STACK #166 Aug 2018

MUSIC NEWS

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TOURING 7+13/10 (Lost Picnic Festival)

movie: there’s three different sections of that song that could be three different parts for three different movies. Harvest Love contains the mega-truthful lyric: “The unfed mind devours itself.” Have you experienced this phenomenon yourself, or do you more often see evidence of it in others? I think you see evidence of it all around you. You go through periods of your life where you’re not nurturing yourself and your surroundings – maybe physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. If you’re not nourishing your own garden, it’s just gonna grow weeds, get out of control and get messy. Then you’re gonna have this unkept garden that could be nice and lovely, but it takes time and care and work to get yourself to that point, and I see that in myself sometimes. I also see it in people I really care about, and then I see it in people I don’t really give a sh-t about. You don’t begin singing until a good three minutes into Blackbird (which is nine-and- a-half minutes long all up). Do you think of this as an extended intro, or do you envision the guitar as just as worthy a storyteller as your voice? I say that I am a guitarist who became a singer, not a singer who became a guitarist. I like to let my guitar to do most of the talking ‘cos that’s my first instrument, and that’s what I did before I even started singing. I wrote that song when I was 16 actually. I’ve had live versions of it and I’ve grown up with that song, and I thought it really needed to be done in a studio. The instrument part is quite difficult

TASH SULTANA Wondrous one-woman band Tash Sultana tells us all about the making of her incandescent debut album, Flow State .

Improvisation is such a huge part of your style. When you’re recording something like Big Smoke (which appeared in two parts on Notion EP ), which elements of the original piece do you feel you need to be faithful to so that the resulting track still, in your mind, deserves the same title? To be honest, if you played me my Notion EP and I

(with the first and last matching). Did you consider separating these slices into their own tracks? I was just jamming one day and figured out this progression, and added this real simple percussion to it. I’ve played it so many different ways: sometimes I play it with trumpet in it, sometimes saxophone. I play

it live and it’s different every time. It wasn’t actually that long, and when I got it into the studio I realised that it needed several different parts to remain interesting and moody. I specifically wrote that song as I want someone to pick it up for a

I'll just do 150 guitar solos, one after the other, until I get the one I like – which is usually the first or second take

heard those two live tracks, they weren’t really songs – they were just something I used to jam when I was busking. I separated them into Big Smoke 1 and 2

‘cos I didn’t really know how to form those songs. But it’s not really two songs anymore; it’s just the one now that

to get right; it took me nine days. We just kept it to one verse and a chorus, and let the guitar do the speaking. It feels like something people did more of maybe 10 or 20 years ago, and I love that sh-t. ZKR

has formed itself, and makes so much more sense. The longer I played it over and over on the live stage, the more it made sense to me, and it got merged into one track. The studio version is how I’ve been playing it live now, and it feels much better that way. I think in the past it’s just been more of an experiment. When recording, do you ever digitally chop parts of guitar solos together and connect them to make the best possible solo, or are you completely loyal to the on-the-fly method even in the studio? chopping stuff – it makes the song not so authentic, if you keep chopping and comping bits together. I’ll just do 150 guitar solos, one after the other, until I get the one I like – which is usually the first or second take. Seven has four very distinct sections to it No f-cking way. I like doing it on the fly. I don’t really like to do that

Flow State by Tash Sultana is out August 31 via Sony.

PRE-ORDER FLOW STATE & WIN Pre-order Flow State by 30/8/18 for your chance to win this buttercream Fender Player Stratocaster signed by Tash Sultana. Head to jbhifi.com.au for details.

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AUGUST 2018

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