Our Independent Artist of the Week SAMATAR journeys into the unconscious on his debut EP ANTIHERO.

Joining Kate Saap on Up For It!, the Canberra-based artist talked the self-reflection that kicked off the project, collaborating on his fever dream of a short film, and more.

“At the time I was pretty overwhelmed by the whole daily pressures of life and everything else that comes with it. And initially I just needed some sort of crux, I guess,  to deep dive into myself, my fears, my hope the world doesn’t swallow me whole. And inadvertently it kind of turned itself into a concept and a self journey against a battle of darkness that blinds my own path to self-realisation.”

ANTIHERO’s path to self-realization evolves over seven tracks, featuring hazy, reflective instrumentals and SAMATAR’s emotive and poetic delivery. One standout is ‘THE HEDONIST’, with fuzzy guitars and discordant synths that wouldn’t sound out of place on a King Krule song.

“Being young and living here, all of life’s pleasures are constantly presented in front of you. And through that, exploring these pleasures and everything else can sometimes explore more other concepts about you. Because a lot of [‘THE HEDONIST’] is about fear and fears that I face on my own day to day and fears that present itself in my future. And the title itself reflects that in a sense.”

To accompany the EP, SAMATAR also dropped the 8 minute short film of the same name, created in collaboration with Canberra based filmmaker Sam Blazer. The film has a number of different “fever-dream like sequences” including the artist fighting his subconscious in the form of hooded and masked figures.

“I just felt as if in order to convey the concept of the EP, what would be really cool was a way for me to portray that visually. It all just kind of came to me in a massive brain dump moment over a series of days, and then constantly drafting ideas until I found the one that potentially worked.”

To hear more listen back to SAMATAR‘s full interview with Kate Saap above, and buy/stream ANTIHERO on Bandcamp below.