New show alert and this one will warm your heart!
There are SO many Australians doing brilliant work at a community level which has a giant impact on real people. This new podcast from Partnerships for Local Action and Community Empowerment (PLACE) celebrates the success that comes from sharing decisions so everyone in a community benefits.
It's been so fun for @deadsetstudios to create an auditory sense of "place" in towns such as Kempsey, Alice Springs, and Shepparton.
Check out Making Place Matter, a podcast hosted by Gamillaroi woman (and soon to be Dr!) boneybrooke
And big chef's kiss to @schuftronic and @ellenleabeater for making some stunning Australian landscape sounds (pretty sure @schuftronic was out recording tree sounds before we'd even had our morning coffee on day one 👏🌿❤️)
Longtime collaborator, frequent houseguest, and neighbourhood rapper; Linda Colour J has been with us for over a decade of Ducks! She’s featured on 3 of our 4 albums as well as our forthcoming EP, Backyard Battles. We love the way everything reminds her of something else, and we miss those nights when she’d come over to our house, create a tornado of ideas, art supplies, sounds and Jack Russell Terriers, and leave us with a song - like this one, our new single, ‘Might as Well Pretend’. 🦆 🦆 🌈
When Dad and I talked, he would ask me what’s going on. When I told him, he would almost always respond in the same way; “You’re doing alright, aren’t you?”
For a long time I thought this phrase meant nothing; one of those things parents say over and over again; a boomer mantra. And sometimes, because Dad and I had quite different ideas of what it meant to do alright, I imagined a little sarcasm in there; “You’re doing alright (for someone who never seems to have a real job), aren’t you?”
He was born in Sydney in 1945 to German-speaking Jews from upper Silesia, and I didn’t realise until I went to live in that part of the world myself just how much a product he was of this specifically North German culture. Dad was hard-working, thrifty and far-sighted - if he often seemed to be saying ‘no’ to things in the present, it was because he wanted us to be secure and happy in the future. Of course I didn’t understand or appreciate this at the time; as a teenager I failed to see that his way of life; running a small business, buying a modest house in the suburbs, taking us on affordable holidays at caravan parks and saving money for later; had created the conditions for me to imagine I could angrily reject all of this.
Later, things got better. We grew to like each other again, but we didn’t always understand each other. Despite our good intentions, our conversation was full of dead-ends and short circuits, and this “doing alright” was one of them. I didn’t really know what to say after he said it, so I usually said nothing.
It took a long time for me to realise that when Dad said I was doing alright, he meant exactly that. He wanted me to be happy, even if he didn’t always understand how I went about it, and he saw that I was. I am doing alright, and Dad deserves a lot of credit for this. He taught me how to be curious and kind, and encouraged my love of reading and listening to music. He brought my sister and I up in comfort and stability, and so created the circumstances in which I could be creative and contrary. he laid the practical foundation on which I could build a world of ideas. If I’m doing alright, it’s because he did too. I’ll always be grateful.
Might as Well Pretend is out now! An ode to psychedelic domestic bliss featuring stream-of-consciousness raps from our frequent houseguest and longtime collaborator Linda Colour J ✨
Photographed & kaleidoscoped by @harriet_clare_richardson
Mastered by @fredrikkinbom at @madame_vegas_boudoir
Costumed by @tralalalani
Skwirl: “I will forever be grateful to Ducks! for so gracefully, artfully, and kindly building a world where I could articulate things that had been a muddled mess in the mind for a long while”. We count ourselves lucky Ducks! indeed, for this chance to build a sound-world for Skwirl’s feelings, and to work with one of our favourite producers on a very beautiful thing. ‘I Was Wrong’ is out now, featuring vocals by @Skwirl , keys and community choir by @Tralalani , impossible organ and plausible beats by @schuftronic , y bajo electrico de @mariopicuet
Mastered by Fredrik Kinbom at @madame_vegas_boudoir
Photography & kaleidoscopy by @harriet_clare_richardson
Costumes by @tralalalani & @schuftronic
Secret squirrel @shaysaver
Backyard Battles is out today! Our new song was written on bright beaches near @roserdefoc in Catalonia, and recorded over long dark nights at our old studio in Berlin with our fantastic – and now very far away – friend, @angelicatavella . Three months ago, we packed up our Casios and tape recorders and moved to Muckleford (Dja Dja Wurrung Country), in the south-eastern corner of Australia. Now we’re releasing a song about how nothing is forever, in a place where we never thought we’d end up, where the words we wrote on the other side of the world feel right at home.
“Breeze blocks and rust / crumbling cliffs and dust…”
Photographed & kaleidoscoped by @harriet_clare_richardson
Mastered by @fredrikkinbom at @madame_vegas_boudoir
Costumed by @tralalalani
I decided to start my year intentionally by choosing a random book off a random shelf, opening it at a random page and selecting the first word I saw as my guiding idea for the next 12 months. That word was:
RIDICULOUS
Yes! 2026 is the year of ridiculous. I want to make a radio show or podcast that breaks people’s brains. Like a Michel Gondry movie for your ears, or ambient music with jokes, or one of those Muppet sketches that starts out as a talk show but ends with the guest eating the host and all the furniture. I want to do a show that has less in common with other shows than it does with the platypus; who is both immersive and absurd. Who wants to make something ridiculous?
