A quote from jazz legend Nina Simone laid the foundations for SELVE’s new album, Breaking into Heaven.
“The people who built their heaven on your land, are telling you that yours is in the sky," she is quoted as saying.
The six-piece band wanted Breaking into Heaven to be inspired by places, while subverting the idea of a ‘heaven’ created on stolen lands.
“This idea that, as mob, the colony is trying to push us to the fringes on our own lands,” SELVE frontman Loki Liddle said.
"And that in order to try to live a good life on these lands ... you have to break into something that is already yours."
Written between Broome and France, the thirteen-track album was recorded at London's iconic Abbey Road Studios.
Loki Liddle with the Aboriginal flag at the famous Abbey Road street crossing. Source: Supplied
Liddle, a Jabirr Jabirr man, told NITV about the layered process in bringing the album to life and the stories they'll share with listeners when it's released on September 12.
Liddle said while recording at Abbey Road, he was constantly balancing the awe of being on such hallowed ground in music history, as a life-long fan of artists who had been there before him: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Frank Ocean to name just a few.
He also drew from 60,000 years of music and story from his culture.
What was this 100 year old studio in comparison to that, really?
Breaking into Heaven is the first full-length album to be recorded by an Aboriginal artist at Abbey Road Studios.
“There was something bigger than me happening and so it was a big part of my creative process to be like 'ok I’m getting this platform, what am I gonna use it to say?'" Liddle said.
“Bringing these songs from Jabirr Jabirr Country and singing that at Abbey Road and getting to sing my language there at Abbey Road is what made it felt like there was something really special coming through.”
While on Jabirr Jabirr Country, Liddle and SELVE's lead guitarist, Anaiwan man Reece Bowden, worked with linguist Aunty Pat Torres and Uncle Wayne Barker.
Their collaboration formed the trajectory of the album.
Liddle said it was there the pair also wrote what he calls the album’s centrepiece - a track called Forever.
The lyrics to Forever paint a picture of history and Country:
"Far across the dunes of time / Long lost children in my mind / Coming home at last to find / What was always theirs in my eyes."
The album’s title single, Breaking into Heaven and the final track on the album, Mabu Walu both use a special Jabirr Jabirr phrase.
SELVE frontman, Loki Liddle in the booth at Abbey Road. Source: Supplied / Your Local Film Lab/Your Local Film Lab
"Mabu walah is when the fire erupts."
Liddle's Jabirr Jabirr name is Joonga Bil Bil which translates to 'keeper of the fire'.
“The role of Joonga Bil Bil … before we knew how to make fire, when we would gather fire through lightning strikes, was to gather those embers and keep them in a coolamon from camp to camp to help be able to light fires," he explained.
“Aunty Pat once said to me that the embers of the Jabirr Jabirr spirit are in my blood, and the coolamon that I keep them in are my songs, my poems, my stories.”
Making their own luck
To record a language that has been sustained for thousands of years, in the heart of the Empire, as an act of resistance and breaking ground as the first to do it at Abbey Road is a feat.
How did an unsigned band do it?
Liddle said he created a three-stage residency project, born from the idea that the band didn’t want to sit around and wait to be discovered. They wanted to make things happen.
Their dream became reality when they secured funding from Creative Australia and the First Nations Commissioning Fund in Queensland.
“We’re not on a label, we’re completely self-managed, we’re completely independent and you’re not supposed to go to Abbey Road at that stage,” Liddle said.
“You’re not supposed to go to Abbey Road with only x amount of listeners or x amount of followers, and so there’s this idea of kind of being like well forget that, we’re just going to do it and it felt like breaking the rules in that respect.”
Rolling Stone described SELVE's sound as "new wave, and indie pop with theatrical flair".
The album is a body of work which includes visuals - music videos for Breaking into Heaven (the single) and Loki Horror Picture Show - characters and story.
From one song to the next the album shifts and changes. Never sticking to one genre, Liddle said its versatility is a reflection of the band members' diverse tastes blending to create the final product.
“We kept trying to surprise ourselves because we're a versatile band of six members all with varying music tastes that kind of collectivised into the pool that is SELVE,” Liddle said.
“But there are so many colours to paint with and we wanted to show the full spectrum of human emotion.
"Blackfullas can go into any genre and we always have transcended genre and there are so many different tastes and things to express that I think we got to explore in this album.”
However much the album transforms sonically over the thirteen tracks, it has a solid through-line anchored by Nina Simone's quote and their culture and language.
Taking 60,000 years of culture to the heart of Empire at Abbey Road Studios. Source: Supplied / Joshua Tate
“So in this place where Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd’s 1973 album) and The Beatles were made, there’s Jabirr Jabirr language and being able to example that our stories, our language and our culture deserves as much reverence and respect as Dark Side of the Moon and The Beatles does.”
