Live-loop loving Phia is looking forward to serenading the Far South Coast.
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The 30-year-old has been hard at work on her EP follow up to her 2016 debut album The Ocean of Everything, which she says has been a more fun approach and is expanding her song writing skills.
“It definitely feels the theme is what comes after your first album, and many years went into that,” the independent artist said.
“My album took an interesting route because I wrote the songs over a few years and toured while I was living in Berlin.
“I lived there for nearly five years, so it was very formative.”
Phia embraced the anonymity the German capital offered, it was a long way from the intimacy of the Melbourne music scene.
“I felt liberated,” she said.
“I wasn’t worried about what anyone thought.”
Her musical journey began singing harmonies along with cassette tapes of James Taylor and The Beatles with her mother and sister in Clifton Hill.
“There was a lot of music in the house, mum sang and dad played guitar, and I started playing piano at five,” she said.
“I did do piano exams, which I’m now grateful for now because of the discipline it taught me.
“I had a great teacher who also taught me how important storytelling is in music.
“It’s all about communication,” she said.
It was while studying at Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts that Phia fell instantly in love with the seduction of the loop pedal, after being serenaded by a fellow student on violin.
“I was a piano player and envious of people using pedals and gear, but I was too scared to buy some,” she said.
However, this would soon change, and her entire sound as an artist was reinvented by two chance purchases.
“My friend sold me a second hand loop pedal and I got a kalimba in the mail in the same week,” she said.
“It was the most incredible sound together,” she said.
“I definitely spent a lot of time in the bedroom before I tried it live.”
Phia is touring with close friend and “indie-pop chameleon” Georgia Fields, who she met randomly at an open mic night in the City of Light.
“I was in Paris with a friend, and because you have to turn up early to write your name down and I recognised Georgia,” she said.
“I called out across the bar, and we had a really fun night out after that.
“There was a fair bit of red wine consumed that night,” she said with a laugh.
Phia will play the Candelo Café on Friday, July 14 with Georgia Fields, and also host a workshop at Bega’s Funhouse Studio on Saturday.