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.
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 on non-stop 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 #1 ARIA charting TERRA FIRMA arrives 3 years after ARIA-winning debut album FLOW STATE – which spawned multiple platinum and gold singles as well as the 2x Platinum single ‘Jungle’ and the Platinum-selling single ‘Mystik’ - as well as accumulating over one billion worldwide streams.
Written and recorded almost over 2 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 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/features 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.
