WILLIAM VAN DER VLIET OF SUGAR JACKET​

After turning heads with the synth-fuelled debut single ‘How Many Times’ last year, Melbourne newcomer Sugar Jacket is today thrilled to share his sophomore effort ‘Real Creature’. The piano-driven number is the first taste of Sugar Jacket’s forthcoming debut EP, due out later this year.

Written after what Sugar Jacket describes as a “life changing gig” seeing Michael Kiwanuka perform at the Corner Hotel with his partner, ‘Real Creature’ is, at its core, a love song.

“Parts of the track came from a real place of fear of love,” Sugar Jacket reflects. “It’s about diving off the deep end and letting go of any fears with a lover. Stopping myself from over thinking things.”

“’Real Creature’ is about my girlfriend Ana, who is the powerhouse behind those high backing vocals that just cut through the track – kind of like how she did in real life. Just came out of nowhere like a bat out of hell, swept me up in an instant.”

‘Real Creature’ was recorded and mixed at Purple Wayne studios in Collingwood with producer Alex O’Gorman.

For increasingly vaunted producer William van der Vliet (Sugar Jacket), his psychedelic sonic guitarscapes often take flight in his car of all places. Not the most traditional of settings, but as he explains, it’s a place where he can often take the kernel of a song idea on his iPhone, and through playback on the stereo while driving or waiting between jobs, he painstakingly crafts melodies over beats and chord passages.

That said, a hermit-like existence tinkering and recording in a darkened room isn’t the preserve of a sports-obsessed young man from rural Australia. The dreamy guitarscapes of Sugar Jacket’s craft evoke the glacial synthesizer expanses of M83 coupled with the iridescent glow evoked by Tame Impala’s hazy endless summer.

Two key events would go towards shaping his music vision. One was a not unconventional discovery of his parents’ record collection and dancing around the living room delighting in discovering his father’s suggestions of the likes of The Stones and Hendrix. The other was a little more unusual, with Albury in the early 2000s not being noted as a hotbed of electronic music production. He recalls getting his hands on his first synth equipment as a 14 year old.

“The guitarist in my high school band’s brother lent me two vintage Roland synthesizers. One was a JX-3P and the other was a Juno-6. That was 100% the most pivotal moment in my musical or just teenage life. When I played around on those synths for the first time down in the rumpus room at home, I knew that’s all I ever wanted to do. I loved how they could sound classic or completely new age.”

Sugar Jacket eschews the usual software and samples that prop up your typical bedroom producer, rather crafting beats and song structures from a veritable treasure trove of vintage keyboards, synthesizers and sequencers as he mines a rich vein of music history. Fellow enthusiasts of the seeds of electronica will prick up their ears in appreciation at nods towards Fairlight synths, Linn drum machines and staples of 80s music production such as Yamaha and Korg keyboards.

Live, Sugar Jacket has managed an impressive one man show built around his collection of vintage gear, crafting a unique live show of complex triggered samples and drum patterns, live keys and incandescent waves of psychedelic guitar washes. As he gradually expands his live show to a full band, he unashamedly admits ‘it lowers the chances of gear fucking up’.