A young, emerging electronic producer who first found national fame seven years ago as an innocent 11-year-old after being profiled by triple j Unearthed, Australian indie EDM artist Black Summer is on the verge of releasing his debut album, 'Channel Horror' (out 12 December).
The first sample of that record – which Black Summer aka Rhys Toms travelled to Los Angeles to record with Chris 'TEK' O'Ryan, who co-mixed and mastered the eight-song LP – is the menacingly dark yet elaborately opulent 'Cernunnos'. Overlayed with a range of cinematic-sounding broken-beat soundscapes and vocal samples, and swathed in delicious strings, the hypnotic, trap-inspired grimy beat drops like a velvety sledgehammer, the dusty industrial-flavoured trip-hop tones creating a magnificent ear worm.
It also features Rhys' own raps, his flow bringing to mind the likes of JPEGMafia and Denzel Curry. "I felt like it was time to step to a new level, I always wanted to do vocals but never had the confidence," admits the young star.
"I've been working on my voice for a long time because I always saw myself as an all-around artist and not just a producer.
"The ideas I had were so specific for this album that I felt the only way I could get the vision I had was to step out of my comfort zone and be the vocalist too."
Ahead of the song's release on Tuesday (22 November), scenestr is excited to premiere 'Cernunnos' today. Enjoy.
"This single represents almost a rebirth of myself as an artist," adds Rhys, "it's about dealing with problems in my personal life – like toxic relationships, trust issues, and becoming numb to the way I got treated by people. I took all of that and channelled it into something creative.
"The song itself is named after an ancient Celtic deity called Cernunnos, a god of fertility, life, and resurrection. To me, it represents a neutrality and being in harmony with what's around you; I felt like it was symbolic of the stage I'm in with my music at the moment with how connected I feel to this new stage of my sound."
Time-travelling back to 2015 and being profiled by triple j Unearthed; while it opened certain doors and opportunities within the industry – including performing at Groovin The Moo – it also uncorked a torrent of online hate.
"Getting constant hate after the interview I did with triple j Unearthed when I was a kid was tough, I guess it was just because I was so young," shares Rhys.
"No matter what I did, there seemed to be no convincing this swarm of hating trolls. I made videos showing how I produced the tracks and it didn't help either.
"So, I got to the point where, just as an experiment, I started a new artist name and didn't tell anyone about it. It had no bio or backstory attached to it, just a name and my point was to see if my music could stand on its own without any of the 'youngest producer' hype, because honestly, after a few years of constant hate I started to even doubt myself.
"The name I chose was something completely different from my main name: Kyotoclan. Not long after posting music and collaborating with underground artists, it started to get some love on Soundcloud, more so than my Black Summer name.
"Songs cracking over 30K listens. Not huge, but I was proud that it happened totally organically, with no promotion or money put into anything, just from people getting excited and sharing.
"Soon, the problem became about whether I reveal who I am as Kyotoclan or merge the two.
"After a while I decided to reveal who I am to my Kyotoclan fans. Some of these songs on 'Channel Horror' I had released under Kyotoclan and this new direction was where Kyotoclan was heading, so, in a way, Black Summer has now merged with Kyotoclan."
