KATIE BROWN - 1 SEP 2021

Newly released today is intimate and delicate EP I Am the Morning by New Zealand artist Gala George. A collection of five tracks written over several years, the EP explores the relationship between love and loss. As Gala says, it’s about “the loss of oneself, the loss of a friend, the loss of a love. It is an acknowledgement that you cannot have loss without love. It’s about growing comfortable in your own silence, coming to terms with grief, and grounding yourself.”

Brought to life in collaboration with producer/musician Levi Patel (see our previous feature on Levi here) from two weeks spent recording at Levi’s Matakana studio, I Am the Morning showcases Levi’s signature ambient textures and sensitivity of production folding themselves around the fragility and natural warmth of Gala’s vocals, perfectly complementing her own instrumentation and production approach. Reflective and stripped-back moments morph mesmerisingly into maximal ‘wall-of-sound’ climaxes, such as in title track “I Am the Morning” and the emotive “Comfortably Silent” with its distorted drums and synth layers. Considered use of piano and stripped-back guitar provides the perfect background for the vulnerability of Gala’s vocals to shine, such as in “Love and Lost” (featuring and co-written by Levi), which swells in intensity and then subsides with a corresponding ebb and flow of emotion.

Part of the especial poignancy and beauty of I Am the Morning lies in the time the whole project has had to breathe. The inclusion of tracks Gala has written over several years adds a depth and vulnerability to the issues of love and loss the EP addresses, transforming it from something that could be a snapshot of a moment of time; of one single loss in life, to a journey of life’s losses and gains instead - and it really does translate this way. It’s a tender, relatable and moving EP to get lost in, and to find your own centre of balance in as you trace the outlines of your own life’s experiences in those that Gala describes.

Perhaps especially meaningful to sit with during these challenging days, I Am the Morning’s outtake is a message of hope - that beyond the darkness of life’s trials, the light of day always breaks through.

Read our interview with Gala and listen to I Am the Morning below.

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KATIE: WHAT IS YOUR MUSICAL BACKGROUND?

Gala: Music was formative for me. Both of my parents are musicians, so I am very lucky to have been surrounded by music my entire life. I have been writing songs since age 11 and I started playing bass around the same time. Songwriting and production are my favourite aspects of music. The creative process of expressing yourself, both through melody and lyrics, and through creating soundscapes, is so cathartic. I couldn’t imagine my life without doing so, and I don’t think I would be who I am today without the role that music has played in my life.

Most of my professional music life has revolved around playing bass and keyboard in bands and working as a session bassist and vocalist. I have done some pretty cool things – I’ve toured through the UK playing bass and keys for NZ musician Jesse Sheehan (playing at festivals such as Brighton’s The Great Escape and Liverpool’s Sound City), I’ve been a guest vocalist/artist on other people’s albums and EPs (including This Pale Fire’s Alchemy, Miller Yule’s Shoot Me in the Heart, and Jesse Sheehan’s Drinking with the Birds), I’ve co-produced other people’s work (Levi Patel), and I have played solo gigs for as long as I can remember.

I AM THE MORNING IS YOUR DEBUT EP. HAS IT ALWAYS BEEN YOUR INTENTION TO BEGIN RELEASING YOUR OWN MUSIC?

Absolutely! I have been quietly releasing music since I was 14 through places like Soundcloud and Play It Strange. I released a single in 2015 called “Serendipity”, which was given NZ On Air Funding (thanks NZ on Air!!). I am the Morning is my first project that is fully ‘me’, though. Levi and I recorded and produced it almost entirely on our own, and I had input on every element and moment in the EP. There is something very pure and intentional about I am the Morning. It is exactly what I wanted it to be, which is a rare feeling with music, I find. I have had a quiet few years while I have been conquering academia (I now have a Masters in Classical Archaeology, which is cool), but there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t play or write music.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO GETTING STARTED WITH IT?

I think the hardest part for me was letting go of the songs that we chose to record. This is hard to articulate, but I feel like recording demands a song to be complete and static. I have always approached my songwriting in quite a fluid way. I never play or sing a song the same way twice – I’ll change the vocal melody slightly or adjust the tempo depending on my mood. Levi and I had to sit down at the beginning of the project and decide: “okay, this is the tempo, these are the lyrics in this chorus, this is the melody.” I found that quite challenging. I still regret changing one of the lines in the second verse of More Than This. I had three different lines that I would alternate, and we ultimately went with “the piano keys are my luxury, they keep you close to me”, but I wish I had kept “the piano keys are my luxury, they keep me company”.

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOURSELF DRAWING YOUR INSPIRATION FROM?

It sounds cliché, but all aspects of life. I love observing the world. I went for a walk earlier today and stood at the corner of Williamson Avenue and Ponsonby Road in Auckland, on a hill looking towards Grey Lynn. You can see the Waitakere Ranges from this spot – framing the Western boundary of Auckland, at least ~30 km away. The streets were completely quiet because of Lockdown Level 4, and there was a thunderstorm brewing over ranges. I had this moment of awe looking over the expanse of my hometown, watching the weather turn. It was a combination of nostalgia, optimism, and gratitude all at once. I arrived home and immediately wanted to play piano and put that experience into music. Observation and self-reflection inspire me the most, I think.

YOU SPEAK ABOUT ‘I AM THE MORNING’ AS AN EP EXPLORING LOVE AND LOSS. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO TRANSLATE YOUR EXPERIENCE OF LOSS INTO MUSIC?

I am the Morning explores several different forms of loss. The experience of putting these forms into song differed: “Echo” is about feeling like I was losing my youth. I wrote it in about 5 minutes on the floor of my friend’s bedroom in Melbourne using her $100 nylon string guitar. I wasn’t sure what I was doing in life; I felt untethered and disconnected from myself. The song almost wrote itself, so that songwriting experience was easy. “I am the Morning” is about the loss of a childhood friend, while “More than this” is about the loss of my first love (he got into Princeton University and moved overseas, so it was a relatively amicable romantic loss). These songs were written during moments of self-reflection. The melodies of both songs came very quickly but putting those experiences into lyrics was challenging for me.

“Love and lost” is about my late uncle and how his passing affected me and my family. I feel as though my life has two parts – a before and an after this loss. I was only 16 when it happened, and it was unexpected. I can still feel the ripples of this loss even a decade later. It took me many years to put the experience into song. I started with the piano melody at the beginning of the song, and then I took that and the chorus vocal melody to Levi and we finished it together. We both thought it needed delicate intensity, and I think the final two minutes of the song are an accurate translation of the swirling of emotions experienced from a loss like this. “Maybe I’m not as brave as I once thought” is my favourite lyric from the song. It’s about allowing myself to feel the experience for exactly what it is. Loss isn’t easy. I don’t have to be brave.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE MOST IMPORTANT CONNECTION BETWEEN LOVE AND LOSS IS?

Despite the grief or disappointment or dissolution that can come with loss, the love that precedes it allows us to turn loss into something that ultimately nourishes us. The loss depicted in “Love and lost” and “I am the morning” were incredibly painful but, because of the love associated with these experiences of loss, they shaped me as a person. It’s the connection between love and loss that changes us, and that’s the most important part, I think.

IT CAN BE A VULNERABLE EXPERIENCE TO INVITE SOMEONE ELSE INTO YOUR MUSIC AS YOU DID WITH LEVI. HOW DID YOU FIND COLLABORATING WITH HIM IN THIS SENSE? WERE YOU SURPRISED WHERE YOU WOUND UP WITH THE TRACKS?

It is an incredibly vulnerable experience. I trust Levi more than anyone else I’ve ever met, and I respect him and his creative process so much. Levi and I met at the North Shore Rockquest heats (a national high school ‘battle of the bands’) in 2009; I was 15 and he was 17. I performed solo and, after I played, he came up to me in the crowd (with his emo fringe and skinny jeans, haha) and told me he loved my music. We exchanged numbers and have been best friends ever since. The first time we ever hung out, we sat in the boot of his car with two guitars and wrote music. We have always welcomed each other into our creative processes, so it felt very natural to collaborate with him on this EP.

We were absolutely surprised with where we ended up with the tracks. We pushed the boundaries of what we wanted and what we knew we could do almost every step of the way, which was awesome. “Comfortably silent” and “I am the morning” both started as relatively upbeat acoustic songs, but the former ended up full of droning synth and distorted drums, and the latter ended up with ~50 electric guitar tracks!

LEVI’S OWN MUSIC CONTAINS AN INCREDIBLE DEPTH OF EMOTION, SENSITIVITY AND BEAUTY. IS THIS WHAT DREW YOU TO WORK WITH HIM ON THE EP?

I remember being blown away by the emotion in Levi’s music and songwriting even when he was in an emo band in the early 2010s. He has always had the ability to tap into the heart of a song, which is such a powerful talent. He also understands my music and my songwriting process. We produced the EP together, and I have always felt completely comfortable suggesting ideas (and even deciding against a direction) with him. He lets me lead and allows me to explore my music and the sounds that I want without imposing himself too much, and he creates a comfortable space to guide the process. I have had situations in the past, particularly with men in the music industry, where my ability to produce (and play) music has been treated in an almost condescending way, and people have always assumed that the men produced/mixed the songs (I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard the words ‘female bassist’, ugh!). But, working with Levi has always felt entirely equal, and I have always felt so respected. I am incredibly proud of the production decisions that I have made with him and what we did with these songs.

YOU RECORDED OUT IN MATAKANA, SURROUNDED BY HILLS AND NATIVE BUSH, OVER A PERIOD OF TWO WEEKS. WHAT IMPACT DO YOU FEEL THIS HAD ON THE WHOLE PROCESS?

We lived and breathed the EP for two weeks – it was incredible! We would wake up at around 10am, go downstairs to the studio for a few hours to record, go upstairs for lunch, go downstairs to record, go out for a coffee in the Matakana village, record again, eat dinner, record again, drink some soju, play video games, record again. It was like time had stopped and all that we needed to care about was music and having fun. I think you can hear this atmosphere in the EP, despite most of the songs being quite melancholy. There’s something very comfortable and quietly confident about the EP.

THE FIRST SINGLE, “I AM THE MORNING”, IS SUCH A MOVING TRACK – I CAN SENSE BOTH THE LOSS OF BECOMING AWARE OF A NEED TO LEAVE SOMETHING BEHIND IN IT, AND THE BRAVERY IT TAKES TO FACE A NEW DAY AND THE HOPE OF WHAT IT MIGHT HOLD. WHAT’S THE HARDEST PART OF LEAVING SOMETHING BEHIND?

I think it depends on the circumstances within which you leave something behind. There are many different forms of loss. Loss without closure, such as the loss of the childhood friendship that I explore in “I am the morning”, hurts in a very specific way. You have no control; people will behave and conduct themselves in particular ways and there’s not much you can do about it beyond letting them go and looking after yourself. I never had the opportunity to sit down with this person and say: “hey, maybe we could have communicated better?” or “you hurt me in this way, why?”. And, sometimes, that’s okay – but it took several years to come to terms with it. That was hard, and this song was my personal chance at closure.

IN “COMFORTABLY SILENT” YOU SING ‘WHEN I SPEAK I SEE COLOURS PIROUETTING, WORDS AND NUMBERS’ – AND YOU’VE SPOKEN ABOUT HOW THIS REFLECTS YOUR PARTICULAR SYNAESTHESIA. WHAT’S IT LIKE TO EXPERIENCE THIS, AND WHAT SPARKED ITS INCLUSION IN THIS SONG?

It’s funny … it wasn’t until I was maybe 17 that I realised not everyone experienced the world in this way. I have a form of synaesthesia called ‘grapheme-colour’ synaesthesia. This basically means that letters, numbers, and people are associated with the experience of colour. For example, in my mind, the number 1 is a light grey, while the letter A is a vibrant green. It’s a fun party trick because I can memorise people’s birthdays using the specific combination of colours associated with the numbers (name a celebrity and I’ll tell you their birthday!).

On the other hand, though, I have difficulty reading and expressing myself verbally. I’ve read into it, and there is apparently a certain level of sensory overload that occurs in the brain because of synaesthesia. I find it difficult to express my emotions accurately through words. Comfortably silent was written about a previous romantic relationship where my partner sometimes had difficulty understanding where I was coming from or why I responded to things in certain ways. The verses are an ode to our miscommunication, and the chorus is effectively a sigh of relief at being alone and not having to use words haha.

WHAT IMPACT DOES IT HAVE ON YOUR CREATIVE PROCESSES?

I don’t think synaesthesia affects my songwriting as such, but I do think songwriting has always been an important aspect of my life because it allows me to express myself in ways that I otherwise cannot, if that makes sense?

DO YOU THINK THAT WORKING THROUGH THE PROCESS OF CREATING ‘I AM THE MORNING’ HAS HELPED YOU SEE NEW THINGS WITHIN YOURSELF? HAVE YOU FOUND IT HEALING?

I am the morning is very much a collection of songs inspired by self-reflection. Writing the songs themselves, and the process of refining them and reworking them, are reflections of moments in my life and how I was feeling at that time. I’m not the person that I was when I wrote “More Than This” at 19 – at least, not entirely. I feel like each song is a representation of the parts of me that make me who I am today. Putting that into a tangible body of work is intrinsically healing, I think. This EP is a representation of parts of me.

I read a lovely short story the other day that sums up my thoughts on this quite well. Here’s a brief excerpt of what Sandra Cisneros wrote:

“What they don’t tell you about birthdays is that, when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday, you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t … you feel like you’re still ten. And you are – underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like, some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten.”

This is how I feel about the EP (except, instead of birthdays, it is, of course, songs). While I feel like I have grown into a new person since I wrote these songs, I am the Gala who wrote “More Than This” at 19, and I am also the Gala that wrote “Love and Lost” and “Comfortably Silent” at 21. I am all of those experiences together and having all 5 songs from different points in my life next to each other on an EP helped me recognise that.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS WITH YOUR MUSIC GOING FORWARD?

I am so thankful for music at the moment, especially given the current circumstances around lockdown in New Zealand. I have spent most days writing and recording in my bedroom, which has been wonderful for my mental health. I have a concept EP demo’d and ready to be recorded properly (the working title is We hung out three times and I wrote five songs about you, haha!). It includes my favourite song that I have ever written. I’m also planning on playing some more live shows (once I am able to). Writing and refining solo recording/production is my top priority at the moment, though. I also recently fell in love, and it’s hard not to constantly want to write about how inspiring and fabulous that feels (there’s a joke in here somewhere about keeping the love but not the loss in the next EP).

The process of recording I am the Morning taught me so much. I am far more secure in myself, both musically and as a person, than when I started the project. Levi and I made this EP ourselves – that’s so awesome! And now I feel very confident in my ability to convey my thoughts through song and to achieve the sounds that I want, the way that I want. I’m really excited!