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Two of Australia’s brightest young artists team up to launch their respective debut albums. Otouto, from Melbourne release Pip after 2009 saw them building a buzz through stunning live performances alongside the likes of Jim White, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Sarah Blasko, Micachu & The Shapes and more.
Fellow traveller Seja Vogel from Brisbane cut her teeth live with Sekiden & Regurgitator amongst others and has been working up to the release of We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares for since late 2008.
One of the tickets of the year so far showcasing some of the best this country has to offer.

Otouto is melting pot art/pop; a band from Melbourne made up of Hazel Brown, Martha Brown and Kishore Ryan. Whether playing warm warped vocal notes through a midi keyboard or hitting a banjo with a drumstick, this trio’s take on pop music is fantastically unique. The vocal harmonies created by the sisters cause beautiful juxtapositions with the dissonant guitar work and frenetic percussion and beats.

Lyrically, Otouto make songs with small and abstract
pictures from daily existence. The pictures are both punctured and highlighted by their constantly unfolding foundation: pots and pans percussion, baritone guitar, Farfisa and homemade keyboards. Otouto (pr. otto-ootoe) has received generous support from independent radio such as PBS and RRR, Beat, mess and noise and www.fasterlouder.com.au.

This wonderfully styled pop music is written with depth and skill that belies the age of the band members who seem to have the soul of Motown in their voices, the dirt of Nashville under their fingernails and the space of electronica in their heads.
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There are many reasons why musicians make solo albums. For some, the delicate artistic temperament simply
cannot bear collaborating with or being around other people. For others, collaboration is a truly wonderful experience, but a time comes when they just want to test themselves and see if they can make something special alone.

Seja could never belong to the first example. This debut solo album, We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares, does not sluggishly lumber from extreme isolation. Emotionally sophisticated, what reveals is the sort of mixed euphoria astronauts, or pilots, may feel when an affair begins mid-flight… or whenever joy is tempered with survival doubts. If it doesn’t sound like a debut, it’s because Seja has spent years playing synthesizers in Sekiden and Regurgitator, two of Brisbane’s finest ever pop bands. Late last year Seja found herself wanting, curious to discover if she could make an album alone. So she stayed home a lot, writing songs, recording lots of old synthesizers, and using her beautifully clear voice more than she ever had before.

There are a few collaborators: Saul Jarvie sings, having turned an instrumental that was emailed to him into one of the album’s best pop songs, Regurgitator’s Quan Yeomans and Spod assist with some structural suggestions and beats, and Cameron Bruce lends a hand in providing some beautiful piano playing for the album’s final track. Seja’s brother Mirko produced, mixed and mastered the album, allowing its wide spaces to be further opened, and amplified.

The instrumentation is virtually all vintage electronics (Seja is known for her loyalty to vintage synths), and it’s with a simple, neat song structure we hear the stuff of classic pop. But the context is modern, and lyrically a touch hard-nosed, too busy living the present to be looking over its shoulder, ala ‘80s fans and alumni M83, granted it’s always in a dream. Crumbly, hand-crafted synth tones evoke such dreaminess, but the thematic focus of We Have Secrets But Nobody Cares never loses its way. Despite what Seja may tell you in a song.