Quiet Blue
It has been a joy to watch Quiet Blue grow, develop and hone in on his dreamy sound over the years. Recently releasing his debut EP Before Dawn, Quiet Blue takes us on a captivating, ethereal journey from beginning to end. Hazy Days Music would like to thank Nic Georgiou for taking the time out and hazy a chat.
It has been great watching your sound evolve from your first release. What have you been doing to develop and find your sound?
I released my first single just under two years ago now, and I started this project with much more of a folk sensibility. I was really into artists like Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens. I found artists like James Blake, Honne, and Bearcubs. All these artists are crazy electronic musicians. That's what influences me today, and that's the style of music I create. I find it more challenging creating this electronic style of music and so much more rewarding. Spending that time searching and learning how to create those individual sounds is super satisfying. My debut EP Before Dawn is a combination of those two influences. I am going to take it further on the production side. But for all of these songs on the EP, I started on either the piano or guitar and then I'd come up with the vocal melody, then I take them and make them electronic, which is a very fun process.
I am consistently pushing myself to get better at creating that ambient sound. It has really progressed over the last year. And looking back, it was pretty rudimental at the beginning. I would record everything (guitar, vocals and midi keyboard) and create the ambience through sampling my vocals and synths. These days I have been working on sound design, which is a lot more daunting and to be honest, I am pretty bad at it, haha.
Sound design is just a whole new world, and I'm keen to keep delving into too.
I am a big fan of your latest single 2AM, What is the story behind making this one?
2AM is the first song I wrote for Before Dawn and got me thinking about this theme for the EP. It's all about the night and my experience throughout the night. I didn't only want to write about the night but create a sonic world to convey the stories.
2AM’s about me struggling with sleep, constantly waking up throughout the night from bad dreams, and how that then plays out into the rest of your life. It is pretty damaging when you don't sleep very well. I found that the case with me, one of the big things that I’ve struggled with is not sleeping well. Even though I love the nighttime, my sleeping patterns have affected my health in the past.
That's where this song came from, It really was the start to Before Dawn, and I just found that at that time, I just had so much to say about the night.
Each of the songs on the EP covers my experience of different parts of the night. 2AM was the base block of my body of work.
I have a bit of a system in place for a few of my songs where I work with my writing partner. He creates the structure, and I write the lyrics. Then we work together till we get the finished product. Edvard Hakansson was the producer and mixed it. Working with him was amazing!
I was blown away when I listened to 2AM the first time. It gave me some big Dustin Tebbut vibes, is he someone that influences your sound?
That's the biggest compliment you could probably say! And sort of what I want to do. I've been listening to Dustin Tebbut for years. Ever since he released his EP The Breach, he has one of my most listened to songs ever. I try and bring that influence into my music but take it to a different place with all the electronic aspects. If that’s the vibe you got from my music, I’m pretty stoked!
Before Dawn Is an incredible Ep. I think opening with Come Into The Water is the perfect track to start the EP with, was that always the plan?
Come Into The Water was an interesting one to make and was made to be the opening track. This was the last and most recent song I wrote for the EP. I had this cool chord progression on a four-bar loop that Jordan De Pasquale (writing partner and manager) I stretched out into a song. We wanted to create a super ambient opening and finish to the song so we could use it as an opening track.
Come Into The Water is about the sunset. When I was living up in Sydney, a mate and I used to surf all the time. One night we were up in Newport and didn't want to get out of the water as it was getting darker and darker. It's one of my favourite memories of night time, where we were just in the water ushering in the night. I thought that it was important that I not only talked about what's tough about the night but also talked about what I love about the night.
Starting on a happy memory before I go a bit sadder was important. It is one of my favourite songs. It goes back into the ambient stuff I used to do. I think it's a nice progression from my earlier stuff into my more electronic songs you hear in my EP.
How did Covid effect making the EP?
Funnily enough, I think the EP only happened because of Covid. I pretty much wrote and finished every one of the songs in lockdown. I did a few webcam sessions with producer Edvard on the first two songs I wrote. That was during the big lockdown in Melbourne. Obviously, it was a hard time, but this was the only time in years where I have had that much free time like I wasn't going to uni or work. I just had a lot of time to work on this music.
What did you do to celebrate the release?
So I had a really nice day planned for the release. I was going to go shopping with my partner and go out for lunch. We planned to have a really nice morning and then see my manager after. We organised a dinner with the other artists and managers in my management group. That morning, I woke up to a message from my manager saying. I’m going to be completely honest, I’ve woken up with a tickle in my throat, and I've just gotten a covid test. I was with him the day before, and we all were sort of with him on that day. So I went into isolation Friday morning and didn't leave the house. It turns out he didn't have it. So I didn't actually do anything on the day, a bit of an anticlimax.
What are your plans for 2021? And has your set changed as your sound has grown?
I want to play as much as possible this year. It's just hard to plan too far ahead with everything still up in the air.
My live set has changed so much since my first show. I used to play with a band, but now it's just me up there, and I use Ableton Live to pin out the set. It was a bit daunting at first trying to figure that out, but I’m really happy with how the set is and really happy with how it all jells together.
I played my first show back since lockdown in January, and it was the first time playing a lot of these songs live for the first time. Between that first setback and the last set I played before Covid, I only had one song in the set from both of those shows. I was playing everything for the first time and it was really fun. I’ve sort of told my managers that now is the period to play as much as possible. It's amazing to be back in the live setting.
It’s just a great place to meet other musicians and be in that environment again. From that first show back, I made lots of new connections at that shows, it's great you can start to build that community again, which is really important, and I really missed that over lockdown. I just love playing shows.
How do you find playing music on your own compared to with a band?
It was good. I much more prefer to do it on my own. I never really wrote my earlier song to be performed with a band. I was sort of playing the same thing but replaying it in a band setting, and I think those earlier songs got lost in that. But now that I'm playing with backing tracks, I can make those songs sound exactly how I want them to. I can change things on the fly, strip them back, pretty much do what I like. I feel like I have a lot more freedom now that I’m up there on my own.