I’m pretty obsessed with how technology intercepts nature. I know there is generally a sentiment that tech has degraded our quality of experience, but I don’t see it. Unless you’re not leaving the house and peeing yourself so you don’t stop playing your game, I think it’s cool. Especially during Covid lockdown, which in Melbourne was 262 days of house arrest in total, the only connection we had to other humans outside our homes was online or on the phone. Kids could only play online together to socialise. Broadly speaking though, I love the juxtaposition between natural and synthesized states and how there is a symbiosis and clash there. Like how tech is being used for cleaner energy sources but we’re only requiring that cos our over-consumption of everything is threatening our existence.
Personally speaking, Bluetooth Breakdown was my way of encapsulating the relationship I have with those intersections. I often use tech in my art practice as a shield cos I’m shy, but my songwriting process is very organic and intuitive, and there's a balance for me in the dichotomy. The EP also represents my headspace over that period, where so many huge things happened in my life, most while in the stasis of lockdown. I lost 5 people I loved so much over a couple of years, and grieving their deaths while trying to keep my shit together was, and still is, a confusing process.
In your latest single, "Light Shines Down," there’s a calming, almost meditative quality. Can you talk about the inspiration behind this track and what you hope listeners take away from it?
I think I write calm songs when I’m stressed. I remember not feeling great about things when I made Light Shines Down, but communicating that and formalising it in song would feel like a nail in the coffin, so I chose to focus on something beautiful instead. My partner has this amazing way of regulating my nervous system just by existing and I wanted to make a song about him and just about finding love in general. Whether it’s platonic or romantic, finding people who you can’t imagine life without knowing them is a beautiful thing.
Can you share more about your process of blending minimalist alt-RnB, trip-hop, and sample-based hip-hop production in this EP? What challenges or discoveries did you encounter?
I love the hunt and piecing together various sounds, which always starts off so chaoticly for me. I love how I can hear what will go well in my head before I can actually hear it, and I love how it feels when it falls into place.
I play keys so I don’t always use samples for the melodic parts, which I usually write after a vocal melody has been sorted, but sometimes I go the other way. Like Perspective and Stay a While were all samples besides the vocals. Actually, so was Anthesis I think. I love the puzzle of production. I always try to go into production and songwriting with a clear head and no agenda and just go where I go. It’s such a different head space to writing vocal melodies and lyrics, which is very intuitive and cathartic. I have the same clear head space but I’m listening and accessing parts of myself that need to come out rather than searching for things outside to make my own.
I struggle with the switch-up between brain function when I’ve been in production mode and I switch back to writing vocal melodies and lyrics. I struggle even more with the switch-up with animating cos it’s such a different playing field and the coded language and tech systems use another part of my brain that feels more logical than creative. I can be slow to transition between those frames of thinking which makes things a bit sluggish at first for me.
"Bluetooth Breakdown" feels deeply personal. Were there any tracks that were particularly challenging or cathartic to create?
They all are but maybe Anthesis was the most so. I was processing the death of a friend and the terminal illness of another close friend and I was so sad. I usually try not to allow myself to feel things that are too painful, which has sent me spiralling in all kinds of self-destructive directions in the past, but this time I sat in the fucked-upness of it all and let myself be whatever I was. And in that space, I realised there's a beauty even in the hardest goodbyes. I got to love someone so much that I could feel so insanely lost in their absence, and the reality that these amazing people loved me back made me feel so fortunate. I came through to a new understanding and acceptance of them leaving, and life itself, and how fleeting and amazing it is. Anthesis is about that and the moment I could crawl out of the hole I was in.
You’ve collaborated with an impressive array of artists, from Funkstörung to Joelistics. How have these collaborations shaped your sound, and did any influence your solo work on "Bluetooth Breakdown"?
