Follow the Sun.
Emma Donovan was commissioned by ABC Kids to create her own songs for children, as well as recreating known children’s lullabies & song into indigenous language.
Mick collaborated with Emma on this project with album credits as producer, co-writer & bass player, as well as providing additional guitars, programming & a vocal feature.
Emma Donovan
Sad Mannequin
Sad Mannequin takes a trip through violence, grief, rage, & injustice into calm, joy & pleasure. Listeners are left with feelings of being bruised & knocked, but ultimately of being washed & cleansed.
WOLFA
Mick Meagher & Jenny Barnes
Cluster.
Cluster is the debut release for Mick Meagher & Jenny Barnes as a duo. It comprises four improvisations recorded at Pughouse Studio in June of 2016.
Systems Over-Ride.
The quintet performs Andrea’s music with grit & spontaneity. Dichotomous relationships abound as she grapples to reconcile the brutal & the beautiful, all the while focussed on stripping back, & connecting, within acts of kindness, & solidarity.
WAVE RIDERS
Outside.
Performed & recorded in isolation during Stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne, throughout July & August 2020, Outside is a collaboration between Mick on bass from his home in the Northern Suburbs, & Sam on drums from his in the West. All selections freely improvised.
Mick Meagher & Sam Price.
Mick Meagher.
Shudder.
Shudder consists of five improvisations further exploring low frequency sound performance on the electric bass. The album is lifted from a single recording session at Rolling Stock Recording Rooms.
During post-production, layering of the bass tracks, were incorporated on some pieces to help reinforce the sub sonic range. Shudder represents the inherent darkness & heaviness present in this music.
(Note that - most commercial playback systems will not handle this album well. Headphones can provide a clearer sound, but obviously some frequencies are not going to be present.)
Droning Bells.
Droning Bells is the creative outcome of an Honours degree completed at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Working towards the development of an alternative approach to solo electric bass practise & performance, the result is bass playing that uses minimal musical material, executed at slow tempos, with specific utilisation of low frequency resonance & dissonance in low registers.
Mick Meagher.
Life is Brut[if]ul
A journey through seven provoking & heartfelt musical stories.
Features special guests Scott McConnachie (soprano & alto saxophone), Julien Wilson (tenor, saxophone & bass clarinet) & Jim Keller (voice).
A contemporary jazz oeuvre of gentle musical vignettes, intimate stories & meditative composition.
FIVE BELOW
FIVE BELOW
Five Below Live
Recorded live at the Jazzlab in Melbourne, Five Below Live is the fourteenth release by Andrea Keller as leader & following on from the success of this album the band won the 2019 Australian Jazz Bell Award for Best Australian Jazz Ensemble.
Eugene Ball 4tet
From Down Here
Led by multi-award winning Melbourne trumpeter Eugene Ball who’s been performing on the jazz scene for 25 years, & appeared on around 30 albums, the Eugene Ball 4tet is a quartet comprising Eugene on trumpet, with trombone, electric bass & drums.
EUGENE BALL 4TET - EUGENE BALL (TRUMPET), JAMES MACAULAY (TROMBONE), JAMES MCLEAN (DRUMS), MICK MEAGHER (BASS)Eugene Ball 4tet
Hi(gh) Curious
EUGENE BALL 4TET - EUGENE BALL (TRUMPET), JAMES MACAULAY (TROMBONE), JAMES MCLEAN (DRUMS), MICK MEAGHER (BASS)City City City
Weaving through a heady mix of genres, from ‘70s spy movie soundtracks to kraut rock beats, Slint-like guitars & occasional electronics, City City City were a Melbourne 8-piece, around from 2000 to 2006.
They toured Australia & New Zealand, played the fifteenth annual Meredith Music Festival & released 2 albums.
CITY CITY CITY (final line-up)- Ned Collette (guitar, voice, synths), Naomi Jean (voice, percussion), Jim McDonald (guitar), Rory McDougall (drums), Eamon McNelis (trumpet), MICK Meagher (bass), Joe Talia (drums, electronics, bass)
The Perimeter Motor Show
An ambitious & engaging offering that forges a path somewhere between the music of ‘60s film scores, post punk, free jazz, kraut rock & chanson pop.
Dawn & the Blue Light District
City City City’s entirely instrumental debut album, recorded almost entirely live in a living room is a mix of squalling guitars, hip-hop beats & rather stupid melodies.
Cheddar Road All-Stars
The Cheddar Road All-Stars project is a collaboration between Reservoir-based songwriters Leo Francis (The Rechords), Cat Canteri (Kutcha Edwards), Justin Bernasconi, Danny Walsh (Danny Walsh Banned) & Emma Peel (PBS FM), & prolific Australian playwright, author & long-time Reservoir resident, Barry Dickins. It also features an array of special guest performers, including Mick Meagher.
BARRY DICKINS (VOCALS), MICK MEAGHER (BASS)
Nowhere Else to Feel Rotten.
Meagher was invited to record music to Dickins’ poem Get Your Own Phone. What follows is almost 9 minutes of atmospheric accompaniment that weaves around & through Dickins’ powerful story about a working class father, desperately seeking support from an unreliable Reservoir community to aid his dying son.
EMMA DONOVAN & THE PUTBACKS
Dawn.
An LP of hard-hitting & heartfelt soul songs telling stories of grief, struggle & redemption. Dawn is a gritty, uniquely Australian record, simultaneously classic & contemporary. The songwriting is in turns optimistic, angry & melancholic, and on occasions bruisingly honest. The music is fluid, live and raw, recorded in one room on eight channels of analogue tape & the electric connection between Emma and the band comes through in every beat.
The sentiment is personal, for both Emma & the band, and forward-looking. From the ferocious opening salvo of Black Woman to the sweet & gentle comedown of Over Under Away, Dawn is above all a journey through Emma’s life written in song.
EMMA DONOVAN & THE PUTBACKS
Crossover.
Following on from the successful collaboration with Dawn, Crossover highlights the band’s shared love for classic American soul & the protest music of indigenous Australia, with a uniquely Australian accent.
With nostalgic songwriting delving into Emma Donovan’s childhood, family & her late mother, Crossover is a beautifully honest soulful ride through the past, with relevance to the now.
The personal, yet powerful lyrics throughout Crossover are emphasised by The Putbacks sharp, dynamic & funky rhythms, delivering a swag of soul-defining songs with sentimental hints of Stax & classic Atlantic recordings the whole way through.
Under These Streets.
Emma Donovan & The Putbacks return with their new album Under These Streets. Following on from their success with Crossover but also on the edge of lockdown, acclaimed Indigenous vocalist Emma Donovan returned to Melbourne with her two daughters to be closer to slick rhythm combo The Putbacks.
Into the studio they leapt, recording eight fresh tracks drawn from the mighty music vault of The Putbacks. Out The Door is the first of this selection, with the lyrics born from the band’s desire to create and make music together in the shadow of the global pandemic.
EMMA DONOVAN & THE PUTBACKS
THE PUTBACKS
The Putbacks.
Melbourne’s dirtiest, darkest & heaviest funk rhythm section – bring you an album of crunchy post-soul post-jazz mystery-cinema instrumentals for your turntable & your sampler.
Produced by Paul Bender (Hiatus Kaiyote) & featuring collaborations with luminaries such as Bilal & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, this record is a hard-hitting, abstract journey into an alternate reality where The Meters specialised in Sci-Fi soundtrack art & Dick Dale played guitar on Madlib records. Known for their instrumental 7inch funk cuts & their collaboration with Emma Donovan, this self-titled LP is the first full-length release to the band’s name.