Leaf Mosaic has a very impressive genetic make-up. It consists of two pillars of the Australian independent music scene – Matthew Sigley (The Daytime Frequency, The Earthmen, Video Video, The Lovetones, The Steinbecks, Polak) and Joshua Meadows (The Sugargliders, The Steinbecks, The Bell Streets), and with such constituent ingredients, you can imagine the resultant sonic dish is delicious. And terribly moreish.
‘What Changed?’ has a pattering percussive beat with washes of synths, and spoken vocals in the verses that have a reflective antipodean inflexion. As the singing enters, it heralds something quite ethereal as the synths build up and gentle riffs dapple and fold in the ether. You can detect elements of Pet Shop Boys in a swirling dance with The Lightning Seeds and Underground Lovers: pure pop delivered on scaling melodies and an atmospheric fugue filled with melancholy.
The lyrics come from Meadows, who says:
The lyrics started to take shape when I was bushwalking in Gariwerd, the Grampians, in Victoria’s west – a place of great beauty and deep spiritual significance. I was thinking about the closeness I felt to nature – birds, trees, animals, even rocks, rivers and mountains – when I was a little boy and about how that connection can get weaker the more enmeshed you become in the human adult world. It’s about the forces that pull us in different directions and the inevitability that people and places will change and about finding some peace in reconnecting with nature.
Maestro of the instrumentation, Sigley, says:
Back in 2020 when we were all locked inside, I started messing around with some instruments I hadn’t used for a while. In the case of ‘What changed?’ it was my 1983 Emu Systems Drumulator Drum Machine, made famous by Depeche Mode on their album Construction Time Again and the singles ‘Everything counts’ and ‘Love in itself’. I came up with a driving tom-based loop with no idea what was to come next. I had to decide whether to make it a fast-paced song or slow it down. After listening to the pattern on repeat I wrote the slow plaintive rich chorus chords which I played on the Roland Juno 106. From there on, the song started to make sense.
The result is something quite mesmerising. The track comes with a video from Dani Bickford with unfolding and blooming flowers – a fitting palimpsest for the antithetically organic feel of the electronica:
This is mighty fine fare indeed. ‘What Changed?’ is out now and you can download and stream via all the usual places. and to add to this pleasure, Leaf Mosaic will be releasing their debut album ‘Sapient’ in early May. What a surfeit of delights await.
