New Song Of The Day: Lontalius – Carousel

Today we bring you new music from Lontalius...a new song and a new video titled Carousel.

Carousel is the latest track to be released from Lontalius’ 3rd album, Someone Will Be There For You.

Here’s the record company blurb with details:

Lontalius gives fans another taste of his soon-to-be-released third album Someone Will Be There For You with the “magical” ballad ‘Carousel’.

For Lontalius, ‘Carousel’ is a favourite from the forthcoming Side Two of Someone. “I was trying to capture the magical, butterflies-in-stomach feeling of meeting someone new.”

The song is accompanied by a video by longtime collaborators Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou filmed between rain showers in Wellington.

“This song is one of the most intimate I’ve written, so trying to come up with a video idea was harder than I expected. I asked Arty and Phoebe to help me capture the intimacy and warmth of the song without going overboard. My music can always be classed as sad or emotional but I don’t think a big, dramatic and emotional video really suits me. What felt right was to just sing the song in the dark, much like how I wrote it,” Lontalius said.

“During the lockdowns and also during my day-to-day life I’m partial to a late night walk around the suburbs, listening to music and contemplating my world. I like that this video captures that, too.”

Carousel’ is out now on streaming platforms. Side Two of Someone Will Be There For You will be released on Friday 30 April. Made with the support of NZ On Air.

About Lontalius

My first motivator behind this record was the idea of refining and simplifying my creative process. No more spending 3 years on a record – act on instinct, use what I learned in LA but don’t overthink it.

Back to basics, in a way. I have been thinking a lot about what the songwriting of Lontalius means to people and how it relates to myself. My music has always been emotional and honest, but I felt I had been writing in a way that was too insular. I wasn’t really letting other people (the audience, or collaborators) into the songs!

A discussion I’ve had with friends and every collaborator is “Where is the entry point for the audience? Am I singing to them or at them?” And of course musically it is a little different to the last record. More acoustic guitar, more natural sounds, more dynamics. Let the songwriting shine and keep the life in the music.

At 24, Eddie Johnston has released more music than many artists do in their careers. The songwriter and producer behind Lontalius has already released three EPs and two albums, plus several more EPs and many remixes as his electronic producer alter-ego Race Banyon.

His music has attracted many millions of streams, with over 200k monthly listeners on Spotify, and yet Lontalius is better known in America than his homeland. He was signed to Brooklyn-based indie label Partisan Records for his first album I’ll Forget 17, then spent five years in Los Angeles, collaborating with the likes of Grammy Award winning producer Om’Mas Keith (Frank Ocean, Erykah Badu) and Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy, Modest Mouse) on his sophomore album All I Have, which he released in late  2019 upon his return home to Wellington, New Zealand.

The homecoming allowed Lontalius to begin a new season of independent songwriting, with the knowledge gained from his collaborative projects embedded in his mind to draw upon. Moving to Auckland in March 2020, he almost immediately went into lockdown in his new home, emerging two months later with a new collection of songs. He took these songs into studio 4 of Stebbings Recording Centre, (where he shares a studio with hip hop duo Church & AP), to develop and record the songs with musicians including Alex Freer and Tom Healy, who also feature in his live band.

The studio space has given Lontalius the luxury of a creative space with no hard deadlines, allowing him to lean into his craft, and self-produce his third and most ambitious album to date. With the release of Someone Will Be Here For You, Lontalius will demonstrate why he’s one of New Zealand’s most exciting musical talents, an artist with an astonishing set of skills, and the ability to write a song that will stay with you for days.