{"id":11838,"date":"2020-07-20T12:49:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T17:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=11838"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:23:53","slug":"artist-interview-katie-stelmanis-of-austra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2020\/07\/20\/artist-interview-katie-stelmanis-of-austra\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Interview :: Katie Stelmanis of Austra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Kaelen Bell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked how she\u2019s handling isolation \u2013 and the Austra tour postponement it necessitated \u2013 Katie Stelmanis pauses for a moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a real answer, which I\u2019m always like, \u2018should I say it?\u2019 and I always end up saying it,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cBasically, I went through another, not-related-to-my-album breakup a few months ago, and was not looking forward to touring the record because of that. And now, I don\u2019t have to tour the record for like, another half a year or however long it\u2019s gonna be. So I\u2019m actually kind of happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tour was meant to be in support of Austra\u2019s fourth record, the deeply personal HiRUDiN. <\/em>And while Stelmanis admits that she\u2019s beginning to itch for the road again, she says isolation has given her time to figure some things out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of nice that I just get to be at home and chill and just kind of, like, process everything from afar,\u201d she says. \u201cI am doing okay. I\u2019m doing like, as good as you can be\u2026 I think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked whether, like so many of her peers, she\u2019ll use this sudden free time for livestream shows, Stelmanis pauses and laughs again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done one live concert online and I have to be honest\u2026 I\u2019m not looking forward to doing any more,\u201d she says. \u201cFirst of all, just the technical stuff behind it is so complicated. You have to download all these third party programs and set up these loop feedbacks. There\u2019s so much stuff going on, and<\/em> you have to rely on the internet. And I\u2019m just in my crappy basement studio when I do them. It doesn\u2019t represent the record, or what I wanna do, at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That record, the lush and orchestral HiRUDiN<\/em>, is unlike any Austra record that\u2019s come before \u2013 defined by a spirit of collaboration, it\u2019s a towering mix of florid live instrumentation and Austra\u2019s trademark synthetic textures. It\u2019s true that it would likely sound out of place coming through your Instagram feed \u2013 it feels made for stages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPreviously my only collaborators had been my old live band, or I had just done things by myself. So this is the first time I was just reaching out to anyone and everyone to be part of it,\u201d she says. \u201cI think that defines the record, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first HiRUDiN sessions took place in Toronto, with a team of players that Stelmanis had never worked with before. Stelmanis describes these early live recordings as the bedrock of the record \u2013 a far cry from the entirely digital scapes found on 2017\u2019s Future Politics<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I always like to do something differently than I did before, and Future Politics<\/em> was the most in-the-box record,\u201d she says. \u201cI wrote it mostly while travelling with these tiny little setups. It was mixed by my live engineer, also kind of just on the road. Everything about it was in a laptop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stelmanis says HiRUDiN<\/em> is the closest thing to a \u201ctraditional record\u201d that Austra\u2019s ever made \u2013 inspired by 1960s pop structures and the music of British Folk legend Joan Armatrading, it\u2019s an entirely new side to Stelmanis\u2019 song writing. She credits her work with those session players in Toronto as shifting her vision of how an Austra record could be made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was something that I was always sort of scared of embracing, \u2018cause I thought that, like, it would take away some of my own artistic integrity or something. But I found the absolute opposite to be true,\u201d she says. \u201cI was able to get closer to creating something and making it sound how I wanted it to sound than I ever really have before, and that was fully because I had so much help and collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stelmanis says that when Austra does eventually hit the road again, it\u2019s going to look different \u2013 a new way of performing for a new kind of music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was rehearsing with my new band in March, before lockdown happened and everything,\u201d she says. \u201cWe got about half way through our rehearsals, and there was quite a difference playing these sort of more introspective tracks. I guess I sort of have to rethink my live show in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s got plenty of time to think, time that she says has already begun to change how she sees her newest songs. It\u2019s going to be a new world by the time Katie Stelmanis is able to bring HiRUDiN<\/em> to the stage, and it\u2019s likely the record itself will feel like a brand new work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI finished this record a year ago, really. And my life, all of our lives, are drastically different from one year ago,\u201d she says. \u201cSo already, these songs have a completely different meaning for me than they did when I wrote them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kaelen Bell When asked how she\u2019s handling isolation \u2013 and the Austra tour postponement it necessitated \u2013 Katie Stelmanis pauses for a moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1739],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11841,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11838\/revisions\/11841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}