By MICHELLE HERBISON
A UNIQUE style of organ Dustin Tebbutt played in Sweden captured his attention so strongly that after failing to buy one on eBay he bribed a seller to cancel an auction for him.
Being an “eBay rookie” at the time, Tebbutt “got really excited” but left it too late to bid for the $30 organ, he recalled.
“I don’t get angry very often but I just got it into my brain that I really wanted this thing,” he laughed.
“I paid more than it was worth to get it but now I’m very attached to this particular organ because it’s cost me some pain.”
The organ is just one of many instruments Tebbutt keeps in his “hermit-style” music room in Sydney where he creates and records music he describes as “sonic landscapes”.
“It can be really hard work but it’s a great buzz when I get on a roll, especially in the one enclosed space where everything’s there already.”
Tebbutt’s debut single, The Breach, gained plenty of Triple J airplay as an Unearthed track of the week.
His new EP is very much a solo project, with Tebbutt having written, produced and mixed most of the sounds alone.
Tebbutt’s unique brand of indie folk reflects influences including Sigur Ros, Jose Gonzales and Justin Vernon, Northern Hemisphere dwellers with inspirations similar to those Tebbutt experienced during two years in Sweden.
“Creatively, I’ve always had an affinity with the Northern Hemisphere. I wanted to touch base in that world and see if it was anything like what I thought it would be,” he said of the trip, in which he lived with a friend from Stockholm who he had met in Australia.
“The winter just blew my mind. It was such a sensory experience to feel the cold, the stillness, be present to the softer light – even the noises like the cracking of ice in the lake,” Tebbutt recalled wistfully.
His focus now was to write as much as possible towards a new record and stay focused on making music living up to his own high expectations.
Tebbutt plays Geelong’s Beav’s Bar on 12 December.
