SLUMBERJACK
Origin: Australia
In the past year, Perth-based duo SLUMBERJACK have brought their music to new heights, turning out massive club hits like “RA” and increasing their total streams to over 40 million across platforms. During that time, musicians Morgan Then and Fletcher Ehlers have also pushed to a new level in their artistry and carved out a more boldly challenging sound than ever before. With their first-ever headline tour in the works, SLUMBERJACK now deliver a new EP that, in Ehlers’s words, “explores the dichotomies of light and dark and beauty and ugliness,” and ultimately creates a world unto itself. Revealing SLUMBERJACK’s more refined musicality and heightened experimentalism, the new EP Fracture is a potent composite of bass-heavy club anthems, hook-driven pop tracks, and lushly cinematic pieces that show their film-score-inspired sensibilities. With its moody intensity and gorgeously jagged textures, the EP’s lead single and title track debuted in January and quickly became triple j’s most played track for several weeks. “Fracture” features a powerful vocal performance from Sydney-based singer/songwriter Vera Blue, infusing the song with an emotional depth that endures throughout the EP. “We want to create club tracks that have a story to them,” says Then. “You can dance to it at a festival or jam to it anywhere, but you can also listen more closely and study it and see how it relates to your own life.”