Music is an incredible vessel for change and political awareness. On her debut single, KathwithaK urges us to take action.
The world is in crisis, our climate is dying around us, and those with the power to make a difference are idly standing by. On her debut single, KathwithaK screams for change, unravelling humanity’s failures through tides of production.
Named after the Greek Goddess of the Earth, Gaea combines a Kate Bush-esque ethereality with the sonic grandeur of Pink Floyd, allowing the artist’s talents as a producer to shine through. Deeply conceptual in its sonic layout, the single adds a refreshing dose of political conscience to Australia’s contemporary catalogue.
From the genesis of her YouTube channel to now, KathwithaK has spent the last three years blending her passions for environmental activism and sound. Gaea stands as the penultimate opus of this route. Within the space of seven-minutes, the artist builds a sonic landscape; rich and lush in its detail, then proceeds to tear it apart. Every careful stitch of melody is ripped away, leaving our reality raw and exposed.
Opening with the bubbles of a primordial soup, earthy, tribal undertones echo through the track’s beginning. We hear water flowing through and the eruption of plant life, as the earth slowly forms its crust. Layers of chorus proceed to sing this sonic image into a reality, with the wistfulness of flute sweeping through to breathe life into the scene.
As the tension of the piece builds, we can feel the burn of humanity sear across the sonic landscape. Overlaid distortion and glitches reflect the impact of our society on the earth, scoring and scarring the once pristine environment. Intricate and expansive, the artist knows the exact moments to explode her soundscape and where to tastefully refrain through watery notes.
“Kath is a music producer in Melbourne, passionate about nature and the environment, and her debut single tackles the topic of how humans arrived at the environmental mess that we are currently in,” the artist’s bio reads. “Gaea is a seven-minute progressive rock epic which follows the timeline of life and human history, right from the formation of our planet. She hopes the song will make people think about just how much our current lifestyle separates us from the nature which gave rise to us and will encourage people to take better care of our planet.”
With the ability to reroute from atmospheric rock to a punk-adjacent fabric in seconds, Gaea is a masterclass in sonic imagery: evoking layers of the earth and its history through ambitious stylings.
Check out the track below:
