Marcus Whale - Inland Sea (2016)

The bulk of the Sydney vocalist and producer's catalogue covers his work in local groups Collarbones (with Travis Cook) and BV (with Jared Beeler and Lavurn Lee AKA Cassius Select). Whale's first full release under his given name is co-produced by Nigel Yang of HTRK, and sees him venturing into more delicate and introspective territory, touching on themes of "race, gender and sexuality" according to the label. Whale himself goes on to explain:

"Having spent years cultivating musical divergences through pop music, experimental music, contemporary classical music, dance music, Inland Sea is all about convergence, using all of these languages simultaneously. Confronted with the possibility of defining myself in the form of an album, Inland Sea constructs my geographic origin stories, drawing from queer and colonial Australian history that looks, fantastically and impossibly, to a future beyond the colony. The "inland sea," then, is a kind of imaginary, inaccessible place of escape permanently outside the hierarchy that so defines Australia's very existence as a nation-state. The album is a kind of utopia-making exercise, building a genealogy of my queerness that's ever turned towards hope."