Unearthed High is one of triple j’s most exciting competitions, each year giving high school kids the platform to showcase their talent and music to the rest of Australia. 2
012’s winner was Hobart-hailing Asta, a singer-songwriter with some amazing raw talent and a killer voice to boot. Since winning the competition she’s released a string of singles, and following on from a solo headline tour earlier this year, she’s been announced on the bill for Jindabyne’s Snowtunes festival.
She’s hugely excited to play the winter festival, but despite living in Hobart, Asta reveals that she’s never been skiing. “I’ve actually never been to the snow! Actual skiing snow,” she laughs. “In Tasmania it does snow a lot on the mountains, so I guess I’ve been to the snow, but I don’t know if I’m a snow type of person. Yeah, I do want the opportunity, so I’m really excited to play a gig at the snow. I’m hoping it might be snowing. My friends are going skiing close to there.”
As for what the punters can expect from her Snowtunes set, Asta is giving little away – but she lets slip that there’ll be new material on show, possibly from an upcoming EP. “I’ll be playing a few new songs. I just finished wrapping up a project and I’m really excited to play some new songs for people and see what their reactions are. It’s a lot more funk/pop type of vibe, so I’m really excited.
“Having released a few songs over the past few years, it’s been a really interesting time just discovering what kind of music I want to put out there. I’m really excited to have finished this thing – it’s a five-track project. I’m releasing a new single soon as well.”
As someone who hasn’t played an excess of live shows, the tour Asta embarked on earlier this year proved a perfect way to test new material in front of an audience, as well as to work out what tracks she felt most comfortable playing live. She’s also found that social media has been a great way to source fan feedback.
“The live show is forever changing,” says Asta. “I’m always putting in new songs. It’s always good to see what people are vibing on and where I feel most comfortable in singing and portraying myself. So that’s been really fun to be able to talk to people, and also on social media. On Snapchat people will say, ‘Oh, what happened to that song?’ so it’s nice to hear that. For me to have that relationship with my fans is great.
“Touring is a really good way to play around with songs and experiment, to change things,” she continues. “You do pick up certain things when you’re performing live. Usually an artist would work on music and then tour, but I’ve been doing the opposite – doing these random kinds of shows, but I don’t actually have a lot of music out there. It’s been very different for me, as people have seen me develop in the public eye – but I can’t complain.”
Asta’s arrival via Unearthed High was an intense period for the young artist. She went from being completely unknown to one of triple j’s most played acts, but in the time since, it hasn’t been easy to figure out what sort of artist she wants to be and how to maintain her foothold in the industry. With the finalists for Unearthed High 2016 just announced this month, Asta reflects on her time in the competition.
“It’s been good in a sense, obviously with the exposure. With the fact that it all happens at once, you don’t have a foundation, you don’t have a manager or a booking agent, or all these things around you. You slowly find those people and it all kind of comes together.”
Despite working mainly as a solo artist, last year she got together with Aussie hip hop star Allday to write the hugely successful track ‘Dynamite’. It was a collaboration that took many by surprise – including Asta herself. “It was really fun,” she laughs. “I was surprised that he said yes to doing it because it was something that I didn’t necessarily think suited his style.”
‘Dynamite’ came as a pretty typical collab in an age where technology means that meeting up in person isn’t a necessity for two people to write together. In fact, Asta and Allday wrote the whole song by sending files back and forth. “He literally made something in a day or two, which was the quickest thing ever,” Asta says. “His way of working – he does really care about his music. That was something that I was really surprised about, and something that I took on board – that he really cared about the vocal, and the vocal treatment and the production. I was constantly sending him stuff and he would give me some tips back. So it was a really nice collaboration that just happened over the web, we never actually met up in person.”
‘Dynamite’ became Asta’s second song in two years to make the top 50 of triple j’s Hottest 100, and with her EP on the way, the best is surely yet to come. “It was crazy, because previously I’d been number 50 with ‘My Heart Is On Fire’, so it was bizarre again to get the top 50. My reaction was to think, ‘What is going on here?’ So that made me feel really good, to know that an Australian artist, who hasn’t put out much or done that much touring – that the strength of the song like that can achieve that much.”
Asta plays at Snowtunes Festival2016 in Jindabyne, onSaturday September 3, with Ball Park Music, What So Not, Hot Dub Time Machine and more.
