Together Group on shifting Boorloo "from option to origin"

Boorloo/Perth’s problem with distance has never really been a mystery. Locals will often joke that it takes less time to fly to Bali than it does to Gadigal Land/Sydney or Naarm/Melbourne, and that it’s the most remote city in the entire world. That distance grants locals in the city and the greater area a kind of forced solitude that, in turn, breeds creative confidence, something most visible during their lack of COVID-19 lockdowns or the yearly returns to the legendary Gooch Week.

But while distance can breed experimentation, it also leads to notable supply issues. Boorloo has long remained a more optional leg on any national tour, a decision often tied to the promise of a trip to Indonesia for willing artists. As in any ever-rotating cultural scene, every few years a new operator arrives, hoping to truly impact the fabric of their city.

Together Group, the promotion outfit formed by Bailey Chalmers and Isaac Jones, has been built around a variety of ventures, including The Vault and its own festival Embrace. Their work, aiming to bring the best of not only Australia’s East Coast but the world’s stage to Boorloo, is one done with the kind of confidence that’s clearly had people take notice.

“We do think it’s changing, but it’s not that easy,” the duo shared of Boorloo’s standing with national and international touring acts. “The reality is that Perth is always going to be a harder market to route into than the east coast. The costs are real, the distance is real, and you can’t just stack endless tours through here the way you can over there. So that challenge never fully disappears.”

The current climate and appetite for electronic music is one that means costs have never been higher, both for organisers and for punters. Fans' expectations are also at an all-time high, which has understandably forced local promoters, venues and festivals to try to keep up.

Like many cities grappling with their nightlife’s identity, Boorloo sits in a series of relatively fractured camps, each with a different view of what the “best” version of something can be. While the illegal beach parties and micro-doofs of greater Perth sit comfortably in a lane against the status quo, Together Group looks at their city through an arguably longer-term lens. This not only applies to Together Group as a promotion group or The Vault, but also to its touring arm, Merge, a multi-stage event series, Embrace, a large-scale festival, as well as Eventflo, a ticketing and event technology platform that Together Group has invested heavily in, and seemingly more on the horizon.

In their case, big ambitions stem from humble beginnings. Bailey and Isaac never set out to build a company together, having found their local scene before they ever found one another. "We knew each other through the scene first, so it started pretty naturally. Perth's not that big, especially once you're in nightlife every weekend, and we were in a lot of the same circles,” Bailey shared.

"It wasn't really some big dramatic moment - it was more that the more we spoke, the more obvious it became that we had a similar vision for what we wanted to see in Perth, but very different strengths in how to build it,” Isaac added.

Ambitions to leave a mark on your hometown are a unifying factor among many promoters, interpreted in countless ways, countless times. In a world where hustling hard can often appear to be the answer to everything, “success” in electronic music is no different. Sending as many emails as you can about a brand you’ve only just built is a tried and tested way to do… something, but working hard can only get you so far. This is something that the duo is all too familiar with. For them, their goals found themselves acknowledged by the universe when ambition met opportunity.

"Bailey had the opportunity to take on The Vault, and pretty quickly knew it was something that needed the right partner beside him. Isaac was the obvious person.”

The Vault, first opened in 2022, immediately became a way for the duo to gauge how their city would respond. Their first move was running weekly.

"There wasn't much that felt like a genuine weekly institution where you knew what you were walking into every weekend. We wanted to create something with consistency and identity - not just a night that happened to be on, but a place people built into their routine."

Weekly parties are by no means a novel undertaking in any city, though they’re often the most regularly churned through. Unlike the long operating hours of cities overseas, Australia is generally subject to a variety of operational and social factors that can deter people from staying in the same place for too long. For Together Group, however, doing so meant understanding how people would respond to consistency as a concept, as much as a commitment.

"When we first started it, there was no big masterplan of 'this is going to become one of the city's biggest clubs.' It was more a genuine belief that if we got the music right, got the room right, got the people right, and kept showing up every week, it would slowly build. It wasn't one huge lineup or one viral moment," they say. "It was week by week - learning what people connected with, shaping the room, and building trust with the crowd over time."

A lot sets weekly promoters apart from one-offs. Beyond the financial commitment and stress, there’s a nuance from week to week that needs to be managed, fostered, and considered. For Bailey and Isaac, it was make-or-break. "A weekly strips everything back. It teaches you very quickly whether you actually know how to build something sustainable, or whether you've just had a good one-off event... With a weekly, you can't hide. You can't rely on one big lineup or one big campaign and call it a win. You've got to keep turning up every weekend and make people want to come back again."

In undertaking such a task, Together Group was forcing itself into a kind of operational speedrun, where learning on the job would either forge them into more confident operators or show them the door. In doing so, they were not only furthering themselves in the eyes of their audience but also in the eyes of potential partners.

Boorloo’s isolation is, in some sense, the backdrop that makes all this necessary. "Because we're so far removed, you can't just sit back and expect culture to land in your lap every weekend. You have to go looking for it," they say. The remoteness of their city became an opportunity rather than a disadvantage, particularly as their relationships with artists, managers, and booking agents across the country strengthened. "You become very aware that Perth often gets overlooked, whether that's by touring artists, agencies or the broader Australian conversation. That can either frustrate you or motivate you," and for Together Group, it did both: "it made us want to prove that Perth deserves world-class music experiences and that you don't have to be on the east coast to build something culturally meaningful."

From here, “once it became clear that we weren’t just building one brand anymore,” as they put it, Together Group was officially formed. Here, the goal was not only to continue working under The Vault, but also to pursue larger shows, festivals, and touring, which soon entered the picture.

That aim for versatility has been most evident in the spaces that Together Group has called home. Outside of The Vault, warehouses and outdoor festivals are now in their wheelhouse. Boorloo’s intimacy is an opportunity, clearly, for them to be able to do more with the experience they’ve earned. When asked which of these they feel drawn to most, the answer they gave was, understandably, “all of them”.

The weekly club side feels very natural to us because that's where so much of our DNA comes from... But the festival side is exciting in a different way because it gives you more room creatively. You can think bigger, build more of a world, and create something that feels like a real moment in the city."

Embrace, the duo’s new festival set to enter its third year in 2026, is an undertaking far larger than any they’d done before. For them, the goal was to provide something at odds with the single-genre programming found at many festivals in their city. “We felt like Perth had great individual scenes and great individual events, but there wasn't much that reflected the way people actually listen to music now," they say. "A lot of the audience overlap is real - the person who loves drum & bass might also love house, garage or techno - but the event landscape was still pretty separated."

For Together Group, the genre-fluidity of its punters wasn’t being properly reflected in what people could do and see. In doing so, it also meant opening the city up to more eyes, as more artists saw themselves playing there. They’re quick to admit that their efforts weren’t meant for everyone; however, this is often misconstrued about festivals with such musical diversity. "We weren't trying to make a festival that was everything to everyone. It was more that we genuinely felt there was a missing link in the market,” the duo admitted.

Perth’s response to that programming has been massive. In the last year, the likes of Girls Don’t Sync, 4AM Kru, Skream, Ben Gerrans, Elipsa, Emma Moon, Loods, Jordan Brando, William Kiss and many others have featured on their bills. What’s next appears to not only be a honing of what’s built them so far, but a script flip on what touring in Australia looks like.

“We would love to look at making the festival a national tour,” Bailey shared.

Inverting that usual east coast-to-Perth pipeline is something unheard of, even for the most adored of local events. In truth, shifting Perth from “option” to “origin” wouldn’t be possible without the duo and their team’s experience, which helps inform that confidence.

With that, however, understandably come questions of commercial viability, but the pair aren’t concerned with doing so meaningfully. "We've never wanted to be commercial for the sake of it, and we've also never been too interested in underground gatekeeping for the sake of image... it's always been about building things that feel musically honest first, but still have the potential to grow and connect with a broader audience."

Together Group’s desire for a healthier musical climate for Boorloo, whether in closing the gap with touring, weekly gigs or diversifying the festival offering, is one clearly done at the right time, but that would discount the trials and hurdles they’ve been through up until this point. It’s the lessons learned throughout their endeavours that have led them to the position they’re in, not the other way around, and for that, a cynical member of any scene could be forgiven for drinking the Kool-Aid. A vibrant music scene is by no means marked by commercial opportunity, but what Bailey and Isaac hope to do appears beyond any broader commercial goal.

“If there’s one thing we’d want people to understand, it’s that everything we do starts from a real love for dance music and the culture around it. The business side matters, of course, but the reason any of it exists in the first place is that we genuinely care about the scene and what Perth can become.”