Listen Up with Ash McGregor

Not many people know the full story behind Amy Shark's career.
Four albums in, hundreds of millions of streams, and it all started because her little brother began guitar lessons and she thought, if this little loser can do it, so can I.
In this episode we go right back to the beginning, growing up on the Gold Coast with a family that thought pursuing music was absolutely out of the picture, an angry all-girl punk band called Hansel Kissed Gretel, losing jobs to go see live music, and the sliding doors moment where she almost sent a song called Home to M-Phazes instead of the track that really kicked it all off, Adore.
We also get into what album four, soft pop, has felt like compared to Love Monster, Cry Forever and Sunday Sadness, and dive into the sexy and sad sides to this body of work.
You can tell Amy has returned to self, she's having fun with it, and after a decade since Adore is still madly obsessed with music.

This is DICE's first proper long-form interview! What a privilege!
DICE are one of Perth's most exciting bands right now and it all started with a Covid jam session, a broken heart, and absolutely no plan.
In this episode we go right back to the moment they wrote their first original song and realised they might actually be onto something. We get into what it really takes to break out of Perth as a band, playing multiple shows a weekend and carrying their amps across the city until they burned out (and how that burnout turned into some of their best songs).
From the turning point in their career that had Australia talking, to deep diving their brand new record 'I Thought the Altitude Would Make It Worth the View'.
We cover a lot of ground here, so get ready!

Drax Project are one of the most unlikely success stories to come out of New Zealand: three jazz school kids plus a fan-turned-band-member, who started busking on the streets of Wellington to pay rent and somehow ended up on the same stage as Ed Sheeran, Lorde and Christina Aguilera.
In this episode Sam & Ben take it back to the Wellington jazz scene, the busking days, the toga parties, and what it really took to build an audience from scratch in a country where breaking out is genuinely hard.
We get into why coming out of jazz school and wanting to make pop music was considered embarrassing by pretty much everyone around them, why they stayed independent, and how they found their sound by deliberately doing the opposite of what was already working in their city.
We also talk their viral side project BlindBeat and why after two albums and countless EPs they're done with grand plans and just making music that feels good - they're ripping up that rulebook!

Not many people know the full story behind Matt Corby's career. Despite being a household name who has soundtracked generations (hundreds of millions of streams, huge hits like Brother and Resolution) the journey to get there is not what you'd expect.
We go right back to the beginning singing as a ten year old with a vibrato he couldn't control, touring the country at 14 and landing on Australian Idol. From there it's the move to the UK, coming home broke and in debt, and making coffees six days a week while writing the songs that would change everything.
We also get into label politics, the unreleased album he hopes no one ever finds, why he's always pushed back against the industry, and what it means to produce for other artists out of his studio at Rainbow Valley.
Plus we hear about the creation of his latest album Tragic Magic which came out of a hard period for Matt.

Hooligan Hefs is the Western Sydney rapper putting Australia on the map.
We go right back to the beginning growing up in the 2767, Doonside, making music in a mate's wardrobe with soundproofing and doing it purely for the boys before the rest of the world caught on.
We get into what it really means to come up in Western Sydney, why staying independent when the label contracts started rolling in was the smartest move he made, and how he became the pioneer of Australia's drill-meets-EDM sound. We also talk performing at Rolling Loud Miami, linking up with Savage, and the career move Hefs is now making off the back of one conversation with him.
Plus: the A$AP Rocky shoutout, and a deep dive into his brand new EP Sixth Sense - packed with collaborations, an evolution in sound, and plenty of nitty gritty in between.