At 17 Magic Mushrooms and Youtube, at 26 Tash Sultana is rocking all stages beyond Melbourne – as a songwriter and looping artist.
Happy birthday. Tash is given his first guitar as a present for his third birthday, and as a teenager he is on the streets of Melbourne. Plucking strings for pocket money, performing in local pubs, filming live sessions in his bedroom – the fanbase grows. Tash goes viral, his own composition “Jungle” cracks a million views within a few days. Not bad. After all, he’s got what it takes – in addition to guitar, he taught himself eleven other instruments: bass, drums, piano, trumpet, saxophone, sitar, harmonica and some flutes. And they also box beats. The repertoire was ready, the label deal was signed in 2016 – and a year later Tash was rocking all the stages: Lollapalooza, Coachella, US world tour – sold out several times over. It’s the art of looping, the outstanding stage presence, the way Tash presses the looping pedal with such concentration, putting himself and the screaming audience into a trance with the sounds. And then immediately goes into the wildest guitar solo: “We all jam out, and it’s fucking sick.” Psychedelic rock, but Sultana doesn’t want a genre. But to use music to give us humans whatever is missing in our lives, perhaps to reach those of us who need psychological support. Just like they did back then, and Tash talks about it openly: How they got high on every drug imaginable back when they were 17, until a magic-mushroom trip ended in delusion. That music has always been a place of refuge for Tash – and that the first song lyrics speak of coming to terms with the past. Now to write about what lies ahead. To pick up his beloved guitar and his own destiny.
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