It’s hard to believe that 2016 is all but over! We’ve all had a huge year here at Liveschool and to celebrate, we’ve pulled together a list of some notable achievements from our impeccable student and graduate community.
Sam Litchfield aka Haliia, Litche & Luunes
It’s been a very busy year for recent Produce Music grad Sam Litchfield with three separate projects on the go.
Sam kicked the year off with a bang with his duo Haliia releasing their third single “With You Forever” in February and bringing in over 175k spins on Spotify and received considerable blog love from the likes of Indie Shuffle, Pilerats, NestHQ and Acid Stag.
In July Sam started his new solo project Litche and has already racked up an impressive 200k plays on Spotify for his first track “Look Up”. The track was also added to rotation on FBi radio and made the #1 spot on Hypemachine.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Sam started a new collaborative project called Luunes. The duo released their first single “Glass” in November, which went on to received huge acclaim from Indie Shuffle, Purple Sneakers, Acid Stag, AAABackstage and Tone Deaf to name a few.
Taylor Ferney & Max Palfrey aka Iljus Wifmo
We’ve been keeping our eyes on these guys for a while and 2016 proved to be their year with the release of their debut EP ‘Laz’ on the impeccable Romanian label Clubwerks, a coveted Friday Mix Up slot on triple j spot and the release of a new single on the newly minted Teef Records. Teef put together a compilation titled ‘Imperium In Imperio II’, consisting of unreleased and unheard tracks by the likes of Fishing, Ribongia, Jake Grace and heaps more. Iljus Wifmo’s offering was “Scatter” and boy is it juicy! All proceeds from the sale of the compilation goes directly to Oxfam’s Syrian Refugee fund. Get it here.
Doug Simmons aka Donatachi
2016 saw Doug release two huge new singles. First up, he released “Bubblegum” a collaboration with Melbourne’s Rosebud Leach via Sidechains Club vol. 2 which amassed over 500k plays on Spotify. “Bubblegum” was followed shortly by “Bunny Island” a collab with Oh Boy and Mallrat and was released on Diplo’s Mad Decent imprint Good Enuff.
Natasha Rindfleish aka Tashka
The wonderful Tashka finally graced us with her debut EP ‘Deals’ and it was certainly worth the wait. The EP was the follow up to her buzzy Liam Neeson-referencing track “Taken” and collaborations with Donatachi and Dugong Jr.
Fun fact: Taska and Donatachi met while studying at Liveschool. Stoney Roads caught up with the pair to chat about their collaboration.
Jeff Kessel aka Humbug Rehab
One of the more weird and wonderful releases from 2016 comes from current Mixing + Mastering student Jeff Kessel. Jeff together with his BFF made ‘The Grinds’ an album consisting entirely of sounds sampled from a coffee machine and coined a new genre “experimental coffeeshop” along the way.
The album dipped into the main stream media when it was picked up by The Daily Mail and channel 10’s The Project.
Sami Tauber aka VNCCI
Anyone that has been along to Sydney’s Ableton Live User Group session during the year probably saw Sami leading the charge. She has been the co-organiser of the community based group in 2016 which included sessions with Kučka, The Goods, Cliques and bunch more.
Sami also released her debut single “Skywlkr” last week and has already amassed 17k spins on Soundcloud, which premiered via Run The Trap – The Inbox
Some other killer tunes from our student community include
Sammy Taylor aka SA.MAY – Booty Calls feat. B.Wise
Alex Hollis aka Seduna – &&&&Up
Joshua Anderson aka Badrapper – Spaces and Badrapper – Search For You feat. Azura