Adrian Kosky’s full length independent album, Frozen With Intent, marks the accomplished culmination of a musical journey, the touchstones for which were mail-order LPs, a cappuccino machine and the film ‘Deliverance’.
Frozen With Intent comprises nine original songs, which combine gently expressive vocals with the fine-tuned sounds of acoustic guitar, dobro, dulcimer and blues harp. It’s a strong document, the product of singer-songwriter’s vision which began in the 1970s when, at the age of 13, he received his first set of mail-order albums from the Australian Record Club.
“There were six records,” he recalls, “including Ry Cooder, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones. For me they were amazing discoveries. I still play them today.”
Around the same time the Mt Waverley youngster began to explore the booming coffee shop scene. He remembers being blown away by Australian blues legend Dutch Tilders. “I asked him how I could play blues well,” he laughs. “Dutch told me to go away and practise for 20 years, and I guess that’s what I’ve done.”
Later on, inspired by these early experiences, Adrian opened his own performance venue, the popular Fat Bob’s Cafe in Caulfield. He preferred to leave the limelight to other musicians, but was often invited to accompany them – which he did standing behind the counter, blowing on his harp, and banging out percussive rhythms on the coffee machine.
A period of travel followed, notably to Tennessee and North Carolina, where ‘Deliverance’ was filmed. “I discovered that there was much more to North Carolina mountain music than albino kids with banjos,” he recalls. “I found my musical lodestone.”
He also discovered one of the fundamental dichotomies in folk music. “There’s the swamps, and there are the mountains. I guess I play mountain music. The city represents the swamp for me. I live now in the Central Highlands, in Daylesford.
“We’re in the mountains here, and mountains are about clarity, isolation, loneliness – they prompt a kind of expressive melancholia which I find very appealing. If you like, it’s a positive melancholia.”
Frozen With Intent was recorded at Adrian’s home studio. It was engineered by Robbie Adams, mixed at Metropolis Audio, and mastered at Edensound. The result is a finely polished collection, in which the crisp melancholy of the playing is matched by the optimism and wry humour of the lyrics.
Frozen With Intent is an expression of talent and modesty, a considered album from a man for whom music has always been about joy rather than business. It’s been many years and a long road since Adrian Kosky unwrapped his first Muddy Waters album, but, as you’ll agree when his music washes over you late at night or on a lazy Sunday morning, it’s been well worth the wait.