Four on the Floor, Interfonic, Subtropic & The 515’s S.W.I.F.T Party

Wollongong and the Illawarra is known for its great live music scene. Whether you’re after something smooth like a Jazz night at ilu ilu Bar, or something a little rowdier at La La La’s, you’ll usually be able to find what you’re looking for! But for a long while, finding non-traditional events and more underground music has been a challenge. There are a few groups in The Illawarra aiming to change that.

One of our Breakfast Presenter’s, Karl, sat down to talk to Thirroul’s own Ryan Fairley. He’s not only a DJ of 13 years, but he runs an events booking company called The 515. Ryan spoke of the music events space that The 515 is trying to fill -” it’s felt like there’s been a bit of a hole in the market when it comes to what we were searching for, when we wanted to be partying. So we’re just trying to fill that pocket and fill that void”. They’re one of a few local crews trying to shake up music events in the Illawarra and build the underground music scene.

Their latest event was a collaborative party with Four on the Floor, Interfonic and Subtropic. It was hosted in a warehouse space (found on Facebook marketplace..) and capped out at around 450 people. The footage on their socials pages from the event speaks for itself, the people LOVE it. It was a pretty special event for Ryan particularly – “Been a long-time dream of mine just as a dj, you know, an 18-year-old going to these parties going, mate, wouldn’t it be unreal if we could do this? So I kind of managed to tick off one of those bucket list items for myself really”

The Illawarra’s underground music scene is only growing, and more of these events will be popping up.

You can listen to the full interview with Karl and Ryan here: