Brisbane producer Kyle Lacko unveils 'Treasureville', the long-awaited album for his solo recording project Tidal Peak.
Since releasing his 2020 single 'Shimmer' in 2020, Kyle has spent the past five years honing his craft as a producer and recording artist to lovingly sculpt his magnum opus. "I never really went away. The reason for the big gap really is my perfectionism ramped up," Kyle explains."I started the album in October 2019, then when COVID hit it gave me some time to listen back to the demos and tracks I had and went: 'No, this isn't good enough, gotta scrap it and start again.'
"You can look at it as a return back to music for me; being away for so long it's like you're coming back out of the wilderness."
'Treasureville' is carefully structured and composed, exploring themes around returning to your childhood home through a richly layered dream-pop soundscape.
Lead single 'Coasting' – which scenestr premiered in March – is the first part of a conceptual suite entitled 'Return To Capricorn', chronicling Kyle's imagined return to his home town of Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast.
"I haven't been back there for 15 years," he says. "[It's] imagining if I'm wandering the beach, who am I going to bump into? What are the places I can remember? Am I still relevant? Am I still regarded in any capacity?
"It was very parallel with how I felt coming back to bringing this album out and getting back out into music again."
The recording, producing and self-releasing of his second, full-length album as Tidal Peak came as a labour of love for Kyle, determined to create a definitive and cohesive body of work.
"I spent all that time working on this album; I needed it to sound right to me," Kyle says. "I didn't want to make another album, get it out and that's it. I can't listen to my previous releases anymore.
"Maybe it's me growing as an artist, me being harsher on my own work [but] it needs to be something I want to go back and listen to and not feel ashamed of or cringing. It was a process of it needing to be chiseled into shape.
"In previous releases my voice stuck out like a sore thumb," he adds with a laugh. "For this album I really wanted to be able to listen and not shy away from it. I worked hard at sculpting my voice, honing it take after take.
"I borrowed heavily from Enya with the number of tracks going into it and sculpting it, so the layers come together then stacking them."
More than an album, 'Treasureville' introduces a transformed Tidal Peak emerging from its chrysalis. For Kyle, it was worth the five years of work to see 'Treasureville' finally released into the world. "There was a period of about a year where the album was actually finished and it just sat on the shelf because I needed to get my bearings," he says.
"I've been at this thing for so many years that I needed to sit back and live with it for a while before I could feel ready to put it out there. I came so close to giving up on it. . . It's been nice to come back and have everyone react to it with a really positive response."
