Tru Thoughts has done it again. The label that unearthed Bonobo has long since developed a reputation for searching far and wide for electronic upstarts with a story to tell. Now they're releasing the debut album from Melbourne-via-Edinburgh producer Jonny Faith. The record, titled Sundial, is rooted in instrumental hip hop but forays to the further edges of beat music and downtempo with a breezy sense of ease.Faith's background as a radio DJ in Sydney gave him a unique perspective when putting together his own tunes. "As a DJ, I think you become more aware of the importance of quality production because you will quickly notice a track that isn't up to scratch when you try to blend it in amongst others," Faith tells THUMP. "That has helped my ear for engineering and production in general I think, but also more specifically meant I could test my own tracks alongside others and know very quickly if they could cut it."Working in radio also gave Faith an inside look on how the Aussie dance scene in particular is cutting it. "There's a lot of good Australian producers and others like myself who have relocated here from the UK," he says. "I think for a long time in Australia people looked overseas to the UK & US for new music, and to some extent, that's still the case, but it feels like Australia's music community is maturing and cultivating their own artists more which is great. It used to be the case that a show wouldn't do well if it didn't have that 'International' on the lineup but now you've got these Australian or Australia based artists who are huge and pull in great crowds. That's really nice to see."Sundial is concise but never falters into monotony. It's a complete vision from start to finish. "I was thinking a lot about different qualities of natural light when I made it," says Faith. "Something I noticed in moving from Scotland to Australia was not just that the sun actually shines here, but the light is way more vivid and so the colors are too. I spent some time taking photos, trying to capture little fragments of this Aussie sunshine refracting in interesting ways and found myself thinking about this stuff when I sat down to make music. The name Sundial then came up after thinking and playing with sunlight (through photography) and using that as inspiration for music, which of course is all about time."We selected three of our favorite tunes from Sundials and got Jonny to give us the rundown on all of them:"Slumber"
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"This one began from finding the vocal sample on a great old Brazilian record and chopping that into some fun shapes and patterns. Next I put together the drum kit, bass and fuzzy synth layer, the piano tinkles came later and got heavily treated with effects and layering. A couple of the sounds were run out through a nice old guitar amp and recorded back in for extra warmth. I recorded the bits of hand percussion in my little garage and kind of mixed it down along the way. The name came from the lazy groove of the drums and vocal chops, for some reason I felt it had a slight lullaby like quality and so Slumber came up.""Dust Settles"
"The name for this one (like all my track names) came from a really vague image that came to mind as I was making it. I pictured a hazy sunny, still day, with light filtering through trees and dust from a nearby road slowly settling to the ground as the sunlight twinkled through it. No samples from other records on this one, just synths and some sampler instruments and a large helping of tape delay.""Neon"
"This began quite differently without the chopped vocal samples but really came to life when I added them on top. The pitching and formant of the vocal samples sounded bright, even fluorescent somehow to me, and so this image of driving at night as neon signs by the road blurred into abstraction came to mind. 'Neon' will be the second single from the album around March, accompanied by some other goodies including an exciting remix of another album track 'Firefly.' "Find Jonny Faith on FB // Soundcloud // Twitter