A QUICK CHAT WITH QUIET BLUE

QUIET BLUE ON HIS DEBUT ALBUM, TRANSIENT SYNDROME, AND PARTNERSHIP WITH MAJESTIC CASUAL

Quiet Blue is a name that has existed in the Australian electronic landscape for some time. His debut album, “A Million Miles”, is a venture of serendipity. The title alone evokes a sense of boundless distance; emotional, physical, and existential - reflecting a journey that is at once personal yet universally relatable. It is in that contradiction the essence of this project flourishes. For Quiet Blue, this distance is not just metaphorical; it's the lived experience of navigating a world that often feels fleeting and elusive. 

He speaks of “transient syndrome,” a self-diagnosed and personally coined condition that colours his perception of time and place, leaving him untethered and adrift to the present. This sensation of dislocation is discussed further in track 7 of the same name as the album’s title, a narrative thread that pulls listeners into a space where the familiar slips through your fingers, and the self is constantly in flux.

For years, Quiet Blue self-admittedly moved through his career as an artist without a clear sense of direction; writing, releasing, and moving on. It wasn’t until he hit a creative breaking point, teetering on the edge of abandoning music altogether, that he found the clarity to craft “A Million Miles” and release it with the help of Majestic Casual. Stripping away the pressures of output and expectation, he rediscovered why he began making music in the first place. Join us as we chat with Nic Georgiou (pka; Quiet Blue), about his debut album, his personal journey through creative disillusionment, and how his label Majestic Casual, management team at Submerse, and label mate and long-time friend Dugong Jr., played pivotal roles in crafting and releasing the record.

"A Million Miles" as an album title captures a feeling of vast distance, both emotionally and physically. It suggests a journey of some form. Can you talk to this and how this title represents the record as a whole?

I have a self diagnosed condition that I call “transient syndrome”. I can’t quite remember when this set in but I think life just moves too fast for me. I go through whole days or weeks even where I almost come to my senses in different situations that I don’t remember being in. This transience leaves me feeling like I don’t always recognise the world I find myself in. In the track “A Million Miles” from which the album earned its name I talk about life moving me a million miles away every day. This feeling is deeply central to how I co this album and it’s the glue holding it all together.

A debut album is a defining moment in any artist's career. What made this the right time for you to commit to such a significant body of work, and why was it important for you to release your first full-length record at this particular stage of your artistic journey?

So far in my journey as an artist before this album, I don’t know if I can say I ever really had a vision for my project. I’ve always finished a song, liked it, released it, and then moved on to the next which I think has stumped my ability to fully realise my music as an artistic outlet. A couple of years ago, I was in an “almost quit music” sort of rut. I wasn’t writing anything I liked, I wasn’t even really enjoying music anymore but I decided to take the pressure off myself and simplify things. I thought deeply about why I wanted to make music in the first place and so was born this album. This felt like the right time to release an album because these songs don’t exist in a vacuum, they are all related thematically and tell one story from different angles.

You’ve previously described your writing process as capturing feelings from the world around you rather than simply just your personal anecdotal experiences. Could you share how this process has been either upheld through the creation of this album or has shifted?

That is completely true, I have always written my music almost like stories rather than writing about myself or my own experience. I actually made a concerted effort to do the exact opposite in this project. I feel like I fell into my rut with music because I just didn’t know what I was talking about half the time. I used this album as a vessel to talk to myself and express how I am feeling so in a lot of ways this is the most personal project I’ve worked on so far.

Artwork - “A Million Miles” by Quiet Blue

Your album delves deeply into the complexities of relationships. Can you explain how relationships, whether between others or your own, have shaped the emotional landscape of the record?

I think there are two angles to emotional complexity in this album. Firstly there is the exploration of my own emotions and how they are impacted by the world around me and these songs feel very much in the realm of the darker feeling sounds that have been common in previous releases. What makes this work so fun for me though, is the impact that my relationship with my partner has had on my recent music. Coming up on 5 years now, I finally opened myself up to writing music about us and actually having fun with it. Songs like “If You Don’t Mind Me” and “Water’s Edge” are filled with this warm energy that I don’t think I have been able to find in my writing until now so it’s so exciting to be able to explore both of these influences. 

Electronic music often blurs the line between the organic and the synthetic, much like the way relationships navigate the tension between connection and isolation. In what ways do you think the sonic landscapes of electronica reflect the emotional complexities of human relationships?

I think the beauty of Electronica is that you have so much freedom to build emotion through the relationship between sonic aspects of a song. I've found I can almost tell the story of a song through the instrumentation and arrangement just as effectively as I can with lyrics which has given me so much freedom in this project to take the listener on a sonic journey. I think this is the case because much like human relationships, there is a way you can build sonic arrangements that feel innately at ease and in sync and just as easily, sounds and textures can clash with each other to create a dissonant feeling. This is a really interesting question because I had actually never thought about making music like this but if I look at the project, I can really see this play out in reality. “If You Don't Mind Me” for example is a sappy love song about my partner, if you listen to this from start to finish, the arrangement and instrumentation just floats along from section to section, and I blend the synthetic sounds in with the piano and vocals to create harmony amongst the accompaniment. Contrast this to a song like “State We're In”, where I go into my feelings about the destructive state of the world and how we treat each other; the electronic instrumentation is so harsh and jarring, that I think you could discern the emotions I am trying to convey without knowing the lyrics. 

Can you tell us the story of how your partnership with Majestic Casual came to be for your debut album? It feels right at home on the label considering its history.

Gosh, where do I begin, I think I had my first run in with Majestic Casual when I was about 15!! I don’t think I had even properly listened to electronic music yet (I was a folk/ jazz boy growing up). I heard a Snakehips remix of Wanderlust on their YouTube channel and this became a very important stage in my formation as an electronic artist. Fast forward 11 years, my manager at Submerse Music had a contact at Majestic as they had worked previously with my good friend Dugong Jr and we thought let’s just show them the album even if it’s to get some feedback. Within a week we had heard from the team that they wanted to sign the album and we went from there :)

We've seen previews and glimpses of an upcoming music video on your Instagram. Who is the team involved in bringing the visual world to life and can you tell us a story from the day?

I worked with the stunning team at Head Girl productions for my upcoming music video. I have a personal relationship with the endlessly talented Harry Brakha and passed on all of my music to him; instantly he jumped at Water’s Edge and we decided this would be the perfect song for a music video. I won’t give too much about the video away but what really struck me on the day was how fun the experience was. I don’t mean this in a bad way but I don’t think my music has ever been that ‘fun’ but Harry and the team had a clear vision of where they wanted the video to go and I was so surprised at how much fun we all had on set!!

When you think about the music you release as Quiet Blue, such as your debut album, are there any local artists or creative forces within your community that you feel have directly inspired the output of this album?

I have to call out local legend Dugong Jr here. Dylan and I are great friends and have cultivated an amazing working relationship. Over the past couple of years I have learnt so much from working with Dylan and seeing his creative process. His influence hasn’t just affected my approach to music creation but also is deeply ingrained in the sonic approach to the whole album. Every track was mixed by him and he had a strong hand in a few of them on the production side.

We look forward to more Quiet Blue in the near future. What's next for the Quiet Blue project beyond the release of the debut album? Any tour plans or further music output on the horizon?

For me, the most important thing in the near future is my live presence! It has been so long since I have been able to share a room with people to express my music so this is my number one priority. I’ll be playing an album launch at the Gaso on the 4th of October and will also be opening for Tora at 170 Russell on November 29th which has got me sooooo excited. Ultimately, I plan to sneak in a gig up in Sydney asap so keep your ears peeled!!

Be sure to catch Quiet Blue at The Gasometer on the 4th of October for the album launch of “A Million Miles” and at 170 Russell supporting Tora. Ticket links below

TICKETS - A MILLION MILES ALBUM LAUNCH
TICKETS - TORA SUPPORTED BY QUIET BLUE