Arts & Entertainment
South Sydney Artist Driftwood ‘Breaking Free Of Creative Shackles’
Driftwood. Photo: Tristan Tringali.
As a creative being able to look back on your work & be proud, whether it was a hit or not, is the most important thing to consider when judging success. For Sydney based multidisciplinary artist Driftwood this mindset has guided his passions for music & filmmaking from the very beginning right through until today.
In a recent interview with City Hub about his newest single Bremfields, we discussed how Driftwood came to find his way into the hip-hop world, producing a record with a collaborator on the opposite side of the world in the middle of a global pandemic & the importance of that sense of self satisfaction/pride in your work.
When it came to discovering his passion for music Driftwood explained that it has been a rather long & winding journey. Like many young men discovering a love for music Driftwood’s journey began with an acoustic guitar, simply for as a way to express his emotions.
“For me I’ve always been expressive through music one way or another & I found that the guitar was simply the best way for me to do that when I was younger.”
This interest in the guitar would subsequently lead Driftwood down the path of the rock & metal genres, so much so that he was even in a metal band for a short period. However, once he was introduced to hip-hop, R&B, soul & gospel music Driftwood’s path pivoted.
“As I got older I was introduced to more areas of creativity in my everyday activities… I remember being at uni in a dormitory with a lot of Latin & African American kids who listened to a lot of different stuff, which was my introduction to the hip-hop scene. Then there were the other kids who listened to the more rock, pop-rock stuff like No Doubt, Sublime & Meshuggah. But there I was, the Aussie guy who just got on with everyone so I listened to it all.
“These days we’re spoiled for choice, so I think it’s quite normal for artists to have a wide variety of forms of expression… It’s a colour spectrum of life. As an artist a lot of what I go through finds its way into my music.”
Driftwood’s latest single, Bremfields, sees him following this hip-hop path more intently because of that sense of wanting to be proud of your work. That can be said because this particular track has been a passion project which has been dabbled with & tweaked over the course of many years.
“This single is all about breaking free of the shackles of creativity,” explained Driftwood. “I had this record just sitting on my hard-drive for a couple of years but I knew I eventually wanted to explore it more because it really showed who I was as a creative.”
That opportunity to explore further came when Driftwood was introduced to British rapper Still Greedy. At that moment a friendship & musical partnership was formed. The two men would go on to collaborate on Bremfields despite being on opposite sides of the world in the middle of a global pandemic. A process which according to Driftwood wasn’t a difficult as you may think.
“Interestingly enough it actually wasn’t that hard, purely because of this new plugin which allowed us to work on the song in our DAW [digital audio workspaces] together in real-time,” Driftwood explained. Before elaborating further. “That process was so interesting to me to be able to have a live session together even though we were on opposite sides of the world. I actually really enjoyed the process & it really opened my eyes to what we could possibly do in the future.”
In closing our conversation we asked Driftwood how he goes about blending his creative desires in music & filmmaking in order to be fully satisfied with his portfolio of work.
“The process of creating a video to accompany a song is very important to me. I always have a mood board to create the aesthetic that I want. Much like when you walk through a heavily curated art gallery I want my YouTube or music videos to be an online gallery. When you go through the videos they are all curated both visually & sonically with my artistic vision. As I always say, ‘you better be doing this for yourself so that you can look back on your work & be proud even if other people don’t necessarily like it.”
Follow Driftwood on Instagram: @IamDriftwood & YouTube: Driftwood Music
