Hi! “Frequency” marks your return after almost 4 years. Can you share what inspired you to make a comeback with this song?
A: Hey!! Yeah so I made the decision pretty much straight after writing Frequency. It had an energy I was really excited to share, I love the element of surprise and unpredictability and I hadn’t ever released a song like “Frequency” before, so I thought it’d be a bit unexpected.
The song “Frequency” seems to be a departure from your usual melancholy songwriting, featuring energetic electro beats and colourful synths. What prompted this shift in your musical style?
A: To be honest the shift in musical style came from what I started writing about and the perspective I was looking at events in my life from.
I write from a very personal place and attach a lot of real life emotions to each song. In the case of ‘Frequency’, a song that evokes nothing but happiness and excitement, there was no way it wasn’t going to have a high energy, colourful feel to it. I also saw it was a real opportunity to try something different.
The song is described as encapsulating the energy and emotion of finding someone on the same frequency. Can you share more about the personal experiences or thoughts that inspired this concept?
A: Haha yeah sure. So “Frequency” was written about when you’ve grown to know someone so well that you can be completely honest with them, neither of you have to try to be something you’re not, who you are is enough.
Actually, also I came up with the concept of using “frequency” as a metaphor for connection because I had just been listening to the radio in my car and for some reason it got distorted when I drove past a particular row of houses, it got me imagining the frequency coming from the houses were trying to communicate with my car, it kind of snowballed from there.
You’ve incorporated your passions for filmmaking and animation into the release of “Frequency” by creating a lyric and music video. Can you tell us more about the process of creating these videos and how they relate to the song?
A: Creating the videos for “Frequency” was a lot of fun. The music video started with me brainstorming the idea of 2 people on the same sound wave running to try and find each other. Once I had storyboarded how I wanted it to look, most of the making the video involved a lot of time of me either in front of a green screen running on the spot or sitting in front of computer editing the various scenes together.
For the lyric video I collected and edited together scenes from a series of old public domain animations (I think the oldest one was from 1864). I really enjoyed the idea of sharing old cartoons (someone’s art) that many maybe hadn’t seen before.
How does “Frequency” set the tone or give a taste of what to expect from your upcoming album?
A: I think in a lot of ways “Frequency” sets a really good tone for aspects of the album, both in its lyrical themes of connection and the high energy of its music. I will say though there are tracks on the album that go in a completely different direction sonically, but weirdly still some how fit on the same album as “Frequency”.
You’ve mentioned that experimenting and creating something new with your music toolkit was a freeing experience for you. Can you share more about this process and how it influenced the creation of “Frequency”?
A: Yeah I really enjoy finding ways to blend and borrow from different genres. A lot of my songs start off being written on an acoustic guitar, so I love letting my creativity go wild and see what new sounds I can come up with to take a song in a completely different direction. Its definitely a trial and error process though, sometimes I get a bit to ambitious and I lose the heart of the song, I think it’s important for me to find a balance and keep what I liked about the song when it was just on an acoustic guitar.
I did a lot of experimenting when creating ‘Frequency’. Actually this was a song that started just with the lyrics and vocal melody, so the possibilities were endless in my head. The sound of Frequency went through many versions, acoustic/folk, rock, funk, rave, but none were giving me the emotional sound I was looking for. Then one day I was watching Tv while playing around with the drum tracks on my computer (from the “rock” version of Frequency), I put a variety of effects on the different parts of the drum kit and it created this sonic rhythm pulse which I absolutely loved, I then had the idea to record the drums with the effects and then take the actual drums tracks out of the mix, leaving just this electronic percussive rhythm (like a frequency, pun intended haha), so this became the backbone of the version of Frequency I ended up creating.
How does “Frequency” reflect your growth and evolution as an artist during your 4-year hiatus?
A: I think “Frequency” really shows a more positive and defiant side to me as an artist and also as a person. As I mentioned before much of my previous musical releases were melancholy and emotionally heavy due to the nature of what the songs were about. Frequency is a great example of where I’m heading creatively and in life.
Your music is a combination of bedroom pop, dark ambient, and alternative folk. How do these genres influence your songwriting and the sound of “Frequency”?
A: I think the main way the combination of these genres influence my songwriting is they make me think about the emotion I’m wanting to convey musically. Like if the lyrics were taken out, how would the instrumental track make me feel.
I reckon the sound of “Frequency” was influenced by these genres, mostly by the way I structured the the song, I have these low/dark haunting ambient synths (which when isolated, sound like they more belong in a horror film score) playing repetitively through out the whole song echoing, almost fighting against these high energy pop rhythms, but then also the centre of all the chaos is these lyrics which easily could be from a folk song (I actually even play it live as a folk sometimes, it usually ends up turning the gig into a campfire sing along).
Finally, what do you hope listeners will take away from “Frequency”?
A: What I want listeners to take away from “Frequency” is that not every person is going to understand or accept you for who you are, but don’t ever change to fit in coz one day you’ll find that person/people that are on your same frequency.