HARMONY BYRNE INTERVIEW| PYRAMID ISLAND| 29.06.17

Harmony Byrne’s extraordinary vocal talent and soaring live performances have been generating a steady buzz around Victoria for the past two years. This week she’s primed to support Sarah Blasko on her first solo tour to Tasmania, along with a headline show with Festival of Voices on the back of the release of her debut single Demise. Harmony spoke with Amanda Van Elk about the process of writing and recording her first single. 

A- Demise is a certainly a powerful debut single, your vocal experimentation is reminiscent of Clare Torry's famous solo in Pink Floyd’s The great gig in the sky. How did you manage to allow enough space for that level of natural vocal experimentation to come through in your writing? 

H- It started as a piece that I would perform as a poem in between songs. When I wrote Demise it had this freeform chapter to it and there was so much room for it to be filled with powerful words and concepts. So I started with playing around with spoken word and it kind of escalated and had that natural progression so that every time I performed it we’d get a little bit louder or a little bit more playful. That vocal part really just kind of came out of me at one point in time.

A- Was there a particular moment in your life that served as a catalyst for penning Demise? 

H- Definitely. It was 2012 and I was listening to The Doors’ An American Prayer every night for a couple of months before I moved to Berlin. One night I just started writing those freeform words and they flowed. I had these words sitting there for 5 years and started writing Demise around them last year and it all just fluttered straight in. 

A- Can you tell us a bit about how the recording process unfolded with Joseph Fairburn in the forests of Selby in Victoria?

H- The house I recorded in is one I lived in during 2013. It was a huge holding space for me to do a lot of healing when I was going through some pretty dark places. I’ve always returned to this home as a place of solace and grounding. So when we decided to record Demise I couldn't really think of a better place to record my first release with the band. Actually the first day we tracked the song I had been up two nights before coughing and I’d had no sleep. I was completely dishevelled and just about to play a gig that night and it was all a bit much. The group were like “Let’s just track it, let’s just see how we go”. We hadn’t even played that day as a band and were just sitting all together in this lounge room. When we started recording together the light began shining through these huge glass windows. We just breathed in breathed in, breathed out, gave it all we had. 

A- Was there a little magic in the room that day?

H- Yeah, a little bit of magic and I think because we thought “Oh we probably won’t use this take but let’s give it a go” I’d taken the pressure off myself to give it everything and so I was able to actually deliver a natural, effortless, more honest representation of the song.

A- I’ve seen you perform live a couple of times and that energy that you channel into your performances is powerful. What do you find contributes the most to putting on an amazing show each time you perform? 

H- I really enjoy doing absolutely nothing before a show. Just really taking the day to enter the space of performing. If I’m playing solo usually that just means spending the day with myself, doing as much as I feel like doing, or as little. And when I play with a band I find it really important to spend the day together just hanging out and discussing what’s going on in our lives. That’s probably what prepares me for performing. I think it’s just about allowing myself to honour the space I’m about to explore on the stage but also not focus on it. Not rehearsing over and over again throughout the day. Just being really silent with it and preparing in that visualising, meditative way. I’ve found so many times that it’s when I’ve had inspiring conversations with my band about our lives and about our ideals, not necessarily about the gig we’re about to play, that that’s when I find the magic. 

A- Your single Demise is out now on Soundcloud, and your live single launch is happening on the 3rd of August in at the B.East in Melbourne. Do we know how long it will be until your full album is released? 

H- We’ll have to wait and see with the full album. Recording to tape can be a bit of a longer process than recording digitally and I’m hoping to record most of it live as well. So yes, it’s in the works and we’re hoping for a release before the end of the year!

Harmony Byrne plays Voicebox at Hobart City Hall this Friday July 7th and supports Sarah Blasko at The Theatre Royal, Hobart on July 12th with Festival of Voices. The Demise live single launch is on August 3rd at The B.East, Melbourne.

-Amanda Laver