By Yourself, Boy.

Today's email is unlike anything you've seen from us so far.

And since it's going to be a bit long, here's the release of the day:

Tutara Peak's New EP.

It’s a perfect example of music that makes you feel and reflect on life so far. It’s a short and sweet experience that can get stuck in repeat, so be careful.

Why send it first? Because you have to listen to it first otherwise this email will make no sense.

Give it a listen and then come back to read the first ever DumpsterView.

And hey, if you enjoyed it, here’s a reminder he has a live show going on this Friday. Check it out here.

Yes, I know it's too much to ask.

But I've had this playing all day on repeat. There's something magical here and it'll be spoiled if you read the interview first.

So go and Njoy the EP

The interview itself will get you inside the creative process of how the songs were made. It’s both mind blowing and mind changing.

Hz: Alright I’m here with the legendary Tutara Peak. Hows it going?

TP: Busy! With the EP launch and my first headline show happening I’ve been all over the place. But seeing everything come together is quite nice. This is going to be the big mama of all the sets that I've done in the past.

Hz: How so?

I'm basically going to be playing through the different kind of sounds that I've explored in Tutara Peak right back from my first release and sequentially going through them.

So yeah, not exactly like a Swifty eras tour or anything like that, but something to that degree.

I've got some guests who featured on the EP that's going to come up and perform with me which is going to be a first as I've never performed with another person so that's going to be cool.

And also the person that I'm sharing the gig with Vermin the Villain.

We've been writing music together for about eight years now. and he's from Texas so he's coming down from Texas to do the show.

I've also put together a new completely refined live setup especially for this gig as it's first headline. Want it to be treating it as something special.

Hz: Hahaha, that’s awesome to hear! So before I ask all about the EP and your show, what’s the story behind the name? It’s very unique.

TP: I was thinking about, what sort of words described my music, and one word that I kept on noting down was evolving.

So I did some research and found that there's an animal called “tuatara” which is the fastest evolving creature in the animal kingdom.

So basically I took “a” out of “tuatara” to make it Tutara and then I added the word peak at the end just because I really like mountains and that's pretty much it.

It’s the first project that’s given me a career and it feels very home grown and DIY and we’ve come a long way to this point.

Hz: I thought you added Peak because the music is Peak but that’s pretty sick. I love mountains as well and discovering a new animal is quite cool.
So tell us more about the EP…

TP: I mean, this EP was definitely the most personal record I think I've ever worked on. mostly because it’s been the course of writing it for about a year and a half or so there' some songs are even two three years old on it.

The whole record was a much more personal one because I think I was feeling a lot more of what’s considered negative emotions, going through a lot of difficult things and coming to grips with where my mental health is at and feeling a lot of directionlessness and a lot of solitude…

I feel like this EP in particular at a certain point just felt like a collection of songs.

And then I had a conversation with someone about looking at things from a different perspective when it comes to negative emotions.

And it's the idea of feeling lost can be an amazing thing because you've kind of got all the possibilities in front of you.

And I think for me that's something I find really really inspiring and incredibly exciting knowing that there's so much possibility.

When I know that there's just one route to something it's very disorientating. I think it kind of put a different perspective on that.

Even though I'd felt lost for quite a long time without even knowing it's come out in the music in the peaks and troughs of the different moments in each song. and I don't know. I think as well sonically it's a very different direction.

Hz: Wow. That’s fantastic. Okay so what’s the story behind the name of the EP “By Yourself Boy”

So, that is actually the title of a poem that I saw on the London Underground probably about four months ago.

I was reading the poem and from my interpretation of the poem it stated that being by yourself is the best way to be…

And I fundamentally disagreed with that.
But I really liked the title because I felt like I was by myself with a lot of things.

And to give you another example of that, all the visual stuff, all the artwork, all the visual assets, the videos, I did myself because I know I gave myself a lot of a bigger task, but I wanted to do it because I just wanted that creative control, which I didn't feel like I knew anyone could achieve at the time.

I'm not saying I did all of this by myself, but from the beginning to now, it definitely felt like I was just by myself a lot of the time.

Hz: Alright, let’s go over each of the songs. Let’s start with Crop Circles.

Crop Circles is the intro track to the EP and basically it's about an experience that I had when I was about 5 years old.

So to paint the picture for you, when I was five, I was in PE at school and basically got knocked on the head and fell down.

I had the weird experience where I just blinked when I hit the ground and blinked again to everyone standing around looking at me. This was a very significant moment because I never forgot that moment.

Throughout my life I kept on thinking of that moment.

What would happen if I get to the end of my life and then at the end I go back to that point when I woke back up and everyone's looking around me to the point where everything almost felt like a dream or it felt like I was being extracted from reality.

I don't know why these are the sort of thoughts I had when I was a kid basically.

I tie this idea into more of a fictional work of being abducted by aliens, hence the term crop circles.

So the idea is that I essentially get knocked on the head as I actually did and then basically get abducted. and then I see all these things happen, then before I know it, in the blink of an eye, I'm then back on the floor.

I researched a lot of people that had abductees and what the experience was like and essentially tried to weave the story like that.

Hz: That’s really good. Wow. So on to Telescope. I notice that it’s on the cover art. is that related?

TP: Yes, but that’s a surprise for later and only if you’re signed up to my list.

But with the song Telescope that's meant to be about feeling like you're on the outside looking in.

Me and Jesse who wrote it we talk about the idea that imagine you're just stood outside seeing through a window door or whatever and you're seeing all your friends at a party that you weren't invited to.

We tried to evoke feelings like that. And then yeah, there's a lot of visual lyrics throughout this EP and I really tried to paint an interesting picture that way.

But it's basically just feeling like you just don't fit in with people.

Hz: Okay, it's perfect. Yeah, and this is something I've noticed that compared to “Of the Nascient mind” and “Bassika” that there is more vocals, guitars, and natural sounds.

TP: So here's the thing. About two three years ago I started experimenting with the sound and kind of going back to listening to a lot of music when I was a teenager. So a lot of post rock and a lot of shoe gaze, a lot of UK indie and 2010s…

And I felt very inspired to try that in my own music - in the realm of electronic music. And I've always thought that electronic music and rock music or post rock or whatever or shoe gaze had never been done the way that I always imagined it to be…

I had started working with a lot more artists in this shoe gaze realm essentially. And I wanted to learn from them how they write songs because I'd collaborated with producers in the past but not necessarily songwriters.

They might come up with guitar chords lyrics before they even start recording stuff which is a very foreign process to me.

So I started working with a lot of songwriters like that basically to understand how to write that sort of music.

I think naturally what happened is this music came out which focused a lot more on songwriting as opposed to production my earlier works did.

And it was completely intentional. It was also I think another reason why this record has been quite a personal one for me is because there have been strong feelings of imposter syndrome and anxiety with actually showing people this because it is quite a different step…

And I've kind of had a lot of thoughts of “will people like it” and these aren't things that I ever think about when creating which I think is important.

But when I've got an EP together and I'm listening to it and looking at it I just think “I don't even know if people going to like it” and I've spent the last year year and a half, two years on it…”

It's quite like a daunting feeling, but I think important having people around you to console you and say as long as you did your best, put it out there…

And I've kind of viewed now the way I view my past releases and this current release is this is just a version of myself at this point in time. So in 30 years from now, I can look back and think that was Tutara Peak in 2024.

Hz: Yeah that makes more sense now… Okay so on to Picture of me

TP: I thought about this idea and if you think about it, if I put me in that person being interviewed, it's kind of acts as a self-portrait.

I call it picture of me because it's acting as somewhat of a sonic self-portrait, except I'm not using myself as the focus.

I'm using all the people around me that have made me into the person that I am, without sounding too cheesy. But basically I've always thought that a self-portrait or the picture of me is actually everyone around me essentially.

So the video to that again is I basically got those backdrops that you have in high school photos or whatever the gray kind of cloudy ones.

So I got one of those filmed it on my video camera me film my fiance and film my parents. and yeah, that's pretty much the story behind that song…

It was at this point that I saw the 2,000 word count and realized…

THERE’S STILL 4 SONGS TO GO.

So this is part 1.

Part 2 coming Fridee.

If you haven’t - even after reading all that - check out Tutara Peak at his website: https://www.tutarapeak.com/

This has officially beaten the record for longest email ever. Thank you for reading up to this point, you’re a real one.

Always Forward

Hz

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