Mara

Mara Schwerdtfeger is inspired by travel.

Not so much by the various cities, people and landscapes but the emotional clarity and renewed attention that comes from being vigilant in a new space. Our latest Independent Artist of the Week, Mara joined Luke De Silva on Surfacing during an artist residency at Desa, Indonesia.

“It really realigns your ears to be somewhere else. You listen with a fresh perspective. Here in Ubud, I keep getting distracted by how much there is to listen to. Everything's new and there's just so much sound, so much music and so many insects. And it's hard to do that when you're in your home environment… you forget to pay attention, I guess.”

Released on Sydney label Pure Space, Mara’s latest album, At Every Corner, keeps this sense of renewal at its centre, as it weaves together expansive soundscapes and fragments of poems. Production began as early as 2021, prompted when Mara was asked to be on a compilation release, following a trip to Korea and preceding a residency in Japan. The time spent overseas informed a large part of her method for putting together her tracks. The first track – the title track – came to be almost on its own.

“It never got put onto that compilation, but I just kind of kept going with that method of making and pulling from field recordings that I'd created for a number of years… Each track is kind of located in a different area, though a lot of it – because a lot of it was made during that time in Japan –  there are a few tracks that are really centred in that place as well.”

Stitching together field recordings and live performance recordings, Mara’s music wanders a line between ambient, experimental, electronic and even dips into neoclassical (“because there's a violin in there,” she laughs). Mara credits this as a unique symptom of creating music in a city like Sydney which is less populated by a single genre, rather forming symbiotic relationships with many.

“In Japan – in Tokyo, especially – where I played a few shows, there's just such a big population that they can have these really niche pockets of community. Whereas in Sydney, I feel like the genre is shared a bit more. Everyone kind of has to support across genres. I think I take inspiration from so many different genres.”

Listen back to Mara full conversation with Luke De Silva on Surfacing where she shares her thoughts on her personalised USB album distribution, notes app poetry and more.

Words by Rhea Thomas