Watch: New doco goes inside the Melbourne sound scene - inthemix

Fri 9th May, 2014 by Katie Cunningham in News 13824 views

Earlier this week, Brisbane record label Trans:com announced that they’ll soon release a comprehensive history of electronic music in the Queensland capital. Spanning a weighty coffee table book and a USB packed with 260 essential Brisbane dance tracks, the release is set to be “the most definitive archive of a city’s independent electronic music scene ever produced anywhere in the world.”

Now, we’ve been given another in-depth look at a local club scene – and this time, it’s Melbourne in the spotlight. Homegrown videographer Adrian Ortega has just released Bodycrash: A Look Into Melbourne’s Unique Club Scene, a 30 minute documentary honing in on Melbourne’s club scene, with specific attention paid to the rise of the Melbourne sound, social media, “the juicy wiggle” and the influence of drugs like GHB.

Ortega interviews club owners, videographers, paramedics, drug experts and Tom Grant, one half of Melbourne duo SCNDL for the video, as well as fitting in plenty of sometimes-unpretty footage from the early hours of the weekend. “I think the problem with this Melbourne music scene is that people focus on the negatives, and they don’t look at the industry as a whole. It’s getting bigger, we’re going worldwide,” Grant argues. “So I think the industry as a whole is getting better.”

But Bodycrash is no puff piece. The doco also addresses how divisive the Melbourne sound continues to be, and tries to answer to what extent GHB – “one of the worst things that’s happened to the Melbourne club scene, ever,” according to one interviewee – can be linked to the genre. For anyone who’s ever partied in Melbourne, Bodycrash is a must-watch – get stuck in below.