Dune
Sunbury, Victoria, Australia | Established. Jan 01, 2014 | SELF
Music
Press
“On this EP Dune has taken the best of avant-garde electro-pop – think Santigold meets Little Dragon, M83 and Washed Out – and has made something truly memorable….This is something completely different and really exciting” - Drum Media Perth
“On this EP Dune has taken the best of avant-garde electro-pop – think Santigold meets Little Dragon, M83 and Washed Out – and has made something truly memorable….This is something completely different and really exciting” - Drum Media Perth
Shoestring
rating: 4/5
Tremendous! Like Santigold and Ladyhawke and The Presets joyfully combined. Love hearing that chorus breaking out.
Tom Ballard, triple j - triple j unearthed
It’s time for the main act, and the audience is taut with curiosity. Much-loved Melbourne singer Jade MacRae has adopted the moniker Dune for her new alternative-electronica sound and tonight’s set promises to be something quite different from her previous soul and R&B work. From the moment she steps on stage in a bejewelled cowl, images of lightning and storm projected behind her, it’s clear that she wants Dune to be an entirely new musical entity. The set kicks off with Alien, a track that features a fearsome bassline, complex synths and MacRae’s astounding vocals. As Dune, MacRae is reaching for something epic here – the tracks are rich and powerful, with sweeping musicality and lashings of grandeur. Her vocal strength and virtuosity offer a power and depth that isn’t often found in electronica-based music, and it sets Dune apart from many of her contemporaries. Bring Me The Night feels a little more like a ballad, tinged with soul and charming melancholia, while Shall We Dance features a positively pornographic bassline and wins the audience over with its gusto. A haunting cover of The Presets’ Youth In Trouble gives the crowd a chance to relax in slightly more familiar territory without deviating from the Dune game plan. Dune’s sound is distinctive: rhythmic, complex and abstract, anchored by MacRae’s spectacular voice.
The single Shoestring is a strong closer, but so enthusiastic are the crowd’s cheers that Dune steps back up for an encore, playing The Sea, a track with plenty of bass and with a slight R&B feel to it. MacRae has found something powerful and intriguing in this new work and she leaves the entire audience hoping that this is the first of many outings for Dune.
Written by Aleksia Barron - Inpress
It’s time for the main act, and the audience is taut with curiosity. Much-loved Melbourne singer Jade MacRae has adopted the moniker Dune for her new alternative-electronica sound and tonight’s set promises to be something quite different from her previous soul and R&B work. From the moment she steps on stage in a bejewelled cowl, images of lightning and storm projected behind her, it’s clear that she wants Dune to be an entirely new musical entity. The set kicks off with Alien, a track that features a fearsome bassline, complex synths and MacRae’s astounding vocals. As Dune, MacRae is reaching for something epic here – the tracks are rich and powerful, with sweeping musicality and lashings of grandeur. Her vocal strength and virtuosity offer a power and depth that isn’t often found in electronica-based music, and it sets Dune apart from many of her contemporaries. Bring Me The Night feels a little more like a ballad, tinged with soul and charming melancholia, while Shall We Dance features a positively pornographic bassline and wins the audience over with its gusto. A haunting cover of The Presets’ Youth In Trouble gives the crowd a chance to relax in slightly more familiar territory without deviating from the Dune game plan. Dune’s sound is distinctive: rhythmic, complex and abstract, anchored by MacRae’s spectacular voice.
The single Shoestring is a strong closer, but so enthusiastic are the crowd’s cheers that Dune steps back up for an encore, playing The Sea, a track with plenty of bass and with a slight R&B feel to it. MacRae has found something powerful and intriguing in this new work and she leaves the entire audience hoping that this is the first of many outings for Dune.
Written by Aleksia Barron - Inpress
Anyone with a pulse will have their attention grabbed by the infectious opening track on Dune’s debut EP Oh Innocence. Remaining steady and constant throughout, the tightly-woven bass and drums form a unique foundation on top of which an equally interesting layering of synths, effects, and soaring vocals are able to dance freely. With trancelike effect, opening track Shoestrings takes you on a journey, setting a scene for the whole EP that will push and pull your expectations from start to finish. It is little wonder this track was chosen to open; all of the intriguing features of the artist - and there are many - are on display here.
As is indicated by the song’s title, Oh Innocence conveys a feeling of longing for the past; for timelessness and purity. The song carries a sense of darkness hinted at in the intro and fully explored at its wandering end, with lyrical lamentation woven into verse and chorus alike. The most striking aspect of this song however, is the fleeting dichotomy between lyrics and music that is most apparent in its thumping choruses, where the slower, pondering verses literally drop into a beat and a groove that wouldn’t be out of place on a compilation next to Flume and Macklemore.
These two tracks depict both a sensitivity and an edginess to the artist, sprinkled with influences such as Robyn, The Presets, Ladyhawke, and even hints of Gypsy and the Cat’s first album. That she experiments so freely while ensuring nothing is overplayed or sugar-coated is a testament to the confidence and creativity underpinning the writing of the tracks.
The song Alien is hauntingly beautiful, introspective and sprawling, with vocal melody and meaning seemingly intertwined conveying a stream-of-consciousness delivery. As seems typical of Dune, right when you might think you know where the music is heading, a beat takes you confidently in its own direction.
Like the opener, Shoestrings, closing track Bring me the night is supported by drums and bass-line so tight they sound like the same person is controlling both at once.
As impressive a debut as I have come across from an Australian artist in the past few years, Oh Innocence paints a picture of a songwriter and performer with genuine talent, creativity, and an edge of ‘cool’ that is detached from any scene, and is sure to grow in prominence with exposure.
Xavier O’Malley - The 59th Sound
The story so far: Wrapped up in bandages to conceal her past prominent music-making identity as much as to add a marketable mystique to her music, Dune has already knocked out some impressive tunes including the Santigold-channelling bounce of Shoestring and the murky, cosmic trip-hop of Black Sand.
2013 forecast: Given her current form Dune’s 2013 looks bright with no harm befalling her for standing connections in the local music industry and experience up her belt. What’s strongest in her corner though is Dune’s easy blurring of genre lines with crisp pop, astral-gazing electronica and modern R&B vibes all blended together. - In The Mix
The story so far: Wrapped up in bandages to conceal her past prominent music-making identity as much as to add a marketable mystique to her music, Dune has already knocked out some impressive tunes including the Santigold-channelling bounce of Shoestring and the murky, cosmic trip-hop of Black Sand.
2013 forecast: Given her current form Dune’s 2013 looks bright with no harm befalling her for standing connections in the local music industry and experience up her belt. What’s strongest in her corner though is Dune’s easy blurring of genre lines with crisp pop, astral-gazing electronica and modern R&B vibes all blended together. - In The Mix
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Bio
Dune possesses a post-apocalyptic vision, one of primal emotion and stark imagery. With a self-produced swag of songs, this Melbourne-based multi-instrumentalist has created a futuristic vista from textured synths and beats.
While she can confidently be filed alongside contemporaries like Santigold, Robyn, Little Dragon, Chairlift, Gorillaz and M83, this musician also has a love of the lineage of electronica. Some of the tracks definitely echo the music made around the time I was born, she says. My dad was active in the experimental electronic movement in the UK in the 1970s, and a lot of the synths I was using, like the Roland Jupiter 8, were his old gear from that time.
Having worked within the confines of various musical genres over the years as a professional musician, Dune had found herself increasingly dissatisfied with toeing the line. I needed to isolate and go deeper into my own psyche, a place that was not always comfortable, she says. I realised the only way I would have the freedom to do what I wanted was to build my own studio, which I did last year with my husband, and then record and release my music independently. There were seemingly endless days of plastering, sanding, painting and hammering, but the pay-off was being able to funnel the incessant questions in my mind into music, without any interference. That has been life-changing.
Shoestring is a song laced with mythology over tribal beats. From the desert plains of the Nullarbor to the jungles of Brazil, the initiation ceremonies of native people become a metaphor for shedding materialistic weight. Its a song lashed with colour, of bright feathers and war paint, with vocals layered over Eastern scales. The device of a rhythmic bed with melodies that drift over the top was inspired by breaking down the components of Radioheads King of Limbs the sort of activity Dunes years spent at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music came in handy for. Fresh from graduating the Con, collaborations with early incarnations of the Presets, Pnau and the Sleepy Jackson followed. Now another musical cohort, Katalyst, has come on board to remix this track.
Small Shoulders explores vintage synth tones with nods to the fusion stylings of Chick Corea, mixing in live strings and a wall-of-sound bridge. The chorus is a huge wave of emotion, a release, relaying a womans role of taking the strain of life behind closed doors, but being willing and able to make that sacrifice.
Oh Innocence is all the vaster a song for the restraint thats exercised. Every note has earned its place, and the lyrics subliminal sketches from the subconscious are equally economical. Its about getting back to childhood and that freedom that came from your imagination, when you were uninhibited and not yet cynical, says Dune, who used echoes of distorted reverb and analogue delay to underline such raw emotion. I was wondering, when this lifetime is over, is that what we go back to? Will I ever experience that again? We get so caught up in the day to day, but every now and then I recall the simplicity of those early years.
Alien is the most avant-garde and abstract of the tracks, flitting between tempos with the vocals slicing through like a voice from the darkness. Its about being aware that you are not from the same place as everyone around you, which is something Ive felt all my life, explains Dune. I was a bit of a stranger among my peers. I didnt look like my neighbours and I was fairly ostracised at school. Growing up on the northern beaches of Sydney, where everybody was blonde with blue eyes and I was a half Maori with a British accent, there was no mystery as to why I felt different! Im still conscious of it today. Alien describes the game of walking the street and trying to meet a strangers eye, willing them to engage. Its the bittersweet message of being fascinated by civilisation and stories, but finding human connection to be a rare thing.
Bring Me the Night uses a glam stomp beat to convey the anxiety and insomnia that, ironically, comes through living consciously. I feel like a slave to time and that I never have enough. I dont know how I ever managed to maintain a non-stop party lifestyle the way I did. Im on the straight and narrow now but there are still nowhere enough hours in the day. Its a constant looming shadow for me. And a sober life can be relentless. The textured, skewed production pays homage to Bowie, Gary Numan, Brian Eno, and Talking Heads.
In the second half of 2012, these tracks will be taken live with full band. No back stories, no drum rolls, just a bewitching new sound. My mission is to invoke a feeling in someone else, whether its enjoyment or empathy, says Dune. Thats all I want. To connect, to make people feel something.
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