Sounding the Disappearance of Warehouse Space in Inner City Sydney
Ben Byrne
An interesting article by Ben Byrne about warehouse space in Sydney and it's role in developing the sound culture there; Focusing Incidents » The Space in Between: Sounding the Disappearance of Warehouse Space in Inner City Sydney.
I would like to make a single minor contention. Ben states;
However, the link between sound in Sydney and the space of the warehouse wasn’t expressed concretely until the development of rave culture in the late eighties.
Explicitly, spaces mentioned elsewhere in his article, such as The Gunnery, and others not (e.g. Lost In Space, Sid's, The Pie Factory and others), had most definitely by the mid-Eighties developed a sound culture, one mostly entrenched in the post-punk, experimentalism, industrial-electronic music culture of that time. For example, early Severed Heads performances in art-spaces such as, well, 'Art Space', and similar spaces which were basically converted warehouses and commercial spaces.
See also the geographic-specific events such as the IAU sound performance event in the disused railway tunnels under Hyde Park, and SPK's (in)famous performance inside the disused St. Peter's brickworks. This very site, once the brickwork surrounds has been converted into Sydney Park, was latterly the location of many illegal Vibe Tribe raves and other events such as Clan Analogue's seminal day long electronic music festival "Bob Moog's Birthday" (and incidentally the very first time I ever performed at a Clan Analogue event).
A shout-out also has to be given in this regard to gay party culture. The best, most lucid, and by far debauched parties always held in warehouses where the residents where mixed gay/straight men and women (see again, Sid's) but they also, with a high degree of people involved in various creative industries, had a serious and thoughtful side that was reflected in sound art and musical practice.