Slingshot Touring & Events is the longest running hiphop concert promoter in Australia…. starting events in 1993 and then going national in 1995 Slingshot has been responsible for over100 international tours and shows across Australia.
The director and founder of Slingshot, Trent Roden started as a professional skateboarding and snowboarding photographer in the late 80s. During this time Trent consulted for brands and companies such as Quiksilver, Mistral, SNP, Wave Rave and many more….he helped to launch the professional snowboarding careers of many of Australia’s top snowboarders from the early to mid 90s.
Slingshot magazine was born out of the frustration and medicrity of the magazine business in Australia at the time. Slingshot Mag featured stories on skating, snowboarding, hiphop, politics, conspiracies and comedy mixed with regular controversial stories regularily calling out wackness and injustices.
Trent then met seminal Sydney hip-hop group Brethren and began to manage their career for a few years before discovering Sydney group MetaBass’n’Breath on the streets of Sydney and guiding the groups career to be the influence that its music and live show is still today.
in 1994 Trent and sydney MC/Producer Lionclub started Spooky Tricks to showcase local artists. Then in 1995 Trent was asked by Steve Pav (Modular) to tour manager the MoWax tour featuring DJ Shadow, Money Mark and James Lavelle across Australia. The success of The Mo Wax tour lead to Trent and Bevan Jee (DJ Sheep) touring DJ Q-Bert around Australia.
From that point Trent and Slingshot solidified itself as a full time promoter and promotions company specialising in bringing American underground and independent hip-hop to Australia and in helping to build the Aussie hip-hop scene introducing and running events such as The ITF DJ Battles, Urban-Xpressions hip-hop festival, Step Forward weekly hiphop club many other special events along the way.
Since 1995 Trent and Slingshot has toured over 100 interntaional artists to Australia including first tours for acts such as The Pharcyde, Tha Alkaholiks, Company Flow, Black Eyed Peas, Souls Of Mischief, Lupe Fiasco, Ghostface Killah, Ugly Duckling, MF DOOM, Blackalicious, Edan, Lyrics Born, Saul Williams, DJ Krush, Roots Manuva and many many more…In the music industry Trent has consulted on jobs for Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony Music, Channel V and has booked artists on some of Australia’s top music festivals such The Big Day Out, The Falls Festival, Pyramid Rock Festival, Park Life, Field Day, Spledour In The Grass, Good Vibrations, Sydney Festival and others…
Trent launched Eashot Music in 2003 releasing albums in Australia from artists such as Ugly Duckling, Edan, Diverse and People Under The Stairs.
Slingshot Asia was set in up to bring more acts to south east asia from America and Australia. So far Slingshot Asia has been responsible for shows in Asia with DMC (from RunDMC), DJ Z-Trip, DJ Premier, DJ Spooky, Blackalicious, Jessica Mauboy, Israel, Frente, Alphamama.
The future will see the launch of SlingshotTV, further growth of Slingshot Asia, the re-launch of Earshot Music, Aussie hip-hop artist representation and more concerts across Australia…
