Ask A Punk australia
AAP.AU is being set up to offer DIY music (Hardcore, Metal, Punk, Industrial, Noise, Indie) in australia a community built online hub.
Some of these offerings are what you'd normally hope to find on a niche music blog: NEWS and updates about the latest recordings, clips, tour dates, and goings on in local scenes from bands and labels across australia.
ARTICLES will feature both shorter-form snippets, and longer-form deep dives into a whole series of topics for local musicians, and facilitators of local music scenes: Chats with local musicians about music and artists that have inspired them, tips and advice from salty scene dogs, and longer form open-editorials that will hopefully give space for those with a seed to plant, or an axe to grind.
LIVE REPORTS will a have a quick write up from shows happening across the country and include photos in full size glory, not tiny pics locked in walled-garden apps.
GUIDES is where things will maybe start to get a little more unique, with region specific guides compiling info about services and businesses that work to look after their local music scene.
The visual guide offers a more interactive way to engage with a lot of the info that's compiled here. You can check out everything in your area, or have a local guide for somewhere you're visiting. You can turn off unnecessary layers to find specific services as you need them.
For non 'bricks and mortar' services, or those that don't wish to share their address, the regional guides will have extra info not found in the visual guide.
(I'll run surveys to help gather info and populate the guides for different regions, so keep an eye out for those.)
In addition to guides for services, each region will also have its own dedicated gig-guide Calendar for local promoters and bands to advertise their upcoming gigs. These are each Gancio instances that require no-sign up, have no ads, and collect no information on users. So all ages and all visitors get the same access to sweet poster art and local show information.
If you choose, there are ways to save individual events to your personal calendar, follow certain bands, promoters or venues so their events automatically show up in your personal calendar with .ics feeds; or if you use RSS readers, you can add a customised gig-guide to your feed as well.
(But I'll make a more detailed post about posting to, and using the calendar soon).
One of the main focuses for AAP.AU is to help provide local scenes (and peoples) another off-ramp from corporate-owned social media.
As well as the public community Calendars, socials are going to be run through the fediverse, namely Mastodon, to offer those navigating away from corporate social media an option for still learning about the latest in australian heavy music news and culture.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to The Counterforce for publishing their zine 'Guide to Mastodon and the fediverse for punks', which was the initial spark for this endeavour. I encourage giving it a read to help understand the vibe that AAP.AU is also aiming for.
Let's grow something better together.
Trying to build from a tenet of federated municipalism, ask a punk australia is grounded in anarchic, anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-bigot thought, and seeks to build a new online community platform for the australian DIY music scene to engage with its own culture.
Punk/Hardcore and DIY music will always happen first and foremost at shows, in zines and records. In people. In making hideous noise in the hope of it connecting with others, and in others' efforts to celebrate and cheer on their friends and comrades, recording and documenting it all.
With this site, I hope to offer a platform for federating all these vibrant pockets of creativity across the country without relying solely on the walled-gardens of corporate owned social media and streaming services. (Yeah, bandcamp ain't perfect. But no DRM).
I don't think I really need to write a whole thesis on how fucked insta and meta are. We all know. It sucks for users, it sucks for artists, it sucks for privacy. But they've done a wonderful job of making themselves so ubiquitous in our music scenes, and lives.
So rather than just complaining, I'm hoping to try and build a small alternative for others who might be seeking one as well.
I'll also make another post about fediverse stuff in a bit more detail soon, but I'll include The Counterforce and Fedizine zines about it below.
But for now, thanks for stopping by and G'day, cunts!
The Counterforce - Guide to Mastadon and the Fediverse (for punks)
Fedizine - An Anarchist Introduction to Federated Social Media
Header Image - Tom Rogerson - Unsplash
Illustration - The Counterforce Guide to Mastodon
Card Image - Joel Muniz - Unsplash