Artist-run label captures the ‘in-between moments’ of Adelaide’s music scene
From bookstore gigs to new vinyl compilation Sitting in the Same Chairs, local DIY label caps lock records is putting Adelaide’s musical community in context.
A few years ago, violinist and composer Thea Martin was asked to do some session work for a raucous Adelaide group called Twine. It went well – so well that Martin joined the band soon after. Then, Martin joined another band, and another, and another.
“It’s not really where I saw my life going, but it was a very welcome change from the trajectory I was on,” Martin tells InReview.
A graduate of the Elder Conservatorium and music educator, Martin had already grown “disillusioned with the world of classical music”, and knew they didn’t want to be a classical performer.
“It was very exciting to kind of step into the band world. I’d written songs growing up, [but] always felt kind of between two worlds, of contemporary and classical. It was nice to find I could do both.”
Martin can now be heard across a half a dozen projects that sonically share little in common beyond their violin work, from the Dirty Three-inspired noise of War Room, to the alternative country of Any Young Mechanic (FKA Wake in Fright), to the quiet bedroom folk of Martin’s solo project Short Snarl.
“I really like playing shows with lineups that are more about the way people consider making music than necessarily the genre,” Martin reflects.
“I feel like the scene in Adelaide, there’s a lot of different pockets, but I’ve always been drawn to people who care about what they make, and approach things in a collaborative way.”
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Martin’s debut Short Snarl EP Gossamer Songs was released in 2024 by caps lock records, a DIY label started by War Room bandmate Louis Campbell. Late last year, Martin floated an idea to Campbell: a compilation capturing a one-year time capsule of the music scene they had come to embrace.
“There’s a lot of really amazing music being made in Adelaide, but people can get very stressed, or unsure how to approach a release plan. I was like, ‘There needs to be a way for more music to exist in the world.’”
"Compilations are so good for picking up those in-between moments in scenes, to give context."
Martin approached friends and fellow artists to submit tracks – live recordings, demos, anything made in the previous twelve months. They soon gathered a pool of material where songs by more established acts like Twine, War Room, and Georgia Oatley sat alongside solo projects, offshoots and experiments with only minimal live or online footprints.
“I feel like compilations are so good for picking up those in-between moments in scenes, to give context,” Martin says. “Maybe a band does get really successful from a scene, and those compilation records and smaller releases really give you an understanding of what was happening around those people.
“I love looking for them; there’s so many strange ones out there, often made by little DIY labels.”
Martin’s approach that recalls similar efforts by Greasy Pop Records founder Doug Thomas, who in 1986 released the first in a series of Adelaide-based vinyl compilations under the title An Oasis in a Desert of Noise.
“Most local independent releases seemed to be one-offs by the band themselves,” Thomas told me in 2016. “I guess there was that feeling of ‘capture the scene now, before the bands fall apart.”
Martin’s compilation, titled Sitting in the Same Chairs: a compilation from a slow and sputtering city, was initially released in January, and like Thomas – who hand-glued many of the first Oasis in a Desert of Noise sleeves himself – Martin and their friends designed and assembled its limited run of cassette tapes and CDs by hand.
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In October, the compilation received a second wind after gaining the attention of Sydney-based vinyl label Impressed Records.
“He really believed in the story of the record, and made me see that it could resonate beyond Adelaide as well,” Martin says of Impressed founder Luke Bevans.
Martin is already planning a follow-up compilation, and in the meantime will celebrate Impressed’s vinyl reissue of volume one with an end-of-year party at secondhand bookstore Goodwood Books on December 16.
Martin has been hosting intimate gigs at the feminist bookshop since February, and the December date will also mark the release of another hand-made compilation Live at Goodwood Boks, limited to 35 copies.
“I think there’s a real lack of places for people to listen to quiet music in Adelaide,” Martin says of the unusual venue. “There’s definitely a scene around loud and raucous pub gigs, which are fun and vital in their own way, but there’s a lot of people who make music that needs a different kind of space.”
“I wanted to have a space that was alcohol free – musicians are so used to being paid in alcohol, and having that be a very integral part of their experience of being a musician I don’t think it has to be that way.”
Like the compilation, it’s another effort to celebrate Adelaide and its musical community – ‘small and sputtering’ as it may be.
“I think [Adelaide’s] a really good place to make things,” Martin reflects. “Because we don’t have as established or well-known a music scene nationally or internationally, we’re shielded a bit from pressures that might come with a bigger music scene.
“You have the freedom to do whatever you want in Adelaide – because you live with the knowledge that not a lot of people are going to hear it.”
As for the compilation’s name? It’s a lyric cribbed from Paul Kelly’s affectionately backhanded tribute to his hometown, first released around the same time Doug Thomas was assembling his Oasis.
“It’s both sentimental, but also kind of reflects the stagnation that people can feel,” Martin says. “It gives weight to both of those feelings.”
caps lock records’ end of year party will be hosted at Goodwood Books on Tuesday December 16.
Sitting in the Same Chairs: a compilation from a small and sputtering city is out now via Bandcamp and Impressed Recordings