INTERVIEW: Sedgwick
The Potatoheadz label owner is one to watch…
As we sit in our confined units, scrolling through the stacks of festival vids in our camera rolls and searching SoundCloud for the next mixtape that will momentarily quench our thirst for a night at the club, there are promising things happening in a beachside flat in St Kilda…
Sam Sedgwick AKA Sedgwick is tirelessly turning out banger after banger. (If you don’t believe us, check his newest release Rhythm and Isolation, released on his own Potatoheadz Records). The five-track EP contains everything you want for a modern-day rave: gritty breaks, ghetto vocal samples and dark electro basslines. The Ballarat product can be considered a musical jack of all trades, and his tight DJing saw him cut his teeth at local parties such as Spin Club and Mania Series (RIP Mercat and Lounge).
And let’s not forget his varied live sets like the bouncy hour recorded live from Waxology at Sub Club last year (link below). With his focus temporarily shifted from satisfying sweaty dancefloors, we caught up with Sedgwick to talk about how he’s handled lockdown, his upcoming releases and what’s next for PotatoHeadz Records.
Q. Have you found the lockdown period has given you more time to focus on your work in production & Potatoheadz?
I’ve definitely had a lot more freedom to act on creative impulses as they come. Prior to Covid-19, I was really fighting against time constraints, trying to abide by a strict schedule where I could only get 1 or 2 sessions a week to focus on production. I’ve established a nice flexible routine now where I wake up early and walk our dogs at the beach, getting this stuff out of the way nice and early so that I can start working on tracks by 9 o’clock. Making this adjustment means that by lunch-time I can move onto Potatoheadz stuff, respond to some emails and then spend the rest of the day hanging out with my girlfriend Jess or just reading/listening to music without having this nagging voice in my head pressuring me to “keep working”. I think starting early helps me tap into a really clear creative zone. Following this routine Monday through Friday means that I get wayyyy more done and I still get to treat the weekend as a kind of watered-down blow-out.
Q. Plenty of local labels have been releasing cool music during COVID - what’s coming up for Potatoheadz?
It’s been really encouraging to see a lot of producer’s increase their output as a result of this disaster, a lot of my favourite Aussie labels/venue’s have also been putting out some really sick merch which is a great way for people within the community to support these crews.
It’s been a weird year for Potatoheadz, we put out PHZ003 (DJ Life & Fibre Optixxx) riiiight at the start of this pandemic, we had to cancel our in-store on release day because it was right at that point where all these unconfirmed rumours were circulating about Government emails suggesting a lock-down.
We made the call one or two days before the launch to do a quarantined live-stream from my house, the lockdowns were announced the next day. This really worked because at the time there hadn’t been this huge saturation of DJ Streams yet. After that, we were unable to do any touring or gigs as we’d originally planned with those guys - but we were blown away by people’s support and understanding.
Aside from PHZ003, we have been working super hard on PHZ004: Rhythm and Isolation since about November last year (Spooky premonition as the title was conceptualised at least 18 months before the virus). We have a habit of sourcing really specific costly materials - so that has definitely kept us busy throughout Iso. Next thing will be to refine some idea’s for PHZ005 which I think is gonna be some really inspiring and mind-opening stuff coming from my favourite producer’s, who will remain un-named for now…
Q. How have you coped without DJ/live sets - the obvious negatives but has there been any small positives?
For sure, at first, it was a bit of a kick in the throat. I really made the effort to put DJ’ing aside for about 2 years to focus exclusively on figuring out how to use hardware and take a live show to the clubs. I was finally feeling confident doing this and played 90% live sets in 2019 - planning for 2020 to be a year of touring and getting to visit new places with my hardware as the ticket - it was really hard to accept the new reality that I won’t be doing anything like that for a long time. Once I’d gotten over that I realised the amazing opportunity I have now to actually combine all that hardware-based stuff and integrate it into a studio workflow. So I have really been loving experimenting with that Hybridity, writing on hardware and then taking it all into Ableton.
Now I am free to bounce back and forth between those environments and I think that allows me to be more experimental by just following different sounds, knowing that I have the freedom to bounce it all back into a live-set when it’s time.
Q. How do you see the Melbourne scene bouncing back from this once it’s all over?
I think it’s gonna be incredibly vibrant and stimulated in Melbourne - this whole thing has just highlighted how vital it is to just show up, support and involve yourself. I think before this, there was maybe even a sense of complacency within the scene, there’s just so many crews operating here and I think it made it hard for people’s idea’s to gather steam. There is a great opportunity coming for the locals to claim back space - there will likely be a delay in big International headliners coming over.
Hopefully, that will result in some really nice collaborations and help to establish a more connected scene. For example, two or more separate crews coming together for one event rather than always label nights - I think that will be vital in putting Melbournians in a better position than we were before the pandemic. It’s as simple and elegant as talking to each other and supporting each other because I would like to believe that we are all doing this stuff for the same fundamental reasons.
