Melbourne producer Lucianblomkamp has released the first instalment of his new album, 'Sick Of What I Don't Understand', which he intends to unveil in three parts over the next year.
“The decision-making to split it up into three parts was because there's a huge narrative shift and tone throughout the whole album,” Lucian says.
“It was also based on the time that it took to put the album together.
"Obviously everyone is influenced by what's going on in their life and it comes out in their art, and I think there was such a dramatic shift during the time that I was creating it that the tone and all aspects of the writing process were so different. It just made so much sense to divide it up.”
'Sick Of What I Don't Understand' is an album that chronicles Lucian's own journey of self-realisation and personal transformations that he has undergone the past, few years.
“It's more of a three-part story in a sense, just an emotional growth over time and the album is pretty much the documentation of that,” he says.
“Everyone is going to continue to change over time but I think that's the growth throughout the three parts, just gradually coming to terms with myself.”
In making the album and coming to terms with himself, Lucian also came to terms with his identity as an artist and some of his creative missteps of his past.
He explains how being initially close-minded to creative collaboration and criticism hindered his songwriting. “Originally I had a really strong idea of what I wanted to do with my music,” he says.
“I said 'no' to a lot of opportunities and a lot of creative ideas because I thought it wouldn't really fit with what I wanted the project to achieve.
"In the end it was more harmful than a benefit because then I was digging myself into a hole creatively because I'd made the trajectory of the project so narrow and so specific.
“Because of that, creatively, writing and making music became a lot more of a chore, more of a task because I made it so that I wasn't doing anything I wanted to. What also influences the narrative of the [new] album is that that's all just kind of bullshit,” he laughs.
“I was taking myself way too seriously and as a result it made me miserable.”
Lucian will be performing a number of live shows in support of the release of the album's first part, hitting the east coast and Perth in November.
He says that after working on the album for so long, the prospect of finally playing the songs live incurs a mixed emotional response. “It's a huge relief to be able to perform all this stuff finally,” he says.
“I've been sitting on it for two or three years now, so it's kind of nerve-wracking and exciting to play things for the first time that have never been played.
“This time around I wanted to make the performances way more about the performance, so there's a lot more live instrumentation and different rearrangements of new and old songs.”
Lucianblomkamp Shows
Fri 3 Nov - The Gasometer Hotel (Melbourne)Thu 9 Nov - Woolly Mammoth (Brisbane)
Fri 10 Nov - Hudson Ballroom (Sydney)
Sat 11 Nov - Jack Rabbit Slim's (Perth)
