PREMIERE: Australian Producer Howevever “There’s Something In The Water Down There”
From a young age, Isaac Lee was always drawn to making music. At the age of 11, he was introduced to the early work of Deaumau5 by a classmate and was instantly intrigued by the music and its process. Throughout the following years, he would find ways to soak in as much information about music production and electronic music, eventually putting his learned material to practice. Lee shares,“My sister had one of the old white Macbooks, so I’d pay her by the hour (with the money I made from my paper run) to let me use it to play around with Garageband, and it all kind of snowballed from there”. While his skills and taste has evolved (and his equipment), the initial inspiration and curiousity for making music still rings through in his music. “I don’t really listen to Deadmau5 at all anymore, but what initially drew me to his music is still what keeps me interested in electronic music today: the concept of creating a sound from scratch. Taking a basic musical idea, and adding this extra dimension to it”.
Based out of Perth, Australia, Lee began his career as flisss, releasing a few EPs and gaining recognition from the likes of Triple J and Possum Feet Records back in 2017. Experimental and textural, while rooted in the world of singer-songwriter, his style has shifted ever so slightly, performing now as Howevever.
His new single “There’s Something In The Water Down There”, premiering today on Dusty Organ, is a fully-formed evolution of his sound, deeply inspired by an array of songwriters such as Panda Bear, Sujjan Stevens, and Katie Dey, while letting his range as an electronic producer expand further. But despite his devotion and dedication to producing, Lee was never one to share his creations. “I never used to show my music to anyone, and even once I did start telling people about it, I would only ever show it to strangers on the internet”,he begins. “I remember creating an Instagram account for my music and blocking everyone I knew so that they wouldn’t see it”.
At the core, his new journey as Howevever is a step in a more adventurous direction, pushing new boundaries with his songwriting and being less shy about his music while minimizing any chances to overthink, a message buried within his new single “There’s Something In The Water Down There”.
“When I was a kid I used to swim at the beach a lot, usually just out deep enough so that I could still feel the floor but I couldn’t quite stand comfortably”, Lee shares. “Every now and then I’d feel something underfoot that wasn’t sand, and my curiosity would get the better of me and I’d swim down to touch and feel what it was. It seems pretty trivial now, but it felt like a big deal at the time. Those are the kind of risks the song is about. There’s only so much you can learn about that object – or an opportunity – just by feeling it with your feet. Eventually you have to leave your comfort zone to really benefit from whatever it may be. There’s something in the water down there, and it might be worth finding out what it is.”
And for Howevever, discovering what lies underneath comes in the form of glitchy synthesizers, contrasting bass, and effect-laden vocals as he explores the new depths of his music. Ryan Hemsworth, Animal Collective, and Shlomo come to mind as the song shapeshifts gradually before cascading into a neo-folk/psychedelic finish, as Lee blends together electronic music and songwriting as two unlikely partners. “This single is super important to me because it represents the first time I was able to combine the two in a way that I felt improved both of those elements”.
While his production skills have their own goal and trajectory, the words on the page also take on a shape of their own, reaching into his personality and self-perspective to add a new dimension. “T he lyrics themselves are more based around relationships of different forms. I’m quite good at making acquaintances, but a little less-good at forming close friendships, so the literal application there is just learning how to recognise the potential for a relationship – feeling the object underwater – and then taking that step forward to act on that potential and make something of it in the form of friendship. It’s all overanalysis of course, but so is everything I write about”.
“There’s Something In The Water Down There” will be off his upcoming debut album out later this year, along with B-side “Drunk Dogs”. Inspired by the Italian short story “If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler” by Italo Calvino , a story of a man gives in to overthinking simple moments in life, each track on the new record explores the removal of meaning from different moments in Lee’s life.
