Vilde walks us through his expansive and dynamic second album, Thud

In case you're yet to be acquainted, Vilde is the brainchild of rising Stockholm-via-Melbourne musician Thomas Savage, who over the past few years, has become one of electronic's most praised names thanks to his delicate, yet dynamic productions – completely put together by himself. After last year's Study / Dance debut, the week just gone saw the release of his awaited second album Thud, an eight-track exploration into the more dark and thrilling side of electronica that'll completely win you over.

As mentioned, the aptly-titled Thud dives into quite a dark side of electronic music, whether it's through the hazy, yet sometimes quite pop-leaning productions, or through the album's meanings around our one-sided relationship with social media and technology in the current age. "A persistent theme that eventuated was our relationship to technology & social media in 2017," Vilde says on the record, which arrives ahead of a pair of tour dates in Sydney and Melbourne next month. "I feel like the record almost became a plea for people to put down their phones and speak to each other, or even just to sit and think. But if this is the future for us, one should just accept it right?"

Check out the album below ahead of the sure-to-be-captivating live tour dates – which you can find more info on HERE – with Vilde himself walking us through the album's creation and inner meanings – it's quite a ride.

Flash In The Pan

This was the first sketch for the album Thud. It marked a bit of a change in that I realised I could get pretty playful & silly without having to undermine the song. I ripped it apart over & over, threw any new idea I came up with into it, erased sections, cut & pasted. Took full advantage of reducing prior constraints I'd put on myself.

Warm Milk / Salted

These tracks were sketch numbers 2 (Salted) & 3 (Warm Milk), birthed the same week as FitP. Yet all 3 of these tracks took months to complete. I followed the same precedence, trying to be less precious about the song & more playful. Despite that, Warm Milk felt very precious, and I think it suffered in the end due to my fear of undermining it. I had a lot of fun with Salted.

Rabbit Hole

This was written later on. I started trying to keep things more minimal so the vocal character would be more exposed. The sentiment ended up as a sort of mantra encouraging pride in oneself & the dismissal of unwarranted shame.

Gawking Gaping Swallows

This is my favourite track from the album. It captured a sense of freedom for me, a perfect balance between being playful with instrumentation & production without subtracting from the song or sentiment. The transitions seem to flow well, which is always a challenge for me. It's largely political & climate focused I guess.

Hyphen

My 2nd favourite track. Was supposed to be a song but I got too precious about it & just left it to fade out after 90 seconds. I realised after finishing Thud that it's actually pretty intense. So this track was a really nice breath of fresh air.

Thud

This was one of the last sketches. I liked the idea of painting an image from sparse details rather than attempting to tell a story. Specifically, it seems to go all over the place, but there aren’t any lyrics that I feel are necessarily out of place.

Meadow

This was sketch 4, started pretty early on, finished it last of all. It was a bit of a nightmare, I’m really surprised it survived. I went through many phases with it, eventually losing almost all respect for it. For some reason I still played around with it, trying stuff. It was like a playground I could go to & it didn’t matter if I made a mess of it. I think it became something special out of that & now I really love it. Not sure if the case is that it had potential that was inevitably discoverable, or if it’s merit is purely based on the bizarre process I undertook in creating it.

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