Australia’s Mushroom Group have a four-decade legacy of independently championing quality rock ‘n’ roll. Rarely, if ever, have they signed music merely for the sake of padding their coffers. This sort of integrity informs Soothsayer, a dance imprint under Mushroom’s auspices, which softly launched earlier this year.
While Australia is home to its share of global dance-music names — Flume, Chet Faker Nick Murphy, Miami Horror, and Dirty South, to name a few — A&R Manager Chris Rigney says Soothsayer’s aim is “to shine a light on some of Australia’s brightest upstarts.”
He adds, “Australia has always been a majestic fountain for great electronic music. However, over the past five years there’s probably been a lot of the same or of a very similar sound. Hopefully we can showcase something a little different, a little left-of-center and lots of fun.”
With musical diversity one of Soothsayer’s core values, they’ve done well so far by releasing disparate — and impressive — tunes by Sydney maestros Dro Carey (a.k.a Tuff Sherm) and Sam Weston and Melbourne electronic-pop duo ALTA.
“That moment, when you’re on the dance floor, be it at a club, at a festival or at a house, and you get all your friends around to sing a song and dance and smile. We want to release music like that,” envisions Rigney. “We want to create a little family of artists that we love, that love us and release music that makes everyone feel nice things. Not take itself too serious and enjoy music for music’s sake.”
As Soothsayer looks ahead to 2017 and beyond, they’re aiming to continue spreading good musical Aussie vibes with an open-minded ethos.”I wouldn’t say there is a specific sound we’re leaning towards and we certainly don’t meant to be genre defined. I guess you can use the very broad term ‘electronic,’ however even that feels a bit claustrophobic. Hopefully the ‘sound’ is good! Good sounds.”