Recently Sydney indie/folk muso Dustin Tebbutt teamed up with Brisbane producer The Kite String Tangle, for a new collaborative project they have called TKSTXDT. At that time they released a stunning single called ‘Illuminate’ and announced they will be playing a few shows together in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne toward the end of June.
Before they hit the road we got in touch with Dustin Tebbutt to ask where his love of music began.
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My first CD was ‘Urban Hymns’ by The Verve. I remember the exact moment I got it (Family christmas at my aunts house), and the distinct feeling of ownership that followed. I really felt like the whole album, the music, was ‘mine’. I treasured it and remember pouring over the lyrics and pictures time and time again…I think I even bought the poster. That album was the world to me, and thinking about it now, Richard Ashcroft was probably my first idol.
My favourite tracks were ‘Sonnet’, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, ‘The Drug’s Don’t Work’ and ‘Lucky Man’, but I’d generally listen to the whole thing back to back, apart from ‘Come On’, the closing track, that just seemed a bit out of character for me. It was to thrashy and over the top compared to the other subtler colours and spaces the album presented.
Looking back now, theres a bunch of things that really made that music stick with me, and I listened to it so many times, there is no doubt the this record had a big influence on me. Richard Ashcroft had this magical crackle in his voice and his parts were often doubled, but an octave apart, which gave the vocal this ‘super real’ quality, like you were there, inside his head. The lead guitar parts were layered meticulously but chaotically and usually laden with delays, creating these shimmering soundscapes that you could drift through, and lyrically the images although quite simple, were really powerful. I could always ‘see’ the songs playing out like films or memories in my mind. Just thinking of the opening lines of ‘Sonnet’ “My friend and me, looking through her red box of memories, faded I’m sure, but love seems to stick in her veins you know”, I still feel like that is actually a real memory of mine, like I was sitting in that room at some point…even though I know it isn’t!
This record really impacted me in a lot of ways, it got me into ‘bands’, and planted the sparks for my love of guitar and textural spaces in recording, but more than the playing or sounds, it was Ashcroft’s voice and words. By far the biggest thing this record did for me was that that it introduced me to ‘songwriting’ through the stories that I felt come to life every time I put this CD into the player.
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The Brisbane and Melbourne shows are sold out, and Sydney isn’t far from it either, so you’d better go get your tickets asap – http://bit.ly/TKSTxDTSYD
And if you do get your hands on some, this is just some of the beauty that you can expect on the night
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