Project Type: Fiction (page 1 of 1)

The DNRC Records

Davey Dreamnation self-released his debut album Islands In the Stream of Consciousness online in 2002.

Although the recordings met with little fanfare at the time, Davey’s subsequent musical efforts were so seething that they led to widespread social and political unrest, forcing the United Nations to enter into treaty negotiations with him.

The result was, of course, DNRC Records.

Originally conceived of as a clearing house, DNRC Records was the label that Dreamnation founded, financed and fledged in those heady days of the new century.

A label that would go on to issue—and then, strangely, delete—exactly one hundred releases by a range of recording artists.

Over an astonishing fifteen year period, DNRC played host to—and then promptly dumped—some of the world’s most influential singers, songwriters and instrumentalists.

From the soaring medieval medleys of busker-turned-superstar Mead to the haunting and ethereal whisperings of Celtic pop princess Enya, DNRC Records released them all. In every sense of that word.

While also acting as a vehicle for Dreamnation’s own recording aspirations, the label was no vanity affair.

Dreamnation made a point of supporting new, young and obscure acts, giving a leg up to artists as varied as the Guide Ponies, Cruns, Cliches, Catholic Autistic Terrific, Nipple Happy Lovelies, Sluice, Clint Bo Dean, Christy Burr, Captain Sans Tenille and, of course, Scaramouche.

As part of the rehabilitation of DNRC Records, each remarkable record is now being lovingly reviewed, remastered and reissued for your personal enjoyment.

With new and unreleased tracks, exciting fresh cover designs and extensive liner notes, this is your one-stop-shop for all things DNRC.

Steam (2009)

‘Steam’ is a series of prose fiction pieces I wrote while living in Gangnam, Seoul, in 2009, where I was undertaking my second Asialink residency.

‘Steam’ is set in a fictional future Korea, and features a young male Korean by the name of Duck-young Moon. The story describes his search for the truth about his grandfather’s disappearance during the Korean War.

Duck young’s quest also features a cast of mostly Korean characters, including Duck-young’s brother, Hyun woo, the elusive Doctor Kang and his assistant, Gilmo.

‘Steam’ is a story which may one day become a novel, but started out as a sequel to ‘Smoke’, a much shorter story about an Australian woman living in Melbourne.

The benefit of the Asialink residency in terms of the writing of ‘Steam’ cannot be over-stated: the characters, places, historical events, incidents and dialogue of the story are all a result of my being able to spend three months living in the place I was describing.

As was the case with ‘Smoke’, the 31 prose pieces that form ‘Steam’ were posted consecutively to this website, without further revision.

While the full text of ‘Smoke’ remains online, I’ve decided to take down ‘Steam’ from this site for the time being, as the text requires a great deal of revision.

For now, you can read what I posted when I finished writing the first draft.

Smoke (2007–08)

In November 2007, while living in Melbourne, I began writing prose poetry pieces about a girl named Jet Fader and her mysterious Korean boyfriend, and posting them, unedited, on this website.

By February 2008, what had started out as a meditation had morphed into a 31-part series with a vague narrative arc and potential for plenty more.

These pieces would later be compiled as ‘Smoke’, and would serve as a foundation of sorts for ‘Steam’, another story featuring the same characters, which I drafted while living in Seoul in 2009.

Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs (2005)

In 2005 I travelled to Seoul, Republic of Korea, as an Asialink resident. While I was there I undertook a writing and photography project that involved visiting Korean internet gaming rooms (PC Bangs), writing about an imaginary city in each one and then photographing the PC Bang signage.

I ended up posting 40 short prose fiction pieces to a special PC Bangs blog I set up as part of my residency, as well as a collection of photographs of PC Bang signage.

At the conclusion of the residency, I closed the blog and transferred its contents to the D/DN website. Over the next several years, a number of Imaginary Cities pieces found their way into various journals, but the collection as a whole remains otherwise unpublished.

Marzipan: A Confection (2004)

Marzipan: A Confection is the title of my Master of Arts (Research) Thesis in Creative Writing, undertaken at the University of Melbourne between 2002 and 2004.

The Thesis, a 30,000 word novella, describes the invention of marzipan in a fictional German town during a famine in the 1400s.

The central narrative is preceded by a section entitled Method, which documents a history of Marzipan and my own creative involvement with this peculiar subject matter over the past 10 years.

The narrative itself is broken into four Parts, corresponding to three relatively undisputed ingredients of Marzipan (namely Eggs, Almonds and Sugar) and a Secret ingredient. Each Part is composed of one or more Chapters.

The narrative is followed by a short Notes section detailing the original models for each of the Characters and a list of Sources.

I began writing the story of Marzipan in the mid-1990s, the first results of which were published as ‘A Brief History of Marzipan’ in New England Review (University of New England, 1999).

A second piece, ‘The Invention of Marzipan’, a partly-confected essay, was published in Antithesis (University of Melbourne, 2004).