The lockdown may have resulted in concert cancellations for us, but for musicians, their entire performing careers have been altered. A new competition from ICE, Western Sydney’s Information and Cultural Exchange, encourages artists to perform over Zoom. Breakfast’s Willy Russo chatted with CHASM, or Chris Hamer-Smith, and Morgan Graham, producer of Youth Engagement Programs.

Sydney’s Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) focuses on artists and promoting cultural participation as well as activities and has produced and presented hundreds of community-based programmes. ICE has created a number of national and worldwide creative initiatives and collaborations in addition to working locally and regionally. Morgan Graham says that “ICE’s philosophises revolve around creating spaces and opportunities for young people in terms of their creative outputs”.

For artists it has been challenging to stay motivated during the past couple of years, especially during the lockdown period, CHASM has a newfound motivation for music through “taking the time to focus on learning new things about sound and mixing music techniques”.

The inspiration and purpose behind this competition can be said by Morgan “to be able put forward something that will bring artists together and give people an opportunity to spark creative ideas because it can be really hard to be producing solo at home; or maybe you can’t connect to the artist you normally work with. By being able to team up with CHASM, can allow for people to try new creative techniques they haven’t already”.

CHASM is excited and looking for ‘creative flips’ of the original works that he has given them. “It’s exciting when someone flips something and does something unexpected, which you never would never have thought of doing”.

If you are interested in all thing’s revolving music and remixing, ICE will provide three tracks, courtesy of CHASM, who has created them specifically for this project. To get in touch, you can reach out to ICE’s social media platforms or by sending an email in order to receive the tracks. In saying this, ICE is “effectively putting an open call out to anyone who believes that they can chop, twist and remix the tracks or anyone wanting to have a go even if it is their first time”.

“The limit is how far you want to go with it”.

Please reach out to morgan@ice.org.au if you would like to obtain tracks and get stuck into this remix competition

The winners will be announced on Friday October 22^nd in a listening party and the winning releases shared through ICE’s social media platforms.