Exclusive: Interview with Andie Isalie

Andie Isalie is an Austrailian singer/songwriter with a massive amount of talent. We were lucky enough to get the chance to talk to her about her EP and musical influences and here’s what she had to say!

 Who is your biggest musical influence, and why?

This is such a difficult question because so many artists influence me in different aspects of my music.

I take heaps of inspiration from Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote for vocal technique with expression and tone, and I look to artists like Lianne la Havas for guitar technique as well as vocal work.
Jamie Cullum is also another huge musical inspiration for me, for coming back to his approach to jazz music in relation to popular music.

What is your favourite instrument to play, again why?

My favourite instrument is my voice.

I have the most faith in my voice, I can be confident that with my voice I can improvise and jam with almost anything, and singing can be such incredible passionate release whether it be for happiness or sadness.

What is your favourite thing about YouTube? And your worst?

My favourite thing about YouTube would have to be that it’s so accessible. Anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection can view and share their own original content. It’s because of this platform that artists like myself can build up a fan base so easily and on such mass scale. It’s amazing.

My least favourite thing about YouTube is that it is owned as a massive corporation, where there is minimum transparency for people like myself at a grass roots level.

A lot of the inner workings of YouTube are centred around money and are easily manipulated. I really dislike that independent content creators are kept in the dark about a lot of the finer details.

Is there any musicians you would love to work with?

There are LOADS of musicians I would love to work with. Maaaan where do I start. Stevie Wonder – the man is a funk and soul GOD.

Jamie Cullum I would love to work with as well, Hozier, Gregory Porter, Allen Stone oh my gosh I forgot about Allen Stone daamn.

Could you describe yourself in three words?

Charismatic, intuitive, relaxed.

Do you have a favourite song?

I have so MANY. I add to the list every day. Right now, I’ve got ‘Back Pocket’ by Vulfpeck stuck in my head.

What would you say to people who are thinking about starting YouTube?

Don’t hesitate!

Get stuck in, even if you don’t have a plan for the long-term, you can always get started with something.

Be honest, creative content you’re passionate about, don’t get caught up in it. Always have some YouTube detox time to bring you down to earth.

What is your favourite song you have ever written?

My favourite song I’ve written so far, probably one called ‘Pot Plants’ that I’m yet to release! (stay tuned)

What would you like to achieve in the next five years?

In the next five years, I want to finish my media arts production degree at uni, have released my first album and have toured multiple countries!

What is the most rewarding thing about doing what you do?

Most rewarding thing is a tear between my own personal relief and adrenalin I feel after really nailing a performance, and the relief that I can bring to my audience. It is so rewarding just to hear from people that they like listening to my music. :)

How did it feel releasing your EP Deciduous*?

I guess I was excited at first because I felt like it was something that I should have done a year or two ago, but then I didn’t really have a campaign to push the release of the EP, so the whole thing turned out to be very anticlimactic.

It did make me realise how incredible the people that I’m surrounded with are though, which I think has been crucial to my happiness and my growth as a person and as a musician.

What is your favourite song on the EP?

My favourite track on the EP is the first track ‘confused/u confuse me’.

I think it really captures the young raw folky sound that I was representing myself as a few years ago, and it’s nice to have captured that. It feels like a little time capsule that I can open whenever I like.

Can you tell us about writing the EP and how you chose which songs to put on it?

The EP was a collection of songs coming from different contexts and times.

Tracks 1 and 2, ‘Confused’ and ‘Its Not Fair’ were written when I was 16 and I wrote them both in very short amounts of time – Confused was written in about 45 minutes.

I started the EP with them because they were the songs written a few years earlier, closer to the start of my music career.

‘Freezing Home’ I wrote in early 2015 on the train home after a long day at work with a friend of mine whom I had really strong feelings for, and I felt that it first in really well with the folky feel of the older songs, as well as with my songwriter style at the time, which was progressing more towards soul.

The hidden track attached on to the end of ‘Freezing Home’ was written with my friends little sister and I had joked that I would put it on my album, so I thought I may as well go ahead with it!

‘City’ was a complete accident and a life saver. The recording you hear on the EP was actually just an improvisation that I had happened to record about six months prior to the release of the EP. I found the recording in a folder on my laptop a few days before I had to submit the final mixes to be mastered.

‘A Year Ago’ was written pretty close to the release of the EP and is probably the most emotional song on the EP for me, to the point where it feels quite strange to perform it now, because the context for the song was so specific to how I was feeling when I wrote it. I wrote it when I was incredibly emotionally and physically drained, and you can actually hear me crying in the first recording I ever made of that track.

So, there you have it! Andie Isalie is continuing to grow and we are so excited to see where she goes with her music next!

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