Article written by Lauren Johnston.
Tash Sultana has taken Triple J by storm. For the whole of last week, Triple J have been playing the crap out of her songs and ending Friday by playing the entire album in a row. Tash Sultana’s sound is different to what probably most of us listen to, being classed as any of the following: Psychedelic rock, Reggae rock, Alternative rock or Lo-fi music. Even though it is a different sound compared to what we usually hear on the radio, I still enjoy her music and her as a person. But where did she come from and who actually is Tash Sultana?
At the young age of 23, Tash is an Australian singer/song writer and multi-instrumentalist being able to play the guitar, piano, trumpet, drums, pan flute, mandolin, saxophone, synthesizer along with 12 other instruments! This gives her a grand total of 20 different instruments she is capable of playing! As if that wasn’t enough, she is also a very talented vocalist. Originally from Melbourne, Tash started her music career at the very young age of three when her Grandfather gave her a guitar, and she has played ever since.
Tash Sultana’s life/career was never easy and you may be thinking: How is that possible? She is only 23, she is so young, she possibly couldn’t have had that hard of a life? Well, like thousands or millions of us out there, she has and is still currently battling depression. As you could imagine, living life on the road wouldn’t be as easy as people make it out to be, especially if your days consist of travelling to spot after spot just to play a show or two and then move on and do it all over again. Tash recently reached out to health professionals and went public on her Twitter and Facebook.
“I had to stop the entire world around me recently. It all got a bit too much being away from home, family and friends…"
"I just went into overload trying to play as many shows as possible, for as many people as possible, to spread my message of positivity. I ran out of energy and my soul was tired and I was scared for my life how dark my mind got. I thought I was going to die from the shadow my mind cast.”
Those are just two different parts of her public post that allow us to see the hurt she was feeling. She continues on at the end to say she has received help and people are there to listen, that they do care, and nothing lasts forever.
Tash says nothing lasts forever, but if fighting depression wasn’t enough for the young 23-year-old, at the age of 17 she went into a 9-month drug induced psychosis. This sent her into a downward spiral, doing every drug except heroine. Tash confesses to Triple J’s Veronica and Lewis in an interview.
“So when I was about 17… I actually got drug-induced psychosis from eating a pizza with mushrooms on it, magic mushrooms. So I was at my friend’s house and I was already pretty depressed before this was happening.”
Explaining what had happened, Tash continues on how she called her dad to come and pick her up because she was “tripping out” and she claims she had lost all sense of reality.
“… and I was watching this documentary on sea life with David Attenborough and I just couldn’t work out why tortoises lived for so long and whales lived for so long when there was no purpose of life. I lost the complete purpose of life,” Tash stated. Missing months of school, losing weight and not playing any music at all, Tash was unable to pull herself from a psychotic state back into reality.
Even though she has only recently gained a lot of publicity, it was thanks to YouTube that she became the star she is today. One Christmas her mother gave her a GoPro, Tash then used the GoPro to film her ‘Jam sessions’ and uploaded them to YouTube. It was then that she went viral and became an internet sensation. “Jungle” was then shared thousands of times all around the internet, which now has over 20 million views, giving Tash an extra 10,000 followers overnight. Tash says that cycle has yet to cease.
Tash never had a foot in the music industries doorway. She started as a busker when she was unable to find and be employed into an everyday ‘normal’ job. From busking to YouTube, and now radio stations, this incredible woman has sold out shows around the state and world. From 2008–2012, Tash was the vocalist to the band ‘Mindpilot’, then in 2016 she not only had two of her songs voted into the Triple J Hottest 100 but also won the J Award for Unearthed Artist of the year. Notion was her first ever album to be released in September 2016, and just like this one it went just as viral, reaching number 4 on the ARIA Australian Albums Chart. Not only did it reach number 4, they also produced and released this record through their own independent record label ‘Lonely Lands Records’.
Due to the album ‘Notion’ going into full motion, Tash announced a world tour, holding hundreds of shows including Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United Kingdom. Then, if that wasn’t enough, she released the first single after the release of Notion, called ‘Murder to the Mind’. It wasn’t long after the release of this track that Tash came down with laryngitis and was forced to cancel and postpone shows right across Australia.
Tash has a lot of plans for 2018, including touring, releasing this album, touring again and then finally taking a well-deserved break and returning back to normal life.
“My plan is that I wanted to do this album and then I wanted to do one more and then I’m just going to f**k off for a bit and just do me,” Tash told Triple J in an interview, also discussing that there are conversations of possible collabs, and wanting to do other little projects, even possibly helping other people write music.
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