From her early years in Perth with Molasses to playing in Melbourne outfits Sleepy Township, Driving Past, Huon and New Estate, RENÉ SCHAEFER tracks the unique career of musician and artist Mia Schoen.

Mia Schoen’s career in indie music is a long and illustrious one, but don’t call it a “career”. Mia would be the first to point out that the pursuit of fame or fortune has always been furthest from her mind. Instead, she is that rare thing – an artist pure and simple.

Since her teenage years in Perth, she has had a knack of seeking out similar-minded musicians to collaborate with, in bands such as Molasses, Driving Past, Sleepy Township, Huon and New Estate. As a multi-instrumentalist, as well as a prolific composer, she has never sought the limelight. Instead, her bands have always served as vehicles to showcase multiple songwriters – much like The Beatles, really.

Moving to Melbourne in the mid-1990s, Schoen quickly became a pivotal character in the local indie scene, along with her soon-to-be husband, writer and musician David Nichols. Both have always been happy to champion their friends’ work, as much as their own.

Schoen’s ethos, as well as her visual aesthetic, are rooted in a suburban realism. She explores everyday existence through her songs, as well as through her paintings, which grace the sleeves of most of her releases and have provided her with a parallel path of expression as a renowned exhibiting artist.

These days, Schoen has left the inner-city to set up home in the western suburbs, a landscape which continues to inspire her creative output. Even the name of her current band, New Estate, evokes this fascination with life beyond the rarefied environment of urban intellectuals and lifestyle poseurs.

Musically, Schoen has translated early influences such as Flying Nun records’ speed-freak jangle, or the shambolic pop of Swell Maps and The Pastels into a style she can truly call her own, whether she’s furiously strumming skewed chords on her guitar or coaxing wheezing beauty from a vintage electric organ.

New Estate’s new album Recovery contains some of her most strident songs, alongside equally impressive efforts from her bandmates Chris Gorman (drums), Marc Regueiro-McKelvie (guitar) and Toby Dutton (bass). The release vindicates Schoen’s steadfast belief in the DIY process, making the most of her home studio set-up.

While it is entirely too premature to attempt a retrospective of her work, Schoen was happy to talk about her past, as well as looking forward to the future.

Perth

When you were growing up in Perth, how did you first become involved in music?
I took classical piano lessons in primary and high school. By the time I was about 14, I used to make up tunes on the piano. They were classical-style pieces, none of which I would ever remember now. They certainly weren’t worth being recorded, but they were my first foray into writing music. I just enjoyed messing around.

When I finished high school, my best friend bought me an acoustic guitar from a garage sale for $50. I worked how to play guitar by playing a chord on the piano and then finding the notes on the fretboard. I was teaching myself, and pretty much learned to play by ear. I thought if my uncle Peter could do it, so could I. It took me about two years to be able to listen to somebody else’s song and then play it on both piano and guitar.

At that time, I was listening to things like Billy Bragg, The Jesus And Mary Chain and maybe some Kinks songs. The first proper album I had bought was a compilation of The Kinks greatest hits, so I’d had that since I was 14. I listened to triple j in Perth, and heard songs like ‘Smoking Her Wings’ by The Bats, which had a huge influence on me, but I also liked ’50s rockabilly and blues. In the summer before I went to Curtin University to start a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I met Paul Williams, Andrew Britan, Guy Blackman, Tracy Read and a whole bunch of people who were into music and introduced me to different and interesting new things.

Molasses - Hindsight by Mess+Noise

That’s pretty much a list of Perth’s indie rock royalty of the mid-’90s there.
Well, nobody was royalty back then, that’s for sure, but meeting these people changed my life. We’d play music together, hang out, and go to the beach. That was a really great summer. Paul and Andrew asked if I wanted to play keyboard in their band and that’s how Molasses started. We all ended up living together. I’d started at art school by then, but Paul and Andrew were in their third year, even though they were younger than me. The first Molasses gig was actually at the graduation show in the art department at university. It was the most amazing fun thing for me to be involved in. People were going crazy, although I’m sure we sounded like shit.

‘A full-on electric shock’

When did you move to Melbourne?
My timeline is totally fucked, but I think it was either 1994 or ’95. It was mainly Paul and I, who wanted to go to Melbourne. We’d come here on a holiday, together with Guy, and we’d met up with Chris Gorman and Mike Staude, who were playing in a band called Double Chin at the time. We knew them very well from Perth, because they had been in a band called Mustang. They had this amazing scene happening [in Perth], having started their own record label, Jacuzzi International. It was named that because they lived in a house with a Jacuzzi and they had these great parties. It was a very happy time, with a constant party atmosphere and a bunch of bands connected to it, like Wormfarm and O!

When these guys moved to Melbourne, they’d keep telling us how much of a great time they were having, and that we should join them. We came over under the guise of a Molasses tour and played a few shows in Brisbane and Melbourne, having a deliriously fun time. This was at the end of my first year in art school. Not too long after, Andrew started to lose interest in Molasses. He’s always been one of those people who is either 300 percent into something, or not at all. He goes through phases of being intensely into something and then changing tack completely.

Molasses - Optimistic by Mess+Noise

The main impetus to move to Melbourne actually came from a bizarre accident that happened to me. I got a full-on electric shock, while living in this house [with Paul and Andrew]. The house was cockroach infested, and as it turned out, it also wasn’t earthed. Paul and I were jamming, working on a new song. I was playing electric guitar, Paul was drumming, and suddenly there was an electrical surge. Basically, I became the earth wire and got the full voltage. Luckily, I twisted around and hit a cupboard, and dropped the guitar. That possibly saved my life.

There were a few moments before I blacked out, but before that, I had time to think “This is it, my life is over, and that’s so fucking unfair.” I came to, tangled up in guitar leads, and Paul was sitting behind the drum kit, with a completely white face. I think I must have screamed as I went down, but it was all a blur. When I regained consciousness, I looked at my hand and I had blood pouring out of my fingertips, where they’d been on the strings. My muscles were seized and I was shaking. It was hard to work out what had just happened. I hadn’t been wearing shoes and I realised that my foot was hurting. When I looked down, there was this big black hole in my second toe, where the electric charge had come out of my body.

The first thing I did was to call my mum, who is a nurse, and she said, “You have to go to hospital immediately.” My nextdoor neighbour drove me to the hospital. In the emergency ward I was just ushered straight through and put on a heart machine. They had to monitor me, because my heart could have kept going purely from the electrical charge, but could stop at any time. Eventually, they let me go, but for the next two months I had really crazy nightmares, which often seemed to involve trying to get away from zombies.

Following this, it seemed to me that all the people I was studying art with were just living in a bubble, and that it was a complete waste of time. Things like that just appeared meaningless to me. Paul was at a bit of a loose end around this time and one day he just said, “I want to move to Melbourne. Do you want to come?” That was it. I went.

Did Molasses continue in Melbourne?
We did carry on without Andrew. It was me and Paul, and then Chris agreed to play drums. Paul switched to guitar and wrote some brilliant songs, but he was always really unhappy with his output. He always thought that people at shows were just clapping to make fun of him.

We were living in Hope Street, Brunswick, and we were spending a lot of time at Chris and Mike’s house in Albert Street. We were living the musicians’ life, I guess, having a great time. Also, round that time Sleepy Township was becoming my main concern. Guy had moved over from Perth, where we’d already played together [under that name], but it was Guy’s band really. He’d asked me and Paul to back him up, initially. We were into that, because we thought he was a great guy. In was playing bass in the Perth line-up.

Molasses came to a conclusion when Paul decided to move to Brisbane. I think he had had enough of my controlling nature [laughter]. That’s when Guy proposed that we get Sleepy Township going again, with Chris on drums and the se list split between Guy’s and my songs. It was just a three-piece at this stage, and for quite a while after, I guess.

One time, when Andrew came to see us in Melbourne, he said to me that he felt embarrassed for us, because of how bad Sleepy Township was. I know that sounds harsh, but it wasn’t meant like that, in context. His head was somewhere else by this stage, which unfortunately was hard drugs. That was something he also got into very passionately, but he managed to save himself by moving back to Perth and getting his shit together. This was after he’d played in Jaguar Is Jaguar.

There’s a band that was quite a phenomenon.
Yeah, they were great. I loved them. I’m pretty sure I saw almost every show they did. They actually lived that life – it wasn’t a pose. They spent every day thinking about music, rehearsing, and they got dressed up every day.

“I got into it with the attitude that we were lucky to be doing this and to be given free beers, to go to awesome parties, and hopefully for people to like us.”

Kinda like The Ramones, The MC5 or New York Dolls, just immersing themselves in the Rock’n’Roll myth.
Exactly. It’s a real shame they just never got it together enough to record that killer album, which they could have easily done. Anyway, I ended up playing in Sleepy Township for 10 years. During that time I played in other bands as well, but they were all pretty much side-projects for me. For example, I played drums in Aboveground Pool, which was Bek Moore from Clag and Julian Williams [Hi God People]. I don’t think I’m on any of their recordings. I was filling in for Paul, basically, while he was away. I might have played two or three shows with them.

Driving Past was another band you played in around that time.
Yes, that was fairly early on during Sleepy Township’s existence. David Nichols, who is now my husband, was friends with the poet Gig Ryan. She was the main songwriter and visionary for Driving Past.

She also was the poetry editor for The Age newspaper, right?
Yes, she’s been doing that for a long time. It was the first regular job she ever had. She’s still doing it now, although I think she’s finding it a difficult position to be in as far as having to constantly apologise to poets, most of whom she knows personally, for not being able to publish their poem, even though it might be 28th piece they sent in.

Driving Past was conceived before I was on the scene [in Melbourne]. David’s brother Michael and Laura MacFarlane [Ninetynine] made a brief appearance in the band, initially. I’m not even sure that they played any live shows together. When those guys left, David asked Andrew Withycomb and me to step in. I had not known David for very long at this stage. We had only just started going out together when he asked me to play.

Was that tricky, being in a band with your partner?
No, because our whole relationship was built around music. That’s part of the reason why we’re still together 16 years later. Right from the start, I felt like I’d always known him and I could never imagine him not being there. We haven’t been apart since our first date. The relationship wasn’t the main thing of the band though. It was more, “I’m here, I can play keyboards.”

I was aware of David’s previous band, The Cannanes. When he asked me out on that first date, after a Sleepy Township show, Guy got so excited. He went, “Oh my god, David Nichols asked you out on a date! Do you know how amazing he is?” I was really impressed already anyway, because David had just come up to me after we played and asked “Do you want to go on a date tomorrow?” That sort of thing just never happens. Usually, in that kind of scenario, people’s way of cracking onto you is to ask, “Can I have a beer off your rider.” David was just really forward.

Most female musicians I know say that they hardly ever get hit on anyway.
I’d agree with that. It never happens, except for my husband. Definitely, it doesn’t seem to happen before or after a show. Guys are way too intimidated. I’ve picked up on the fear many times. There’s a message for the guys out there: see what a bit of courage can do. [Laughter]

Sleepy Township

Sleepy Township continued to be the constant in your musical output though. The band existed for 10 years, despite never selling loads of records or becoming hugely famous.
Luckily, it never cost me any money. Guy was the big investor in Sleepy Township. He’s probably still got boxes of unsold copies of our records under his bed. Guy is a wonderful person and a great purveyor of music. He’s just always been really solid. I can say the same for Chris, but he’s solid in different ways. Maybe he’s not as reliable as Guy [laughter], but I know he’s true. That core of people went back all the way to Perth, so we shared a certain understanding, which always kept the band going.

We were a three-piece at first, but that had its limitations, so we asked Alison Bolger [Clag, Panel Of Judges] to join on bass. I don’t remember how it came about, but it was just understood that it would be awesome for her to play with us. We’d been hanging out with Clag a lot, so we knew what an amazing musician she was. She’s a lovely, understated person, who used to hide her talent. We just respected her.

The late ’90s was an incredibly prolific time for you, seeing you were also playing in David’s band Huon. How did you find the time to do all those things?
Yeah, Huon started around that time as well. I was also painting, but usually late at night, in the garage. I had been working at Zetta Florence, which is an archival company, for a while. That job led onto working at the State Library, which was full-time. I don’t know how I fitted it all in.

Obviously, playing music wasn’t something you did for financial gain.
God no! Can I just say this: I never made any money from music, ever! On the other hand, I never lost any money from music either. I got into it with the attitude that we were lucky to be doing this and to be given free beers, to go to awesome parties, and hopefully for people to like us. It was always just about having a great time. We had some really great fans. During the ’90s, there were people who would be at every show and would come to parties afterwards. Who were those people? Where have they gone? I guess they all had kids or something.

Did you ever tour overseas?
Sleepy Township never went overseas, but Huon did a tour of America in 2001. It was two months after the 9/11 bombings, but we had all our tickets booked and shows organised. My mum was terrified at the thought of us going travelling there at that time. We figured it was probably the safest time to go, actually. It was going to be annoying, getting through all that security at airports, but there wouldn’t be any danger. It was a really interesting tour. The feeling in America at the time was just so bizarrely patriotic. I’ve never seen so many American flags. It was like an orgy of patriotism, people convincing themselves that they were OK … Anyway, the tour had gone really well. It had been organised by our friend Stewart Anderson, who runs the 555 record label over there. He’d put out the first Huon album and a few other things after that.

How did that connection come about?
He was a fan of The Cannanes, I think. He also knew Blairmailer, which was a band that David had been in with his brother Michael. I’m not sure exactly, but I guess that Stewart had asked David if he could put out whatever band he was playing in at the time.

‘22 songs of unadulterated hiss’

Sleepy Township wound up not too long after you returned from that tour. The farewell show was in February 2002 at the Punters Club. Why did you break up?
Guy was going to Japan, and Alison was going to London. Life was moving on and people were heading to different places. There wasn’t a conscious decision to end the band. It was more a case of, “We’ll see what happens when we come back.” I felt a little bit sad about it, just because we had put in so much work. It felt like a perfectly sensible thing for the band to end at this point. We realised that we’d been doing this for 10 years. Sleepy Township wasn’t my only musical outlet. I’m always writing songs. That’s what I do when I’m sitting around, watching TV.

Your first solo album Champions came out around that time too.
Yes, that consisted of bits and pieces I did over a long period of time. A lot of it were the kind of demos I make before I take a song to the band. It’s just really raw. 22 songs of unadulterated hiss.

The cover is a great painting you did, of a person walking on a rooftop.
That is actually a self-portrait. I set a camera on timer, placed it on the chimney and photographed myself doing that. This was a place I lived in Nicholson Street, next to a brothel, just down the road from The Empress Hotel. Actually, living there was the reason Sleepy Township played so many gigs at The Empress. We could just walk there from my house. We’d wheel Guy’s big amp down the road and somebody could ride on it. We’d play The Empress pretty much every week. It was the heyday of that venue around this time. I really miss that, now that I live in Broadmeadows and everything must involve a car. Luckily, my husband supports my alcoholism and drives me to shows.

Tell me about the transition from Sleepy Township to New Estate.
When I knew that Sleepy Township was coming to a close, I was thinking I would like to get a band together that was not like Huon, or Sleepy Township, that nobody would call twee or cute. I wanted to get a really shit-hot guitarist and Chris to play drums. It was something that Chris and I had been talking about it for a while. We wanted it to be noisy and guitar orientated.

A while back, I had met this guy called Marc Regueiro-McKelvie at a Huon show at The Empress. He was in Melbourne on holiday from New Zealand and he had given me some tapes of his solo project Popolice. I really loved his guitar playing, as well as his songs. It occurred to me how awesome it would be if he could play in this band I was planning, which I’d already decided would be called New Estate. The name came from a series of paintings I was working on [about new housing estates in Melbourne’s outer suburbs].

I sent Marc a couple of emails saying, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to play some music the next time you’re in Melbourne.” So, he did come back for another holiday, we had a jam, and it worked really well. We actually played with David on drums at our first jam, because Chris was not able to be contacted that day – how unusual. [Laughter] Right away, I thought it sounded brilliant. Suddenly I was surrounded by all this lush guitar melody. It was what I always wanted. Marc then decided to move to Melbourne to be in New Estate. I’m proud to have had a hand in bringing him here.

At the last Sleepy Township show, we asked our friend Mindy Mapp [Fur, Little Ugly Girls] to play bass with New Estate. She was playing [in Flesh Vs Venom] that night. She agreed, so we had a line-up together and started writing songs straight away. We played for a bit over a year with Mindy. I really liked her work, but she was just way too busy, doing a biological science degree and working a job as well. One day she told us she just couldn’t handle the commitment. It was completely understandable.

At the last show that Mindy played, I was a bit drunk and I said to the audience, “If there’s anyone out there who wants to play bass, talk to us after the show.” After I packed up my gear, I found Chris at the bar, talking to this guy called Brad [Cosier]. Chris and I liked Brad straight away, because he said his favourite bass player was John Entwistle. Chris was excited. He took me aside and went, “Can you imagine how great it would be to have someone playing like John Entwistle in New Estate?” I had my doubts about that, initially. I mean, I like John Entwistle, but I didn’t think it would suit the band. It was pretty much decided on the night though, that Brad could be in the band. It was only later, when we sobered up, that we thought about whether it was a good idea to get a total stranger in the band, or to find somebody we already had a connection with. Chris was the one who insisted that it should be about the music, not about the scene.

He was with New Estate for ages, considering you weren’t entirely convinced.
It lasted a pretty long time. We recorded two studio albums and a couple of EPs with Brad and did three tours. One was with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the other were album tours. One time, we played to literally three people in Adelaide. That was because our show was the same night as Sonic Youth, or some fucking shit. South Australia was the worst tour of all. We had one good Sydney tour and two great trips to Brisbane. Brisbane has always been good to us. They seem to like us up there. People turn up and they dance and generally go crazy. They’re not so worried about looking cool. You can’t be cool when you’re wearing thongs and board shorts.

In contrast to drafting in a stranger, Toby Dutton, who replaced Brad on bass, was an old friend of yours.
Yeah, that was the best thing that could have happened to us. We were at the end of our tether and I’m pretty sure Marc was about to leave. In Marc’s way, of course, he could never say it. He just comes out with weird things like, “I had a terrible dream…”

I really didn’t want the band to end. I heard that Toby was at a loose end, because his band Flywheel weren’t playing anymore. I think [music journalist] Shane Moritz was quite instrumental in this, because for ages he’d been suggesting that I should talk to Toby about playing with New Estate. I’d always really liked his playing and songs in Flywheel. His style is so melodic and his musical sensibility is very simple. His bass lines curl around the melody, which is really nice, and I liked the idea of having another excellent songwriter in the band. I eventually asked Toby if he was interested when we were hanging out at Golden Plains. The band had a break for a couple of months, but from the first time we jammed with Toby, it just seemed right. Suddenly we were really happy again.

It seemed like suddenly all these new songs were being written, which were quite phenomenal.
Toby didn’t just change things musically. He’s got a very easy-going, sensitive, artistic soul. He just had this instant bonding effect on us. It totally enthused us. All we could talk about was recording something as soon as possible.

All the bands you’ve played in have had multiple songwriters. Has that been something you’ve actively sought out? Rather than being a power struggle between competing writers, it’s always seemed really egalitarian to me.
Absolutely. That’s what I find interesting about playing with other people. I guess I’ve been really lucky in that everybody I’ve played music with also writes songs and I really like what they write.

Have you ever vetoed something that somebody else has written?
Never, because it’s all fun and interesting to me. There was one time, when I had been doing a simple droney keyboard thing during a rehearsal, that Brad said to me afterwards, “You shouldn’t think that everything you do is good.” This just made me so angry, because my attitude is that I’ll play on whatever someone else plays. Even if I’m not really that into it, I’ll find something to play that I’m into, because that’s what I enjoy doing…

‘Painting is a very solitary experience’

On that note, how does music relate to your visual art? In art, you are totally in control, making all the creative decisions.
Visual art is a totally solitary exercise. This is you, for hours and hours alone in the studio, with only your mind, and eventually you are in this bizarre position where you’ve got all your shit up on the work. Then you put it up on the wall and people are making all these judgments about it, which is terrifying because it is all just you. Ultimately, painting is a very solitary experience. Being in a band is a complete contrast to that. I would be a very sad and lonely person if I only did painting. On the other hand, I would probably be quite shallow and unfocused if I only did the musical group thing. Both give me things that I can’t get out of the other.

Is your band MSG [Mia Schoen Group] more akin to the painting experience?
No, no, because there are still David and Alec [Marshall] involved, and whoever else is around. The idea behind MSG was actually David’s. He suggested that I should have a band where it’s just my own songs. He thought that I have so many songs that it would be great to be able to choose from any part of my history. It’s not a solitary thing though, because I find it very hard to call the shots. My experience is not in telling other people what to do. Even on a musical level, telling people to play a D or D flat, is not part of my expertise.

I would have thought that, coming from a classical music background in your youth, that would come easily to you.
You would think so, but I only got up to Grade Two in music theory, and I really really hated it. I can’t remember how to read music. It takes me ages and ages to work out, if I have to. I suspect that MSG really only exists because David got a digital drum kit and he wanted to test it out [laughter]. It’s just this amazing thing, where you can turn the whole drum kit down. You can make it fit in with the guitar and keyboard in a much more controlled way. It’s not as loose and exciting as real drums, but it’s got its own little world.

So, New Estate is still your main focus now. Is the new album Recovery closer to your vision of what the band is all about?
I feel like this album is a return to the ethos of our first album Considering, in the sense that it is more poppy and about the idea of doing it ourselves. We took our time to see just how it would come out. I now know a lot more about how to record things. I now have this amazing technology at my fingertips, which everyone does, by the way. Using computers to record, and programs like GarageBand, has made the whole process so much easier. You don’t need tape monkeys anymore. For this album, I had this interface called M-Audio, going into GarageBand, but after this I’m planning to upgrade to a more professional set-up. Nothing against GarageBand; having limitations can be a good thing.

Years ago, you were recording on 4-track tape machines. It might have been technically deficient, but those recordings had a lot of character to them.
The closer you can get to the sound of a band in a jam room, that is the best recording, in my opinion. The closer you can get it to sounding to the way it sounds to the musicians’ ears while they’re playing, the better. This album is the closest to that I’ve ever got. I hope to be able to get even closer to it in our next efforts. It took a long time, but ultimately it was a really fun and relaxed process. Before we started recording, we decided we would approach it on a song-by-song basis. It was a good process, and things came out of that process more than had in the past. When we’ve recorded in studios, we’ve never had the time to take our time to listen back repeatedly and work out what’s best for each song. That’s a luxury you get with home recording.

With this album having been finished for a while, have you been working on much new stuff?
We had a phase of writing one or two new songs a week, but then Chris had a terrible accident at work and Toby went overseas. When we’ve been getting together lately, we’ve just been rehearsing the songs we’ll be playing at our launch.

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‘Recovery’ is out now on Chapter Music. It’ll be launched at Sydney’s Bright 'N' Up Bar on July 12 and Newcastle’s The Terrace Bar on July 13 with Igor (NZ).

Mia Schoen: A selected discography

Molasses/Minimum Chips split 7” - Chapter Music 1995
Molasses/Sleepy Township split 7” - H records 1996
Sleepy Township/The Cannanes split 7” - Chapter Music/H Records 1996
Sleepy Township Online 7” - Chapter Music 1997
Above Ground Pool Red Green Confuser 7” - From the Same Mother 1997
Sleepy Township Set Sail LP/CD - Chapter Music 1998
Pip Proud One of These Days CD - Emperor Jones 1998
Huon Fluoro 7" - Library Records 1998
Huon Epic LP - 555 Recordings 1998
Driving Past Church Fete 7" - Chapter Music 1998
Driving Past Real Estate CD - Chapter Music 1999
Huon Songs For Lord Tortoise CD - Animal World Recordings 1999
Huon Hung Up Over Night CD - 555 Recordings 1999
Sleepy Township Morning EP - Library Records 2000
Sleepy Township/Smiley split 7” - Chapter Music 2000
Huon Tragedy 7" - 555 Recordings 2000
Huon Disco Square 10" LP - 555 Recordings 2000
Huon Answers to Lucky CD - Animal World/Dutch Courage 2001
Sleepy Township Deep Water CD/LP – Library/Chapter 2001
Sleepy Township All These Records CD - Lost & Lonesome Recording Co. 2002
Sleepy Township Tragedy & Hope EP - Dutch Courage 2002
Mia Schoen Champions CD – Library Records 2002
Long Weekend All Roads Lead to Roam CD – 555 Recordings 2002
New Estate Considering... CD - W.Minc/Kittridge 2003
Possum Moods self titled CD (Jen Turrell + Mia Schoen) - Red Square 2003
New Estate EP CD - Jacana Records 2005
Tracey Read Tiny Lights CDEP - Jacana Records 2005
Driving Past Travel CD - Jacana Records 2006
New Estate Rock Shop CD - Jacana Records 2006
Possum Moods Possum and the Moods CD - 555 Recordings 2007
New Estate Is it Real? CD - Low Transit Industries 2007
New Estate Out of the ground CD - Low Transit Industries 2008
Huon Advance LP - 555/ Knock Yr Socks Off 2009
New Estate Diamonds CDEP - Jacana Records 2010
MSG self titled CDEP – Why Don’t You Believe Me? 2011
The Enclosures self titled CDEP - Jacana Records 2012
New Estate Recovery CD – Chapter Music 2012