Wollongong ‘neu-folk’ artist Sean Conran aka Obscura Hail has just released his debut full-length record, Leaves, Earth. First gaining attention with 2014’s Thrown Into The Sea, and has since shared the stage with contemporaries including Aldous Harding, Julia Jacklin and Stolen Violin (The Middle East).
Described as a collecttion of “personal evaluations, inspired by the conscious experience of the early 21st century,” the new record tackles themes of the world’s relentless digital pace (‘Qualia’), as well as “contextual self-perception (‘Little Well’)” and “the post-application of fate (‘Quarterlife’)” – all detailed below as he takes us through the release track-by-track.
Leaves, Earth is available now through No Safe Place, and will be launched at the Lazybones Lounge, Marrickville on October 20 with FRUIT and Wartime Sweethearts in support.
Terminal
So the album dances (interpretively) around personal themes of cognitive dissonance, curiosity of the void, and dissociation. The songs are mostly fictional narratives, abstract concepts, relationships, and thoughts I just can’t let go of until they’re externalised. ‘Terminal’ is the struggle to understand ‘self’ in relation to ‘other’ while stuck in a vacuum, told through the experience of a patient undergoing a complex medical procedure.
Little Well
Both the prelude and the prologue of ‘Little Web’, featuring hand claps, knee slaps, foot stomps, tinny riffs, and a premature forgiveness of my past sadism.
Quarterlife
One particular place and person that pulled me completely out of my head, letting an incredible amount of sensory and emotional detail to flood in and leave a strong memory. I’m naturally forgetful, so I had to frame it immediately to keep it alive. I revisit it often. Love in the age of crisis.
Urgency
An overwhelming sense that something is terribly wrong with who I am, escalating to erratic behaviour and a desperation for release. I drove up Mt. Keira, Wollongong and spent dusk pacing around my binaural mics and a loop pedal in the middle of an abandoned road, until something violently changed in me.
Qualia
As descriptive and un-biased as I could get while putting into words, the complexities of the individual human experience and the fabric of the dimensions that bring about our existence, as I understand it. What a fun little riff though!
The Sense That I Prefer
I loved someone very much once, and I wrote this about them a long time ago, when I really struggled to find common ground, or even a way to communicate with them. A lot has changed, but I see our misunderstandings and our differences much clearer. No regrets.
Little Web
Reflecting on my developing pre-teen empathy, and my guilt over the treatment of countless simulated lives I decimated while binging The Sims.
Void Surfer
A visceral drilling in of the notion that humans can be persuaded to perform horrific acts of violence on living things, and it’s all on display for our catharsis. Recorded in a dimly lit room, in a state of dehydration.
Augmented
Misdiagnosis, self-medication, recognising self-destructive habits. A great self-deprecating number.
Exulansis
A single un-edited thought stream over looping drones with layers added in post. Attempting to describe it would defeat the purpose. The track title being a recently coined word, defined as “the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it” – Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig
