“The wolf that howls for none and all...”
Indira Elias is an artist, musician, composer and producer based on Gadigal and Birrabirragal land in Warrang/Sydney, Australia. One of the Powerhouse Museum’s 2021 Generation Fellows, Indira is a creative powerhouse herself. Testament to her curiosity and willingness to “try anything and learn everything”, Indira writes, performs, arranges, produces and engineers her music, self-releases through her newly-established label ‘Loba Records’, and handles creative direction of her projects.
Warmly welcomed onto the Sydney scene with support from Fbi radio (see Independent artist of the week feature here), 2SER and Triple j Unearthed, Indira’s first few releases have left an impression. Her second single “Soon Enough”, made Fbi radio’s top 100 most played songs of 2020, and “Dreamy Youth”, the third single from her debut album, was shortlisted in the top 40 of the 2020 Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Comp.
Indira grew up in the luscious hinterland of Byron Bay, in an artistic household firmly connected to nature. Amongst rolling hills and fields, Indira’s childhood fostered reflection and intuition, two prominent features of her work. Discovering the works of Emily Dickinson at age 16 was a pivotal revelation, focusing Indira’s purpose and influencing her world view. Fellow-artist sisters, Elena and Isoldé, are frequent collaborators in (often literally) building visual worlds to reflect Indira’s sonic landscapes.
Australian born, of Lebanese, Filipino, Spanish and Portuguese heritage, Indira embodies a uniquely modern collision of traditions. She fuses genre and sound in much the same way, drawing inspiration from myriad places with tender care. Cinematic soundscapes, painted in folk-noir, create a haunting and ethereal collection of songs that speak the language of mythology and fables. Utterly devoted to the details in her composition, arrangement, production and recording, Indira carves her songs with precision.
Charming as any libra sun, it’s hard not to be swept away in the whimsical worlds Indira builds, led along by her otherworldly, honeyed vocal. When performing, Indira crumbles the walls between artist and audience with playful intimacy and commanding presence. Carefully sculpting songs and guiding her band, she is everywhere at once, imbuing deep poetic sentiment into her work.
While studying to be a pastry chef in Paris, Indira nurtured her musical sensibility in underground open-mics. Here, between jazz caves and piping choux, she grew into womanhood, filling piles of notebooks with poems and stories and singing them through the evenings. The beauty of the streets and the distance from home permitted her expression to unfold without expectation, and the resulting songs are a remarkable testament to this process. These tracks make up the “Songs from a Moon” half of her two part album, while “Songs by the Sun” was written after returning to Australia.
Now finding herself part of a tight-knit community of dedicated artists in Sydney, collaboration and community have become integral to Indira’s creative process. Her band, an opulent ensemble of incredibly talented musicians from varied musical backgrounds, inspires and encourages her to create dramatic visions of other-worldly scenes. Indira’s work is founded on fundamental beliefs of connection, in the process of its creation and in what it aspires to create.