Adelaide Stolba is a Performance and Composition student at the ANU School of Music with a penchant for beautiful imagery

I was cat-sitting for a family friend. I had my recording equipment with me, but no keyboard and since I’m usually confined by the embarrassment of singing in a house with three other people, I couldn’t waste the opportunity to record for several of these nights in an empty house. Since I didn’t have my keyboard, I decided to make something a capella, which I had never really committed to before. I really enjoyed the more stripped back process, but listening back now I wish I had paid closer attention to the overall rhythmic structure.

Lyrically the general concept was writing out these very tactile experiences like feeling the sun on one’s arm or the ocean lapping at the feet and the sense that these experiences are like glimpses amidst the quotidian, of the dream-like and somehow more authentic landscape that one may sense inside themselves.

There’s a seductive quality to these small things that break through to the physical realm from the surreal topology within. Walking into the desert parched but enjoying the sun on the skin so much that all warnings are ignored, or in the closing verse, where this is contrasted by walking into the ocean, so tired one could easily be swept away, but the sensation of warm water and the little, silver fish seen through its pellucid mass are just too mesmerising to allow this dangerous potentiality any real influence.

The video was produced in collaboration with my friend Miranda Jayne. We usually begin with a general sense of the song’s meaning and the emotions we want to evoke. Our videos are mostly based around a few props and a location or two. Once at location we throw out ideas and workshop as we go. We also draw from a bank of video inspiration images that we continuously add to, the citrus fruit and wigs were informed by this. I had also been wanting to lip sync in a video as well as implement the surreal quality achieved by slowing this down. The copious amounts of footage were then tirelessly edited down by Miranda.

See more of Adelaide's work on YouTube, Instagram and Spotify.