Words by Brooklyn Gibbs.

From her biggest headline tour to date, as well as a regional run with Groovin the Moo, Brisbane musician Hope D has announced the release of her highly anticipated debut album, Clash of the Substance.

Futuremag Music caught up with Hope D to find out what we can expect from the upcoming album!

FMM: Congrats on the announcement of your debut album following your Cash Only EP. The album is titled Clash of the Substance. That’s such a sick album name! Given the title, is there a certain theme we can expect to hear from this album?

HOPE: ‘Clash of the substance’ is a lyric from a song called Senseless, which will be on the album. What I mean from ‘clash of the substance,’ is the mixing of all these different things. Mostly, drugs and alcohol and being intoxicated, but also love and heartbreak, relationships beginning and ending, and just all of them happening at the one time and being influenced by each other.

I really liked that lyric in Senseless and I thought it fit the album well for the themes of vaping addiction, and love and heartbreak, of course, and dead friendships.

FMM: I’ve had a listen to Emerald, quite a few times actually, which is the third single from the upcoming album. What makes Emerald, along with Happy Hangover and Hate Goodbyes, the perfect preview of what’s to come?

HOPE: Well, Happy Hangovers came out first as I felt it was very upbeat, and very fun song, so that was a good taste of that. Then, the second one being Hate Goodbyes, is an insight into the more sad and heartbreaking themes that are going to come from the album. Emerald is bringing it back up again with that upbeat sound and having the way I speak come across fast in it, because I think that comes out in a couple of other songs on the album, so it’s nice to have that preview. I’ll probably release another single and then the album, and hopefully it is a nice appetiser for it.

FMM: Emerald follows the relatable story of pretending to like things you don’t, and pretending to hate things you actually like, to impress someone you’re interested in. How did this story unfold?

HOPE: I was in my first year of uni and I had left high school, obviously. I was getting into the music scene, the Brisbane nightlife scene and the drinking scene. I was meeting a bunch of people and I was meeting people with incredibly eclectic tastes in music, films, movies, and tv shows and such. I hadn’t been exposed to that kind of thing before. Also, I wished I had that in me before meeting them, but I didn’t. It got to the point where I was thinking ‘Who am I?’ and ‘I don’t even know what I do like.’ Then it just happened naturally where you do find your own interests and you don’t have to copy people. But, the story behind Emerald was that I was really into someone and they liked all these things, so I pretended to like them.

FMM: I’m loving the music video for Emerald. It looks like it would have been super fun to film!

HOPE: Yeah, it happened very quickly! Maeve McKenna, who directed it and wrote it, saw me play at a flood relief gig in Brisbane. She asked me to do a music video with her and I was so grateful because I hadn’t thought about the music video for the next single yet, and she just came to me with it. She’s extremely professional, talented and incredible and had all these resources that made it look like a feature film, which I wasn’t expecting at all.

Maeve wrote the idea behind it and I really loved the concept, and I love arcade and it made the video look so poppy and bright. We got an actress from Sydney, Amelia Douglass, and she was incredible. I got all my friends to come along and it was a very late night from about 8pm to 4am at the arcade. But, it was so much fun. Acting isn’t really my strong side, so I just smiled and laughed the whole time, but it was really fun to get into it. I’m super proud of how it turned out.

FMM: It looks like you’ve come such a long way since your Cash Only EP. I’ve been following your journey for a while now and have seen you do some really cool shows and even festivals! For those coming across your music for the first time, do you mind sharing a bit about how you stepped into the Aussie music scene and got to where you are today?

HOPE: Well, I guess it would be very interesting when the album does come out because I don’t have too many songs out, and the songs I have played live, some of them aren’t even out. We’ve been playing so much new music. So from what people can expect from not having heard the songs before, and only hearing them live, I think the production is very different and playful. It’s a lot of play on words and different sounds - a lot of fun topics.

During Covid, we were only able to do a couple of shows and that gave me the opportunity to write so many songs. I guess I just kept writing personal music and posted little snippets on my social media stories. People reacted to that and it’s so nice to see that other people can relate and it builds me up to do more. It makes me more motivated and as long as people keep listening, I’ll keep releasing music that is true to myself.

FMM: I’ve seen you perform live in Sydney previously and I must say, I was amazed. It was March last year at the Oxford Art Factory and it was a solo show without your band. Just you, your guitar, loop pedal and vocals. I love that you can pull a show off solo, as well as with your full band. It’s great to have that skill set and option, especially during Covid times! Do you have a preference when it comes to performing live?

HOPE: That’s so cool that you got to see that! It was really fun to do that tour by myself and do the whole looping thing. I used to think that I would never stop looping, but I am very much over it now. It’s way too much fun with the band and you feel like you can just work off each other’s energy and have such banter. We get along so well and it’s such a fun time with them. Playing solo though, I still really enjoy it, but I don’t really loop anymore as I just find it super repetitive. It’s super fun and it makes my songs how they are, because I write them with the loop pedal, so I’m super grateful for that. However, I probably wouldn’t do that anymore because it’s just way too much more fun with the band.

FMM: Well, I can imagine you’d have a hectic schedule leading up to the album release over the next couple of months. Do you have any shows coming up during this time, or will your focus mainly be on the release?

HOPE: I think we’ve got a couple of festivals on later in the year, which will be super fun! Then, not too much else live show-wise, but hopefully something might happen from releasing the album, so that some more shows can happen a bit later on.

FMM: And how many songs can we expect from the album?

HOPE: There’s going to be about 15 tracks, but pretty much 11 songs and then four interlude-type things that create the scene.

Clash of the Substance will be available on October 21 via AWAL.

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