Love is the Message, and FLINTA are the focus

I first met Milkpaste on a dance floor, gyrating wildly as if she had skis attached to her feet. Fifteen years after she first started collecting records, her high-pitched laugh rings out as infectious as ever. She’s had a fascinating journey. From growing up in the deep west of Adelaide, immersed in skate culture, fashion design, compulsively collecting records, devoted house and techno scenes, girl-bossing in the corporate world and perhaps most consistently: hustling in and out of the club.

Since moving to the queer epicentre of Gadigal Land/Sydney, which she affectionately refers to as “the gaybourhood”, Milkpaste has rapidly ascended line-ups to support some of the most reputable names in the music industry such as Fred P, Soichi Terada, Lil Louis, Chez Damier, Omar S, Tom Trago and now, at an upcoming House of Mince party: Honey Dijon. This kind of trajectory doesn’t happen overnight, though it often seems so externally.


The novice DJ tends to treat musical exploration as homework for the dance floor. It becomes an inside-versus-outside activity driven by performance anxiety and the pressures of the panopticon, rather than by an earnest passion for the music they are playing. But I notice that conversely, Milkpaste has integrated music into every metronomic second of her day. In the morning, she’s mixing bossa nova before her pink percolator bristles. In the afternoon, she’s mid-Zoom call, spinning around on her swivel chair to switch ambient tracks at the desk behind her. “I’m just a big kid,” she laughs. “I get to eat fruit loops for breakfast and mix records all day and night.”

Having just made the bold leap many dream of – from full-time corporate to full-time music – Milkpaste is now on the clock at Fanático Records, holding down coveted residencies in Sydney, and is set to release her brand new FLINTA-focused record label: Spot Dial Recordings. For propriety’s sake, the term FLINTA is a German acronym that stands for “frauen, lesben, intergeschlechtliche, nichtbinäre, agender/transgender.” In English, this translates to femme/female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, transgender/agender and excludes cis men. The term has proliferated across the pond and reached antipodean shores, culminating in a growing FLINTA presence across club nights and music scenes. Despite the organising principle’s criticisms, both valid and redundant, the acronym’s utility in the music industry persists, particularly in music production.

Bracing for a turn around the statistical side of the internet yields ambiguous results, with research either approaching expiry or representing spotty sample sizes.

Although consistent research may feel like a quixotic pipe dream, it is clear that the upper echelons of more technical roles in music production lack femme talent. In 2017, University of Sydney research reported that women made up only 5% of technical engineering and music production roles. To bring that into more recent terms, a 2023 national survey by the Music Producer and Engineers’ Guild of Australia found that just 11.3% of respondents were women.

Spot Dial Recordings is positioned to reduce that disparity by platforming FLINTA artists where it matters most: at every step of the production chain. “Men already have significant representation in electronic music,” she says. “Over the last few years, and especially from what I’ve noticed in record stores, I’ve really started to see that gap. FLINTA artists are massively underrepresented. There are so many amazing femme artists who deserve to be platformed.” Resisting an incomplete diagnostic urge and turning instead towards the kind of scaffolding that benefits FLINTA artists, generating welcoming spaces is a crucial step.

“There is nothing more intimidating than coming into a space as the only femme DJ, and there are a bunch of guys hovering around just waiting for you to fuck up,” she says. “Sometimes the most impactful thing is just a welcoming space,” she says. “FLINTA artists really need support and encouragement, so that they can feel like these music spaces belong to them too. Allocating resources and institutional funding is also incredibly important. There are workshops and grants, and local community radio is incredible at providing that grassroots support,” she says.



The efficacy of FLINTA-focused programs is increasingly visible through the pathways and opportunities that they create. FBI Radio’s FLINTA mentorship program ‘Dance Class’, which has been running for a solid five years, has seen alumni such as Ebony Boadu, Lauren Hansom, Crescendoll and AK Sports find their feet with the necessary support, before going on to tour locally and internationally amongst headliners and heavyweights. Local community radio station 2SER regularly runs call-outs for femme-identifying DJs, which Milkpaste tells me was the kind of opportunity that was instrumental to her experience.

“My first DJ gig in Sydney was at Café Freda’s, responding to a call-out for femme-identifying DJs for their World Pride event in 2023,” she tells me. “There were so many people. I almost didn’t make it to the gig at Café Freda’s because the roads were blocked off and it was completely manic. When I finally got there, sweating and with 5 minutes to spare, I accidentally played one of the same tracks as the DJ before me, Harry Court, who is now one of my best friends. But that track now holds such a special memory for me, which is one of the greatest things about music,” she tells me. Smaller cities unexpectedly pull their weight in terms of the tasteful selectors that come from them. I can think of any number of audiophiles who prefer to geek out in a living room full of gear rather than persist on a pulsating inner-city dance floor, but Milkpaste is somehow both. “The music community in Adelaide was definitely a help, rather than a hindrance, and holds such a special place in my heart,” she says. “There’s a sort of symbiosis that exists between different music scenes in Adelaide, or a kind of cross-pollination that’s necessary for their survival. The subcultures in bigger cities are able to exist on their own, so there are unique conditions that are created in a smaller town for people that love music,” she says.

“My first DJ gig in Sydney was at Café Freda’s, responding to a call-out for femme-identifying DJs for their World Pride event in 2023,” she tells me. “There were so many people. I almost didn’t make it to the gig at Café Freda’s because the roads were blocked off and it was completely manic. When I finally got there, sweating and with 5 minutes to spare, I accidentally played one of the same tracks as the DJ before me, Harry Court, who is now one of my best friends. But that track now holds such a special memory for me, which is one of the greatest things about music,” she tells me. Smaller cities unexpectedly pull their weight in the tasteful selectors they produce. I can think of any number of audiophiles who prefer to geek out in a living room full of gear rather than persist on a pulsating inner-city dance floor, but Milkpaste is somehow both. “The music community in Adelaide was definitely a help, rather than a hindrance, and holds such a special place in my heart,” she says. “There’s a sort of symbiosis that exists between different music scenes in Adelaide, or a kind of cross-pollination that’s necessary for their survival. The subcultures in bigger cities are able to exist on their own, so there are unique conditions that are created in a smaller town for people that love music,” she says.

As for the music Spot Dial Recordings will release, Milkpaste doesn’t intend to stick to any one genre. Instead, the label will follow the same instinctive musical curiosity that runs through Milkpaste’s own collection: a fondness for swirling chuggers, a warped synth, an ecstatic vocal that touches on strangeness, drifting in and out of experimental estuaries, while never quite becoming untethered from the dance floor. While Milkpaste’s DJ sets draw on a sonic palette of early 80s protohouse, funk, boogie and “oddball stuff”, as she describes, the slow pull of more ambient and downtempo soundscapes has led to Spot Dial Recordings.

“After a while, your ears sort of get tired of dance music, and I find myself making music that is soothing and therapeutic. A different genre is just a different mode of self-expression,” she tells me. “I consider Spot Dial Recordings to be more of a listening label,” she says. “But at its heart, FLINTA is the core identity.” Milkpaste’s philanthropic instinct can be traced back to her days as a youth worker, where she helped troubled kids redirect their energy into creative and constructive pursuits. “There’s so much value to be provided through these workshops,” she says. “We’re teaching people how to mix and produce music, but emerging artists also need basic business and accounting skills. Tax and invoicing can be overwhelming if you’ve never done it before.”



Milkpaste heads up a queer DJ collective called ‘Love Message’, which is on regular rotation at Club 77 and the now-shuttered Mirage. The collective includes inner Sydney locals Unprotected Success, Harry Court, Alex Diwa, and Milkpaste. The track they chose for their namesake, Love Is The Message by MFSB, carries reverberating historical significance for black and trans communities. A history well worth celebrating – from ballroom culture to pivotal activism soundtracked by feminine power anthems of the 70s and 80s – the enduring influence of trans people in the arts moves beyond inspiring and becomes almost galvanising. For Milkpaste, what moves her most about trans culture is its resistance.

“If you look back at these movements within music, the experiences of minorities, ballroom culture, black trans women, race segregation laws – this hugely influential subculture grew from that. Back then, if you weren’t gender confirming, you couldn’t go to some of these venues; it was illegal. So it all starts from a place of resistance, from a place of being ostracised and being made fun of; and saying hey, we want to play our music, we want to do our thing,” she explains. “People don’t realise just how entwined trans people are with house music. When subcultures grow from counter-culture, they inevitably become commercialised and overrun. So for me, it’s important to remember its roots,” she says. “This is about going out and dancing; being free, creative and expressing yourself in a liberating way.”

Milkpaste’s music production tends to tread more ambient waters than her DJ sets, which she feels is a kind of refuge from high-energy nightlife. “Making ambient and downtempo is a really nice contrast to what I would normally play in clubs and bars,” she says. Untangling her thoughts on her process, she starts with vitreous self-criticism (an essential characteristic of any venerable artist), then lays out a remarkably cohesive thesis behind a single track.

“My first release is called Unused Rattlesnake,” she begins. “It’s about a lonely rattlesnake who has never really found their potential, and who is fighting their inner demons throughout their short life. The rattlesnake weaves in and out of the whole EP. They love Billie Holiday and venture through abandoned hotels, getting caught up in the blue and exploring different territories. They’re trying to discover who they are, and whether they belong on land or sea,” she describes.

“It helps to have scenes in my head that I can visualise,” she continues. “There’s a narrative element to the way I make music – a push and pull between the visual and auditory senses. I find that world-building creates an endless source of imagination and creativity, and there are fewer roadblocks in the production process. I can start with a scene in my head and then impart sound, creating these dreamlike places that may or may not exist in the physical world.”


-

Marianne Astrid Close is a freelance writer and domestic violence specialist worker newly residing in Naarm, Melbourne. Find her on Instagram.