1.Growing Up

I grew up in a very musical household. My dad plays guitar and a few years ago started teaching himself drums; he is a massive music lover along with the rest of the fam, so that has had a pretty big effect on my music.

2.Inspirations

So many freaking inspirations! As a teen I was heavily into hardcore blues music and grew up listening to Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, those kinda cats. In the last five years or so, my influences have changed and now I listen to a lot of hip hop and producers. I’m loving all the young guys that are on the rise at the moment like Chance, Earl Sweatshirt, Rejjie Snow and Joey Bada$$ (I saw him a few weeks back and he was so, so rad). Also BeyoncО – I saw her last year and she seriously blew my mind!

3.Your Crew

Alta is cooked up by Jules [Dowson] who makes all the beats and who really is the brains behind Alta; and me, who sings and one day wants to be able to rap on the beats. Jules works full-time, and I work and study business at uni full-time. One day in the nearest of near future (I wish it was tomorrow, or now even), we want to just do music, but at the moment we work so we can do Alta. It’s all good though ’cause we love it.

4.The Music You Make

We have tried to place our sound more specifically than just ‘singer/producer duo’, but we find it kinda hard – maybe downtempo sometimes, but not really all the time. It’s quite experimental so our style is constantly changing, but we try to keep an Alta-ery sound. We have two releases – Stay Awhile, which was released in late 2012, and Game Broke Out, which was released late last year. We try to keep our live set one continuous flow, playing off each other and giving the music breathing space… which is good for me ’cause I literally need to breathe. I think I can dance like BeyoncО and the reality is I can’t!

5.Music, Right Here,Right Now

We are so lucky to live in Melbourne where we are just surrounded by such great musicians in such a great scene. The electronic scene is huge here and some standouts for me are artists like Silent Jay, Leaks, Friendships and so many more. Also Oisima from Adelaide; we were lucky enough to support Bonobo and he played main support, and is just rad live and a real nice dude.

Charades Present: Format ft. Altaat Goodgod Small Club onSaturday February 1.

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