After a decade away from releasing music, iOTA is heading back to where it all started: a voice, an acoustic instrument and the songs themselves.
The Australian singer-songwriter, actor and theatrical shapeshifter has announced ‘Hours Disappear’, his first album in ten years, due September 25 via MGM Distribution. Self-produced and entirely acoustic, the record revisits songs from across his career alongside a collection of new material.
The first glimpse arrives today as a double A-side featuring new versions of ‘Home Song’ and ‘Bitter Wine’. Stripped of excess, the two tracks put iOTA’s songwriting firmly in the foreground while showing very different sides of it. ‘Home Song’ deals in longing and memory, while ‘Bitter Wine’ heads somewhere darker and more intimate.
Both will appear on ‘Hours Disappear’ alongside acoustic versions of ‘Come Back For Me’ and other songs from his catalogue, while ‘Silver Train’ and ‘Same Three Words’ are among the new compositions making their first appearance.
It’s an interesting way for iOTA to re-enter the musical conversation. There’s no attempt to disguise the passing of time or chase whatever has happened to music during his absence. Instead, ‘Hours Disappear’ pares everything back and lets songs written at different points in his life sit alongside each other.
That career began gathering serious momentum with debut album ‘The Hipbone Connection’ in the late ’90s, but music has only ever been one part of iOTA’s peculiar creative orbit. He won Helpmann, Sydney Critics and Green Room awards for playing Hedwig in ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’, later stepped into the heels of Dr Frank-N-Furter in ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ and appeared as the Fallen Angel in Graeme Murphy’s ‘Berlin’ with Sydney Dance Company.
Then there’s the role that introduced him to an entirely different audience: the flame-throwing-guitar-wielding Doof Warrior in George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’. It remains one of the film’s most wonderfully strange images, although anyone familiar with iOTA’s theatrical history probably wasn’t entirely surprised to find him hurtling through the desert strapped to a wall of amplifiers.
iOTA will take the album on the road in solo acoustic form from October, beginning at Melbourne’s Brunswick Ballroom before heading to Sydney, Katoomba, Kiama, Adelaide, Canberra, Dangar Island and Newcastle.
It’s a suitably intimate setting for an album built around stripping the songs back rather than dressing them up. Ten years after his last release, iOTA isn’t attempting to pick up exactly where he left off. He’s looking back at the songs that got him here and finding out what remains when almost everything else is removed.
‘Hours Disappear’ is out September 25.
‘Hours Disappear’ Album Launch Tour
Friday October 16 – Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne VIC
Thursday October 22 – The Vanguard, Sydney NSW
Friday October 23 – Baroque Room, Katoomba NSW
Friday October 30 – Fillmore’s, Kiama NSW
Friday November 13 – Trinity Sessions, Adelaide SA
Saturday November 14 – Smith’s Alternative, Canberra ACT
Saturday December 5 – Dangar Island Bowlo, Dangar Island NSW
Sunday December 6 – Flamingos, Newcastle NSW
Go HERE for tickets.
