Interview with Fazerdaze
Interview with Amelia Murray for Under the Radar
Winner of Album Of The Year and Best Solo Artist at the 2025 Aotearoa Music Awards, and currently top 20 finalist for this year's prestigious APRA Silver Scroll Award (winner to be announced), I interviewed Fazerdaze aka Amelia Murray about the journey to her long-awaited second studio album Soft Power and beyond. Murray will be playing in a special duo form with Dave Rowlands for all three dates of Fazerdaze's winter tour of Aotearoa, sweeping through Tāmaki Makaurau, Ōtautahi, and Pōneke this week with special guests.
“The feeling of being invisible and feeling really insignificant, I think those feelings impacted the sound. I was trying so hard to prove my love to someone, I was trying so hard to be seen. I was trying so hard just to show someone I was valuable. And so I think that feeling of striving and trying, that was what impacted the sound.”
Lucia: Soft Power was your first full-length album after a seven year break since Morningside. How do you think that break impacted your sound, and what was the experience of coming back to releasing music like?
Fazerdaze: The experience of coming back into doing the music thing publicly again was… It definitely felt, I mean, obviously, it just feels scary. It just feels scary putting yourself out there again, and it was quite easy to get stuck in my head like, “Oh, what will people think? It's been so long!” And I was kind of ashamed, I felt shameful and embarrassed about that. But then it also just felt so good to relinquish control and just let it be received however it is gonna be received, to not worry too much and just try to do my job as an artist. To kind of come back to the humbleness of the work of being an artist, just trying to serve the divide or something. And so, that kind of reminds me to just step out of the way and just try to do my job. That was also like, in the end, it's been quite a healing process because it's like: oh, stop trying to let fear control me and just show up each day and do my best and don't get too complicated about it.
I think maybe just taking the break, it wasn't even really a conscious break. I just had so much stuff going on in my life, and it was—yeah, the feeling of being invisible and feeling really insignificant, I think those feelings impacted the sound. I was trying so hard to prove my love to someone, I was trying so hard to be seen. I was trying so hard just to show someone I was valuable. And so I think that feeling of striving and trying, that was what impacted the sound.” Soft Power is quite dense at times. It’s also sonically dense and expansive.
L: Were you still making stuff by yourself or had you just cocooned a bit?
F: Yeah. I was always, I have always—I definitely was still making stuff by myself. It was more like I couldn't really finish anything. I was just really stuck, or like 60% finished songs for so long. I just couldn't, I was too scared or not in it, just not able to finish them.
L: When you came back, obviously, that was so scary, but you had such a great reception. You won the Aotearoa Music Award for Best Solo Artist and Album of the Year this year! Was that kind of validating and comforting? What was the experience of that?
F: Oh gosh… Yeah. That was a lot. That was like all the feelings at once. I mean, directly after I won album of the year, I was so stoked, I was so satisfied at that point. I was like, “Great, the night's done.” I was just so stoked to walk home with one trophy. And then when I won Album of the Year, I was genuinely just—it’s almost just an emptying of your feelings. I was just, I couldn't, I just couldn’t! I wasn’t ‘empty,’ but I couldn't process it. But then, I think the first moment I got to myself after that, I burst into one of those ugly, convulsing cries. You know what I mean? It's like, it's so ugly, and I was just streaming tears. It was just, oh, such a massive, massive journey. And, it felt so good because I felt like people around me had been working really hard, people on my team had been working really hard. I had been working really hard. And it was just nice to take that home for everyone that’s been part of Fazerdaze.
So, yeah, it was really moving and just really humbling too. You kind of forget about all of that stuff because you're like, “I just wanna do a good job. I just wanna play a good show. I just wanna do the single really well.” And then… it was just really nice to get recognised by my peers.
L: It was so lovely seeing the videos from that moment and the photos from the night, you’ve got such a lovely team around you!
F: Oh, I do. I really do.
L: Yeah, it’s so nice. I feel like everyone— it is very well deserved. It's great, and it's been lovely to see that journey.
L: Your show at The Powerstation earlier this year was such a sentimental time as well. I think at the end of the show, I was outside and bumped into four or five friends, and all of us were like, “Yeah… We cried.” I think I told you when I last saw you as well. I was like, “I cried at your show!!!!!” It was so great. You're touring the album again in a couple of weeks, what can people expect for the shows at Whammy and in Lyttleton and the likes?
F: Yeah. So these shows are a lot more compact than that Powerstation show. Dave and I have kind of figured out this more electronic way to play Fazerdaze songs, it's a little bit more jammy, and I'm looping things and affecting beats and stuff as well as playing guitar on top. So, yeah, it's a little bit more of an elastic Fazerdaze set. There's more fluidity between the songs, and messing around with the structures a little bit more. I'm really proud of this. I mean, it's like a chance for us to really nail the set before we take it on the road with Pixies.
L: Oh, yeah. That's crazy. When does that start?
F: Our first show with them is sometime this month, like August 23, I think?
L: That’s so exciting.
F: No. Wait. Wait. Let me just double-check that…Well, our US tour, we play our own LA show on August 23, and the first Pixies show is the 27th.
L: That’s so cool.
L: Soft Power also marked a move to your own imprint record label with Butterfly Records. How has it been to have more autonomy over your project? And then also, transformation vibes, butterflies, la de da—can you talk to me a bit more about the butterfly imagery that we've seen through this album cycle?
F: Well, Zoey Hannay designed the logo. I think she's from Wellington, but she lives in Melbourne now. She's been doing most of the graphic design around tour posters and stuff, and often, either she or I will be like, “Should we just throw in a little butterfly?” And it's just sort of become this really cute little token of signalling my freedom, which is, I don't know, maybe a little bit sassy? It’s just kinda cheeky and cute.
I feel like my femininity and my growth into being a woman and working towards being a fully embodied woman has been something that's been so threatening to people around me. So the butterfly is just like a cheeky little symbol to kind of trademark the era, I guess. Like, there's a little butterfly in the So Easy video, I'm trying to think where else we've thrown them, they're just—every now and then you see them on a poster, they’re on the merch, yeah.
L: This butterfly that you guys have, that logo is so cool. It's like, real tough looking, but really dainty and feminine as well. It's kind of perfect for what you were talking about.
F: Totally. I think we workshopped a few because I was like, “It can't look too pretty and it can't look too toddler-y. It's gotta look cool, but it's also gotta be the right amount of pretty as well.” Zoey really nailed that.
L: What has it been like moving to your own, like, imprint and having autonomy and independence over this record?
F: It's been a good learning experience. I feel like it was a really necessary part of my journey to release without a label and just see what that process is like. There are definitely pros, and then there are definitely cons. When you sign to a label that's really invested in you, you've got a whole team of people helping you and doing stuff that you maybe don't have time or capacity to think about, so you definitely miss that, but then at the same time, I learned a lot and maybe realised how I can also be, yeah, I can be a boss and I can guide things. I know so much about music now, I know a lot about the industry because I've been doing it so long. So it was kind of nice to just stretch those muscles. It feels cool to experiment, starting my own label, and then to also see it win Album of the Year and stuff. But then I say all that, and you know, it's not like I'm just starting out of the blue, I’ve been building off the work of so many other people who have helped me.
L: It's so lovely to have seen this growth because, as you know, I started listening with that first EP, and I was I would have been 14. Yeah. it’s been ten years, right? And it's just been so cool to kind of grow up alongside you in a sense, and see it move from that little handmade cardboard CD—that I didn't buy and I regret it so much—
F: I’ve got to find one for you!
L: To having your own label. And Album of the Year, touring the States, it’s amazing! It’s been such a joy to watch.
F: Oh, thanks! That's so cool, the timing of that is so cool. I feel so honoured to be a part of that part of your life; that’s such a transitional part of someone's life.
L: Yeah. The early teen years, which I feel like your music really lends itself to quite well.
F: Yeah, youthful and—I feel like when I sing, I often sound like a child sometimes [laughs] So I don't know, it’s really young at heart, I guess.
L: Well, there's a lot of nostalgia to just being a girl and exploring these feelings. And I think, as you've said, you've kind of grown into a woman throughout the project. So it's cool seeing it culminate with Soft Power to be more like, well, taking power of those feelings, whereas with Morningside and the EP, they're they were so good in my teen years because they were like, “Oh, I don't know what to do with this feeling.” And now it's, “Actually, no. We've got this!”
F: That is totally the arc!!!
Can’t remember exactly how I came across Fazerdaze but I can’t stop playing it and telling my friends. Think they’re tired of hearing about it now but Soft Power hits the note I was listening and hoping for