The story of the label's ascension is not characterised by the same exponential success experienced by other prominent names getting around these days, but in their own humble way, the collective has achieved much in the meantime.

If anything, a gradual accumulation of esteem and thus attention is the manner in which things have transpired. Traksewt (Kenny Sabir) kindly set aside some time to discuss a little history as The Herd's 10th Anniversary tour approaches.

"I started Elefant Traks in 1998 but I soon realised it was a lot of work so I enlisted a bunch of friends. For the first compilation, some of the people on there I had never actually even met at the time of release. It was sliding a CD under the door type of stuff. I think that was Richie (Sulo), I didn’t meet him."

The Elefant Traks founder soon became very familiar with the inevitable dichotomy of being a musician running a record label.

"After a while I realised I was getting more entrenched in the admin stuff which is not really where I wanted to be. Tim (Urthboy) was getting trained up on the business side of the operation and he was really keen to play a more prominent role, he was showing a lot of excitement about it. I cut it off by going away for a year travelling and Tim took over in the meantime. When I came back I worked with him for a bit longer but I moved on to other work. I still meet up with them regularly to talk about boring stuff like the GST."

Interspersed in Elefant history is a number of migrations to the Central Coast with the intention of writing music for The Herd’s now numerous albums.

"We decided to go up the coast to get back to the music and get away from the administration side of things. Previously we had been putting together compilations such as ‘Cursive Writing’. So what happened up the coast was just non-stop collaboration. The songs evolved out of five people standing around with various input towards what was coming out of the speakers. With that sort of set up, it’s instantly recognisable whether people are vibing on beats or not.”

The Herd celebrate their tenth anniversary with a show at The Zoo April 8. Next week’s issue will feature part two of the Elefant story.