I’m living in Perth at the moment, gigging around the place and recording music where I can.
Since I was a young child, maybe about 7 years old, I had this dream. I had this goal in life that I wanted to achieve. I had this vision of becoming a doctor or a lawyer. However, my parents insisted that instead of pursuing law or medicine, that I should get a real job, and start playing music on the streets. So I began to busk in Perth. After finishing high school, I moved to London where I busked in cool spots like Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. Busking there I met some amazing musicians, who really inspired me to pursue music and make something out of it.
During the summer, I like to return to the city of Perth and busk through the summer, so in between a few gigs here and there, that’s what I’ve mostly been up to recently. Other than that, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole the other day of free solo rock climbing, and the story of Alex Honnold. So I’ve been imagining how cool it would be to do that. But then I remember my crippling fear of heights, and my inability to rock climb, so I’ll stick to experiencing that through YouTube.
The idea with this music was to start with a cool song and dress it up in a lot of sound layers to make something unique and out there. Imagine starting with a Margherita pizza (the main skeleton of the song) and then deciding to spice it up by putting spaghetti bolognese on top. Weird, yes. But probably delicious. That’s the kind of thinking that inspired this song, a weird combination of musical flavours all blending together to create ‘Connected To Disconnection’.
I started with the music, I can’t remember if the drums or the guitar came first. But I had that and at that point it had a bit of a RHCP feel in my opinion. I sat with the instrumental for a few listens and one of the themes that popped into my head was our societal addictions to our phones. I feel like most of my generation (myself included) have become very absorbed in this virtual world brought about by smartphones. At the same time, our phones are an amazing thing that give us tools that in the past could not be dreamed of. So they’re extremely harmful in some ways, but extremely helpful in other ways. That’s part of what I was trying to capture in the lyrics when writing the song. Funnily enough, I wrote the lyrics on my phone!
I recorded/produced the track at my home studios with the assistance of copious amounts of coffee. I did a lot of editing on the sound by myself and then I took the song to Rob Grant, at Poons Head Studios who mixed and mastered the song for me. He gave me a lot of guidance as well with the arrangement of the track, and making all the sounds blend in and stand out at the same time.
I recorded everything several times (ALOT of takes) and then cut and pasted the best parts of each take to make the best possible take. I get carried away sometimes while recording and don’t take enough breaks, which is what I did while recording this song. I think that fatigue made me go into an almost zombie-like state of exhaustion, which I think added some of the vibe of the song. It’s meant to seem energetic and tired simultaneously. Like a zombie dancing erratically.
I wanted to express the music visually to go along with the song. I felt the best way to do this was with lights. I had two ideas for the music – fire flow artists or a cool lighting show. Me being my excessive self decided to go for both. I worked closely with the team to find a way to make this work and allow both aspects of the video to stand out.
I filmed the video with Ward Media, I had Orion Audio Visual doing the lighting and laser show and finally the amazing Shelby Jewel and Charlotte Noonan as the flow artists for the video.
And much more!
I don’t have much outside music, I usually shoot the breeze with friends and get up to whatever shenanigans arise. To me, who I’m with is more important than what I’m doing. I try to live my life surrounded by music as much as I can though, I want to dedicate my life to creating interesting and unique art, and sometimes that means sacrificing other fun adventures like travelling in order to hone in on my craft.
The end of the year gets quite hectic with gigs so I’m busy riding that out. Once 2023 comes around I’m looking to record a new album early in the year. I’ve also got some more songs ready to be released coming out on my debut EP.
Favourite food would need to be sushi. During the summer I like to busk, and I’ll go into a cycle of eating nothing but sushi during this time. Shout out to Sushi Hub in Perth City for fuelling my busking season. Another favourite place to go is Yelo or Canteen in Trigg, great spots. I’m actually writing this at Yelo right now.