Now Always Fades
Into The Doldrums
After releasing four albums under his Sonny Ism alias, the Melbourne singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and mix engineer Xavier Bacash flips the script and starts again with the debut album 'Into The Doldrums' from his new project, Now Always Fades, due for release through his Northern Underground Records label.
Recorded in the wake of returning to Australia with his family after spending seven years in Copenhagen and Stockholm, Into The Doldrums sees Bacash building on the beautifully melancholic downtempo, deep house, and synth-pop sensibilities he's explored as Sonny Ism. Inspired by The Durutti Column, Massive Attack, and Everything But The Girl, the album sees him painting shades of post-punk, ethereal pop, trip-hop and street soul into nine aesthetically consistent songs. From the early morning ambience of 'Into The Doldrums' to the heaving breakbeat soul of 'Close To Greatness' and the sundown strut of 'A Pain I Used To Feel', Into The Doldrums unfolds with the logic of a hazy, sunkissed daydream.
Although Bacash has served as the primary voice on his Sonny Ism albums in the past, this time around, he opened things up, inviting fellow Melbourne-based vocalists Lili Hall, previously from the experimental group Squaring Circles and Tilly Vickers-Willis, to join him in his process across most of the record. "The creative rationale of NAF has been to create an opportunity for me to investigate where my songwriting can go whilst collaborating with other vocalists and learning from their process too," he says. "It's opened up new possibilities and realms of artistic creation which I couldn't reach with my own vocals, whether we're that's lyrically, tonally or in regards to inflections in vocal delivery. Its also quite Darwinian as a process because, sometimes as an artist you can write a song that you love, but at times be forced to sing on it yourself because its for your output, but really it would suit someone else's voice better".
Through recording Now Always Fades, Bacash unlocked the template for what he sees as the next stage in his musical journey. "I like the idea that in the future, although I might be the common denominator as the artist, I can keep working with a changing landscape of vocalists to keep the listener guessing as they work through the music - kind of like how a director approaches their films," he explains.
| LP | Northern Underground Records: NU007 | upcoming |
