Welcome to The Halfway House

Greetings.

Welcome to The Halfway House - a blog designed to showcase and discuss creative work that I believe is more deserving of a wider audience or greater recognition. I am Matt O'Neill and I will be the curator of The Halfway House. I have created this blog because, increasingly, I have had to afford great creative works and artists less coverage than I feel they deserve because of the realistic limitations of the various publications I have worked for over the past couple of years. I have also grown tired of some of the conventions of music journalism I have grown to rely on over the course of my career.

The Halfway House is designed purely to showcase important artists and creative works with the maximum possible investigation allowed for interviews and reports and minimal journalistic interference on my part. Whereas, conventionally, my work consisted of equal parts contextual analysis and creative composition, The Halfway House is entirely focussed on the work and words of the artists. I will conduct interviews and post the transcriptions verbatim and only a brief introductory paragraph will be allowed to explain my understanding of the importance of an artist or their work.

There are no limitations as to content of the work other than my own opinion. I am not attempting to provide an insight into artists people already like so much as provide an understanding home for works that do not always get afforded the commentary and coverage they so often deserve. There will be no specific discipline or community covered but there will be a slant towards a) experimental or unconventional works b) Australian artists and c) musical works.

These biases are not rules by which the blog operates but merely circumstances I must acknowledge - experimental and unconventional works get less coverage than they deserve, I am based in Brisbane, Australia which means I am most exposed to Australian artists and my background is a musical one which means I am predisposed to write about music. I have no intention of living religiously by these biases and will, in fact, work against them where I can but one of the central tenets of this blog is directness and honesty. I have no agenda other than showcasing work I feel is important or interesting and I have no interest in attempting to bullshit whatever audience I can acquire.

I will be posting content I have amassed over the past couple of months in the next couple of days but will also be attempting to cover new events. Anyone with suggestions as to what I should cover - email halfwayhq@gmail.com

Yours,

Matt O'Neill