motel void

Florence Waking Vale emerged as a collaboration between two friends, Kane Mazlin and Lawrence Folvig, connecting through harmony, melody and lyrical imagery. 

MOTEL VOID: You’re from Melbourne (I think?:), Australia. How would you describe the current ‘indie’ music scene there? Do you feel that you’re part of it?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: Yes! Well, kind of. I (Lawrence) live in Melbourne and that is where Kane and I met and started making music together but then Kane moved to Brisbane a while ago and we kept working on music together remotely.

MOTEL VOID: This is your “brand new project”. Where did you play before “Florence Waking Vale”?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: A whole range of things really. I come from a more jazz and experimental/improvised music background which then led to me doing a lot of writing, recording and performing with another Australian artist named Ainslie Wills. In recent years I’ve been more of a session musician for other people and have been exploring more instrumental/electronic/ambient/experimental music again.

MOTEL VOID: Could you recommend your favourite local artists and venues?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: Gosh, so many to choose from! We’re very spoiled for great venues and musicians in Melbourne! Hugo van Buuren is local songwriter whose songs and sounds are wonderful. Hannah Cameron is another Melbourne songwriter who has just released a beautiful record called ‘Holding Pattern’. Helen Svoboda is another amazing musician based in Melbourne who just released an EP with an accompanying short film called ‘The Odd River’ that is incredible. I could go on! In terms of venues that I love, Shotkickers, The Merri Creek Tavern and Long Play are all fantastic venues for punters and performers.

MOTEL VOID: I really love your new single “Suburban Blues”. The atmosphere reminds me of something between Bon Iver and Jose Gonzalez… Could you tell us more about the writing and recording process?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: Oh thanks so much! Jose Gonzalez was definitely a reference for me in terms of the instrumentation for this record and Bon Iver is a fantastic artist. The project evolved quite organically, we became friends through mutual friends and one day thought we should try and see what would happen if we tried to make some music together with no real intention of it being anything other than something for ourselves.

The first time we started to write in a room together we had an instrumental song form sketched out, just a chord progression. I sent it to Kane after the session and then about a week later he sent back these incredible songs with beautiful lyrics and melody and some epic Brian Wilson-esque vocal harmonies and I was just in awe of what he had turned the piece into. That song ‘Last Call’ ended up being the first track on the EP.

From there, I would send Kane instrumental nylon string guitar song forms and he turned them into stunning songs and then together we embellished them with subtle piano, string, bass and percussion parts. The rest of the process we pretty much did entirely remotely even though we lived in the same neighbourhood for about a year. But I think the remote working style was an advantage when Kane ended up moving to Brisbane. There was all this distance, but the process remained the same for us.

MOTEL VOID: Who is your biggest inspiration/influence right now?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: For me personally, there are two musicians that I have been deeply inspired and influenced by in recent years. They are Björn Meyer, a Swedish bass player, composer, improvising musician based in Switzerland and Skúli Sverrrison also a bass player, composer and improvising musician from Iceland. I think their music is sublime and highly recommend that everyone listen!

MOTEL VOID: Your plans and goals for the rest of the year?

LAWRENCE FOLVIG: For Florence Waking Vale hopefully we can get back into writing more songs, exploring more sounds that we enjoy and seeing where that leads us. I think one thing that is important to both of us in this project is that we’re enjoying the process and trying to create the music from that space. It is so easy to get overly caught up in the non-music aspects of any music collaboration and sometimes that can lead to losing sight of what inspired the project in the first place. So hopefully we can hold sight of the things that inspire us and that we connect with.