In the studio...

Three of us stood in MESS's mustard kitchen. General Manager, Xavier. Co-Founder and Creative Director, Robin Fox. And yours truly, each cupping a piping tea, too hot to drink.

"Come over and sing a note," kicking us off for the morning, Robin placed his mug on the steel benchtop and ushered me over to the island of instruments, floating in the centre of the space. Angling a corded microphone my way, he offered again, "sing a note." Having spent the last few decades keeping singing strictly for solo car rides, I sang a measly C (I think).

"Oh okay," Robin returned. With slightly flushed cheeks, Robin gave a "try again."

"BooOOOoooh," once more, I sang (with gusto) into the mic.

"Ah ha! There's our problem."

Surveying the benchtop, Robin flicked a small switch from "off" to "on", causing a mellow drone to play from nearby speakers. Before I could try for a third time, Robin tapped the enter key, held the mic towards his chin, palmed his beard, and— in what could only be described as scrubbing the hairs over the head of the mic —exclaimed, "sometimes I like to sample my beard." A cacophony of melodic scratches fed into the machine, and without moving an inch, I watched him scale up his scratchy sample.

And I just stood there, watching. My mouth agape, all I could think was, "this is so f*cking cool."

After hairs were sampled and my debut was over, we stepped into the rest of the tour. Machines from around the world circled the space. Some stacked, some on wheels, some with cords, some with keys, some with screens. And in the corner, encased in glass, a tape embossed with hundreds of perfectly spaced dots. Noticing my intrigue, Robin jumped in: "that tape is the earliest example of electronic music, and it was created here in Australia."

I spun around instantly. "What would you estimate the age of all these machines combined? If this one's from the '70s and is fifty-odd years old, what do you think the total would be of all the machines at MESS?"

Robin paused, running the archive through his mind. "At least a millennium."

The Time

Having spent only a morning with Robin and Xavier, it quickly became clear that this idea of time was so central to MESS.

• The time taken to create and learn how to play the instruments
• The time given to young people to build an enriched life through music
• The time held in the archive of machines inhabiting the space

It seems obvious, but time is so layered in the world of music. There's the time taken to learn, to practice, to listen. With each combination of sounds comes a set of memories, only unlocked when you decide to press play again, and again.

I like to imagine music as almost a tesseract-shaped black hole, living through endless combinations of notes, instruments and moments. It spans generations, cultures, communities, individuals, theatres, bedrooms, garages, stages. It lives stuffed in quiet pockets on mixtapes or iPod Nanos, once on CD stands at your local Sanity, or in that vinyl shop you stumbled upon a while back. It lives in carrying your instrument from one place to another - the hours of setting up, tuning in, playing to a crowd, waiting for the applause. Then it's there again when you walk off the stage and beginning once more - to practice.

There's a beauty in the friction that music brings. While everything else in our lives keeps getting faster, there's no speeding up this gnarly, hard-earned, experience of a life dedicated to making music. Even for those who are lifetime listeners, toe-tappers or hummers, and even for those who lack a little tone or sense of rhythm - the enjoyment remains. Here time and music continue to dance in unison.