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Jun 14, 2017 Fazerdaze By Marty Hill Photography by Imogen Wilson

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“I feel like I’m inviting people to watch me grow,” says Amelia Murray, confessing to the deliberate transparency that she presents Fazerdaze—her happy/sad bedroom pop project. “I’m still figuring out what I’m doing.”

Speaking from a busy Munich cafe, eleven thousand miles from her Auckland, New Zealand, home, Murray explains that Fazerdaze began as a means of documenting her own processes and developments, void of any serious intention of finishing and structuring releases in the conventional way. “I like the idea of it being a constant work in progress,” she explains. “I like being able to try new things and make mistakes.”

It’s hard not to feel that much of the project’s magnetism stems from that tentative nature. Much akin to the way that Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos—with whom Fazerdaze have toured with—writes, Murray’s writing is seldom saturated. She has a knack of punctuating fleeting bedroom pop jams with enough of herself to intrigue, but not enough to overpower. There’s an uncertainty about Fazerdaze songs, they seem more concerned with exploring dream pop’s capacity for intimacy than establishing an identity; they invite you to get lost in them.

Evidently, many do. Well before she had even begun to think about releasing an LP, Murray’s Fazerdaze EP had flown her around the world-and had her sharing stages with the likes of fellow countrymen Connan Mockasin and Unknown Mortal Orchestra closer to home. “It was totally overwhelming, but in the best way,” Murray recalls. “I guess it also became physically overwhelming, in that there was a considerable demand and my setup was just me, posting out CDs from my bedroom. I had a lot of difficulty with knowing how to get help from people; with knowing how to let this thing grow authentically.”

Fazerdaze’s debut LP, Morningside, is being released by cult New Zealand label Flying Nun. “It was important for me to sign with a label that I can be friends and hang out with,” says Murray. “They see me as a human being and not a product.” Already, Murray is viewing the album as a springboard rather than a finish line. Murray finished the majority of Morningside before touring her EP, and feels that her hometown is prevalent throughout the record as a result. “Before finishing the record, I’d never really been outside of Auckland,” she explains. “I think it shows—it sounds inward looking and insular. Now that I’ve travelled, I think I’ve had my eyes opened a little bit more.”

Morningside, though, is a remarkable debut. After a not-too-happy foray into the world of studio recording, Murray recorded most of the record—save for “Little Uneasy” and “Friends”—the only way she knows: in her bedroom, alone. “I learn mostly from watching things being built, and I love being the one in charge of that process,” she explains. “To me, there is so much art in that.”

“It’s an interesting mix of being isolated and connected,” she says of recording alone. That sentiment is one that runs central to Fazerdaze as a project—it’s an exploration of growing up isolated and cut off from large parts of Western pop culture, and of learning to tease out the benefits of that. Bedroom pop could quite feasibly be experiencing its finest hour yet, and still Murray has crafted one of its most worthy flag bearers to date.

[Note: This article originally appeared in Under the Radar’s Spring 2017 Issue (April/May/June 2017), which is out now. This is its debut online.]

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