Back To Front

The human body can be a fickle thing. Chet Faker, or Nick Murphy to his mum, hasn't been sick “for over a year”, but our talk just before a big slot at Splendour sees him facing the inevitable. “I'm just nailing myself with multivitamins and cold relief at the moment,” he admits. “Just trying to avoid getting sick. But yeah, I'm just in the studio getting some things ready for Splendour and Spinoff. Hence the medication. It's a bit of a weird thing to talk about in an interview I guess, but I'm feeling better already, so it's all good for the weekend.”

A weekend packed with gigs – and the unavoidable anti-flu drug cocktail – have become usual events for Faker, not even a year after putting down the tracks that would become Thinking In Textures. The EP stands out because there was no label and no promotion behind it. Just the internet and Faker's skill and love for a combination of traditional soul/r'n'b and electronic production. “Initially, it was pretty strange,” he says of the time after the EP's release, when he found himself becoming a triple j darling and working with Flume. “And it's pretty funny because you can ask all these questions, like, 'What did I do? Why is this considered better than that?' I guess I went a bit crazy for a while there. I mean, it was all cool, but every now and then I just snap or tweak a bit in my head and just get really anxious. I mean, a lot of these things over the past year or so... it sounds really simple, but the key has been to just accept things. Don't ask questions unless you need to ask questions. I just keep doing what I'm doing, and not worry about what other people are thinking. It sounds so basic, but it makes it a lot easier. So yeah, the progression was pretty crazy. I didn't really settle until last summer or early this year, where I was kinda like, 'Well, you know, shit. This is what I'm doing now'.”

The anxiety is completely understandable; Faker went from a position of complete anonymity to national awareness in a matter of weeks. It's an issue that he still has to deal with, knowing that he won't be able to step out of the limelight any time soon. “When I was writing those songs, I didn't even realize I was writing an EP,” he explains. “In my mind, I wasn't writing anything to release; I was just writing, you know? That was a big realization for me last year; I worked out that the EP will be the last time I ever write anything just for the sake of writing it. No matter how hard I try, that will always be in the back of my mind. I had a job then, and I would just go home and sit in my garage and record music, just because. Because I had things to talk about. I guess it's like an end of an era.”

As always, though, the end of an era means the beginning of a new one. “I haven't even listened to the EP the whole way through since it came out,” Faker mentions, seemingly avoiding even the title of Thinking In Textures. “'Always forwards, never backwards', man. That's the motto.” So it is that Faker is now working on what will be his debut album. The anticipation for it is palpable: the public gobbled Thinking In Textures up wholly last year, heralding it as one of Australia's endeavours into the new wave of chilled-out r'n'b. Fair warning, though: don't expect it to be a continuation of what we've heard before. “Well, I'm sitting down looking at it right now on my computer,” Faker announces when the question of just how different the new album will be comes up. “I mean, here's the thing: we were just talking about how when you put something out, it's dead to you, so that whole idea doesn't really enter into it for me. I haven't really compared them at all, because the EP has been the furthest thing from my mind while recording this. Mostly, it's just the kind of music that I want to make right now. There's a lot of things that I've managed to capture this time around that I don't think I would have managed to two years ago. But when you tour so effectively for a year and a half or two years, you see so much music and you meet so many musicians and find so many ideas... I mean, it can get overwhelming, but now I'm making music that I feel comes from all these different places.”

Which brings us back around, fittingly, to Chet Faker the bedroom (or garage, as it were) musician and Chet Faker, the must-see act at national festivals like the upcoming Circo shows. Coming from a place of almost completely insular production, Faker has had to meld his slow-groove sounds into something palpable and exciting as a live show. Thankfully, and as already proven a few times, he seems to have already worked that one out. “That balance is interesting,” he says of recording and touring, “I think I'm still figuring it out. In terms of recording, it wasn't until recently that I really realized how important touring was in order to give you ammunition in the studio. See, I was working on these songs [for the album] for a long time, and then there was the national tour with Flume, and then I did my European tour. It was a breath of fresh air to just have this space in these songs, and have some, like, fresh inspiration to put towards them. I think the two sides become kinda symbiotic.”

This is, of course, good news for Chet Faker fans, both in terms of what you can expect from a live show later this year (after a huge US tour), and the album. The album itself, Faker assures, will be “released on the internet, in the same way as the EP”, which is a bold step but one that he fully embraces, with good reason. “Even now, I consider word-of-mouth the main way people hear my music, and that happens through the internet. I've never paid to promote it anywhere, actually. And I'm still independent, which is something I plan on being for the time being. I know I don't want to give up creative control; there's still a lot I still want to do on my own. It's an amazing tool, and I wouldn't be talking to you right now if the internet didn't exist. I would probably still be sitting in my garage. Which is fine, that's what I do. But it's nice to be sitting in my garage and know that, in a matter of weeks, I'll be over there in front of a huge ground. It's scary sometimes, but it's a thrill.”