In the sage words of Ferris Bueller, “life moves pretty fast” – and so it is for dance music too. In the ten years since inthemix fired into life, we’ve seen many transformations: the advent of festivals, the shifting fortunes of the club scene, the backlashes and comebacks.

Perhaps the most significant development of the 2000s on the dance front, though, has been Australian talent going global. Coming from a time when even travelling interstate was a rarity for DJs, the early part of this decade saw our own brand of electronic music transported to the rest of the world.

To pay heed to this boom time, we wanted to hear about it from the DJs and producers who led the way. Our star panel is by no means comprehensive, but these guys all played a pivotal role in putting Australian dance music on the map.

THE EARLY 2000s

Jamie Stevens, Infusion: It was a chaotic time full of change. Around then we had just released our first album on Thunk. Frank and I left our jobs in 2001 to work with Adam Freeland and by the end of 2001 we’d picked up management. In November 2001, Frank and I moved to Melbourne and Manny came a year or so later.

We also started touring internationally at the start of 2002 after a real financial struggle. We had to save up all our Australian gig money to pay for our international flights and accommodation, as the clubs weren’t really paying us well, let alone forking out the money needed to fly three guys from Australia to Europe and USA!

Anthony Pappa: The early 2000s was definitely a pivotal time for me. In 2000, I released an album with Global Underground titled Nu-Breed. This album changed my career and put me on the global map.

It was a time that all of these artists were breaking into the scene. They had all been producing for a long time before they finally got the recognition that they deserve. Early 2000s, the door was wide open for a new sound and for new talent. The timing of it all just seemed to come together for everyone.

Kid Kenobi: That was definitely the height of breaks: 2000 to 2005. It was the beginning of my ‘award run’ and when I went from hard-working underpaid underground DJ to someone who was getting interstate, festival and Ministry of Sound-type gigs.

Luke Chable: As far as I remember, 2000 to 2002 is when I started to work on solo projects. It was roughly the time Sealers Cove came out. It gave me an identity as an artist, rather than part of the duo with Ivan Gough.

There were some key records that pushed my profile further, namely a remix of Sasha’s Cloud Cuckoo, and shortly after the teamed remix of You Are Sleeping with PQM. Following that at some point Ride came out, which was the tipping point in my early career.

Danny Bonnici, Nubreed: It was the peak time for us. We were young and excited to be making music and touring. Breaks was a fresh sound and the fact that we mixed that with the whole band style thing made it even more unique.

AUSTRALIAN DANCE MUSIC GOES GLOBAL

Kid Kenobi: In the early days it was rare for DJs to even travel interstate. I mean, “As if I’d ever dance to a DJ from Victoria!” That was how it was back then. I remember getting death stares from the local DJs camped up the back of the room at some of my first interstate gigs.

Anthony Pappa: It used to be a territorial thing, but it’s not like that any more. I moved to the UK in 1995 to make my mark on the international scene. I think possibly that my rising DJ career as an Australian DJ making a name internationally may have helped other Australian artists get noticed. The world was starting to take notice of Australian artists and DJs.

Jamie Stevens, Infusion: There was quite an effort to make music that would cave people’s heads. Andy Page had a big part to play in that too. Fusing that trippy sound manipulation that no one else was really doing (maybe apart from BT, but that’s another story) with the atmospherics of progressive, and a really dirty, heaviness was really, really fresh. In retrospect, I think it stood out from the pack.

It’s funny, I think at that time no one really thought seriously about “making it” overseas. It didn’t seem particularly achievable, so everyone just went ahead and did their own thing and if something got noticed, there were big cheers everywhere. We felt very disconnected for a long time.

Luke Chable: We just wanted to do the best music we could. We constantly strived to out-do each other – in the sense of making something crazy and caving our mates! We weren’t trying to be like something overseas, which was very important, because in a sense we created our own unique slant on whatever genre we were writing.

Kid Kenobi: We were kind of a melting pot of international influences – US, UK, Europe. Plus Aussies always tended to write pretty positive and appealing music, which was kind of a reflection of the fact we came from such an amazing country and basically love to go ‘hard’ and party.