“It’s kind of surreal,” Australian artist Olympia said in the days leading up to the release of her debut album ‘Self Talk’

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“It’s a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, equal measures of fear worrying that some won’t like it, and lots of excitement and pride.

“You work on an album for so long, and then it becomes this object, and then it’s out there in the world and people are reacting to it.”

Olympia is the performance moniker for Olivia Bartley who has released a series of singles and EPs in the lead up to tackling a full album. Her songs are a curious mix of electronica, torch songs and country twinges.

Bartley said she chose her performance name to give a little bit of distance between herself and her artistic output.

“I didn’t want people to be going ‘let’s go hear what Olivia is thinking today. I feel like the album is like a book of short stories.” Bartley said before bursting into laughter. “Now that I say that out loud it sounds incredibly pretentious!”

“But I did want to disrupt how people will take it on, it’s a bold name, I don’t know if I’ve lived up to it yet, but I need that as an artist, I need to push myself hard.”

The video for her single ‘Smoke Signals’ looks as if it’s pulled from the ‘Countdown’ archive, it’s a lovely nod to the visual style of the late ‘70s when images were echoed to infinity with what was considered ground breaking technology in its time.

“We shot it on cameras from 1982,” Bartley said, ‘It’s retro by design.”

Olympia will be playing Amplifier on June 24^th and The Odd Fellow in Fremantle on June 25^th. 

‘Self Talk’ is available now. Head to the giveaways page  for your chance to win one of five copies we’ve got on offer.