Mildlife

Long jams, short edits

Wikipedia dates Mildlife's formation to 2010, while MusicBrainz gives 2017, probably the date of the first release. Tom Shanahan, Kevin McDowell and Adam Halliwell are long-time friends and have said it is hard to say when the band officially started; Halliwell and McDowell attended the Victorian College of the Arts with a focus on improvisation, and Shanahan did not study music formally. Jim Rindfleish joined as drummer while Automatic was being written. Mixdown reports that songs begin as long recorded jam sessions mined for moments, and Rindfleish said most of their best ideas come from a long jam. Sets run uninterrupted, with songs woven together by short bubble sections, according to Dummy and the AU Review.

Phase, their debut on Research Records, won Best Album at the 2018 Worldwide FM Awards and was nominated for Best Soul, Funk, R'n'B and Gospel Album at the 2018 Music Victoria Awards. The Guardian gave it 3 of 5 and Prog's Philip Wilding described a 1970s fusion-bound TARDIS. The Mildlife Remixed EP (Research RREP01) has Tornado Wallace's remix of "The Magnificent Moon", Sleep D's of "Im Blau" and a Mount Liberation Unlimited re-edit of "The Gloves Don't Bite"; it is dated August 17, 2018 on Wikipedia and February 16, 2021 for the 12-inch at Oye Records. The Phase II EP followed on September 14, 2018.

Automatic (September 18, 2020, Mildlife, Inertia and Heavenly) reached 8 in Australia and won the 2021 ARIA for Best Jazz Album, with a 4 of 5 from the AU Review. Live from South Channel Island (April 29, 2022) was recorded on an uninhabited artificial island in Port Phillip Bay, played, in the AU Review's phrase, for penguins and spiders, and won an ARIA in 2022. Chorus (March 1, 2024, PIAS and Heavenly) reached 36. Shanahan said playing the Sydney Opera House would be a dream, and their 2021 Vivid Sydney and Opera House shows were cancelled because of the pandemic.