This is especially true of NBC's original trio The Med Heads, Fungas and Soy, who are the label's most high-profile acts.
Fungas' most recent album Locate 0, released in May, was produced by Labbe and is considered by various people in the Newcastle music scene to be among the city's top releases for 2022.
"I think it's been a really good journey for us as we've really developed our palette in terms of what music we do listen to and being more inclusive of sounds we otherwise, as individuals, may have turned our noses to," Sumner says.
"Now that we identify as a group, a collective, or whatever you wanna call it, people are more accepting of a new influence."
On Friday The Med Heads - which also features Labbe's brother Cale on percussion - will release their fourth album Sonic Fragrance, a bold shift away from their punk and psych roots.
"Sonic Fragrance is a hard left from what we've been doing and it's more atmospheric and synthy than what we've been doing," Sumner says.
"We've tried to define a new sound, with some reference back to synth-wave and back to garage and DIY and something that's more intended for a soundtrack."
While NBC is overflowing with creativity, Sumner and Labbe are frustrated by the unwillingness of Newcastle's radio stations to curate the label's releases.
"We're really great at creating music," Sumner says. "But in terms of that distributor section, we can distribute records and do stuff with social media, but to actually get in people's ears is the hard part."
They also believe the majority of Newcastle's various original live music venues aren't paying local bands fairly to make live performance worthwhile.
"There are good venues like the Lass [O'Gowrie Hotel] which pay fairly, but there's a lot out there who still think it's OK to pay $200 for an hour set," Sumner says.
"We got that money in 2017 when we were a band just emerging and we didn't have a clue.
"For that same amount to be offered across Newcastle now goes to show there's such a limited model to make money from music in Newcastle that it's hard to want to do that."
For Labbe and Sumner there's no grand plans of turning NBC into a financially-viable label.
They aspire to keep growing NBC as a hub for creativity, which they will eventually pass on.
"Just having it as an available outlet for the community of bands that we have, is the goal, and anything that goes from that, I think, is icing," Labbe says.
