Timberwolf Asked A Member Of His Favourite Oz Folk Band To Be His Producer

"Ever since I discovered them, The Middle East are my favourite Australian folk band," explains Christopher Panousakis. The Adelaide-based singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who travels as Timberwolf is fresh off the plane from opening for Gin Wigmore in New Zealand and is explaining his decision to call Mark Myers, formerly of The Middle East, in to co-produce his second EP, Flux. "I just thrashed their album, I Want That You Are Always Happy, as well as their EPs — I just sort of lived by them for a few years — and I grew to love the complexity and probably the texture in their recordings. Alongside Jordan [Ireland]'s songwriting the production of all The Middle East stuff I was just in love with. It has that melancholy, spooky feel about it, and it really fits the origin of where a lot of the songs from Flux were written, and I thought I'd love to pair that vibe together.

"I just fell in love with how their records made me feel and they made me feel similar to how I felt when I was writing a lot of the Flux songs."

"So I just thought, 'What the hell, I'll just send Mark an email.' He has this solo project, The Starry Field, so I sent an email to that address and sure enough, he hit me back, and I had a few demos and sent them across and he said he'd love to work with me and that was really, really exciting. I just fell in love with how their records made me feel and they made me feel similar to how I felt when I was writing a lot of the Flux songs."

And what, you might wonder, was Panousakis feeling at the time? "Loss, I would say, loss and change is a pretty big aspect, you know? Changing relationships, changing friendships. I'd say the whole theme of the CD is change, which is why I called it Flux, and the songs were written across a period I guess where my life transitioned from mostly previously studying and playing music to myself, to doing it full-time.

"To record [2013 debut EP] Man And Moon was, if you like, 'I've got these songs and some bedroom equipment, let me just bang out a CD in two days playing most of the instruments myself on half the songs.' To do Flux it was a different approach, which was: I brought my bass player, a female vocalist, a keyboard player and a drummer up to Mark's studio in Cairns. And obviously Mark and a few of his friends played too. So to get a really full band of musos behind the songs was really enjoyable."

Playing saxophone for eight years as a child, guitar and piano since he was 14, Panousakis was heading for a career in physiotherapy when he realised it really wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. When he has the time, he's a session guitarist in Jesse Davidson's band and in that capacity played The Great Escape and some club shows in London a couple of months ago, cutting some of his own tracks while there with producer Jake Miller. But that's next year's debut album story, so we'll leave it there.