Songwriting for Phia – the creative moniker of musician Sophia Exiner – starts far away from an instrument. Describing them as “light bulb moments”, she discovers stories and feelings that deserve to be captured, preserving them lyrically long before the arrangements form. She then weaves a selection of interesting sounds from an arsenal of expressive tools including loop pedals, beatboxing and her beloved kalimba. Finally, Exiner refines her creations with the help of guitarist, producer and colleague, Josh Teicher.
“What I love about the kalimba and the loop pedal is that the limitations are really strong,” she says. “So I have to do a lot with a little and I find that very inspiring. I hate feeling like, ‘Oh my God, what instrument should I play?’ Anything could happen, and the possibilities spiral out of control. The kalimba has two octaves, so that’s all I’ve got to work with, and I find – sort of perversely – that I’m much more creatively inspired when I’m in that situation; backed into a corner.
“I felt like I did as much as I could with these songs to get them to that live situation, and then Josh sort of teased out all the things that I was hinting at with the loops. I feel like it was really clear what our collaboration was, which is why it worked so well.”
As part of the Leaps and Bounds Music Festival, Phia will be teaming up with Georgia Fields to launch Fields’ new single Open Orange (which features vocals from Exiner). Also on board are the Melbourne Indie Voices, an indie-folk choir that performs renditions of contemporary songs. Exiner met Fields for the first time at an open mic night in Paris around 2011. From that chance encounter, a wonderful creative relationship was forged. Exiner herself has only recently returned to Melbourne after five years in Berlin.
“Having been away from Melbourne for so long, coming back I’ve just been so impressed with the quality of the music scene here,” Exiner says. “Everything’s just so good; the standard is high and it feels really stimulating to be back in this scene.”
Exiner can’t sit still for long, though. She’ll be touring Germany with her new album in September, and plans to keep on visiting for a couple of months each year. “I think when I’d left Melbourne, I’d just finished studying music here and I felt claustrophobic. I felt like, ‘I know everyone’. I’d studied piano, so I was feeling, ‘Everyone just knows me as a piano player – I’m never going to be able to be known as anything else.’ When, of course, who knows how much of that was just in my head?
“Whatever the reason was, I had to get away and Berlin provided me with this amazing sense of anonymity, which I could never have gotten here because I’d grown up here. That’s what Berlin gave me, this sense of total blank slate. That was really refreshing.”
Having learnt the intricacies of jazz at university, Exiner’s developed an impressively versatile approach to making catchy indie pop music. “I love that this type of music allows me to tell stories to people and be up on a stage. I feel very fulfilled by being allowed to do that. When I’m able to capture some sort of feeling that’s important to me, or a memory or something in a song, I really feel this sense of accomplishment. I don’t know where I would get that anywhere else; feeling like you’ve been able to immortalise something.”
BY JACOB COLLIVER
