The Systemaddicts on finding success from Adelaide

In an instantly connected world, The Systemaddicts know you can still choose to live and work in a place where everyone is happy to see you.

This article was produced in collaboration with the Government of
South Australia's New State of Mind.

How does the local community and environment shape The Systemaddicts’ ethos?
The local scene offers the comfort of knowing you’re going to play to a crowd where there’s at least a handful of people who are going to be really happy to see you play. Without friendly, supportive environments I’m not sure if we’d still be around, because to keep your spark alive after almost 15 years, the gigs need to be really rewarding. We’ve always had the local music community at heart when recording and performing. Liam isn’t writing songs to appeal to an imaginary audience, it’s just for us and the people at our shows.

We are always excited when we discover an Adelaide band who’s playing music that might suit being on a bill with us one day. I hope we leave other musicians we share time with feeling good about themselves and the value of their creative endeavours.

Remarks

South Australia is a New State of Mind – a home for those who want to live and work with a deeper purpose.
For more information, see here.

This article first appeared in CityMag’s 2023 Festival Edition, on streets now.
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What is it like trying to reach a global audience from South Australia?
For our latest album, Red Desert Rain, the small record label in Melbourne went under during the pandemic just as we were trying to get our album pressed with them. Luckily, we got our pressings in and I decided to work on the international marketing myself – sending download codes and even physical copies to everyone I could find who’d review our albums or played our songs on their shows before. It was a bit of an awkward process as most people were surprised to hear from a band member sending them links to music from the other side of the world. But it worked, and we got some more good feedback and our online plays keep going up despite no other promotion so it’s good to know people out there are having a listen to our music, whoever they are.

Any scheduled gigs or other projects on the horizon?
We don’t have any gigs booked at the moment as we’ve just played a little string, but keep an eye out for some shows over winter and for a release late this year.