The Home Base crew welcomed AC Slater, one of the several guest artists that have come down to work on some production

Our drop-in project Home Base has been running for almost 4 months now! Being set up at the Redfern Community Centre affords us a great facility and location for anyone to drop by and make music with us. We started off with 3 attendees and now have a regular attendance of 10 or more. The young peoples’ ages range from 14 to 20 years old and they are from all parts of Sydney.

Kobie and Jack are the youngest artists that attend and have a love for 90’s hip hop. They have been working hard with our facilitator Kristy Lee on some original hip hop tracks for Triple J’s unearthed high competition and the Mad Pride event coming up soon. The guys hava amazing flow for their age and turn up every week, without fail, ready to go.

Adrian as always has been an amazing inspiration all attendees at the Home Base session. In the studio he has been writing new raps every week and putting together a good collection of original songs. Also bringing new friends to the Home Base sessions and helping them use music to express themselves.

American superstar DJ/Producer and all-round nice guy AC Slater imparts a wealth of knowledge to budding dubstep producer Tom at a Home Base session

Tom and our facilitator Jeremy have been cranking out a lot of awesome dubstep production. Recently, Big H aka Henry put down a verse on one of Tom’s dubstep beats which was amazing. It was great to see the boys collaborate and both be a part of different styles of music they normally wouldn’t have been.

Henry, aka Big H and Sai have be working on a couple of collaborations together. Sudeki has also been singing some amazing hooks for the guys on their tracks. This guy has an amazing voice and the boys are almost lining up to get him to do a chorus on one of their tracks. Big H is also starting to plan a new EP and we have got two songs down for this already which we have made in the Home Base sessions!

The boys looking at home in the studio. From left to right: Adrian, ‘Big H’ - Henry, Jack, Kobie, AC Slater & Sai

I could not be happier with how the sessions are going. The turn out has really been amazing, sometimes overwhelming, and always inspiring. I’m looking forward to the coming sessions and making some good music!

Words and Photos Adam Bozzetto

Jeremy, Pipemix of Sydney’s Generic Collective, has been coming along to help out on a weekly basis at Heaps Decent’s “Home Base” workshops at the Redfern Community Centre. Here’s what he has to say about it (oh, and the original chord progression sounded nothing like Barbra Streisand, just sayin’):

‘The Home Base workshops have been a melting pot of unique talent and style that have showcased Heaps Decent’s young guns and Australia’s potential future of music. I’ve been working with one talent in particular; the dubsteppin’, metal lovin’, bush doofin’ Tom.

Tom has developed a passion for the increasingly popular genre of dubstep, and with the abundance of dubstep at this year’s Parklife it looks like he’s about to ride the proverbial wave that is now associated with that unmistakeable WOBBLEWOBBLEWOBBLECRUNCH.

Coming into the workshops with little musical experience, Tom quickly flourished in the world of Ableton with guidance from myself (at Home Base) and from Adam Maggs of LiveSchool (outside of Home Base). Boz and Charlie got the ball rolling with a chord progression that resembled that of the one featured in BARBRA STREISAND. After listening to the same 3 note hook for weeks on end, Tom and I decided that its time was over. Tom began altering the notes and came up with a hook that is the perfect blend of subtle and sinister - if only he would record the devilish ‘OHHHKAAAAY’ sample that he’s been describing for the past month!

What has resulted is a BANGER of a toon that is sure to bust subs ‘n’ heads. Big H of Stunna Set has since laid some killah vocals that will hopefully see the light of day on an alternate version of the track.

This new version of the track that Tom has come up with is testament to the talent that these guys (and girls) at Home Base have. Hopefully everyone can hear their finished products soon!’

Home Base is a new Heaps Decent program, which has been running out of the Refern Community Centre for about 2 months now. Redfern Community Centre is equipped with a pretty awesome music studio and we have been lucky enough to have been allocated 3 hours a week to work on everything music with really anyone who wants to come in. The goal is to make it a ‘Home Base’, to provide a central place and community for young people interested in music to meet each other and work together. Home Base aims to be a drop in for young people with musical aspirations or to simply have some fun with music.

From our first week to now there has been a steady increase of participants, we started of with only a few students. Tom who came over from Key College is producing some pretty crazy dubstep beats and we now have the awesome Jeremy coming in to help him with his production. Henry and Rhimi from the well-established hip hop group Stunna set are always in and we are working on some new original material with them. The Stunna Set boys also help us with bringing in new boys who want to record and write and also assist and encourage new boys already there. Daniel aka D-minor and Harold aka Low Tee, regulars with us are now fine-tuning their new original tunes and getting ready to do new vocal recordings with the great gear at we have use of at the centre. Harold is bringing in his sister to record on the tracks and if she sings anything like Harold I can’t wait to hear her!

Some of the new students include Rifat, who produced and recorded his first original song with Nina. Adrian, who has never rapped before, also comes from Key College and has also produced and recorded a song with our amazing new facilitator Kristy Lee. This is just only naming a few of the students who are starting to come to the sessions.

ABC TV has also been down to a session to shoot for their TV show ‘Stay Tuned’, where Nina Agzarian and I did a segment on how to make a beat. Keep an eye out for the screening time.

The sessions are really starting to pick up at Home Base and we have only been working there for 2 months. In that time we have almost doubled out facilitators at the Monday sessions just so we have enough people there to work with all the participants. There will be tons of great content coming out of the session very soon, which I am very excited about. Finally a big thanks to Tania, Tim and Redfern Community Centre for use of their space to start such an exciting new program!

Words: Adam Bozzetto, Photos: Nina Agzarian

The past two weeks, Heaps Decent’s Charlie has taken some newcomers, Hugh O’Brien and Scott Stirling, to help out running a workshop at Juniperina. They were thrown in the deep end and did an excellent job! Here’s what Hugh had to say about the experience:

“As a first timer to the Heaps Decent workshop programme with the girls at Juniperina, I was really quite nervous to start with. Being inducted with another first timer, Scott Stirling, was a fortunate situation. We bounced off each other in the steep learning curve — probably more off him, considering his ACTUAL skills… Two trips to Juni down, I’ve learned a great deal about the girls and how Heaps Decent can help them, and I’m super keen to get there again soon!

I was blown away by the talent of the girls, I never expected the raw skill that some of them have! We had the whole group written and recorded in under 2 hours, and they were all 100% humble and really keen to record some lyrics. All in all, my experiences of the Heaps Decent workshops have been a challenge and awesome fun!!”

It was an early start on the Wednesday morning; arriving in Wagga Wagga by 9.30am to get the workshops at the Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre underway meant an early trip to the airport. The ever-amazing Thom Paton was there, smile on face, coffee (3^rd of the day) in hand, waiting to pick us up and get us to the centre.

We commenced proceedings with workshops for the second half of the school day. We split up into two workstations, with Heaps Decent’s go-to producer Adam Bozzetto, a seasoned Wagga Wagga Heaps Decent veteran on his 6^th? trip, manning the beats station while I got to work on recording.

The boys from the Riverina Community Centre with the centre’s youth worker Thom Paton in front and Heaps Decent’s Charlie

It was my first Heaps Decent trip to Wagga Wagga and having done plenty of workshops at places like Juniperina Juvenile Justice Centre, where we have a great standard of work from the girls, I’m used to a rapport with the girls and a level of productivity that we’re really happy with! The boys at the Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre surpassed these expectations significantly! I was astounded to be met with the level of enthusiasm that these guys had.

First up was a young Indigenous guy, ‘Belly’, over the next three days it would prove near impossible to remove him from the mic! He had incredible flow and a natural knack for words, coming up with way too many great rhymes!

From there, three songs started to take shape and over the course of the coming days, we had recorded and made beats with some 25 incarcerated boys. With varying skill and confidence levels it was awesome to see that so many were keen to record some lyrics and have a go. A few of the boys took some coaxing but the look of exhilaration after completing the dreaded task of performing in front of their supportive peers was great to see. A couple of the boys in particular found it hard to face recording their lyrics, it was a foreign concept for them and after some back and forth I finally convinced them to record something. The looks on their faces after they had finished were those of pure relief and they definitely had a sense of accomplishment from overcoming this hurdle.

Heaps Decent’s Adam Bozzetto sharing a few trade secrets

On the Thursday night, after a full day of workshops at the juvi, it was time for our bi-monthly visit to the Riverina Community College. About 6 boys attended the session. We broke up into two groups with Adam showing one of the boys a few Serato tricks in a DJ workshop while I took a group of boys that played in a band together through a brief introduction to Logic as they are keen to get some recordings of their band underway. After a long day at the office, it was time for Adam and I to hit Nina’s parents’ place for a much needed home cooked meal! It lived up to our expectations!

The following day was the one where it all came together. We chose the boys showing the most interest to spend the day with us recording and working on finishing the songs we had started. This meant for a super productive day and some excellent material recorded by the boys. The intensive session gave us the chance to polish what we had already done, work further on the vocals we had already recorded, and try to come up with some hooks for the three songs that we had started on.

The session ended on an optimistic note, with the majority of the boys wanting to stay in contact following their departure from incarceration. For a few of them, this date was approaching quickly, for others it was still a while off. Regardless, they were excited at the prospect of working with us in the future and picking up where we had left off.

A massive thanks to Thom Paton and to the Agzarians for their hospitality! I’m very much looking forward to returning to Wagga Wagga for more workshops after such a great trip!

Words: Charlie O’Brien, Photos: Adam Bozzetto

In amidst his heavy Australian touring schedule, Heaps Decent was able to bring L.A.’s Aloe Blacc, a singer, rapper and producer signed to the great Stones Throw label, to a workshop at Juniperina Juvenile Justice Centre. Joining him was his drummer Te’Amir and the now L.A. based Maya Jupiter, a long time friend and supporter of Heaps Decent who we’ve always wanted to work with.

Taking a different approach to most workshops we run, Aloe began his afternoon session by teaching the girls about drum breaks, the funk songs they originally came from and the songs hip hop producers have used them to make. The girls selected a break of their own to use as the basis for a new song which Aloe, Maya and Te’Amir helped them write.

Like always, we made a video from the back of Charlie’s car as we drove home from the workshop which will be uploaded very soon!