With a new single released in August, an acoustic tour under his belt and a recently announced slot for this year's Australian Music Week, Harry Heart has been busy.
Kicking off in Sydney, the multi-instrumentalist toured throughout September after the release of his single ‘Ninety Six’.
Harry, who says ‘Ninety Six’ has been a long time coming, wrote and recorded everything himself.
“I feel like I’ve had the song up my sleeve for so long. It was nice to finally put it out into the world. I think it’s the best stand-alone representation of what I like to do in music,” Harry says.
“I record everything myself – it was just me and my drummer, just sitting there and we pushed it out.
“The song is written in the same way I live my life, I jumped from instrument to instrument and just got it out. The song itself is about me having a look at what I’m doing with my time and life and why I’m doing it,” he says.
Harry brings the same enthusiasm and love he has for his art form to his live shows. “I’m very sort of hands-on with everything I do; I have other people who help me but I like to plan and package it all. I put a lot of thought into whatever it is I’m going to do,” he says.
Harry recently released his debut EP, ‘First Endorphin’. “'First Endorphin' is quite refined,” he says. “It’s a lot more heavy-hitting than anything I’ve released before. It’s not very long, it’s in and out, but it leaves its mark.
“I’m really proud of it and pleased with it. Sometimes when you spend a long time doing something you kind of get scared to show it to people.
“I think I have a tendency to rush things, I like to get it done, and I know a lot of artists who are the opposite and spend the a lot of time getting the final details.
“But with this EP, I took my time, more than I usually would and I don’t have those doubts because I genuinely feel like it’s the best job I could have done.”
With Australian Music Week just around the corner, Harry is looking forward to playing alongside other independent musicians.
“Australian Music Week means everyone ends up in the same place and we are all after the same thing. It’s cool because it puts all these people who have similar aspirations into a one or two kilometre radius, and it’s a chance to organically connect with people, which isn’t as common now,” he says.
Harry started playing classical piano at a young age and it wasn’t long until he added more instruments to his resume. “I guess when I was little I was curious about different instruments, I played classical piano and gradually accumulated loads of instruments from there.
"One day I picked up an electric guitar and just played with it until it sounded like I knew what I was doing,” he says.
“A drum kit somehow ended up in the garage and then I guess singing was a natural result of that, a mandolin got in there too.”
Along with his instrument-playing abilities, Harry has always had a passion for words and writing lyrics as well. “I quite like writing lyrics, [from] when I was little – even poems and that sort of thing.
"I didn’t really have the voice for it at the time. It didn’t take long before I was writing songs though, I started at 11 or 12. [I] loved it back then just as much as I do now.”
