Everyone knows that Future Classic is spearheading Australian electronic music on an international scale. Predominantly an independent record label, they also provide management services and do some of the best tours going. It’s home to the likes of Flume, Chet Faker, Ta-ku, Panama and Wave Racer, to namedrop just a few. Now, they’ve teamed up with Le Coq Sportif to reissue some tracks and tracksuits. Let’s have a listen to the goodies they’ve retrieved from the archives, below.
EAVESDROPPING ON FUTURE CLASSIC
Who are you?
Chad Gillard, A&R at Sydney-based management company and record label Future Classic.
Where are you from?
Sydney born and bred.
What is unique about your local music scene?
I feel like Australian music is in a really great place right now. There are lots of exciting new local artists stepping up and some really great collaboration and cross-pollination taking place over the last couple years. This feeling of community is continuing to grow. Artists like Flume, Chet Faker, Ta-ku, George Maple, Touch Sensitive, What So Not, Scenic, Charles Murdoch, Oscar Key Sung, Flight Facilities, Elizabeth Rose, and so on.
A number of the artists mentioned above have been collaborating with each other and making really great music lately. I feel like this kind of community and collaborative atmosphere definitely does exist in other places and scenes around the world though.
It’s nice to be part of the current Australian version of it and see new musical ideas surfacing that do have a bit of local flavour that you won’t hear from anywhere else. Many of our artists and other Australian artists that we’re friends with are increasingly starting to collaborate with international artists also. I feel like that level of international interest and general knowledge of what’s happening here in Australia at the moment is a solid indicator that the local scene is quite healthy at the moment.
Have you heard any new music lately? Got any recommendations?
Always plenty of new music coming across our desks at Future Classic. It’s often hard to keep up with it all, but finding new music is a big part of the motivation for us doing what we do. Those moments when you find great new music and then go on to manage that artist or put out their records – it’s a pretty special and privileged position to be in. Whilst it is really fun and awesome, we do take it very seriously and put a lot of time into listening to music that’s happening around us and outside of our existing crew.
Some recommendations from me: the new Caribou record is awesome, really looking forward to Rustie’s new album as well. From our stable, I’d suggest checking out George Maple. She’s our newest signing and just did her first Australian live shows supporting Little Dragon in Sydney and Melbourne. Those were special nights. Seekae’s new album ‘The Worry’ (their third full length but first with Future Classic) is just around the corner now too and we’re super proud to be working with those guys. Seekae are an act that we’ve been massive fans of for a long time so it’s an honour to be part of their team now.
Describe The Reissue Project in three words. Go!
Satisfying, French, tracksuits!
What makes the Reissue Project unique?
We’ve worked with a number of brands over the years on lots of different styles of projects from the Beck’s Berlin Sessions tours we used to do through to Intel’s Intelligent Sounds campaign with Flume last year. The part of this project with Le Coq Sportif that was really fun for us was looking back at our back catalogue and getting to re-introduce some of this music that we put out a long time ago in a tasteful and interesting way… and to audiences that might have only tuned into Future Classic over the last couple of years. Acts like Peret Mako and Stick Figures were some of the first ever artists signed to Future Classic around nine years ago and to have their music being remixed now feels like a really nice way to shine a bit of a light on some of the early artists and output on FC.
I think the thing that made this project really ‘sing’ is that it was a genuine collaboration for both us and Le Coq Sportif. The Le Coq Sportif guys gave us access to their catalogues and ranges from the last 30 years to go through and give us inspiration for what the clothes in our Future Classic collab could look like. There’s some amazing shots in these vintage catalogues of super quirky but awesome ’90s tracksuits and guys like Will Smith in his Fresh Prince of Bel Air days totally rocking out in the Le Coq gear of that time.
Then we went through our back catalogue of releases and found records that we wanted to see reimagined today. It felt like a really nice fit that genuinely drew on both LCS and FC’s history whilst making something new and fun across both music and clothes.
What else are you working on at the moment?
There’s a lot of new music coming on Future Classic before the end of the year, including new bits from Flight Facilities, Seekae, George Maple, Ta-ku, Thrupence, Basenji, Scenic, Charles Murdoch, Karma Kid, Panama and Touch Sensitive. Hope I haven’t forgotten anyone there.
There are some really fun international collabs and interesting bits for a lot of those artists I’ve just mentioned coming as well. Plenty to keep us on our toes! There’s also plenty of great international artists that we’re bringing to Australia with our partners at touring company BBE as well. A couple highlights for me on that front would be the recent Rustie, Chrome Sparks and Little Dragon tours. All of those were amazing!
And some upcoming international touring artists that I’d suggest checking out when they’re in town would be Com Truise, Shlohmo and DJ Dodger Stadium.
Always important to get amongst it and go out and see great music in the flesh to keep getting inspired.
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