“The notion of Utopia doesn’t have a lot of currency these days, but that hasn’t stopped Katie Stelmanis. The creative force behind the Canadian electronic outfit Austra, she’s used the project’s new album, Future Politics, to foment a kind of radicalism in an age of doom and gloom: making music that questions, confronts and uplifts without scaremongering or sugarcoating.
In her latest songs, it shows more than ever that Katie Stelmanis is both romantic and pragmatic. though this album is her most collaborative to date, its sounds and themes are just a natural expression of who Katie is and how her experiences have affected her. Her whole life long she’s pursued a very individual creative mission and followed her passions, which has led to her unique musical approach. From early childhood on, her interest was in classical music: without any pressure from her parents she threw herself into learning instruments, and even more so into opera and choral singing – she performed with the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus from the age of ten. “I never even went to a rock show until I was eighteen or nineteen,” she says “and I never had any interest in whatever pop culture was around. I was just focused on what I was doing.”
The closest, in fact, that she came to pop in her teens was an interest in the compositional rigour of Radiohead – but then came a rush of new influences. At seventeen her close friend and fellow classical musician Maya Postepski – now percussionist / programmer for Austra . Katie was fascinated by. When she did finally attend a rock show, she “realised what it was really about, how the volume and physical power worked with the performance”, but it was artists with an electronic edge that properly caught her attention, with Nine Inch Nails and Björk her firm favourites as she started to form her ideas of how her own music should sound.
Maya and Katie would join the band Galaxy together, then in 2009, together with bassist Dorian Wolf, they formed Austra. Initially conceived of as a solo project for Katie, Austra was, she says, “always a work in progress.”
This record,” she says, “has more of Maya and Dorian in it than ever – the process of playing with them, especially with Maya just putting down riffs, has been absolutely vital to it. I’d never let people in before, but this time I was ready… A lot of the lyrics, as well, were written by our backing vocalist Sari [Lightman]. Sari helps me create ideas, add important lines, fill in the blanks – and lyrically this is the strongest thing we’ve ever done!”.
‘Lose It’ is the new single from Austra’s debut album ‘Feel It Break’
The Fat Angel Sings 