Description
Melbourne’s Tobias Hengeveld writes melodically vivid songs, riddled with unexpected angular pop-hooks. His distinctively sylvan voice rides personal experience with a wry lyrical candor.
Nominated for an Age Music Victoria Award for 2014’s The Daylight Express, Tobias Hengeveld has remained a lesser-known, yet formidable presence in the league of Melbourne songwriters worth their salt. His anticipated third solo release Naughts & Ones is triumphant testament to a starkly original sound that is hard to define, and even harder to forget. A mirror-maze of unabashed, snappy pop tunes, set in a hinterland of darker rock ballads.
The strange fruits of collaboration with producer/drummer Rohan Sforcina (Head Gap/Oh Mercy/Dune Rats), rife with experimentation, working fast and instinctually, brought to the fore Hengeveld’s musical stamp; formative experiences of pop music in his childhood, in particular the weirder radio hits diffused throughout the 1980’s. His often bent, jangling guitars, esoteric synths and rich sense of melody trace influences like XTC, Split Enz, Roxy Music and David Bowie to name a few.
“Hengeveld casts some uncanny spell over the ears - not to mention the heart and head as well.” (Dom Alessio – Triple J)