A QUICK CHAT WITH KLUE

So tell us, how was ‘Coming Home’ brought to life?

It must have been a couple of years ago I was driving to Coledale, the little town near Wollongong where I spent my childhood and I just started singing bits of the song that come to me. I often sing when I’m walking or driving, something about movement seems to help. I had the idea return to me on a long flight and started production on the plane, but it was only more recently, inspired by the excitement of coming back to Australia for the summer season after the last year or so in Europe, that I really sat down with it and made it a song.

Literally the day before I submitted the track I showed it to my boy Harvey Grant (Kerala Dust / Puma Blue) and he was like ‘let’s put some Rhodes on it’, so next day we went into his studio and he nailed the keys in one take. I turned down some of my keys parts, mixed his in an all of a sudden everything just fell into place.

You definitely shine a light on Australia in this song. What are some of your favourite things about the country, and its music scene?

Apart from the sunshine (crucial life ingredient) it’s the people and the community I have here. Australia’s music scene manages to survive against the odds, with pretty ridiculous government impositions, a conservative mainstream culture that doesn’t understand or value music and arts, and yet the musicians, promoters, fans and supporters still manage to keep a scene alive that is actually really remarkable, and that stands up beside many of the world’s capitals, with out having world capital infrastructure. There are a lot of really passionate people here, working incredibly hard to make it work, I really respect and appreciate that. Being back this last week and catching up with so many people I haven’t seen in ages has been all-time.

I like the stories the verses explore, from where you are now in verse 1, to your upbringing and nostalgia trips in verse 2. Did these lyrics come easily and naturally, or did you have to dig deep to craft what you wanted to say with purpose?

I often find the majority of it flows and comes together pretty fast, but then there’s some little gaps that can take some real ‘work’ to tie up. On this one I was having trouble closing some of these, then one night I had some friends over at my place in Berlin and I put the draft of the instrumental on in the background. We were just hanging out having drinks and chatting, then every now and then I’d just start singing a section and by the end of the evening the song was finished. I think I work best when there are other people around.

Around the time of writing this I had had a few moments of realisation about what really affects me. In the same week I’d had a major bucket list moment, performing to a full house at Brixton Academy, and while I was in the greenroom before the show and received a message from an old friend back home saying that his kids wouldn’t get in car unless my record was playing and they had to listen to it on repeat all the way to school. At that moment I was so under slept and just wrecked from touring, and that totally lifted me.

I would never have guessed that Brixton Academy would be the second most memorable event that evening. It’s been an interesting learning experience. The journey is amazing, and I’m looking forward to more, but also, sometimes you’ve gotta go to the other end of the planet to fully fathom how good what you have at home really is.

Can you tell us about your plans for the rest of the year, and leading into 2020?

I’m really looking forward to the summer season here in Australia. The ‘Coming Home’ Tour kicks off next week with one of my favourites – Subsonic Music Festival. In between finishing off some new records (including some collabs I’m really excited about), I have solid plans to lie around on beaches with friends and eat lots of mangoes, the real serious business. As well as an Australia tour with True Vibenation, which we’ve just extended til March to do Womadelaide, then it’s back to Berlin to prepare for the European festival season, and another epic support tour that I’m not allowed to talk about yet.

KLUE 'COMING HOME' TOUR

Click to stream 'Coming Home'

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