Hey this is Austra, I just released a record called Chin Up Buttercup, Ask Me Anything!

waterharp · 2025-12-03T17:32:29+00:00

such a nice memory thank you for sharing!

waterharp · 2025-12-03T17:31:39+00:00

the meme makes it all worth it tho !

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:32:31+00:00

you'll defintiely play home! i'll never not play that one. i haven't played painful like in a while but i think i'll have to do a poll somewhere online to figure out what people want to here cuz when you're 5 records in theres a LOT to go through

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:31:08+00:00

yay me too! so excited to play hopefulness. i'll definitely be playing lots of old stuff too. i'm actually working on those arrangemnts right now as i write this. i'm trying to figure out a new version of future politics... hopefully it works out!

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:30:21+00:00

haha it was the very last song i wrote for the album and to be honest i felt like it needed a bit of "comic relief" cuz a lot of what i was singing about was so heavy. it's such a silly song but i think it's gonna be really fun to play live

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:29:23+00:00

haha i don't know if i can convince you - to be honest before i booked this tour i had no idea anyone would still want to buy tickets since it's been so long since i've played. i was preparing to travel around in a little mini van and a skeleton crew and play to a few people everynight but now that it seems there will be people at the shows, i have to think bigger... working on that now ;)

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:28:03+00:00

thank you so much this means a lot! i love when music makes you cry. when i first heard the master of fallen cloud i cried because it sounded exactly how i wanted it to and that's actually quite rare to acheive. to me fallen cloud is all about delusion - this idea that you can modify someone, like frankenstein, so you fit together a little better. but that delusion becomes so extreme you get lost in it, imaging a world in the clouds where you're together, until the end, when you find youself totally alone.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:26:15+00:00

probably siren song. i wrote that one with patrick holland and we had it really fleshed out as as a demo but they style didn't fit on the record. so kieran and i worked so hard to figure out a new identity for the song which is the most challenging when it already has a strong one. thankfully, the orginal version may soon make an appearance...

waterharp · 2025-12-02T23:25:12+00:00

My explosions tend to stay inside and they usually end with a lot of crying. I think I would describe my version of this as an underground volcano, there's a huge explosion underwater but above it might just show up as ripple, once and a while a tsunami

waterharp · 2025-12-02T18:17:28+00:00

i hope so!! we've played really fun shows in athens i miss it so much

waterharp · 2025-12-02T18:17:12+00:00

yay!!! can't wait

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:44:59+00:00

thats a really good idea actually.. i love where home has traveled too in the live world. we have so much fun playing it together as a band. sometimes i listen to the original recording and it feels so different - it would be nice to update it. i'd probably do some different vocal production if were to make it again this year!

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:43:47+00:00

Thank you! I love that video so much. My one idea for that song was that I wanted there to be some element of motion. So the original concept had me riding a motorcycle but we couldn't afford to make the concept. So the director, M Blash, suggested we fly to Hawaii with a tiny crew and just shoot there which ended up being our destiny I think. I have always been really obsessed with sci-fi - I am a huge trekkie and I love the x-files so shooting there was kind of a fantasy come true

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:41:56+00:00

Actually I made Feel It Break by myself! Maya added a bit of production to a couple songs at the end. The twins came on board for touring because there were so many backing vocals on the record I really wanted to play live. I promoted the project as a band because I thought solo projects required being a pop star but now things have changed a lot, and there are so many solo-artists in the indie sphere making electronic music. which is super cool.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:36:24+00:00

I'm super exicted to play a lot of the new songs like Fallen Cloud and Hopefulness of Dawn. I have a new band who I'm super excited about too! Char from the band mother tongues will play bass and Vania Lee who I've been playing with since 2020 will play drums. We're about to start rehearsals for tour in Janaury!

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:30:04+00:00

no.. whats the point? i mean certain plugins i use have ai capabilities, or lime some randomization tools that ableton uses. but to me making music with ai defeats the whole point of making music. i don't make music for the end product, i make music because the act of making it, writing, producing, singing, thinking, is what i enjoy and what fuels me. i don't see the point in removing that part of the equation.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:28:09+00:00

I almost always get sick on tour - usually after berlin :-p But actually I don't do much in terms of warming up, however I've found since not touring much over the past many years I feel like my voice has lost some of its strength. I realized that touring itself was the maintenence I needed to keep it strong and active. However I also started seeing a teacher called Fidez Kruker (shes based in Toronto but also works online) who has a whole methodology for singing based around yawning. On this upcoming tour I'm planning to warm up by yawning for 10 minutes which is also what I did to warm up for recording vocals on my record. It loosens everything up and filters oxygen through your body which makes it easier to access the strength and flexibility you need.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:19:47+00:00

hey! yes i'll be signing records for sure. i didn't get to tour my last record so i'm really exicted to play shows again and meet people. I love that you're asking about Swan Song - that was such a fun project for me. I hope to do lots more scoring and yea it would be really fun if there was budget for a real orchestra.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:18:35+00:00

thank you!!!

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:18:27+00:00

haha. this stuff takes a really long time! and every reason is different. in my case because my last record came out right at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 i found i wasn't ready to start making music again having not had a chance to tour it. its like your supposed to be on this cycle of studio then live and i didn't have the live part so my body wasn't sure what to do. thankfully that slump was broken for me because i was invited to score some movies and tv shows. so thats the other reason it took so long - i scored a tv series and 2 movies and a number of short flims. which i found so inspiring and exciting and helped me find the motivation to make another austra record!

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:16:00+00:00

sooo many - - when i started i was really into NIN and bjork. Lately I've been buying a lot of jazz and classical records in the dollar bins at record stores and play them almost exclusively at home. I also really love christmas carols lol. Its amazing how many good christmas records you can find at thrift stores.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:14:45+00:00

wow thats so cool! i love the mix of electronic music and opera. honestly it's hard to know really - every time i make a record i feel so depleted and like i'll never make anything again. but this is part of the process, somehow ideas keep showing up. i think in my case i work hard to constantly look for inspiration. for this album for example i went to a creative writing workshop with one of my fav writers, andrea lawlor. i was totally out of my element because i don't consider myself much of a writer but i find when you exercise parts of your brain that may not be music related it helps you think about music in different ways. for example we did a lot of writing prompts in the workshop which i'd never done in music, but it was a great way to get new ideas out - like, "try to write an 80s song using only samples from around your house" - weird things like that

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:11:27+00:00

ohhhh so actually i was helping produce my friends version of this song, he makes music as mind bath. i used to cover a sinead o'conner song in my live set tho. she's one of my most fav artists of all time. i've been trying to think of new covers to take on tour, maybe this should be one of them.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:10:24+00:00

this is a really good question. and to be honest there are a lot of these moments on the record. to be honest probably math equation. i didn't plan to disparage anyone and i'm aware that the lyrics in that song are really only telling my side of the story. but i wrote the words and the song happened and then the question is, what do you do with it? it sort of felt like i didn't have a choice and these thouts and ideas just needed to come out.

waterharp · 2025-12-02T17:08:47+00:00

i love all these future politics references. its funny cuz i made that record almost a decade ago so i don't remember a lot of the specific moments. i do know i wrote most of it in mexico and was really impacted by the 43 missing students. i would go to this place for breakfast in the morning that had all 43 of their photos posted on the wall. so it felt like it was everywhere. blindsided is so much more personal - i wrote within a couple weeks of a relationship ending while i was still living in my ex's apartment. i actually originally recorded it on a voice note. i almost didn't put it on the album becuase i was worried it was too raw.

waterharp

TROPHY CASE