ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 19 JULY 2022
Suldusk is the vehicle of Melbourne musician Emily Highfield. Emerging with an EP of dark acoustic folk in 2017, Suldusk’s Lunar Falls of two years later saw the style expand into post-rock and auras of atmospheric black metal. With a second album on the road to completion, Suldusk will be adding a very different aspect to the central Australian musical odyssey Blacken Open Air at the end of this month. A few days after her first live performance for quite some time, we sat down for a video chat with Emily Highfield about the art of creation and expectations for the festival.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us Emily. It’s great to be able to chat with you ahead of Blacken, because you’re going to offering something very different to a lot of the music that will be playing there.
That’s right. The Blacken crew have been hassling me for a few years, and then COVID happened. Last year when the line-up was announced and then it got cancelled, of course, I really wanted to do it, so when the opportunity came up again, it was just a straight-up yes. I think it’s going to be really interesting. We’re playing around dusk, and I find that is definitely going to be appropriate for the style of music we do, even though the newer songs that we’ve got for the next album are a little bit more hectic. I call them more post-black metal, so maybe a bit more French, Belgian influence and we’ve got blastbeats… it’s not just acoustic anymore! That’s a lot of light, and a lot of dark.
That’s going to be great, and I understand that the weekend it’s on, it’s going to be a New Moon.
Oh really! I’m all about manifesting! I didn’t know that.
I’m excited about the experience. I’m so much an introvert and a homebody, so COVID was no biggie for me, but I played a show on the weekend, and it had been a year. I forgot how much I like being around music nerds: “We’re just music nerds! Look at my new trick! Listen to my new sound! My new frequency.“ It was nice to be around that species of human in that compact space. To actually be in such an auspicious place that has such an indigenous power – I cannot wait.
We did an interview with Wardruna recently. Their music isn’t the same as yours obviously but it draws from the same neo-folk well. It’s interesting that the fanbase is so strongly tilted toward extreme metal. It doesn’t make sense, but at the same time it totally does.
There’s something very visceral about [neo-folk]. It does lend itself to something extreme. There’s an extreme side to it. My music started with just an acoustic [guitar] and my voice. That was it. Then it felt natural to just go into blast beats! I don’t know… how did that happen? There’s an intensity to it. It starts with just a voice, and then it can just go to that next level, wall-of-sound stuff.
There’s definitely something about the aesthetics, the emotion. Maybe it’s the dark emotions or something that’s very natural and chaotic?
Beautiful description! I agree with that completely. This next album pushes the light and dark more. I stayed in a certain space with the last one as it was definitely more acoustic-based, but the next one is going to be chaos. It feels right. I think the emotion is about the same. The first album was about melancholy, and then, when you look at the emotion of sadness, the other side of it is anger, and that’s where chaos comes from. There’s an intensity. Where sadness can spiral, anger can escalate in power.
Is it a darker direction and is there also some hope in there? There seems to be an element to this style of music that has a ray of hope in spite of the dark aesthetic, and for someone who is as close to nihilism as I am, that seems to be a weird thing to be drawn to.
I need that, for myself, in my music. I don’t like music where I’m shouted at [for the sake of it]. There’s got to be a purpose for the screaming, and it’s usually a release or an expression of some emotion. There’s a part of it that’s empowering. There is definitely… I’m so excited. I’ve got these amazing musicians that I’m working with now. I love acoustic guitar, and my playing is solid, but I’ve got a classically-trained guitarist who also plays technical death metal in his spare time… so it’s that nuanced acoustic guitar playing that’s going to be featuring on the next album. Some of the tracks are very naturalistic, then there’s the more tremolo-picking, hectic stuff. There’s those tracks, and then there’s the acoustic stuff – it’s very light and shade. I love playing with other musicians. I started the project just on my own, with a producer. I had very minimalist… the arrangements were solid but the instrumentation was basic. He and I worked together and we got session musicians in. But this time around, I have members of the band that I composed with, so it’s got so much more body. They’ve brought blood vessels and all the rest of it.
It must be a great change to have someone to bounce the ideas around with you, so you’re not doing all the thinking.
Absolutely. I’m working with a guy whose band is also playing the festival. I’ve roped him in to joining Suldusk. His name is James Mulholland, and he’s also in a band called Myriad Drone, who are playing at Blacken as well. They do post-rock, post-metal, fully instrumental with vocal flourishes. He and I pretty much composed everything through COVID. I loved that aesthetic. I really wanted to use more post-rock elements. Just creating more atmosphere and making it more broader. It was challenging at the start, because the first album was my vision, 100%. Then working with someone else who’s gone, “Maybe we should do this,” or, “Maybe that won’t work,” was a bit of head-butting my ego. But then I just went, “Well, we’re here to serve the song,” so it ended up being a really strong collaborative effort.
It’s really going to be incredible to have you playing at Blacken because you will be bringing something very different to the festival. Up until now it’s really just mostly been metal and loud bands, so Suldusk it going to add some real colour and flavour this time.
I agree with you. I have pretty nichey tastes in music, but I’m always interested in expanding my palate and being exposed to different sounds and frequencies. I’m all about that, so I think it’s really cool they’ve done that.
It gives people another reason to get out there, because it’s pretty far to go! It’s an extra incentive to expand people’s horizons.
A lot of people said to me after the first album, “It’s not really traditional black metal, is it?” and I said, “It’s not meant to be traditional black metal!” There’s the spirit of it, and there’s flourishes, but it’s definitely not that First Wave of black metal. I’m inspired by it, and I listen to, and I respect it immensely and its position within metal, but no, my tastes are now leaning towards blackgaze.
That’s an area that can be further explored, for sure. One of the things I have always loved about metal is that it doesn’t have to be just one thing.
Definitely! I know there’s a lot of purists who just like it a certain way. I very much like fusions of different styles – deathgaze has technical death metal with elements of blackgaze and shoegaze, and some of that stuff I can really enjoy. I love the virtuosity of technical death metal, but I also like the feel that shoegaze brings. I’m all for metal being more experimental. I know a lot of people hate it now younger artists are doing trap metal which is hip hop with metal stylings, but it’s all just expression. It doesn’t have to be… I know a lot of people say that metal has to be real instruments, but there’s room for everything!
Once upon a time it seemed there was only a small amount of things you could put into the metal category, and now there’s a galaxy of stuff.
SOmetimes it’s easier to get lost and go, “Oh man, everything’s been done!” But just stay in your lane! That’s what I do. I’m doing my own thing. I’m not going to compare myself to what’s happening here or what’s happening there. I’m just going to do my own thing, and people seem to dig it! Which shocked me, because when I started it was just me and a guitar playing sad tunes and I was like, “Who’s going to listen to this sad sack?” What the hell? It’s kind of awesome. I have a violinist who’s been nagging me to let them play on some songs and I’m like, “Ok, fuck it!” I love strings. I can do some sit-down shows with just an acoustic and strings, or we can do the whole three electric guitars. We had three guitars on stage at one point. It’s just wonderful to be able to play to people who are into it. I never anticipated that. I was just writing music for my own therapy. It’s still kind of humbling and I feel grateful that I’ve got a little market and some people like it. Some people want to be soothed a little bit, and then be punched in the face!
Is it still cathartic for you? Is this still therapy?
I’m going to start being honest about this when the next album comes out. I had a nervous breakdown two years ago. That put a hold on composing because I was scrambling to put my brain together. It’s all good now, but when I get in and rehearse with the band, it’s just like a cathartic release of trauma and shit like that. You just have to let it out. Your body stores it if you don’t let it out. I feel very blessed that the vocals are an instrument for me that, apart from my guitar, I can actually release a lot of that stuff. People will actually find it and connect to it, because they can relate to it. We played a show on the weekend and it was with a prog crowd, so I didn’t want to scare them too much because they’re on a different frequency and I didn’t want to vomit in their face. Metalheads get that, but I think prog and rock people, their aesthetic’s a bit different. The intensity isn’t as strong.
