2 days ago
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Gordi, a 2016 Stereogum Artist To Watch, debuted new songs at shows in her native Australia this past autumn — Australian autumn, meaning March through May — and sold them as a tour-exclusive EP titled Nylon. The copies sold out entirely, and the strength of those sales on that five-week tour led the EP's #3 debut on AIR's 100% Independent Singles chart in late May, meaning it charted before its formal release or any online announcement.
Sharing screengrabs of confused emails from the Australian Independent Record Labels Association ("we can't find any reference online to this release nor the image for the cover"), the singer-songwriter summed up the achievement on Instagram:
I made a record but I didn't tell the internet
or anyone really
except for every single person who came to my Aus tour in April who bought every single advance copy
so now the unreleased record is in the charts
lol
Nylon is now available on streaming services via Gordi's Hey Alfalfa label, and as a 15-minute studio performance on YouTube captured by director Madeleine Purdy. It's a sublime collection of four indie-folk songs that Gordi, singing and playing nylon-string guitar, recorded live-to-tape with no overdubs or edits. Middle Kids' Tim Fitz produced it with her and added instrumentation and harmonies, while Alex O'Gorman (GORMIE) mixed and mastered.
"I just wanted to make something that I couldn't with, that I couldn't edit to the point where I lost all perspective on what the thing actually was," Gordi said earlier this month. "I was really fixated on wanting to just capture a moment."
In a letter accompanying the release, Gordi explained that Nylon grew out of a desire to make and share music away from the internet:
Last December I had finished 8 months of solid touring and promoting my album, and I was tired. Like, bone tired. A thick fatigue had descended on me and I felt a pathological resistance to looking at my phone, streaming songs from the internet, and recording or producing music on any digital device. I was thinking a lot about Joan Baez, and how she never had to advertise 'Diamonds & Rust' on Instagram.
Technology wasn't just bothering me in its unrelenting constancy, I was also beginning to reject its influence over the way I made music. I could listen over and over to a vocal take, and redo every section until it felt perfect. As if that was the goal in the first place. With these ruminations, I picked up my nylon string guitar and wrote a few songs in a flurry. I messaged my long time friend, Tim Fitz, who is in a band I love dearly called Middle Kids, and I asked him if he had a tape machine. He did.
In one afternoon at the end of January, we recorded the four songs. I performed each a few times and we recorded directly to tape, and then we picked our favourite take. My friend and long time collaborator, Purdy, filmed the whole thing. As I listened back, I found myself focusing in a different way. I wasn't waiting to pick out wrong notes that needing fixing, I was simply listening for which take best captured the soul of the song. In all its imperfection.
I was scared of losing the sacredness of the process to marketing the thing on the internet. So, I decided not to. Instead, I printed a couple hundred copies to vinyl, and I took them with me on my Australian tour and told the people who turned up to shows about what I had made. They bought every single copy. As a result, the record, which was technically unreleased, made it into the charts. I thought, perhaps this body of work deserves a wider release. So - here it is. Nylon. It's out everywhere today.
Gordi previewed Nylon a few weeks ago by posting the studio performance of "Forget About Dying" on her channels. "Given this record is leaking out into the internet, I thought it was time to properly share a song from it with you," she wrote. She continued:
This is track #1 - 'Forget About Dying'. I really laboured over every word of it. A meditation on the irrepressible desire to be present. About desperately wanting to be exactly where you are.
Making it was one of my favourite ever days of recording. We spent an hour talking through how we would do it - no overdubs, no edits, no changes. However it came out was how it was meant to be. It was about capturing a moment.
You can check out Nylon on Bandcamp and buy a copy of the second iridescent pink vinyl pressing, limited to 300 copies, via Sydney indie Impressed Recordings. Gordi says she forgot to grab one from the first run for herself before selling out, so hopefully they set one aside for her. Gordi will also be back in the US in autumn — American autumn — on a short tour that kicks off at Los Angeles' Zebulon.
Nylon is out now via Hey Alfalfa/Impressed/Mushroom Music.
Georgia Griffiths
English (US) · 