Saulé
Saulé is the solo project of Indonesian-British singer-songwriter Riahta Ranford currently based in Ngunnawal country (Canberra). Releasing her debut EP, Blush, 2017, late last year, Saulé has quickly become an artist to watch in 2022. Hazy Days Music would like to thank Riahta for taking the time out and having a chat.
It's been really exciting to watch you grow as an artist over the past year. How much of a role has music played in your life growing up? And when did the idea for Saulé start?
Creating music came pretty late for me. I grew up writing a lot, and my granddad loved that, he encouraged me and took an interest in my writing; he'd always print off and bind up my work.
When I was six, my parents enrolled me in piano lessons, but I ended up hating it. My teacher was this really strict Russian lady who would put apples under my hands and make sure I sat with good posture. I just wanted to go off my ear and learn melodies from memory rather than reading music because I'm really good at picking it up that way.
That was my early gateway into music, plus I'd listen to whatever my dad had on - Chicago, The Beatles, all the classics.
Lockdown is definitely what birthed Saulé. I released some music when I was a teenager, playing a few shows, putting my music up on SoundCloud for free and all that, but I think the last time I would've performed live was when I was sixteen. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was pretty naive, but I was doing it for fun. Then reality hits you, and you need to get a job and go to university. I travelled overseas for a while, spent a bit of time in the UK and put all that music stuff on pause for a really long time.
Your debut EP Blush, 2017 is incredible! How was your experience writing this EP? Was it all written over lockdown?
Honestly, it wasn't really any different from any other time I have written music. For me, writing music is a very solitary practice; it's usually just me alone in my bedroom with a guitar. However, my writing process has recently changed to lyrics first, rather than melody, which is interesting.
The process used to be I'll create a melody; it'll either take a few days or a couple of hours. Then, once I have the entire outline played through on guitar saved in my voice notes, I'll send that to Sam with the lyrics and chords, and he'd think on it for a bit. We usually have a big back and forth over emails, showing me bits of what he has done to the song, and I suggest things that I think would be a nice vibe, maybe synths in this part, stuff like that.
I'd love to learn how to produce music. I think it's so interesting how they hear things differently for where a song could go, whereas I can get stuck in the acoustics of it all.
The first song I wrote was Until This Blows Over (Sore) back in 2017/18, and my friend/producer in the UK, Sam, helped with all the backing instrumentation and mixing the song. I'm not sure why, but I had no interest in doing anything with it. I moved to Canberra, bored and stuck in lockdown. I wasn't really enjoying my day job and thought I'll just do this again for a bit and ended up writing a few more songs, and it ended up becoming a pretty collaborative thing with my producer. But the idea for an EP only happened recently. I'd been umming and ahhing for a little while after all the tracks were recorded; if I should take it any further? Then Gaga Digi reached out to me wanting to help release my music, and I thought, what am I hesitating for?
God Damn Dream is one of my favourite tracks off your EP. Could you share the meaning behind this one?
It's funny. I didn't think that God Damn Dream would have such an exciting reaction. I thought it was kind of a boring song when I first wrote it. I really liked the melody. I just didn't think it was as nice as the others.
I was going through a hard time when I was writing this one. My partner was in the hospital, and I was home alone, all mopey and sad. I think I wrote it in a way that conveys the feeling of being a little scared, scared about what may happen to someone you love when you can't be there for them. I suppose it's a really vulnerable song, written in a really vulnerable space, dealing with someone close to you who is really ill. I'm sure many people have been experiencing that. I just wanted to let that person know that you are actually everything to me, and please be careful.
You are very talented with your writing style, setting the scene and making it easy to picture what is happening with your lyrics. Is this something you focus on? Are there any artists who inspire you to write this way?
I read a lot, recently it's been hard to read with work being so full-on. Definitely, poetry is a big factor, people like Claudia Rankine, an American poet, beautiful stuff, on black lives. Poetry, literature, I’m always writing notes in my iPhone. I really like using imagery a lot. I think that comes across in the songs. I'm really attracted to the moon, the ocean as a metaphor to build upon. Nature is one that I really like using imagery with. It's funny, I've never really thought about what inspires me.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about the EP?
The whole EP is based on relationships with people in my life and the different types of intimacy I have with people. A few songs are about my mum and my relationship with her, and others are about my partner; they are all really vulnerable. I think that's probably another place where I write from, about the relationships I have with people, and it's not always romantic, sometimes it can be paternal or about friends. It's all very relational.
Can we catch you playing anywhere soon?
I've been speaking with Canberra based website/magazine Homegrown Sounds about shows. Prior to lockdown, Homegrown had been putting on these intimate performances at cafes around Canberra. They'd asked me a few times, but I never got around to playing; I was too scared, haha, I'm just such an anxious person.
I would like to do a launch show for the EP. Hopefully, before the end of the year (2021), start with baby steps and go from there. I think because it's been such a long time since I last performed, plus I also don't have a band, so it's just going to be me and my guitar playing stripped back versions from what you hear on Spotify. Which I think will be really lovely.
What’s planned for 2022? Do you have any more music on the way?
I'm already working on a second EP. I have like 5 or 6 songs down. Sam has been helping me transpose some of my chord progressions because sometimes I think my chords are boring and lame, haha. I don't know much about music theory or read sheet music very well. He'll tell me that's actually a really unique jazz note and stuff I have no idea about, so it's been fun learning things from him. And just slowly start playing some shows.
Stay up to date with Saulé on Instagram and Spotify.