SUI ZHEN EAST COAST TOUR

Our reviewer recently described her as “quaint and summery,” as well as, “whimsical and fluttery.”  Her grandpa (who gifted the singer her Chinese name Sui Zhen, pronounced ‘Su-ee Chen’) went with ‘rare’ and ‘pure,’ but in our books, Rebecca Freeman is just downright adorable. She’s packed her mumu, borrowed a drum kit and is set to hit the road for an East Coast tour touting her lovely new album, Two Seas.

You wrote a song in Redfern, recorded in an old church in Wildes Meadow, arranged in Berlin and mixed in Gerroa. What flavours have all your global ramblings brought to the music? The travel inspired deeper meaning within the songs for me personally, so I was able to perform them with more passion. You can hear the different room sounds in the takes – which reminds me of strange and specific details. A cello Tony Dupe learnt to play in Berlin, a pink shirt I wore to death when I first heard the album mix and the darkness is maybe from my Redfern days when I worked full-time and wrote late into evenings. Other noticeable flavours are present in the artwork with photos from Gordon’s Bay and Huskisson to infuse the songs with the Two Seas theme.

What is your process in writing your lyrics? I’m an obsessive documenter so I’m always collecting ideas for creative work… There’s always room for happy accidents. My favourite line from the album would be, ‘There’s a hole beneath my bed but it doesn’t bother me at all.’ Because after I finished recording that song I fell through the said hole.

As a Sydney-born, now Melbourne-based musician, what has struck as the differences in scene between the two cities? Melbourne still has more long-standing venues than Sydney can sustain. There are some clear differences of taste within the scenes, but both have really supportive community radio stations – which helps a hell of a lot. The rest comes down to who you know – if you’re well connected then you can get things happening pretty quickly in both cities.

Your drawings and photos are a huge part of your output. How would you describe the ‘Sui Zhen’ aesthetic? Tactile, expressive, sometimes humorous, often strange – I suffer from acute colour palette and lighting sensitivity so I try to capture that.

Your hamster and a little frog have played key roles in your work … if you could have an animal totem, what would it be? Octopus. A really big one. P.S. It’s a guinea pig!

And finally, it took two years to bring Two Seas to fruition. What was the hardest part of bringing out an album in Australia today? Having to follow the same few channels as major label artists and compete for exposure without the dollars.

Jun 3, FBi Social, L2, Kings Cross Hotel, 248 William St, Kings Cross,  $10 on the door, facebook.com/suizhen