This article is an instalment of the Songcards Spotlight series where we interview the humans that make it all possible. We recommend you start by clicking the play button above and reading whilst enjoying the artist's music.
Who is CommsBreakdown?
I’m Steve Ash, a British-born, Australia-based music producer making music under the CommsBreakdown alias. I make a mix of ambient, electronica, house, techno, drum & bass, post-rock and downtempo beats, merging styles to create the CommsBreakdown sound.
What is your origin story?
The early years
I’ve been making music since I got my first Casio keyboard as a kid, back in the 1980s. My dad had briefly been a singer in a 1960s guitar band, and later got into amateur operatics. And my mum was a massive Beatles fan, so there was always music being played in our house.
We also had a big Yamaha organ in the house that I used to mess around on, driving my parents insane with the built-in arpeggiator and primitive drum machine rhythms.
I can remember watching Depeche Mode performing Everything Counts on the British TV show Top of The Pops back in the early eighties and wishing I could make these cool synth sounds with my home keyboard. I gradually saved up enough money over the years to get better keyboards, then synths, drum machines and samplers, until I had enough gear to make what could be called vaguely decent electronic music.
The indie and dance years
For a few years, I was the guitarist and co-writer in a band called The Space Kittens (not the much more successful Scottish band of the same name) with the very talented Lacrimat. We made indie-dance crossover music in a similar vein to Utah Saints or The Shamen.
Then in the early nineties, dance music really exploded in the UK and I started making house, techno and drum & bass tracks and getting a bit more experimental with my tunes. I had a drum & bass track called Panic Attack released on a compilation from Tony Thorpe’s Vibez label, but, sadly, this didn’t lead to much airplay or any further releases at the time.
The Black Dog years
While at university studying Philosophy & Electronic Music, I made contact with Ken Downie from Warp Records legends The Black Dog. Ken was super supportive of the demo tapes (yes, tapes, that’s long ago this is!) and encouraged me to keep sending tunes.
When Black Dog co-founders Ed Handley and Andy Turner left Black Dog Productions, Ken asked me if I’d like to work with him. That was too good an opportunity to miss, so under the ‘Hotdog’ alias, I became resident producer and remixer for the Dog Squad.
I worked on the Unsavoury Products album, collaborating with leftfield poet, Black Sifichi, to create an electronica/spoken word crossover. The title track Unsavoury Products was one of mine. And I also remixed several big artists under the ‘Bitten By The Black Dog’ remix tag. These remixes included Fever (Or A Flame) by dance icon A Guy Called Gerald and Newborn by Manchester indie band Elbow. I even did a remix of U2’s New York track, which didn’t get released until about 20 years later!
I loved the creativity of working with The Black Dog, but issues with their management meant that I ended up having to part ways with them – and Ken teamed up with Richard and Martin Dust to great success soon after, continuing to make great music under the Black Dog name.
The CommsBreakdown years
I didn’t make much music at all for several years. Working as a freelance writer, parenthood and life in general took over and I kinda parked the whole idea of ever releasing any music.
Then in 2024, having moved to Australia and finding myself with very little freelance work to do, I decided I’d use all this spare time to start making music again, this time as CommsBreakdown.
I’d heard that Bandcamp was a good place to release music, so I pulled together enough tracks for an album and released my first ever solo album. Ultra Communication was a mix of electronica, ambient, techno and drum & bass, collecting together my 90s and 00s influences and bringing them up to date for the 2020s.
Amazingly, a few people really liked the album and that spurred me on to keep making more music and putting out releases, firstly through Bandcamp and then via Distrokid to get my music onto the main streaming platforms, like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music etc.
Since then, I’ve put out several singles, EPs and remix collections and three more full-length albums – Music For A Civilised World, Dystopia For Soundtrack Lovers and Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere.
When did you realise you wanted to make music?
I listened to a lot of synth-based 80s pop music as a kid and used to try and replicate it on my crappy home keyboards (with very limited success, haha). I have a very clear memory of grabbing a Roland keyboard in the school music rooms and trying to play The Chauffeur by Duran Duran while one of my mates sang.
I don’t think I ever went down the ‘playing a tennis racket in front of the mirror’ route of wanting to be a rock star. But I knew I knew I loved music and wanted to be involved in it somehow. I think what I loved was sound, and messing around with it, so getting into sound engineering and music production just seemed like a logical progression.
Who are your long-standing influences?
My original influences were the 80s synth-pop artists who went on to influence the new wave of dance music producers in the 90s and beyond. Bands like Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure, (yes, Vince Clarke is God!) Ultravox and even Duran Duran in their more synthy moments where Nick Rhodes got to explore his electronic side.
Then when dance music really took over, some big influences were Orbital, Aphex Twin, Underworld, Massive Attack, Photek, Four Tet and even Radiohead in their Kid A period.
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a musician?
I’d say the most valuable lesson is to make music for yourself, not for an imagined audience. This sentiment was repeated in Rick Rubin’s recent book The Creative Act: A Way Of Being.
If you start out making music to please an audience, or a market, or a particular kind of DJ, you will generally make rubbish. It becomes contrived, overthought and overproduced. But if you follow your heart and make music that demonstrates your own ideas, emotions and styles, you’ll make something unique. That’s the path to being a true artist, in my book.
What are you working on at the moment?
My most recent album was Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere, a concept album of sorts. The album takes you on a journey around the sounds and everyday moods of Australia – something that was very alien to my British ears when I first moved to Australia in 2022.
The album features my trademark mix of ambient, electronica, downtempo and post-rock, merging it with the sounds of Aussie wildlife, cascading waterfalls, rolling thunderstorms, laughing kookaburras and the hot summer buzz of evening cicadas.
I’ve been working on some remixes with fellow independent producers, like DarpSyx, Stimeral, Masefield Labs, Shugmonkey/Nic, Key of D Music and Twitchy Bones. Collaboration is so much easier these days, sharing files online and sending mixes back and forth, and it’s great to have that community vibe too, giving feedback and support to each other.
I’ve also just released a new single, called An Unexpected Treat, which is a dub-influenced, jazzy house track, featuring cut-up piano sample, stand-up bass and 130BPM rhythms. I’m hoping this one does well!
What would you tell your younger self?
Hmmm, probably to go solo sooner! Being in a band is a lot of fun, but the internal politics and conflicting directions do get kinda stressful! I like being a solo artist now, but collaborating with lots of other solo artists. It seems to be the ideal way to get that whole band vibe, but without having to go to a damp practice room to play the same song twenty times!
Which band or artist are you really excited about at the moment?
I’m pretty eclectic when listening to other artists. When you dive into Bandcamp and platforms like Songcards, you realise just how much talent there is out there. So many great songwriters, musicians and producers, all trying to get heard among the white noise of the industry.
I’d encourage people to explore Bandcamp and Songcards to find the many musical gems that are hiding there. The mainstream is definitely not the only place to look for music.
I’m always excited by Four Tet’s music and Kieran Hebden’s ability to move from chilled downtempo soundscapes to club-focused house bangers. To have a foot in both those camps is a true talent, in my opinion. And I discovered Carbon-Based Lifeforms recently and really fell in love with their mellow, spacey tracks. They create such lush arrangements and sounds.
Where can people find your music?
You can find out more about CommsBreakdown on my website:
My Bandcamp page is here:
https://commsbreakdown.bandcamp.com/
My first Songcard is here:
https://songcards.io/cards/e2960acc-e298-4a0a-b17e-c2e56f7a9410
Links to all my albums, EPs and singles are here:
https://linktr.ee/commsbreakdown
What’s next for CommsBreakdown?
I’ve got a few projects on the go at the moment. I’m working with my network of independent producer friends to come up with remixes of my Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere album. This Remixes Of The Southern Highlands album will be out later in the year, featuring mixes from DarpSyx, Stimeral, Masefield Labs, Nic and Twitchy Bones.
I’ve also just finished a ‘drungle’ remix of Masefield Labs’ n-i-g-h-t-s-h-a-d-e-s track, which will be out later in 2025. And I’m working with Stimeral on a collaboration for our Meraldown project too, combining our different styles for some inventive, dancefloor-friendly tracks.
I’m hoping to put out another album of original CommsBreakdown tracks as well. I have maybe five tracks ready to go. I’m toying with calling that album ‘Dadtronica’, after an in-joke with my producer mates that all our fans are other middle-aged producers, haha.
