Since the release of Saddleback’s acclaimed 2004 debut Everything’s A Love Letter, Tony has found increasing demand for his touch behind the recording desk. Tony’s studio is housed in his Kangaroo Valley residence on the south coast of New South Wales. Found inside are all sorts of instruments including various guitars, percussion makers, horns, a clarinet, a double bass, piano and a specially-fashioned drum set. Having arranged and played these on other peoples’ work – most notably for Sydney’s Holly Throsby – Tony fashions his own sound into an altogether different, personal realm. The remote surroundings tell heavily on the sounds he creates for Saddleback, and as its title suggests, Night Maps has a darker sense of beauty than its predecessor.
The uncanny atmospheres of Night Maps are the result of contrasting feels at play. Sounds push and pull against each other, then unite into a mysterious force that is by turns desolate, fragile, visceral and translucent. These abstracted orchestrations featuring guitar, strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and electronic textures work in the cracks between jazz, folk, post-rock and classical, claiming a space between dark and light, both shimmering and haunting.
Night Maps is a breathtaking, artful work.
Saddleback is the solo project for producer Tony Dupé. In many ways, with its warm and exploratory
craft, Everything’s A Love Letter is the culmination of the varying strands in Tony’s musical life.
Tony first came to notice in Glovebox, who put an ethereal, ambient twist on the indie-pop scene as far back as the early ‘90s. Glovebox’s swirling sound has been as unhurried as its release schedule, though no matter how spare their output, each album has always found a warm reception. The group were even invited to make a record with US independent music luminary Kramer, who at the time had already produced records for the likes of Low, Palace Brothers and Galaxie 500.
As time went on, Tony would tinker with the Glovebox sound by using a rotating group of players with each recording and eventually started to produce records himself and sow the seeds for Saddleback.
Tony moved some years ago into an old disused nunnery on the South Coast of NSW and into production, fashioning a recording studio within the huge 18-bedroom building. The relaxed vibe and Tony’s willingness to experiment with sound and song brought the likes of Bluebottle Kiss’ Jamie Hutchings, Tania Bowers (Via Tania) and The Sea & Cake’s Archer Prewitt to record albums. Saddleback Mountain is where Tony now resides and records nearby the now-sold nunnery. (Both The Woods Themselves’ and Holly Throsby’s debut albums being two of the newer projects to emerge from there). It was somewhere during this time that Tony started work on material for Saddleback.
As Saddleback, Dupé has unanchored his atmospheric musings from Glovebox’s pop roots into new territory. Everything’s A Love Letter unfolds with small sonic gestures and gradually shifting layers of quiet sound, its fluttering, winding arrangements building into something altogether mesmerising. Blending guitar, piano, strings and brass into its mild electronic realm brings up compelling dimensions between classic composition and abstraction – a tender melodicism that draws on jazz, folk, pop and ambient electronica.
Everything’s A Love Letter is a most elegant debut and indeed a unique one.
