INTERVIEW: Sun Araw

Listening to the psychedelic, trance-inducing SUN ARAW (U.S.) is an adventure to somewhere hot, tropical and strange. His most recent releases ‘Ancient Romans’ and ‘Off Duty’ are explorations of sound and form that transcend traditional song writing and transport the listener to another time and place. Come January, SUN ARAW will be hitting the Australian highways for the SUGAR MOUNTAIN FESTIVAL (Mel.) and a string of tour dates across the country. We caught up with Cameron Stallones of SUN ARAW to chat about possums, the sun, Jamaica and of course… his music.

What did you get out of your last visit to Australia? What was something that you took away from it?

We just had a blast. It was a really, really great time. It was sort of a great time and a psychotic time because we had to fly 11 times. I have never flown that much in my entire life and that was pretty catastrophic for the psyche and the body but whenever we got somewhere we had such a good time. So I’m looking forward to having a little bit more relaxing time this time and being able to spend some time but… We got to swim in the Indian Ocean and that was pretty rad.

You’ll have to swim in the Pacific Ocean this time, it’s going to be summer.

That sound about right. We missed that last time. I wanna go to Hanging Rock too. Is hanging rock cool or…

It’s Beautiful.

Yeah, I wanna go there. I love that Peter Weir film. It’s really amazing.

It feels like ghosts are hanging around.

Oh that sounds right on. I’m also really into your possums. Your possums are crazy. They’re totally adorable. Have you ever seen an American possum? An American possum looks like one of those turned inside out. It’s gnarly. It’s so brutal. So I was all like “that’s a possum?” and I was like “no, that’s an adorable creature that I would keep in my house”. 

Have you had a bad experience with a possum?

Not really. No. I’m pretty in to them anyway. I like their sort of vibe. 

Where else have you been traveling in the last year or so?

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. I actually just got back from Berlin and Poland. I still sort of sick from that trip. We also went to Canada, we’re going to go to Brazil in about a month, which I’m really excited about. I think we’re actually going to go to Singapore before we go to Australia, which I’m REALLY excited about.

Were you in Jamaica this year?

Oh that’s right. Of Course. I was in Jamaica last January and I’m fixing to go back I think, I hope. I made a record down there, which was a really incredible experience.

And you were working with The Congos over there? How was that?

It was a pretty life-changing thing. Demonstratively life changing and nobody should have let that happen. That was totally beyond the scope of any supervised situation but it was really incredible and what came from it was a lot of relationships that have produced a lot of fruit. So, we’ve got the record that we made there and me and my friend Ged - we were there together - started this dance hall label for some of the stuff that we made when we were down there at the same time as The Congos record. We’re trying to get pretty involved with Jamaica at the moment because we just really want to go back.

Is that Duppy Gun Productions?

Yeah, Duppy Gun is the Dance Hall label. We just got the test pressing for the first single that we’re putting out yesterday so I’m actually, my friends gonna come over later tonight and we’re gonna listen to it.

What does the Sun mean to you as an image?

Wow, that’s cool. I don’t know if I would have had an answer for that a while back. Like, I was thinking a lot about… definitely like concentrated points of energy in the universe are pretty interesting to think about. What it is that causes something like fusion to happen between atoms and that that can project in to space and create solar systems that allow for biological life to spring from them. So that’s a pretty direct relationship I think.

When I picked the name I picked it for a lot of reasons and there’s a lot behind it but that has revealed itself as… I don’t know how it ever… not so much as the sun worship part of it but definitely now it’s something that’s on my mind a lot.

Do you reckon that comes through in your music?

The way I go about making music, yeah, it’s definitely part of it because I’m very interested in trying to connect with something. I’m really sort of letting go of the conscious mind and just trying to adapt (my) playing to something else and form like, maybe more of a jazz form or some form of improvisatory and psychedelic… Yeah so definitely, seeing the sun is sort of the ultimate expression of some unconceivable force that alters and affects the universe. I think that that’s a big part of it.

Large power sources that, in some way, are unknowable and unapproachable.

When you’re playing live is there a different energy created to when you’re at home recording by your self?

Yeah I think so. It’s taken a long time for me to be comfortable playing in front of people. I mean, I’m pretty comfortable with it now but even so, we do a lot of improvisation and there is a really good energy created but I’ve never been someone who’s really able to feed off that energy the way some people do, like real performers do. I think that I’m sort of able to function despite the fact that there’s people watching. Which is a fault of my self and I wish I could get past that because I really love great performers.

Do you get nervous?

Not really anymore. No, I don’t get nervous but I think I get self-conscious certainly. Especially if we’re improvising, I’m like ‘oh oh! Is this boring?’ And nobody wants to be having those thoughts. For me at this point its like, minimise that awareness to the extent that you can try to be an organism again, something that functions on instinct.

Is there a particular show where you feel like you’ve broken through that barrier of self-consciousness?

I’d have to say that most of our shows these days, I always manage to get there. Really, for me, the only reason I play music live is that feeling that you get when you really sort of cruise beyond. If that wasn’t a regular part of it then I don’t think I’d keep doing it.

SUN ARAW AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES:

Saturday 14th January

Sugar Mountain Festival, The Forum, Melbourne, VIC

Tickets through Ticketmaster.

Sunday 15th January

The Bird, Perth, WA

Tickets on the door.

Thursday 19th January

Format, Adelaide, SA

Tickets through Moshtix.

Friday 20th January

Woodland, Brisbane, QLD

Tickets through Moshtix.

Wednesday 25th January

GoodGod Small Club, Sydney, NSW

Tickets through Moshtix.

Thursday 26th January

Yours And Owls, Wollongong, NSW

Tickets through Moshtix.

Friday 27th January

Sister Smooth, Batemans Bay, NSW

Tickets through Moshtix.

For more information about Wollongong's Yours And Owls, head HERE.

For more information about Sugar Mountain, head HERE.