STACK #197 Mar 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

Combining technically brilliant practice with dreamy sonic ideas that seem to span the subterranean to the astral,Tash Sultana's second album Terra Firma will pop your head clean off.We spoke to the singer- songwriter about the lush new tracks. Words Zoë Radas

VEG-OUT Tash let their garden overgrow at the end of winter as they've (understandably) got “too much stuff to do” right now, but they're pumped to get back into the fold come 12 months time. Get out your journal and pen down Tash's tips. “I live on 10 acres and there is a veggie garden that is completely north-facing, so you get the sun from the east to the west at all times of the day,” they explain. “There are eight garden beds that I've built, and an irrigation system where they go off on a timer at 6am and again in the middle of the day. There are people that are super- pro at it, and I’m not, but I can grow stuff. If you’re going to grow tall things like corn, you put them at the back so that they don't cast a shadow over the rest of your stuff. Companion planting as well – some things cannot go together and others can, and others are a natural insect and pest repellent. Mainly it is your care, but it is also just hit and miss. I suck at tomatoes, but my passionfruit vine is thriving.”

O nce Tash Sultana has picked a “nice sunny spot” for our phone interview, the first port of call is a straight-up congratulations on reaching the shortlist in this year’s Vanda &Young songwriting competition. Turns out that’s news to them. “I didn’t actually know that,” they chuckle, “so... thanks!” As to whether there’ll be any sort of knees-up, Tash meets the question with the same creamy chill as they received the news. “I’m not the celebratory type,” they say simply. “I don’t make a big deal of stuff – I never have.” From the home-recorded, loop-pedal- heavy Jungle video and Notion EP which slung the then-busker into stardom in 2016, through 2018’s debut LP Flow

State and now second record Terra Firma , Tash’s music has always encouraged reflection on time. If you consider

that way, hey: I’m all about the jam. I just write, record, and release if I feel like it.” And they don’t always feel like it. Case in point: Pretty Lady comes from some of the oldest seedlings to populate Terra Firma , Tash having written it six or seven years ago. “I didn’t think it was good enough to release, so I just didn’t,” they say. “Then when I did a ten-day writing session with Matt [Corby] and Dann [Hume] – just to have fun, really, there was nothing ever said about anything [getting] used on the record – I said, ‘I’ve got this song, but I think it’s a bit wanky, and I don’t know if I want to release it.’ I played it to them and they were like, ‘Well, you’re an idiot.’ So it all fell together with the parts that I was a little bit stuck on.” If you watch the ‘Studio Jam Version’ of the song on YouTube – featuring Tash’s famed lo-fi split-screen approach featuring themselves playing each part – you can see Tash’s obvious enjoyment in operating every instrument. Bass, however, sticks out: Tash’s baseball-capped head bops so deeply in time to the bass groove, it’s hard to even catch

I've got so much going on in my brain at all times, literally all the time, every moment of the day. So I write it down

the craft of music as time- based art, or ‘decorating’ time (as opposed to space-based art, like a sculpture), then Tash’s repeated lyrical themes of being present take

on a new form. The track which made the Vanda & Young shortlist – the serenely propulsive Pretty Lady , from new album Terra Firma – even underlines the idea in its chorus lyrics: “Where you goin’ so fast?/ Try to make the moment last.” But Tash doesn’t view this artform- and-message echo in any codified way. “I have never, ever, ever thought about it like that,” they say. “I don’t think about it as savouring [a] moment, I think about it as present moment. Generally, it’s moreso in performance. I suppose anything recorded, you timestamp as a moment, as a recorded piece of art. But I just don’t think about it

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