Gordi, the name of Melbourne musician Sophie Payten’s solo work, is a living icon in the Australian music scene: her last album ‘Our Two Skins’ released in the middle of the COVID lockdown last year was a graceful and epic release, thrown into release by Payton’s extraordinary work as a doctor, assisting with understaffed local hospitals in Melbourne during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gordi has released a short film of two tracks taken from this album performed live in a new venue called Phoenix Central Park with Sydney production team VERSUS. ‘Refracted’ is set inside the new space in Sydney’s inner city, uplifted by the dramatic, atmospheric architecture. This performance is being released as a live EP entitled ‘Refracted: Live At Central Park’ and is due out in May, 2021.
The video and the music is rich, deep and lush: Gordi’s voice is angelic and floats in the atmospheric setting. There is a delicate lightness to the instrumentation – subtle and powerful – with Gordi an isolated figure in the vast halls, dwarfed by the architecture yet a mesmerising giant in the performance nonetheless.
‘Our Two Skins’ was released by Jagjaguwar and is available here along with other releases.
