about the artist
Melbourne based, self-taught, singer, songwriter, beat boxing, vocalist, guitar tapping, loopologist.
Tash Sultana, the gender fluid multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, producer and engineer, has been dubbed one of the hardest working music exports in Australia. Tash began playing the guitar from the age of 3 after being gifted the instrument from their late grandfather. From there Tash began to pick up other instruments such as piano/keyboard/synth, bass, drums/percussion, beatmaking/ sampling, beatboxing, trumpet, saxophone, flute, mandolin, oud, harmonica, lap steel, panpipes and arranged it into loop style performances along with percussive and finger tapping style guitar playing coinciding with a vocal range stretching 5 octaves.
History
By the age of 13 Tash was playing at open mic nights up to 6 times a week across Victoria.
Tash’s refusal to conform to normal society pushed the young artist onto the streets of Melbourne to busk, where they harnessed crowd stopping performances on Melbourne’s famous Bourke Street.
From there a viral bedroom recording of “Jungle” in 2016 skyrocketed the artist off the street and in front of the world. Since then Tash has broken attendance records across sold out global arena tours, their accolades rush in faster than there is time to count them. In 2019 alone, Tash sold over half a million tickets across the globe.
Tash’s second album, number 1 ARIA charting Terra Firma, arrived 3 years after ARIA-winning debut album, Flow State, which spawned multiple platinum and gold singles as well as the two-time platinum single “Jungle” and the platinum-selling single “Mystik” – as well as accumulating over one billion worldwide streams.
Written and recorded over two years (2019-2021), “Terra Firma” saw Tash in full flight as they recorded, engineered, performed, arranged, and produced the album themselves. (Tash has also written, recorded, arranged, performed, and produced all prior works such as the “Notion” EP and “Flow State”.)
From the expansive “Coma” and evocative “Greed” to the intuitive “Beyond The Pine,” Tash adds to their trademark looped and layered jams with a dazzling patchwork of neo-soul, funk, R&B, folk, rock, hip-hop – you name it. The result is Tash’s most ambitious triumph to date.
“Terra Firma” is recognizably Tash Sultana, but its lyricism delves deeper, its impact more nuanced. While “Terra Firma” still cements the oft-used description of a “one-person band,” the record hosts a first for Tash Sultana, with four carefully chosen co-writers and close friends brought in for just a handful of songs: Matt Corby, Dann Hume, Jerome Farah, and Josh Cashman.
As a cohesive collection, “Terra Firma” is Tash Sultana on full display. Each track opens a new door into the mind of Tash, whose musical integrity and confessional poetry soar on the wings of that multi-octave-vaulting voice.
