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Music

Listen to Karli White’s Dark and Brooding Soundtrack to the Short Film 'Crush’

Dealing with gender, emotion and hormones, the film is matched well with White’s moody and fractured R&B.

Melbourne by way of Perth songwriter and producer Karli White has teamed up with filmmaker Lara Kose to contribute to the soundtrack for Kose’s short film Crush.

Dealing with gender, emotion and hormones, the film is matched well with White’s dark, moody and fractured songs that touch on femininity and a refreshingly Aussie slant on new wave, techno and R&B.

Listen to the soundtrack below one and read have a chat with Karli about her creative process and collaboration.

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Noisey: How was the collaboration with Lara?
Karli White: Lara showed me the script and a bunch of reference images and we spent some time talking about the story. Themes referenced the differences in how each gender behave and make personal choices, particularly for young people who can be naive to the way emotions and hormones sometimes overpower intellect.

Later I watched Klute (1971), and liked this dark minimal vocal sound that emphasised a feeling of vulnerability in the main character. I recorded some vocal ideas with that in mind and explored from there.

During the editing process Lara showed me a piece of music that invoked this dark urgent feeling she wanted for a particular scene. It was a song by Thurston Moore from the murder scene in the movie Bully and has this beautiful dark reverberated guitar tone, which I very naturally felt inspired by.

Your music is cinematic and visual - spanning way across the audio spectre - is this something that appeals to you specifically?
Developing my style in electronic song writing coincided with learning the capabilities of production software. My first phase of learning focused on the value of recording my own audio for constructing drum racks and sample loops with the intention of stamping individuality on the project, as well as the importance of quality recording. The second phase was the realisation that 'perfection' is a fallacy. I considered more abrasive influences and began experimenting, playing around with techniques that deplete sound quality, which made the process a lot more fun and interesting.

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Who are some other great Melbourne acts you would recommend?
I've been compelled by a bunch of artists that bridge 80s new wave dark synth sounds with RnB vibes. Notably: Jonny Telafone, HABITS and Pillow Pro who each have gorgeous distinctive vocal melodies. Other standouts are Second Sight, Mollusc, Ausmuteants, HTRK, Exhaustion, EXEK, Vacuum, Orlando Furious, Halt Ever and Golden Syrup.

What about your musical influences?
80s goth, like Depeche Mode, into some more recent dark techno influenced acts like The Knife, TR/ST and Soft Metals. I'd had a number of friends make reference to Holly Herndon before I got around to listing to her music and when I finally did I was immediately immersed. I spent hours watching her videos and reading interviews, which directly inspired two new songs I've been playing live. The new tracks both feature a different warp of the same Gold Class sample from their track "The Soft Delay".

A limited edition cassette of the soundtrack is available through Comfort 35.

Karli launches Crush in Melbourne Feb 18 at the Old Bar.