The Secret History Of 3D World Magazine

In May 2011, 3D World Magazine, known as the dance music bible, published its last-ever edition after over two decades and 1061 issues. On the cover was a fashionably blurry image of the Brit post-dubstep soulster James Blake with a profile written by Huwston, "Pretty Hype Machine". The edition also had the finale in the now national magazine's Icon series – ironically on the fabled 3D World itself.

In print's halcyon days, beginning in the late '70s, Australia had a buoyant street press industry with a plethora of electronic and dance music magazines – including an Australian edition of Ministry. But, in Eora/Sydney, the flagship 3D World was a gamechanger. "There's never been another magazine of that size and distribution in Australia that's been so squarely focussed on progressing and reflecting the dance music scene exclusively," stresses former editor Danny Corvini. 

Alas, with the advent of smart phones, social networking and streaming services, the Australian dance music industry didn't sustain its support for a specialist media in a volatile landscape. But no pure dance title exists today. Nor has that output been historicised – partly as the music media retains a rock bias, something compounded by the demise of 3D World.

This frustrates Kris Swales, 3D World's final editor, from September 2009 to May 2011. "Samuel J Fell's recent history of Australian music media [Full Coverage: A History Of Rock Journalism In Australia] dedicates about 80 pages to the street press wars and 3D World's 22 years of service is barely a footnote – a massive oversight given it was at worst the fourth biggest in the country (behind Drum [Media], Inpress and beat) in its heyday."

READ MORE: Inpress: Remembering The Primitive, Pioneering Glory Days Of Street Press

Early on, the UK ruled the global dance music media with publications like Mixmag, originally a newsletter, launched in 1983, followed by DJ Mag, Jockey Slut and Muzik. Notably, North America's rock-centric Pitchfork, premiering in 1996, largely ignored electronic and dance, as well as hip-hop and R&B, with Philip Sherburne only interviewing Detroit techno auteur Jeff Mills in 2015.

But 3D World emerged as the Australian equivalent, the club magazine a novel standalone title that charted a genre, movement and ecosphere. As Leigh Treweek, 3D World's last co-publisher with SPA (Street Press Australia), says, "It helped to lift the visibility of DJs and producers and catapult them into the mainstream music scene while fostering the underground."

THE EARLY DAYS OF 3D WORLD

3D World was inherently DIY – and grassroots. The brainchild behind the clubbing weekly was Jonathan "Jack" Morris, a Perth fashion photographer seeking to expose his work. He launched Blasé in the late '70s – inspired by English snapper David Bailey, who had his own publication, Ritz Newspaper.

READ MORE: From ‘On The Street’ To ‘Drum Media’ To ‘The Music’

"I just fell in love with it – I was like, 'Oh, fuck, this is just so amazing,'" Jonathan says from Bali, his base for 12 years. "He did fashion shoots and then [photographed] all these glamorous people out at night and stuff like that – and I thought, 'That's what I wanna do.' So I did it in Perth, of all places – Perth in 1979. Imagine." He circulated five issues of Blasé covering fashion and music. "It was just a bunch of guys. We were all on the dole at the time. We just put this thing together at my house that I had." But the venture "went bust". "So I got on a plane and flew to Sydney – never been there before."

Jonathan was determined to try again with a second periodical. "It was a real struggle because I basically had no money." He gigged as a photographer while driving taxis. Joined by a graphic designer, Jonathan eventually inaugurated the monthly Stiletto Magazine, newsprint with gloss cover, sold through newsstands, in the early '80s as the New Romantic movement held sway over nightlife – describing it as "a labour of love."

"We struggled with it for about 60 issues and finally went into receivership." Commercialising the title was tricky. "Towards the end, we went glossy – and that's when we went bankrupt, 'cause gloss costs a lot more money. But we thought, if we went gloss, we would be more credible and then advertising agencies would take us seriously. But, nah, they didn't."

At the time, street press, distributed for free, was taking off, Sydney rock mag On The Street popular – and profitable. Jonathan decided to institute his own tabloid, 3D World, in 1989 as a Stiletto "spin-off" fortnightly with fashion, music and social club photography. Jonathan's receivers took Stiletto – but he bought back 3D World for 20 grand, office equipment included. "I think it was a time when there was a bit of a recession on as well, because we really struggled with it, but we kept it going."

READ MORE: The Music Launches Expansive Street Press Archive To Honour Australian Music History

3D World established its niche as a music journal, evolving into more than a gigs guide by galvanising a community. "It just slowly became more of a club magazine, I guess – 'cause it wasn't my interest; I wasn't particularly interested in that whole scene at all." Indeed, Jonathan wasn't a clubber. He admits to often not knowing the DJs featured on covers, leaving it to eds. Meanwhile, Sydney's dance music was exploding. "The magazine just went in its own direction and it became its own monster, in a way – it went where the advertising went."

Though the editorial mirrored the advertising, it also reflected the rise of club and rave subculture as the '80s Summer Of Love reached Australian shores. The nascent electronic and dance music industry came into its own in the early '90s with homegrown DJs, producers and live acts, superclubs and brands. The first Earthcore bush doof was thrown in 1993. The next year, the Big Day Out inducted the Boiler Room.

The entrepreneurial Naarm/Melbourne DJ Richie McNeill started Hardware Corporation in 1991, while Fuzzy threw their first event five years later. In 1998 Richie promoted Australia's inaugural electronic and dance music travelling festival in Apollo (the same year the overground crew Mad Racket surfaced in Sydney). What followed was a national mega festival boom with Two Tribes, Summadayze, Park Life (a precursor to Listen Out), Future Music Festival and Stereosonic.

Jonathan reminisces about the "exhilarating" formative days of 3D World, the publisher supervising every facet. "I used to drive around in a car and pick up the advertisers' money so I could pay my staff on Fridays."

They produced the title from a terrace house in the inner-east suburb of Surry Hills. "There was no kitchen because the kitchen was all full of junk and magazines and things." Because of that, they dined out. Within two years, 3D World was making money. "Suddenly, one day, I had 100 grand in the bank account, and we went, 'Oh, shit, let's just get a new office.'" Unfortunately for him, success ruined the fun. "I was just more or less in the background 'cause it was imperative that you got the money coming in all the time. So, it was full-on just doing that – there's chasing accounts continually."

Jonathan can't remember individual editors – and concedes turnover was high. "We did have a lot of editors," he jokes. "We had a few crazy ones that we had to throw out of the office!" His favourites "were the ones you could have a drink with." Jonathan rues that, as the accountant, he was perceived as a "bad guy". "I probably wasn't even very much welcome in the editorial department if I walked in there."

3D World flourished when it had no competition for club promotion. "Basically, we had a monopoly and, if you weren't in 3D, you weren't there, you know?" Jonathan says. As a free paper, with him printing over 30,000 copies every week, that revenue was key. "It had to be full of ads, because it was expensive to print it… Without advertising, it didn't exist." To be viable, ads had to comprise 60 per cent of the paper. "There was a little bit of [editorial] independence. [But] we didn't have much space for that."

Jonathan had more people working as sales reps than editorial. He was on top of the distro. "I had eight drivers, driving around all through the Sydney Metro area, trying to get [3D World] out there. Then you had dodgy drivers dumping them, not actually putting them out there." The magazine soon became weekly for economic reasons – Jonathan already paying his staff full-time. It would be more topical.

"The advertisers were all a bit pissed off, because they were forced to advertise twice as much." 3D World's covers were "political", being leveraged for advertisers. "In the earlier days, we had a much freer hand – we did some really interesting creative covers." Nonetheless, Jonathan insists that he was "not that fascinated by money."

There were challenges attracting corporate advertising – dance music stigmatised. "We weren't taken seriously as far as ad agencies and people like that. One of the reasons that I heard, which was a classic, was that they weren't gonna advertise in 3D because everybody who reads 3D is on the dole."

Still, the money Jonathan made with 3D World allowed him to launch yet another independent fashion periodical. In 1994 he and business partner Monica Nakata rolled out the bimonthly magazine Oyster, again retailed. "Oyster was kind of a vanity project that lost a lot of money for us," Jonathan says. "The only reason I could do it was that 3D was doing so well that we were able to afford to do this glossy sideline."

Looking back, Jonathan considers Oyster "a pretty interesting publication, but I don't think it's as interesting as Stiletto." Selling ads "was a real drag," Oyster competing against major publishers for market share (a ex-3D World staffer, Antonino Tati, started Cream). In 2014 Jonathan offloaded Oyster onto the media sales house Inception Digital, 3D World's former general manager Jade Harley a partner. Inception Digital then floundered with Oyster acquired by DT's Jonathan Pease – familiar to television viewers as a mentor on Australia's Next Top Model.

Oyster's website, and Instagram account, has been inactive since 2021 but, on LinkedIn, Pease auspiciously suggests that the magazine will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year – Oyster's founder unaware. Symbolically, Morris has archived Stiletto on Instagram, although his collection is incomplete.

An unprecedented quandary was the effect of digital platforms – MySpace activated in 2003. "If you'd told me that people were gonna look at a magazine on a screen 20 years ago, you'd go, 'Just impossible.'" From 2000, 3D World would have an online rival in inthemix – famed for its forums. In fact, Resident Advisor originated in Sydney the following year, its architects promptly decamping to the UK, establishing the site as a ticket sales enterprise. (In 2024 RA's status here is predominantly intertwined with branding at events.)

BEYOND THE PRETTY HYPE MACHINE

3D World was unique. It was a training ground for journalists, photographers, and designers. 3D World even had contributors who became dance music pioneers – among them Paul Mac. "I used to write record reviews and put the live listings together for a couple of years in the early '90s, then started doing interviews with artists for a while," he said in 2011's final Icon. "It was a great way to get free vinyl when I was a poor student and a good way to meet like-minded people. For me, 3D was part of a revolution that was sticking its fingers up to rock 'n' roll and creating a new underground rave or dance culture. I'm proud to be part of that period. You never got paid very much – it was all about doing it!"

Danny, aka DJ Raydar, was at 3D World from 1996 to 1999 as associate and later co- editor with Stu Connolly. Then 21, he had been a copy boy at the Sydney-based Loop Magazine, "Australia's first national dance music magazine," instigated by Naomi Dinnen (another assistant ed at 3D World, in 1992). "I applied for a job as receptionist at 3D World because I loved the magazine so much that I would have done anything to work there," he says. "They offered me the role of typist instead – someone had to type up the faxes for the 'What's on' section in those days – and, within weeks, I was given an interview with UK electronic music outfit System 7 and that's how I discovered that I was a writer."

3D World was on-trend – and prescient. The mag landed big, and exclusive, interviews. "I got into Eminem pretty early in the piece and I think I was the first editor to put him on the cover of an Australian magazine," Danny muses. "At the time, even 3D's ever-worldly staff were like, 'Who dat?'"

3D World chronicled local scenes. Nicole Fossati, who advanced from staff writer to editor in the mid-'90s, advocated for trip-hop, jungle and nu-skool breaks. "There was something about the combination of the funk and the energy in jungle and breaks that I knew would hit; something so rich and enveloping, so sophisticated about trip-hop," she enthuses. "I didn't realise at the time it was all about production and trip-hop swallowed you whole. [But] I was never a fan of happy hardcore and entertained too many conversations about why it would never go mainstream. 'Yes, yes, Belgium and the Netherlands... but we simply don't have enough drugs and far too much sunshine in Australia!'"

The gazette consolidated its brand under Nicole. "Before my time, the magazine was veering into indie-rock," Stu explains. "When Nicole took over, she brought it back to dance music and I joined her reign. When Danny and I were editors, we tried to put more local content in the magazine, doing bios on local DJs and local electronic acts as a counterpoint to non-stop pieces on international touring DJs. We also varied the columnists to reflect changing music styles."

For Danny, capturing a pluralistic culture in flux, with the upswing of subgenres such as electroclash, was tough. "The dance scene was truly splintering, and we tried to cover every little change as well as we possibly could. We kept the doors open to all genres – and our team of writers were ready to write about every new sound that was coming (or going!) while trying not to be discriminatory. Being editor does mean being a sort of 'quality-control', so hardcore and commercial dance probably never fared quite as prominently as some of the other genres. But I don't think we ever got any complaints."

Editors pushed back to advertorial directives as journalists developed their voices and presented subversive takes with no stipulations about 'tone'. And 3D World had influential columns – Lefroy Verghese, aka Ritual, writing the drum 'n' bass Brockout from 2001 to 2010.

Writers were early influencers, spotting trends – and new acts. Prior to the explosion of virtual communities, 3D World crucially had cherished social sections. "I still can't quite believe some of the stuff we got away with – like the 'Gurner Of The Week' in the social photo pages, which people would stick to their fridges!" says Nick Jarvis, who started at 3D World in 2005 as assistant online editor, but was promoted to online editor and then editor. "Up until 2006 or so, we also had a 'Gurners Hotline', where very high people could call up and leave long, rambling, semi-coherent messages – it was the job of the sub-editor Lee [Bemrose], best known as 'Grumpy' to Acid Tongue [column] readers, to transcribe these missives from MDMA Land."

Another cult column was DJ Stiffy's Wide World Of Shorts, originally published in Inpress – Kris noting that its author was "a guy whose day job involved trade policy and flying around the world to various environmental and climate forums – that is, a real adult. He was doing to dance music what Joe Aston eventually did to the business world in his storied AFR [Australian Financial Review] Rear Window [column] stint; ruthlessly skewering genres, trends and artists and generally taking the piss out of the po-faced nature of it all."

3D World could be both progressive – and problematic. "The first cover was a picture of an Indian with a head-dress feather thing," Jonathan says. As with other street press, style guides were permissive, if not negligent – offensive words in record titles and quoted lyrics not always asterisked.

Stu, also a sometime mobile DJ, refers to his experience as the "best time of my life," comparing it to the '90s movie Empire Records about a record store. "We were a bunch of young people who'd moved out of home; had free tickets to gigs and shows. We were low-paid in editorial – we reviewed CDs and games and sold them on Fridays at second-hand stores to pay our rent!"

Nicole notes that editorial and sales staff forged "enduring connections".

There were office hijinks. Stu confesses that they made up letters to the editor – and, once, a fake notice for a dance party. "It happened when an ad was pulled last minute from a non-paying promoter. We had to come up with content to replace it. For some reason, we came up with the Ministry Of The Round party ad. Jonathan was happy with it – he put his own mobile number on it."

As arbiter, Danny recalls the labour involved in 3D World's annual retrospectives. "I remember one year, as the members of my group house were in Christmas party-mode, requiring chemical assistance to get me through having to pore over the previous 51 issues."

He boosted emerging homegrown acts – like PNAU, whom he chanced upon as host of his show, Sounds That Bite, on the transitory Radio Dex 96.9FM (Peter Mayes was volunteering on reception and gave him a tape). "I was absolutely committed to supporting Australian electronic music by discovering local producers and giving them proper editorial support, whether they were with a big label or an obscure one." In 2000 3D World sponsored Australia's inaugural Dance Music Awards – its delegate Jade Harley.

Nick sums up the 2000s as dynamic. "2005 to 2009 was a great time for music, with the whole Modular [Recordings]/Bang Gang/French electro/fidget scene and early dubstep – and a great time to work in music and have a title you could put into print each week.

"My era was notable for the trend in fashion away from big raves and prog[ressive house], trance and hard house towards guitar bands and dance melding together (for example, Modular), the whole blog-house aesthetic, and rap and crunk via the likes of [Diplo's] Hollertronix and Girl Talk."

Nick listed Diplo's late 2004 Florida album in his 2005 top albums and credits editor Sonia Sharma with putting MIA on the front, circa Arular (and pre-Paper Planes). His colleague Jack Tregoning picked up on The Presets, writing, "Two members of Prop are back with art school haircuts and synth-pop to match." Says Nick, "We were definitely giving love to Australia's blog-house and indie-era bands before they blew [up] – Van She, Lost Valentinos, Damn Arms, Temper Trap…"

He oversaw bumper editions of 3D World. "We would hit 100 pages in our larger issues – I believe we were actually Australia's largest street press at our peak."

3D World had clout. Nicole hung out with UK prog house heroes Sasha & John Digweed in their prime, the year they unleashed their influential Northern Exposure compilation. "He and Sasha were out here late '96 and, while Sasha was a bit of a nob, Digweed was the nicest bloke you'd ever want to meet. I have a photo somewhere of us at [the Watsons Bay seafood restaurant] Doyles [On The Beach]: me, John, [promoter] Sudeep Gohil and Sasha. Everyone's laughing except for old scowly."

In 2008, Future Music Festival headliners The Chemical Brothers and Sven Väth attended a milestone 900th issue party. Something similar occurred at the event in 2011 when Kris was conducting backstage interviews and met the Stafford Brothers and their trumpeter, Timmy Trumpet. "Timmy was beside himself: 'Wait, you're Kris Swales? You gave me my first interview!' Here's a guy now playing the biggest festival main stages in the world, yet getting his first quarter-pager in 3D in 2010 was such a moment for him along the way."

THE HIP-HOP/R&B TAKEOVER

3D World had long encompassed hip-hop and R&B (then classified as 'urban', an American catchall term controversial in recent years for racialisation) under the dance music umbrella, stimulating an authentic multicultural domestic scene.

The DJ/promoter Scott Wolfe penned one of the country's primary hip-hop columns, titled Howl, and interviewed names like Public Enemy. Later, Miguel D'Souza would be credited as a pivotal player Western Sydney's early hip-hop underground, acknowledged in Ian Maxwell's 2003 academic tome, Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip-Hop Down Under Comin' Upper. In 1990 he started the local show, Mothership Connection, on Sydney community station 2SER and, soon after, a column in 3D World called Funky Wisdom.

3D World also recruited Melbourne tastemaker Sasha Perera, who had a trailblazing R&B column The Cool Tip in Inpress (or Zebra, its dance/R&B/hip-hop supplement). Significantly, Sasha edited Australia's very first retail R&B and hip-hop magazine WkD – launched in 1994, the year after Vibe in the US.

Stu remembers, "We were encouraged by advertising – led by the publisher – to find new columnists who didn't have specific links to a record store or a record label, as neither of those clients floated the magazine, meaning the publisher was fed up running content for the music industry as they took the magazine for granted with their advertising budget. The main clients were promoters.

"As we editors recognised that urban music was on the up, through clubs advertising their urban nights and venues, it was obvious to us we needed an urban columnist… We encouraged [Sasha] to take more CDs from our pile and turn his reviews into a [new] column about urban albums and/or singles. It was popular, even though it had problems as Sasha was so talented, he was writing loads of reviews and a column – it seemed like we were 'r 'n' blurry', that is becoming too focussed on this genre, which was okay in some ways but dramatic in others."

3D World introduced an R&B and hip-hop section on learning that Drum Media was broadening its coverage. "We were gonna call it Beats Per Minute – BPM – but I'm not sure," Jonathan says. "There was a bit of a controversy because [Drum's managing editor/publisher] Margaret Cott who had it was gonna call it some name and we went and registered the name, and they were pissed off."

3D World eventually had scaled-up R&B and hip-hop supplements such as REQUEST (conceived by Sydney DJ George "G-Wizard" Bechara, with its editor the later Urban Hitz founder and memoirist Simone Amelia Jordan, née Kapsalides, from Western Sydney and, ultimately, Homebase.

This writer wrote the R&B column The DL, which began as Flavas in beat and became the longest running of its kind, finishing in TheMusic in December 2019. In the street press days, freelancers pursued, and syndicated, hot interviews. In 2007 Sasha, then an entertainment correspondent living in London with his own bureau, secured a Beyoncé cover story.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

In 2007 Jonathan sold 3D World (and the website www.threedworld.com.au) to destra Corporation, Domenic Carosa's digital music provider. "Destra was buying up all the musical assets around town," he says. Jonathan stayed on as an employee but without a designated position – an irksome scenario. "They just had no bloody idea." Centralising the accounts in North Sydney caused problems, no one chasing promoters for overdue payments. "We wouldn't run somebody's ad the next week if they hadn't paid for the last one... We had to do it, because you're dealing with lots of dodgy bloody operators – nightclub people."

Destra's ownership was brief as in 2008 it entered administration, having been embroiled in the collapse of Opes Prime. Jonathan reacquired his real estate, this time going up against SPA – publishers of the East Coast Inpress (Melbourne), Drum (Sydney) and Time Off (Meanjin/Brisbane).

"When we sold it, it was only within 12 months that I ended up buying it back." He mainly wanted to keep Oyster, the two titles a package. "I was up in Bali, and I wasn't really even in [the office]. So, when they started to go bankrupt, there's this sort of mad rush because the Street Press [Australia] guys wanted to get a hold of 3D… I had more money because obviously I had all destra's money and I was buying it back really at a fraction of the price that they originally paid."

As boss again, Jonathan had to explain to irate creditors that he wasn't responsible for destra. "It was really a bad move, 'cause we bought it back and then it started failing with advertising." Regretful, he contacted SPA managing director Craig Treweek. "I rang up Craig – 'You can have it.' So, I sold [3D World] to Craig. I was pissed off with Craig 'cause he forced us to actually pay more than we wanted to pay, but then I had the last laugh because I sold it to him and then it failed for him."

Jonathan was over it. "I wasn't really that attached to it in the end. I mean, I loved it in the beginning, because I was really hands-on in it. But, towards the end, it was quite a big operation. I wasn't involved in any of creative [side] – or anything. I was stuck with my accounts person in an office, just collecting money and paying bills."

In 2009 SPA assumed custodianship of 3D World as the publishing and music industries alike grappled with new digital technologies – and their impact on younger generations. "We took over the magazine at an interesting time," Leigh affirms. "Electronic music was still flying, however the industry was always on the cutting-edge of technology and new trends and much of their marketing spend had moved to online and Facebook, so it was difficult."

Tragically, in the transition, 3D World's archives were lost. Jonathan had been storing them on his farm in Windsor, north-west of Sydney. "I kept quite good, mint quality papers – they were boxed up and everything – for all the issues. We'd just set aside 25 odd copies every week and try and store them like that." He sold the farm and moved his stacks to other sheds.

At one stage, Jonathan offered his 3D World collection to Craig – but he wasn't immediately responsive. "They're in boxes and the rats were getting into them and all sorts of things – it was a real battle. I was hoping he would come and pick them up – because I knew they were valuable, in some way, or were gonna be valuable in the future, because it was an amazing time." Jonathan was about to relocate his repository when inclement weather struck. "We were moving it and, that night, it pissed down with rain and it just destroyed all the archives, because they were just in cardboard boxes and just turned into mush. We had to just dump it all, which was a shame." Other than The State Library Of New South Wales, he says, "I don't know anybody who's got any copies."

THE REBRAND

The Treweeks turned 3D World into a lifestyle title with a glossy magazine format (and fancy font) – Kris its ed.

Kris, a descendant of the Gunggari people of south-west Queensland, and based in Brisbane, started writing in the late '90s. Employed remotely by SPA from 2008, he'd edit the Zebra inserts of Time Off and Inpress, and initially 3D World. Kris transplanted to Sydney in 2010 to oversee the title's redesign.

Kris suggests that, with social networks gaining traction, "It didn't really make sense for 3D to be a 'What's on in Sydney this week' magazine anymore." He aimed to produce evergreen content. "I wanted us to be working outside of that cycle so that someone could pick up the mag in five years and still find something to read."

3D World debuted the Icons series, "a weekly longer Q&A with someone who had contributed in a big way to the culture of the respective city – so John Wall from Fuzzy (who'd incidentally penned a column under an alias) in Sydney or [the] Vicious Vinyl [crew] in Melbourne or a little leftfield with [the owner of the famed Australian movie rental 'emporium'] Trash Video in Brisbane."

The Treweeks brought in Andrew Mast, then SPA's group managing editor, who guided 3D World's rebranding alongside Kris. He had an impressive track record. In the late '80s, as a freelance journo, Andrew had scored an interview with The KLF just before they broke out – and syndicated it. ("No one wanted that interview. A month or so later, everyone wanted it, including mainstream media outlets.")

In 1989 he was an editor at beat – but also selling ads. Andrew went on to be features ed under Christie Eliezer at Juke Magazine in the early '90s. He then had an editorial gig at the queer title Brother/Sister but returned to beat as it ushered in a dance insert, Dose. Andrew was the longest-serving editor at Inpress, for 15 years.

"I look back with a fairly heavy heart," Andrew divulges. "We took on 3D at a time when the dance music press was heading into a major slump. I'd previously worked for a few other impactful dance titles: TRM (Techno Renegade Magazine), Zebra and Dose (aka Play). They are all now defunct… 3D had such a rich history – and the team I worked with there was top-tier." Andrew praises Kris as one of the greatest editors he's encountered. "His passion and knowledge was as impressive as his deep love of Katy Perry was scary."

In mid-2010 3D World expanded into Melbourne and Brisbane, with localised weekly editions. Curiously, Jonathan had already distributed the magazine in Melbourne, "for a little while, just to see what it was like," competing with beat at a time of intense rivalry in street press.

The new iteration of 3D World progressed from being a traditional street press to a culture magazine, comparable to the '80s UK staple The Face. It incorporated film, technology, fashion, travel, current affairs and investigative journalism. Again, it was about the readership as much as advertisers – the mag courting agency clients.

"With the changing face of the scene and the growth of the major festivals, we saw that the scene was playing a major part in mainstream culture and was more than just a music movement," says Leigh.

That July, 3D World had actor Kristen Stewart on the cover, promoting The Runaways. In a nod to 2000s poptimism, Kesha graced the title ahead of 2011's Future Music Festival. But the digest stayed on the cutting-edge of dance with Four Tet in early 2011.

Kris was especially pleased about an Icons feature on a DJ legend in the New Year's Eve 2010/11 edition. "We tracked down Carl Cox to talk about the time he DJed against the countdown clock twice on Millennium Eve – he played NYE in Sydney, then braved the Y2K bug to fly back in time and do it all over again in Hawaii. He even remembered what tracks he opened with! A ripping yarn then and just as amazing now."

Kris caught up with a notorious American novelist in 2010. "I interviewed Bret Easton Ellis under the staircase of a boutique Sydney hotel, and it felt like a scene from one of his books – paranoid and slightly askew, though he was quite personable."

Kris also influenced the tone. "For 12 months, I got to create a music mag in my own image – 'cynical optimism' was the vibe I was going for, which definitely shines through reading back."

Above all, he and Andrew were aware of cultivating diversity – dance music increasingly dominated by cishet white males. Kris orchestrated some of Briggs' earliest press, spotlighting Indigenous hip-hop.

Andrew commends art director Stuart Teague for his lay-out. "[He] was such a good designer – all his covers were good. Give him the shittiest low-res pic – see his James Blake and Four Tet covers – and he could make it look like the classiest image on the planet."

Andrew would actually style shoots alongside photographer Kane Hibberd – recollecting a distinct edition with Cut Copy ("Scoping (The) Future"), attired in sci-fi white. "I remember having to ask their shirt sizes in advance so we could purchase the matching white shirts." The same issue had Sasha interviewing Nicki Minaj, just months after the Queen Of Rap's 2010 debut Pink Friday.

In its final incarnation, 3D World consistently tackled cultural shifts. In October 2010 this journalist, by now senior contributor, documented the decline of the once-vital mix-CD industry amid rampant illegal file-sharing in the cover story "Is The Mix CD Dead?" Stuart "designed it to look like a compilation of the era, but with a skeleton in fluoro glasses, teased blonde hair and the like," says Kris. Drama ensued.

"Apparently some of the record companies were like, 'Why should we give you our ad spend if that's what you think?' But, by that stage, I don't think we were getting a lot anyway, so it was a moot point. And even though DJ-KiCKS and, to a lesser extent, Balance And Fabric are still ticking along, in the context of mainstream releases, we were bang on the money."

Another cover feature, "Tagged & Bagged: The Uneasy Truce Between Venues & Hip Hop", from February 2011, presaged debates about a racialised crackdown on live performers such as ONEFOUR by authorities.

Most polarising was a story on memes in March 2011, Kris recalls. "We were scratching around for cover stories for a particular issue when our publisher chimed in: 'What about the cat?' The cat being 'Business Cat', one of the memes we kicked around the group chat to take the edge off what was by that time a pretty fucking grim situation. So that was that. Business Cat was our cover star under the coverline 'Memes – Serious Business' with a story to match. One of my old sales colleagues, who I'm still good mates with, always jokes that was the cover that killed 3D World, but [again] we were already dead in the water and had nothing to lose."

BUSINESS CAT

The dance music scene became ever more commercial, or mainstream, in the New Millennium with the incipience of EDM – like 'electronica', less a genre than marketing term from the US obscuring its rave history. Not coincidentally, 3D World's days were numbered with new media, especially Facebook, changing human connectivity and consumption – dance promoters abandoning legacy outlets.

"Social media happened," Andrew rues. "All the advertising dollars were redirected there. At first it happened slowly and then it was like a flood. Street press advertising budgets were slashed, and it became impossible to exist in that environment.

"Labels and promoters still expected you to cover their artists and events – and many got nasty about it when told we no longer had the space to cover everything – but they wouldn't put the dollars into supporting the medium's survival. It got pretty ugly. I witnessed tantrums and got yelled at down the phone a lot."

3D World wasn't as fun, Kris states. "I've heard some of my predecessors – particularly in sales – say they had the time of their lives at 3D World, and it was one big party, but we were scrapping for survival the whole time. I don't think I've ever worked so hard and thrown as much of myself into a project before or since.

“So, by the end of it, I was burnt out and a bit jaded that we'd done all that work and created something a little out of the ordinary in the world of street press and it still wasn't enough to save it. The whole affair changed my relationship with the club scene – and music journalism – and triggered my gradual transition towards hard-newsier pastures."

In 2011 SPA closed the masthead, causing shockwaves. "Everyone wanted to be in 3D World, especially in the final gloss format – promoters, publicists, artists, journos, snappers...," Kris says. "But not enough people wanted to pay to support it."

Today Leigh – who now presides over Handshake MGMT, with buzz acts like Vacations on the books – is pragmatic. He maintains that the dance music counterculture had by then been absorbed into mainstream reportage – though it had been only in 2008 when The Presets were the first dance act to win "Album Of The Year" at the ARIAs.

"I don't think anything went wrong as such. As time went on, audiences changed and weren't so tribal when it came to music. They might be at Future Music Festival one week, then Splendour [In The Grass] the next. I remember when Tame Impala played FMF [in 2011] and realised that tastes were broadening; combine that with the growth of social media and the impact of media had become diminished. However, I still believe that the voice of quality music journalism is so important to any scene. But, when 85 per cent of all marketing dollars goes to social media, it was too hard for those [titles] to survive."

The Treweeks introduced an innovative iPad magazine, THREE, to acclaim in 2011. "Technology was playing a part with the launch of digital magazines on iPads," Leigh says. "My brother [Craig] saw a chance for us to move into that world and we had a belief that we had the writers and editors to make a mark. We always believed in the power of the written word.

"The magazine, although not as financially successful as we wanted it to be, was recognised by The New York Times as one of the Top 10 digital magazines globally and was the only independently published magazine on that list."

THREE was superseded by TheMusic, an amalgamation of all the SPA mastheads, in 2013. "It was sad for us to combine all the titles at the time, but it also allowed us to keep going and continue to support our music journalists," Leigh philosophises. "However, such as music, clubs and festivals, nothing can last forever."

THE END OF AN ERA

3D World has generated its own mythology, and cult of nostalgia, amid a boom in decade-themed parties – with Facebook pages dedicated to Sydney's ephemeral nightlife. The magazine has left an unparalleled legacy in Australian music and publishing.

"[3D World's] existence speaks to cultures that were only possible in the pre-digital information era," Nicole posits. "At the time, I wouldn't have given a passing thought as to how media shapes culture. Mine was a hardy, all-purpose, contrarian insouciance – a combination of mindless self-absorption and awareness of dance music's underdog niche. I couldn't have conceived that soon there would never again be a safe space for musicians and writers and everyone to make mistakes and figure shit out without the world watching; for things to evolve and develop without ricochet feedback."

The Australian dance music journals of the '90s and 2000s have all vanished. In 2018 inthemix ended – digital platforms also affected by smaller margins on advertising and the music biz directing monies to apps. The website's dissolution was contentious, its caches expunged from the Internet.

But, even as the scene has revived strongly post-pandemic, there has been an accelerated Australian music media contraction and cultural drift as editors and journalists move into other industry roles or leave it all together, taking their knowledge with them. Few are still music writers, says Nick, currently a journalist, copywriter and content producer. "All the editors I worked with have moved into the corporate, government or NFP [Not For Profit] sphere because music journalism just isn't a viable income stream anymore."

In fact, dance music, already transient, is frequently peripheralised – no blogs filling the void. The industry that took campaigns to third party platforms now decry the loss of 3D World and inthemix alike, disillusioned by the vagaries of algorithms on Facebook. Besides, Facebook was lambasted for astroturfing the 2010s pivot-to-video phenom with specious metrics, initially attributed to an attention economics, rather than pressure from advertisers and investors, and resulting in editorial lay-offs.

The consequence of digitisation, and social media, has been dire for cultural memory, too, with narratives fragmented – and, in some cases, fabricated. History has been lost, erased or distorted – alarming as marginalised POC and LGBTQIA+ people invented dance. (That ahistoricity was apparent when, in 2018, the US ABC News Nightline declared David Guetta "The Grandfather Of Electronic Dance Music".)

Admittedly, some used 3D World as a launchpad for careers in the arts – Paul Mac not alone. "Everyone went on to do such interesting creative things with their lives and continue to fascinate me," Danny notes of his associates. "I have no doubt that 3D shaped us as we were busy shaping it."

As the Australian dance music scene surged in the late '90s, Nicole departed 3D World for a brief stint as a publicist in Sony Music's dance division before forging an iconic identity as a presenter on SBS TV's weekly electronic show Alchemy and triple j, championing homegrown electronic and dance plus hip-hop.

Stu reinvented himself as a scriptwriter and producer. He's a partner in, and director of, the BAFTA-nominated production company Sticky Pictures and co-created the animated television series CJ the DJ. "All my shows I've created, or co-created, have had a music focus to them." Stu met Australian IDM stalwart Noel Burgess, who scored CJ the DJ, through 3D World.

Kris is fronts editor at Guardian Australia but has also published an engrossing novel, The Drop, "set in a dystopian future Sydney where EDM was used as a form of mind control. It was a satire, but at its heart a love letter to the scene and the music I loved. Everything I've ever thought about dance music – good, bad and otherwise – was in there."

Kris mentions 3D World interns who've since distinguished themselves – journalist/authors Lucia Osborne-Crowley and Gina Rushton, Internet personality and Marc Jacobs design cohort Ava Nirui (who subsequently wrote for TheMusic), and DJ/artist/radio host Mowgli May. But Danny laments that "the opportunities and connections that were there just don't exist for young people these days."

Aside from Purple Sneakers, which has charted the ascent of Aussie superstar DJ Dom Dolla, there are now no other domestic titles centred on dance music. Analysis of the local underground is rare – though the specialist Cyclic Defrost, initiated in 2002, remains extant online. Larger publications haven't picked up the slack, either. As Nick points out, newspapers "have slashed their arts sections to capsule size, if they run arts at all."

Yet 3D World's imprint is deep, Andrew says. "Like all Australian street press, 3D's influence can be felt in today's media. Its irreverent style can be seen all over youth-marketed digital mastheads."

Says Kris, "I don't think you could've clubbed in Sydney in the '90s and noughties without 3D World being part of your life. When I started at the AFR in 2019, three of my new colleagues there wanted to talk about it. So, if you knew, you knew. I thought it was great in Brisbane that we had three weekly street mags, then I'd come to Sydney and pick up a copy of 3D and it was fatter than the three of them combined. 'You mean Mark Dynamix plays five different clubs any given weekend? Holy shit!' So, I would say its legacy is in people's hearts, rather than the collective memory of the media or industry."

Nick holds that 3D World provided more than social media. "It was an iconic publication and social media still hasn't been able to reproduce the unity and ubiquity of a print magazine that had all the gigs and parties you'd want to go to, last week's social photos to spot yourself, and 60-100 pages of content worth reading."

3D World validated Australian dance music; Danny argues. "I think that there is a loss of confidence in a scene or a culture after it doesn't have quality publications to reflect it anymore. Social media offers up a much shallower world."

And 3D World's closure had ramifications for the dance scene, Andrew says. "There was a healthy dance/club presence online when 3D folded. But they weren't as genre-agnostic as 3D. So, the scene felt a bit splintered." The magazine's absence was conspicuous in 2014 when the Sydney lock-out laws were enacted, decimating the city's night-time economy. "The scene can finally rebuild now, but it's sad that 3D wasn't there as a voice of the underground movements that survived, or as a voice of opposition against a government that could not see the cultural and economic benefits of a nightlife industry."

Artists have lost out, too, Kris adds. "What is the journal of record of Australian club culture? Which Australian publication is shouting from the rooftops that HAAi is the first Aussie to do a DJ-KiCKS mix? Is Sydney's nightlife really thriving with the Kings Cross gentrification project now complete, cops shutting down warehouse parties and promoters doing their arse on the regular? Who is asking these questions? Who is documenting it all?"

There has been endless discussion about an existential crisis in the music media – as well as the repercussions of contraction, and contentifaction, on music journalism. In Australian thinkpieces, that glocal debate is tainted by cultural cringe and a devaluation of Australian writing as much as cynicism – the music media unjustifiably dismissed as defacto PR. In 2024 Music Australia extols storytelling as paramount to 'music discovery', but the domestic music media is excluded from wider conversations – despite their salient roles as chroniclers and curators.

A defiant Danny has recently floated a new bimonthly periodical. "I started my own magazine [in 2022] called STUN with one of the designers from 3D World, Rob Duong. The name is borrowed from Sydney's early '90s rave club night of the same name. Its creator/DJ Paul Holden was my partner when I was 18 and one of the first people to encourage my creativity.

"STUN is an LGBTIQA+ magazine published that's distributed in Sydney, Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong – and, yes, there's a lot of dance music and club culture in there. I'm very proud of the first five issues and I am truly committed to the long journey ahead of introducing quality street press to a whole new generation. I've missed writing and I get exactly the same satisfaction from it that I did back in the 3D days."

The residual 3D World archives are being preserved digitally so they are accessible ironically as content – which Leigh welcomes. "I think it is important to remember that these magazines existed off the back of an incredible group of editors and freelance journalists who worked so hard to create these magazines. They would be out four, five nights a week spending hours writing incredible articles and reviews. They were the heart and soul of what we did – they were why we did it. I am so glad to see these articles get digitised and put up online."

As for Jonathan? He's still the dreamer. "I was quite happy to actually create something out of nothing, in a way; something that wasn't there before. It was interesting from that point of view, realising that, as far as a career – 'cause I never knew what I was. You know how people don't know what they are? 'What am I meant to be – as a career?' I like photography, I'll do that…' And it led to that. It became a real obsession to do a magazine. That's what I lived for – and it worked, to a certain extent."

To celebrate the launch of The Music’s street press archive, this week sees us expand further on its history and legacy in Australia.

If you want to visit the archive, go to TheMusic.com.au, find “Street Press Archive” in the main menu and register to start your journey through Australian music history. Happy reading!

Can you help us fill the gaps in our collection? Click here for details on how to add to our archive.