Astral People, OutsideIn Festival and Plastic World Records co-director Vic Edirisinghe sat down to unveil how his experiences have enabled him to solve the ‘big puzzle’ of the music world and the need to ‘develop’ rather than exploit young Australian artists.
“We started Astral People as an artist management company…however when we first started the company our artists were all very much developing – we had to think of other revenue streams to be able to support the 3 of us at the time, that’s when international touring came into the picture” Vic reflected.
“This then lead to the creation of our little baby, OutsideIn Festival. However, now four years down the track, those younger, emerging local artists that we started with are suddenly selling more tickets than the internationals we’re touring so now we’re finally in a position whereby our focus can go back to the ethos of Astral People – local artist management and development. Besides a few key tours throughout the year, curating and extending properties like OutsideIn Festival and Summer Dance (which are both a huge priority for us over the coming years), we are going to take a step back from the international touring side of things and focus in on the management. For me personally, there’s no better feeling in this world than helping guide a new artist and take that journey with them throughout their lives. I mean these guys chose us to guide their careers, when I think about it in that manner I just hope that I can do them justice. I’m really excited about the next phase for Astral overseeing the rise of our local roster,” Vic explained.
It’s been a challenging yet fruitful four years for the Sydney local, as he’s overseen his management company go from ‘throwing parties’, to having members of their local management roster such Wave Racer, Cosmo’s Midnight and Roland Tings, go on big scale national tours.
Vic credits the flourishing nature of his business down to the personal development and need to engage in “good communication with [our] artists,” as the cornerstones.
“Our job as managers is to guide their careers via guiding the team we choose to work with the artists, whether that’s the publicists, label, booking agent(s) etc., our job as a manager is to guide all those facets and make sure that they’re all turning in a cohesive manner.”
“When you look at some of our artists like GL or Basenji, they were all very much emerging – some didn’t even have a Soundcloud or Facebook fan page up at the time. It’s just about following your instincts as a manager and being prepared to commit fully to that artist and nurture them through their careers,” Vic added.
As a management focused man, Vic revealed the real influence behind his decision to not rest on his laurels and ‘take matters into his own hands’ in regards to supporting and promoting Australian electronic artists through the Plastic World imprint.
“Look to be perfectly honest, and this is the first time that I’ve said it in media, basically I started this record label with James (former Future Classic label manager) simply because there weren’t any Australian labels at the time that wanted to take a chance on these emerging electronic artists and music I was getting sent to my inbox on a day to day basis.”
“I had access to a lot of music from artists that fell into a weird middle ground with Australian based electronic labels whereby the music wasn’t underground techno nor was it really pop music. It sat somewhere in between. It was really tough pitching this sort of stuff to labels here, so rather than sulking and being like ‘oh dam these guys aren’t going to get signed… I started my own label with James, as he shared the same vision as me at the time when it came to acts like GL, Retiree and Savoir,” Vic explained.
“Once again it was about following your instincts and not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Be the change that you want to create,” he added.
In an industry plagued with corporate giants wanting to reap the financial benefits from the talents of the artists they represent, Vic discussed the issues involved and the need to ensure longevity, rather than condemning artists to being another cliché flash in the pan.
“I feel like a lot of people in this industry, whether managers, agents, publishing companies etc, are all very reactive. They see something have a moment online and straight away these emerging artists are getting signed up left, right and centre. There seems to be a new agency popping up every few months as well, all trying to make their own new movements, which is all well and good, but I do think the attention to detail and idea of core development is getting lost a little bit. It’s sort of like everyone just keeps tabs on radio ads mailing lists and if a song gets added and it’s coming from a fresh artist you’ve got a bunch of industry folk going straight for that artist trying to secure a piece of the action. In my opinion It’s like, ‘hold on a second, these artists haven’t even had any time to hone their skill set across not just making music but the back end of releasing it’ and that to me is the biggest issue at the moment, a lot of artists don’t get that chance to grow in a natural, organic manner.”
“It’s the same issue globally. When talking to some touring agents that we work with today that have been around for 20 or so years, they’ve explained to me that back in the day agents used to be able to talk directly with artists about tours here quite often. Often artists had to get to a certain stage before they start formulating a team around them. The great thing with this is that at least these artists get time to develop the necessary skills like gauging their worth in the market place, gain a really in depth knowledge into the back end processes involved in their careers and actually get to know what terms like advances and withdrawal tax actually means. This is something that can serve them well in the future and ensure that no one takes advantage of them. The artists that I’ve had the best experiences with working with on a management front are those that have a decent enough knowledge of industry processes. Now you look at it and people are getting swooped up almost instantly and given unrealistic expectations after only releasing one SoundCloud hit and that whole idea of developing and working towards long term goals is fading. Hopefully we’ll see the cream of the crop come to the top, but yeah, that art of developing is something that really seems to get lost a little bit these days.”
“Fads come and go and it’s important that as a manager you invest in a long-term plan for your artist that is stronger than whatever is getting traction right now on radio. Strong foundations are the cores to a long lasting career in my opinion,” he explained.
With the electronic music scene synonymous with so-called ‘mega festivals’ with an absurd amount of money involved, Vic lamented the strain it has had on young emerging artists, whilst revealing the thought process behind the OutsideIn festival, which Astral direct with the help of Sydney label Yes Please!
“It’s very much a Sydney focused festival, and that’s what we do like about it, there’s a lean towards local Sydney artists on there.”
“For me there was a gap in the market for this, there’s a lot of amazing electronic artists internationally and especially locally that don’t get seen on bigger stages. Once again we’re about that middle ground, a feeder festival for emerging talents in electronic music. There’s so very few spots on big touring festivals for locals however it’s still important for them to be able to showcase their talents to wider audiences at decent set times. Often it’s about booking internationals for headline spots first and then fill in the gaps and early plays with locals, so hopefully OutsideIn takes a step in changing that mentality with bookers,” the tour manager admitted with ebullience.
Vic believes that potential breakthrough artists “just don’t get a big stage to showcase their music from”, which OutsideIn festival helps to remedy.
“It’s a boutique festival in every sense of the word…the big touring festival idea in Australia is exhausted”
“OutsideIn is positioned in the market to be like a ground-feeder festival for a lot of emerging artists and as I said before, a lot of these artists we’ve booked before like Freddie Gibbs, Wave Racer, BadBadNotGood, Flume, Movement and Snakehips, they’ve all gone on to break through in the following couple of years,” Vic revealed.
With a diverse range of artists covering an array of genres from the lovely Perth local Kucka, to international dons such as the Pender Street Steppers (personal favourite) hailing from Vancouver playing, the festival, which will includes a ‘carefully curated food and drinks menu’, promised to be an event that’ll be daft to sleep on.
“We designed OutsideIn as an affordable boutique festival in Sydney which really gives local artists a chance to play those peak time slots at a bigger event to a good crowd, one that’s really enthusiastic about discovering new music,” he added.
OutsideIn Festival this year is on the 26th of September at Manning House on the Sydney University campus.
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