Gordi Walks Us Through Her Stark New EP, ‘Beneath The Reservoir’

Two years after gaining international attention with her debut LP Reservoir, Sydney artist Gordi has returned with a new EP, titled Beneath The Reservoir. 

As the title suggests, the EP sees Gordi rebuild some of Resevoir’s biggest tracks — including ‘Heaven I Know’ and ‘Long Way’ — as acoustic arrangements, often supplemented by ghostly harmonies and clattering Casio drum loops.

“I never thought I would get to know my own songs as a listener might,” Gordi — real name Sophie Payten — says of the decision to re-record the songs. “As if I am hearing them new for the first time and they sound different and I am discovering what they mean.

“This happens for me through touring. I’ll be playing the same song for the 100th time and suddenly I hear the same chord and same word in an entirely different way. The most unsurprising realm in which this happens, is when I’m playing a solo show. Because I have to get rid of the way the song is arranged and just play it in whatever way I possibly can using two hands and one set of vocal chords.

“That is, in essence, the aim of this collection of reworked songs. To strip it all away and to give a solo performance with all its imperfections and feeling. To remember that they are all just songs. That is what I connect to as a listener and a fan of music — the songs and the feeling.”

The resulting collection of songs showcase Payten’s impressive talent as an arranger, as well as a reminder of the powerful simplicity of her songwriting. In honour of its release, Payten has walked us through the EP track-by-track, which you can now listen to below. Dive in.

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‘Something Like This’

I’ve lived in the same flat in Sydney for the last five years. When I decided to rework the tracks from my first record I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time in the studio, because I felt like I was hardly ever at home with all the touring I was doing. In my flat I have a piano, a few harmoniums, a bunch of guitars and an assortment of other instruments.

Over a few days one very hot summer, I tracked everything you hear on this these songs with the stuff in my house and with the help of my friend Dorny Mayes. I spent the majority of the time dripping with sweat as there is no air con in my place, and in between tracking we would watch the Australian cricket test match on the TV.

‘Something Like This’ was the first song I tried and as I played around in the key on the piano I started playing the piano riff that is looped throughout the song. You can hear my harmonium, my electric guitar through this pedal that spits out random sequences, and most of the pads are me humming through different effects.

‘Heaven I Know’

‘Heaven I Know’ was the first song we released from ‘Reservoir’. The original song has me counting ‘1, 2, 3’ in it, which became incredibly divisive.

I remember sitting in an AirBnB in Bergen, Norway, and listening to the song being played on triple j on the Good Nights show. The presenter read out a comment from one of the listeners saying they hated the counting loop. Though it seemed to go down very well in the interpretive dance community.

When I rerecorded it we replaced the metronomic counting with a wire brush on a tambourine so I hope that guy who texted into triple j feels less aggravated when he listens to it. Once again the pads are made up of my harmonium and my voice.

Often when I’m doing vocals in the studio we track me singing multiple times to get a layered effect. But when we set out to record these songs again I wanted them to be single takes that were more focused on the individual performance, even if it amplified some imperfections.

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‘Aeon’

If you’ve never come across an Omnichord, you should look it up — most of the sounds in this I played on the Omni. Some of the others are samples I cut up and reversed from times I played the piano. After my friend Dorny helped me track everything, I sat with it all for a while and put in a bunch of extra textures in there.

I got my hands on a bunch of Casio drum-loops and you can hear a heavily effected one at the end of the song. It was my first real attempt at engineering so it took me so much longer than it would take a legitimate engineer, and it also means you can hear some of the stuff you’re not supposed to hear — like me pressing the space bar on my laptop and my lips smacking together before I sing. But when people listen to these songs I want them to think about the process.

“To present a shiny, tidy version of any of these songs wouldn’t be representative of what went into them. It is about capturing a feeling.”

I want them to be in the room with me when it was 40 degrees and the cricket was on and I had just come home from two months of touring around the world so I was so tired and frustrated and Dorny had to repeatedly talk me off the ledge and say don’t think about it too much just sing and play your instrument.

Throughout these songs you can hear distorted mics that are turned up too loud and clicks and extra noises that we would usually edit out or do again. Because to present a shiny, tidy version of any of these songs wouldn’t be representative of what went into them. It is about capturing a feeling.

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‘I’m Done’

The original version of this song is a few keys lower and played on acoustic guitar as a duet with Sean Carey (S. Carey).

There was a nice kind of symmetry because this version of the song went back to Wisconsin where my friend, Zach Hanson, mixed it along with the others on this EP. After tracking we pretty much just had the piano take and vocal, so I did a bunch of extra tracking at my desk at home.

I sat in my desk chair and sang into an Apogee One and threw effects at it until I liked how it sounded. For some reason my brain has been programmed to enjoy listening to a song with piano and distortion more than anything else. So I made this. For my own enjoyment.

‘Long Way’

When I did the Australian leg of the Reservoir tour I had to come up with an encore just in case the crowd bought into the house lights not coming back on after the ‘last song’ thing.

I had never played this song in the set because I found it hard to replicate in a live setting given the version on the record is all vocal pads and loops and I didn’t just want to sing karaoke to a backing track.

“It’s a song about growing up. The most frightening thing there is.”

I came up with the idea of playing an acoustic version of the song as the ‘quiet encore moment’ before the big finish. At every show it was a real highlight and I don’t think I’d ever felt that level of intimacy with a crowd.

So the version you hear on this EP is the version I played on that tour. Just me and guitar. It took me a few goes to get the vocal take right and then when I finally did I realised I was singing too loudly into the mic – hence the distortion. But who cares.

Every time I play this song it makes me emotional, and listening to it like this, where everything is stripped away but the story of the song, really magnifies that. It’s a song about growing up. The most frightening thing there is.

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Beneath The Reservoir is out now. Gordi will be supporting Julien Baker on her upcoming Australian tour. Check out all dates and details here. 

Photo Credit: Ward Roberts