VOLT 2023: A Volition Archive

VOLT 2023: Prior to Crackerjack, you were in indie rock band The Faith. How did you get into electronic music?

Scott Millard: The nineties came right after the eighties, and frankly, this was a surprise to some of us, especially if you were living in a share house in inner city Sydney and lived the lifestyle that we did at the time, and I won’t elaborate but if you’re reading this you likely know.

At the time, I lived for music, and it wasn’t just about playing tunes; it was about belonging to a gang… being part of something bigger than yourself. One of my earliest bands was poorly named The Faith. The poor naming thing will be a theme here. It was cobbled together from remnants of Soggy Porridge – yes, the band, not the breakfast – and Sons of Guns. It was pure pre shoegaze, inner city noise. We produced a single EP called “Chain of Flowers”. Brett Myers of Died Pretty fame produced it, and even graced the record with some backing vocals, probably against his better judgement.

After my stint in shoegaze, I took a hard left into metal with a band called Candy Harlots. We toured with Cheap Trick and a few other legends, and to this day, I can barely remember a thing. It’s all a hair induced haze. Fun, but not for me.

I soon found myself floating between projects… Seamonsters, a brief incarnation of Jump Inc., and then a quick splash with Crash Politics. But none of it stuck. After a revamped version of Bell Jar came to a sputtering end, I landed with ID, a band that had just released an album on Mushroom Records. But by that time that had run its course and I was thoroughly disillusioned with the music scene. 

At that point, I had an epiphany: why not make dance music? It had one very important perk… I didn’t need anyone else to do it. Just me, my vinyl collection, and an unhealthy fascination with The KLF. I had managed to come across the book called The Manual written by the boys from The KLF and thought, “Hey I can do this!”

VOLT 2023: How did you meet Paul Mac?

Scott: At one gig at the Annandale Hotel, whilst watching Boxcar, across the room I spotted Paul, who was already something of a legend.

Now, funny thing… Paul and I had met long before, though he didn’t remember. Years earlier I had answered an ad for a bass player and went to jam at this share house in Chippendale. We jammed in a tiny room that doubled as a bedroom, art studio, and possibly a kitchen. It was a disaster, the room and the jam.

But now, I figured I had a second chance, so I sauntered over and asked, “Hey Paul, would you produce my record?” To my surprise, he said, “Sure, two hundred dollars a track.” I, of course, said, “Deal.” And so, about a week later, we began recording in his share house in Surry Hills.

Halfway through, he moved to his new studio in Newtown, famously known as Dog Hair Studio. That’s also where I met Scott Leslie, Paul’s flatmate and frontman of U.S.S.

VOLT 2023: What led to you establishing your label Mouse Records?

Scott: I started Mouse Records while I was at Warner, mainly to release Crackerjack, and Nasenbluten, who specialised in hardcore 8-bit techno. I had met Mark Newlands from Nasenbluten in a record store in Newcastle. They sold some cassettes and so I offered to release it on a record at the same time I did Crackerjack. I figured it would be easier to sell two than just one. Mouse wasn’t the best name, I admit, but I was creatively bankrupt in that department. The label released two vinyl records, which were pushed through Mushroom Distribution Services (MDS).

VOLT 2023: How did your association with Volition begin?

Scott: I had never met (Volition head) Andrew Penhallow. I had heard so much about him though. My brother was the Marketing Director at Sony and talked about him a lot. I had a girlfriend in the music business who also knew him well. But we never crossed paths. I was absolutely fascinated with him because of his Factory Records connection. I had a secret obsession to be like Tony Wilson.

Paul later called me up and asked if he could include a Crackerjack track on the Itch-E & Scratch-E “… And Friends …” album (VOLTCD96), to which I obviously said yes. That led to Crackerjack being featured on a few dance compilations, including Volition compilation album “In The Mix” (VOLTCD151).

The bookend to this part of the story is that both the Mouse vinyl records are quite sought after. Many ended up in Europe where they were DJ favourites. I once saw Nasenbluten’s “The Nihilist E.P.” 12″ trading for 500 Euros on eBay. Mark Newlands (Nasenbluten) ended up moving to Europe on and off for the next decade and made many more hardcore records.

Before too long, I was back in the band game, joining U.S.S. as their bass player after the introduction to Scott Leslie at Paul’s Dog Hair Studio. U.S.S. had a bunch of new material, and with my heavier style of playing things quickly became much more my aligned with my musical tastes.

By this time I had left Warner Music and started work at (video game) company Sega. Sega had recently released a device called Mega-CD (aka Sega CD) and it was faulty. The marketing team had this idea that if they showed people that it could play music maybe they could sell it as a sort of music player attachment.

The Product Manager at the time asked me whether I knew of a CD they could buy and stick in the box. She had approached several record labels at the time and had been totally confused and given the run around by several synch managers who confused then with talk of territory and mechanicals – all the hard stuff. I said, “Hey, I will sell you a CD. All rights for eight thousand dollars.” She said, “Great!”

The one I thought of and used was the unreleased U.S.S. EP. I used that as the songs were very commercial and the people at SEGA at the time would accept it. They wouldn’t accept Crackerjack as it was too obscure. So just out of convenience I badged the EP for Sega from U.S.S. as a Mouse recording and that was the story.

I still remember being at Paul’s house with Scott (Leslie) and the rest of U.S.S. cutting the cheques for everyone. They couldn’t believe it. None of us had actually had made money out of music before and here we were 8K the richer!

At this point Festival Records had been taken over by News Corp and were completely reorganising under Roger Grierson. I called Roger, pushed my way through the door, and next thing I was Marketing Manager. 

It was fun, but by the time 1998 came to a close I thought It was time to strike out on my own. I left Festival and formed Air Recordings… another really bad name choice… and my first releases were The Blue Hour album, coincidentally a project by Andy Rantzen, the other half of Itch-E and Scratch-E; Nic Barker, a refugee from Mushroom; a local Sydney band called Lime; and FC Europa, another Sydney band including Andy Rantzen.

The Blue Hour went on to being album of the week on (national youth radio network) Triple J, and Lime and FC Europa were on high rotation.

I spent a year releasing about sixteen records from artists all around Australia, including the soundtrack of the film Erskineville Kings.

By the end of the nineties I was pretty exhausted. I had managed to secure an inordinate amount of airplay on Triple J over the course of the year with all my artists, but nothing had really stuck and I was scraping by, bootstrapping a record label that I really could not see a future in.

The mergers and acquisition crowd had moved on from the record business and interest in these local specialty labels seemed on the wane. I hit control alt delete, I packed up, and I jumped on a plane for a new adventure in Hong Kong.