Feral Media is an artist-run Australian music label & studio which produces exciting, non-mainstream sounds in beautiful & limited edition packages. Owned by Danny Jumpertz and headquartered in a historic dancehall (now gallery and recording studio) in North Carlton, the label is managed by Danny and his Sydney-based partner Greg Stone.
For more than two decades, Feral Media has brought an adventurous spirit to releasing music, prioritising energy and originality rather than any specific genre.
Feral Media is drawn to invigorating artists that sometimes fall between the cracks, artists who are not so easily defined. While that may have made marketing challenging at times, every release has stood the test of time, and is as fresh today as the day it was created.
We’re in it for the long haul. Feral Media was founded in 1996, and our first release was in 2000.
The Back Story
Feral Media’s origins as a record label can be traced to Lismore in regional NSW, Australia. Label founder Danny Jumpertz was studying there between 1998-2000, and it was from that student pool that Danny made the connections that would provide Feral Media with many of its early releases – the members of Plankton, Mieli (Ryan Gobbe) and Comatone (Greg Seiler) were all fellow music students at Southern Cross University.
Between 2000 and 2002, Feral Media was based in Melbourne, where Danny was a music producer at SBS. During this time, the rising Melbourne scene & emerging bands sourced from SBS’s Whatever Music Project provided Feral Media with fresh talent which included Barrage (originally from Brisbane), ii, The Emergency, Minimum Chips, Catnip, David Elliot Incigneri, and Sydney bands Underlapper and Sparrow Hill.
During 2002 Feral Media began an art and design collaboration with the Sopp Collective, one that continues to this day in their latest incarnation as Toben. They have designed the lion’s share of Feral Media’s artwork and packaging, but the collaboration runs much deeper than that, to include branding, art installations (at parties, gigs and the Ongoing Moment project), t-shirts and retail displays. Sopp has been intrinsic in authoring Feral Media’s visual aesthetic.
Between 2003 and 2010, Feral Media’s base was Sydney’s inner west (Camperdown) and the artist roster has evolved to include the new projects by established Feral Media artists (Greg Seiler’s collaborations with Amanda Handel and Sleuthound, Jon Tjhia from ii’s Scissors For Sparrow) as well as new artists The Longest Day and Melbourne post-rock legends Because Of Ghosts.
Over the years Feral Media has aligned with various underground media outlets such as FBi Radio (early and consistent champions of Feral Media), Mess + Noise Magazine (RIP), 2SER and the Chooch-A-Bahn Collective to release fund-raising compilation CDs. For a while there, between 2003 & 2005, Feral Media planted a tree for every CD sold!
In 2007 the POWWOW series was launched with Jason Sweeney’s School Of Two project. The POWWOW series, designed as an agile 10-part CD release series, features the best of emerging Australian artists and completes in April 2010 with the final release by Sydney producer John Hassel from Seekae in his Vorad Fils persona. POWWOW has allowed Feral Media to take on inspiring new artists such as Cleptoclectics, Touch Typist, AFXJIM and Broken Chip.
A common element all Feral Media releases share is an adventurous spirit. Feral Media has always been more about a type of energy than any specific genre. Feral Media is drawn to invigorating artists and concepts that sometimes fall between the cracks, artists who are not so easily defined. While that may have made the job of marketing a little difficult at times, every release has stood the test of time, and is as fresh today as the day it was created.
Between 2010 – 2016 (and founder Danny Jumpertz’s re-location to New York City), Feral Media had one foot in the USA & the other in Sydney. From mid 2010 Stuart Buchanan (New Weird Australia) managed the label, and from mid 2011 to 2016 Greg Stone (Underlapper/Haunts) stepped up to manage the day to day running of the company.
Feral Media is currently managed by Greg Stone & Danny Jumpertz.
CONTACT FERAL MEDIA / SUBMIT MUSIC:
EMAIL: Greg: feralmedia.gs@gmail.com / Danny: danny@feralmedia.com.au
or submit via Soundcloud:
