A message from Will:
Dear friends,
I am writing to you back on home soil and within a dramatic 35-40º drop in temperature from our previous Antipodean dwellings. I’ve got my coat on indoors, in other words. But that’s okay. Part of the fun of tour has been switching between wildly different climates, seeking out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before…
Over the last two years we’ve (‘we’ being myself, Andy, George and at times Brana and Dan) been stringing together dates all over the globe (apart from South America – one day we hope!!) to perform sets built from two albums released in quick succession.
Although TOTAL STRIFE FOREVER came out in January 2014, the lion’s share of work on the album was mostly completed back in August 2012 and then the sessions for CULTURE OF VOLUME – which came out in April 2015 – started immediately after that. This is why the two albums came out so close to each other, but in actuality about two years worth of work was done on each before they were ready for wider consumption. As such, these periods of creativity and promotion have fed and bled into each other to the point where I find it hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. I’ve been to so many places and met so many people in this time that it’s hard to truly comprehend and remain calm about it. So perhaps it’s time for a break.
We’ve no more shows planned, now that the brilliant Laneway Festival tour is over, and I’ve taken the decision to keep it that way for the foreseeable future. I have nothing new to offer on stage right now and I want to go away for a while and think about how to repurpose my work for new audiences and to create new challenges for myself. I don’t mind being honest with you in saying that I have mixed feelings about how the last year has gone. There are plenty of things I would change about some of the things that I’ve done, but ultimately I’m glad that I am able to sit here with this perspective now and see how that may shape what I end up doing next. There seems to be a pressure on artists to consistently offer up very definitive gestures and make large sweeping statements with each release. We are not faultless and we shouldn’t pretend to be. The music world especially is often not an environment that allows the artist to be critical of their own work and learn from it, and so it’s important that – when necessary – we can throw up our hands and say “Sure. It didn’t work. Let’s try something else.” Making mistakes is the job of the artist, for this is where the growth occurs, and so a break for me is imperative to take stock of where I think or I’ve been shown to have gone wrong. I need to be out of the headspace and the suit-space of EIY for a while, to learn about myself again, and I’m keen to do some work with others in the meantime (get in touch if you have any good ideas).
I’d like to thank Andy and George for being there at every step of the way of the tour and for their immensely hard work ethics and unbounded sense of fun and adventure that has brought great colour to the touring life at every juncture. We had a great time at Laneway Festival last week and so I’d also like to thank the great friends we made out there, namely Shamir and his wonderful band and crew, Majical Cloudz who consistently broke my heart (in a good way), CHVRCHES & crew for having us support them on their off-shows in Sydney & Melbourne, the irrepressible Kirin J Callinan, the guys in Japanese Wallpaper and many others of the stellar line-up. Of course a huge thanks is extended to the rest of the hard working Laneway Festival crew and organisers for one of the most pleasurable touring experiences we’re ever likely to have. Go out on a high.
We’ll be keeping these channels fairly quiet from here on until new ideas and work starts to surface. Thank you so much for the support you’ve given since the start and I hope I can offer you something new and exciting in the near future.
Love,
William
