Elder Children AKA Harry Edwards is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/ Melbourne. You can find him making music, producing, making live visuals and writing about music. I met Harry at a creative networking event in Brisbane a few years ago (please come back Collab Club,) and have been mutuals online ever since! It was lovely to catch up with Harry and speak about the various creative fields he wanders, his new music, his upcoming project ‘Reviver’ and more. Read on below.
Lovely to reconnect with you, thank you for being here. You were living in Brisbane a few years ago, now you’re in Melbourne. What was the motive behind the move?
All the typical reasons why musicians move to Melbourne. There’s a lot more down here, and it just makes sense sometimes to give yourself a change of perspective. Brisbane is a small town.
That’s true. Can you expand on the comparison between the Brisbane and Melbourne creative scenes?
It depends on your scene. In Brisbane there’s a little bit of everything…like there’s a little bit of everything ya know? So, I think it means if you’re looking to branch out, there aren’t as many options and there’s fewer venues for certain things. I found in the circles that I play in…so many amazing friends and amazing musicians are in Brisbane, but at a certain point I felt like I wanted to be challenged a bit more by something that feels almost…. Imposing! Personally, if I could have, I would’ve gone to the biggest city possible because I want to feel like an ant. That’s exciting, that feeling I find is very inspiring.
You are going down a lot of different creative paths at the moment with music, producing and art, tell me a little bit more about those and how you juggle them all.
I started doing the visual video glitch art a few years ago because I’d been looking for a certain style for my own videos for a while. I felt like when you have an idea in life of what you want and you don’t have an infinite budget to play with and ask for revisions and all these sorts of things when dealing with other artists, I found myself wanting more control.
I think the best way for me to get that was to put all the responsibility on myself. You find yourself trying not to be too demanding or too finnicky or too over the top with your requests of people, but you just end up having so many specific things that I wanted to just be able to blame myself if I wanted something to be a certain way. And from that I developed a style, well still developing it, that allows me to do projection art and music videos and that sort of thing in one and now it’s just at the point where other people are starting to ask for it for their things.
Recollection is the title of your new song, what was the inspiration behind this song?
That’s a single from a compilation album/project called ‘Reviver.’ That album is an overarching title of a broad range of tracks that I’ve had in the vault for a while. Instead of randomly releasing singles here and there which I’ve done in the past, I haven’t put out a full EP or an album, but I had probably near 200 songs stacked away between 20 and 80 % finished and produced.
I thought why I don’t put the songs that feel cohesive into this ‘Reviver’ project. The idea is that when I revisit these songs it’s like reviving the energy behind those things while I work on fresh material in a more band/collaborative setting.
Growing up, what was your connection like to the arts and music? Has it always been such a big thing in your life?
Well, my dad is a musician so I’d say that would have some influence on it! And his mum, my nan has always been a massive music fan, and her dad and his brother were in a jazz band in QLD and drummer and a pianist, and my dad makes punk music in a band called FAT. So, there’s a bit of lineage there! And then there’s me so it comes from a fair few generations back.
Where did the name Elder Children come from?
Thats a tough one, there are a few things that were running around in my head. I liked the contradiction of it, and this idea of kids being older or implying multiple things. It could mean the eldest of a group of children, or it could mean children who are older. Back in the day when I first thought about it, I liked the idea that it leveled people out. It was this idea that you could level out the elderly and the young in this way that would lose the distinction… not about this fixed thing but more about these ephemeral states that consciousness passes through and spends time in. Also, I just like anything where someone can hear it and it means one thing and another person hears it and thinks something else.
What have been some career highlights for you?
I recently did a couple of music videos for my friend’s band Magic Machine, they toured with The Dandy Warhols in May. They played a national and NZ tour and that all happened right off the back of the few videos that we did together, so it was cool to see in tandem with the video side of things, that a band I’ve been working with had this great opportunity on that same promo cycle.
Within my own music there’s a few things that are coming up that I’m not actually allowed to say. I’d never signed an NDA before, but I recently did which is exciting.
Again, in terms of my own music stuff happening it almost feels like the beginning of another phase right now; another city and working with a new band…that’s what’s exciting to me right now. But I think only time will tell in terms of highlights within that phase, it’s too early to say.
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