QUASI HEARTS | INTERVIEW + EP REVIEW

Quasi Hearts writes from a specific corner of the world that shapes everything about the music. Vaughn Pinxit lives on a dirt road in regional Queensland, off-grid with solar and water tanks, in a house he shares with his wife Louise and a slow, quiet way of working. The project began where most people would call a low point. In 2020 he was made redundant, and after a decade at university earning his PhD, a Centrelink officer suggested he up-skill. He felt a knife go through his heart. A few days later the name Quasi Hearts arrived, a name for the people and institutions moving through the world without one.

The Indigo Flame EP is a record about spiritual love, its title drawn from a meditation session with a Guruji in central India in 2016 where Vaughn saw a soft indigo flame appear in his mind's eye. The cover art recreates that vision with Louise modelling as Shakti holding the light. Between the songs and the record are threads that give the project its shape. A walk-in robe used as a vocal booth. Six-hour mixing sessions that end with the body reminding him it exists. Meditations that pull creative material out of the sky. A philosophy that art requires a certain amount of hermit-ism to survive. In the interview below Vaughn talks about writing as medication, the moment "Cloud drifter where are you today?" arrived from nowhere, why he refuses to live inside the algorithm, and what he hopes a first-time listener will carry with them by the time the last note fades.

EP REVIEW - Indigo Flame

From its opening moments, INDIGO FLAME transported me completely into QUASI HEARTS’ world.

There’s something immediately absorbing about the atmosphere they create. An acoustic guitar arrives with this beautifully warm, almost tactile tone, while the vocal seems to appear rather than announce itself. It’s gentle, but there’s a rawness underneath it that reminded me of Fontaines D.C. at their most restrained, where emotion doesn't need to be pushed to make itself felt. Then the melodies begin wrapping around one another.

That's one of the things that stayed with me throughout these four songs. Nothing feels desperate to occupy the foreground. Guitar lines, vocals and surrounding textures seem to circle each other, occasionally meeting before drifting apart again. There's an enormous amount of space in the arrangements, yet INDIGO FLAME never feels empty. If anything, that restraint makes you lean further into it. The atmosphere becomes almost ethereal.

Pinxit’s vocal is a huge part of that. At times it sits remarkably close to you, then suddenly begins to swell and stretch into the surrounding instrumentation. Those vocal swells throughout the EP are almost tantric in the way they slowly build and release tension. There are flashes that take me back to early alt-J, not because QUASI HEARTS are attempting to recreate that sound, but because of the strange intimacy and physicality of the vocal delivery. And the band understands the value of not giving everything away immediately.

There are moments where a melody feels as though it's beginning to resolve, only for another layer to curl around it and pull you somewhere slightly different. That push and pull gives INDIGO FLAME a dreamlike quality. Rather than four songs simply arriving one after another, it feels like you're moving through different rooms inside the same place.

There's also a warmth beneath all of it. For an EP capable of feeling fragile and introspective, it never becomes cold. The acoustic instrumentation gives the record something human to hold onto while everything surrounding it seems to float.

By the end, I realised I'd stopped thinking about individual production choices altogether. I was simply inside it.

That's ultimately what INDIGO FLAME does best. It doesn't demand your attention by becoming louder or busier. It creates its own little world and quietly convinces you to stay there. Across four songs, QUASI HEARTS allow space, melody and atmosphere to do the heavy lifting, taking the listener somewhere intimate, romantic and occasionally otherworldly.

INDIGO FLAME doesn't feel like an EP I've simply listened to. It feels like somewhere I've been.

Quasi Hearts didn't arrive as a fully formed project, it built itself over time out of a life already deep in music. Can you take us back to the moment the name existed, and what it was you needed a new vehicle to say that couldn't be said any other way?

Ok…I became un-employed in 2020, and yes, Covid hit. I had to wait a few months to use up my sick leave before heading to the Centrelink office to sign-up for the Dole (I prefer to call it the Anthony Albanese Australian Creative Arts Fellowship Allowance :). Talking with the staff member and toward the end of the discussion they asked me: "Have you thought of up-skilling?" It felt like a knife went into my heart!! I gathered that they were unable to see my CV, because it would have shown that I had entered Uni at age 40 and spent ten years up-skilling at university to attain my PhD, from being a tradesman to a qualified academic…how could I "up-skill" further? Anyway, I had been writing down band names for quite some time, and a few days later reflecting on that event at the dole office, the name Quasi Hearts came to me, I felt they had no heart, a quasi heart, to ask me that question. Some of my songs seem to call-out the quasi hearts in society.

Regional Queensland has a way of quietly changing what an artist makes. The pace is different, the silence is louder, the seasons hit harder. What has living remotely done to your writing that a city studio never could?

I'm not sure about the experience of working with music or art in a city studio, but living rural seems to shift one into another 'time' priority. It took me a few years to really 'wind-down' after working fulltime, and just sit and experience being mindfully in the moment of each day without considering anything. In these moments I find myself in a receptive mode for creativity. One example is my song Timewinder, off the Timewinder EP. I was just sitting in the sunshine one morning and looking up at the clouds drift across the sky, staring for some time, when I spoke out aloud asking myself the question: "Cloud drifter where are you today?" That was the beginning moment when writing that song, I was in a state of melancholy and self-reflectivity, really just questioning myself, and what I was doing in life, and with my notebook I began writing that song all down that afternoon. I have found that the slow pace, and the silence can contribute to a harmonious environment, which allows one to consider deeper concepts of life.

Dirt Road Studios feels less like a business name and more like a philosophy. Do you think building your own space to create in has given you a freedom most artists spend their whole careers trying to find?

We actually live on a dirt road; it is a literal business name that also represents a new pathway. We are empty-nesters, our daughters live in the city, we live Off-grid with solar, batteries, water tanks, and effluent system, so we manage our own utilities and this is our ethos. We made this decision around ten years ago, and it supports our wellbeing in knowing that we have a very small carbon footprint in our daily living. As yet, we only have a small separate multi-use space for work, my wife Louise makes textile art, sculptures and other creative work. One reason why I moved to the medium of music, was because we don't have a working art studio for me to paint or make sculptural/installation work. I set my microphone up in my walk-in robe for recording vocals, and the guitar pieces I record in our bedroom space where it is quiet. I mix my tracks in the lounge space with headphones and monitors. I'm a bit of a minimalist with excessive OCD that prefers a clean environment; music gives me that.

Making music while managing chronic pain must fundamentally change what a session even looks like. Do you find songwriting works as a distraction from the body, a translator for it, or something in between?

I suffer from some debilitating chronic pain at times, and I am unable to function at all during the day, it becomes a waiting game. When days are good, I get chores out of the way and get into music mode. There have been times when recording vocals, standing one to two hours, or mixing for six hours, I come-down from the focus and realise my body is pinging pain, it is then time to recover with a break. My recent songs for my next EP are quite impassioned with justice for society, and my pain was in the vocals, however I decided to pull-back on the desperation in the vocal tone on one song and be more accepting of the pain, which paints a heart-break appeal in the song and making it more beautiful than angry.

There's a version of artistry that treats hardship as a story to sell and another that treats it as the private material a song is quietly built from. Where does your relationship with mental health sit on that spectrum when you're writing?

Songwriting is my medication for mental health disease. I suffer from depression (from pain) and anxiety (from pain), and other syndromes. Most pharmaceutical medications harmed me more than my diagnosed symptoms. Over time, I've come to realise the best way for me was natural health living that includes home cooked food, filtered rainwater, reducing stress, and meditation. Music has been gentle on my body and healing for my soul. I align with the notion that songwriting is built from my hardships, and I try to provide a positive resolution in the song to benefit myself, and the listener. It is all cathartic.

Indigo Flame is a title that suggests something burning steady rather than wild. What was the emotional or creative colour you were trying to capture across the EP, and how did the title arrive?

I've travelled in India with Louise in 2016 and we visited a Guruji in central India. We had a meditation session with him, we were all sitting in the darkened room for some time and ever so gently I realised I was seeing an indigo flame softly glowing before me, in my minds eye, it was a most beautiful clear vision. When I was making the Indigo Flame EP, It was the song Hollow Embrace that inspired me to create an Indigo Flame experience for the cover art, and I took on the experience with Guruji too for the cover. Hollow Embrace is about trying to hold our inner spirit, to embrace it, where is it? Louise modelled for the photograph, which represents the Shatki feminine energy holding a candle flame of divine light; I used Photoshop to create the image. The EP is about spiritual love.

You're already deep into work on your 5th EP. When you've released as many records as you have, do you find yourself chasing new territory or refining a language you've been developing for years?

I could say both, each song is new territory like a dirt road, and each EP gets technically better refining my language, as I develop my experience along with my practice. The songwriting process is very intuitive with the lyric writing, and the guitar work is by feel too, it all reveals itself to me, and when recording happens, again the song reveals itself as I add layers of vocals and instrumentation. It happens when I paint too, it is like I am dusting away the painting's surface with a brush (when actually I'm building layers) to reveal the painting. I give my mixed songs to my colleagues Stephen Wilcox and Rex Hardjadibrata who work with me on my EP's providing extra guitar, bass, keyboard tracks, and experimental sound for my final mixing stages before I send the songs to my colleague Lawrence English for mastering. Stephen, Rex and Lawrence have much experience in music history and theory, and they compliment my tracks with the right 'sound', something that I'm limited with doing.

A lot of independent artists talk about the pressure of the algorithm and the calendar, but you seem to move at your own pace. Have you had to consciously build a way of working that ignores the noise, or has that always come naturally to you?

I've realised that if you want to be an artist then you have to accept a certain amount of hermit-ism. You need to be somewhat a hermit, so that you can have weeks of focus, not just one day, but prolonged focus on your creative urge. You are your own quality control and primary producer, so your creative work will only benefit from 100% focussed attention. I manage my music publishing but I'm not online 24/7 cringing over data metrics, it can be such a downer.

Living rurally, running your own studio, writing through pain, releasing consistently. That's a lot to hold at once. What does a good day in the life of Quasi Hearts actually look like when everything is working?

Hmm…If I don't have much pain upon waking, then I get positive in my attitude. Breakfast is done, Louise heads to work, house-hold chores are done, the weather is fine with no wind noise, I setup recording gear in the bedroom, I record my guitar track in one take, then vocals, head to the lounge room with the MacBook to mix, make a shake drink, mix with headphones, then sit back, relax and press play to hear the first mix on the monitors of the newly recorded song and I couldn't be happier. If there are still a few hours in the afternoon, then I meditate before making a nice dinner. This has been the main process over six years for the production of my EP's.

If a first-time listener finds Indigo Flame and it's their entry point into your entire body of work, what do you hope they carry with them by the time the last note fades?

I anticipate that the first time listener of Indigo Flame, and my catalogue, will experience from my lyrics and music, a sense of personal empathetic awakening or realisation on experiences that are close to their heart, which may benefit closure or self-healing.

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