Ela Stiles – Songs & Bushwalking

+ Monica Brooks, Lucy Cliché,  Angie

Over the years, Ela Stiles has built a name for herself as an adept musician in Sydney’s often strange and varied music scene. Moving beyond her work in local favourites Songs, she became a driving force in Melbourne outfit Bushwalking, releasing two records with the band while still based in Sydney and working on numerous projects.
This, her debut record, is made up of two parts. Side A was recorded and mixed by Jack Farley at Transient Studios in Melbourne over one weekend. A mainstay in Melbourne music, Farley is responsible for records from Twerps, Bitch Prefect, Full Ugly, Beaches and more. He was also the man behind Bushwalking’s second record No Enter and had spent a lot of time working with Ela.

The B-side, then, is one single vocal drone, self-recorded, run through tape machine and then layered again with more vocal, this time recorded by John Duncan (Silver Moon) “a brickie/labourer who records strictly one project a year”. Pieced together, the record was then mastered in Melbourne by Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring et. al.). It is complex and deliberately structured collection of sound, and as a whole is truly powerful