Marcus Whale's first solo album, Inland Sea, will be released on Good Manners Music in June.
The bulk of the Sydney vocalist and producer's catalogue covers his work in local groups Collarbones (with Travis Cook) and BV (with Jared Beeler and Lavurn Lee AKA Cassius Select). Whale's first full release under his given name is co-produced by Nigel Yang of HTRK, and sees him venturing into more delicate and introspective territory, touching on themes of "race, gender and sexuality" according to the label. Whale himself goes on to explain:
"Having spent years cultivating musical divergences through pop music, experimental music, contemporary classical music, dance music, Inland Sea is all about convergence, using all of these languages simultaneously. Confronted with the possibility of defining myself in the form of an album, Inland Sea constructs my geographic origin stories, drawing from queer and colonial Australian history that looks, fantastically and impossibly, to a future beyond the colony. The "inland sea," then, is a kind of imaginary, inaccessible place of escape permanently outside the hierarchy that so defines Australia's very existence as a nation-state. The album is a kind of utopia-making exercise, building a genealogy of my queerness that's ever turned towards hope."
Listen to "Vapour", the second single from the album, below.
Tracklist
01. Inland Sea
02. Is He That Man?
03. Vapour
04. Vulnerable
05. Arcadia
06. 1888
07. My Captain
08. Milk
09. A White Blanket
10. Blood Moon
Good Manners Music will release Inland Sea on June 10th, 2016.