Mossbeard is an artist from Torquay, on Wadawurrung Country along Victoria’s Surf Coast. The sound began somewhere else, though. He grew up in Johannesburg, where a stint in a band had him on a range of guitars and some lead vocals. Later, years on South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal coast brought a love of photography and a deeper connection to nature. Life eventually carried him to Australia, to build something new.
Australia felt like a real chance at a different kind of life: a place to give it a proper go, to value mateship and community over just work, and to live close to some genuinely vast natural beauty. Torquay and the Surf Coast became home, and these days that’s where the music comes from too.
The sound moves between folk, rock, hip-hop, soul, and Afro-pop, drifting in and out of each other from one song to the next, often carrying isicathamiya-style Zulu call-and-response harmonies. Each song finds its own shape rather than repeating a formula.
A child of the 80s and 90s, his influences run from rock to hip-hop, folk to soul, with one simple test for whether something belongs: does it move you. If it does, it becomes part of the sound.
A song usually starts long before it’s ever recorded: a line, a feeling, a realisation that won’t let go, jotted down and left to sit until it’s ready to become something more. Words and feeling come first, the music follows, built slowly and with as much care given to the story as the sound. He still picks up a guitar now and then, and every so often that’s where a melody actually starts.
He cares less about being traditional in how a song gets made, and focuses more on making sure it’s honest once it’s finished. His latest release is “Of Dogs and Men,” a 16-track album.
These days, life moves a little slower by design: coastal walks, time with family, the odd quiet morning with a guitar. That’s the pace the music comes from too.
Welcome to the forest. Welcome to slow songs and wild hope.
