Soul Wun: Finding Greatness In Madness

As a teenager, there wasn’t anything quite like bombing hills on my skateboard. I still remember the best street for doing so in Balmain, where I grew up. Rowntree.

A combination of factors made Rowntree Street the bee’s knees – super wide with smooth bitumen and a lovely slope. Headphones in, I’d kick-push between traffic, without a second thought for my safety, beaming the whole way through.

Musicmaker Soul Wun (Blake Carthew) knows this very same feeling. I’ve seen the corners of his mouth turn upwards as he flies around on his own plank of wood. But it’s more than that. Blake lives his life the same way, hurtling towards things with a sense that, somehow, they’ll work out.

Unlike many other Australian producers, Blake grew up with a “small country town mentality” – one that hinges on staying put versus escaping to chase a bigger city buzz. The towns in question: Ararat, 200km west of Naarm/Melbourne and later Young, around 380km southwest of Sydney. A far cry from Balmain's bustle.

“It’s like animals in a zoo, ignorance is bliss – you’re not aware until you are and then suddenly there’s this burning desire to see what else is out there.”

In these towns, curiosity was its own form of survival. It helped to have something that put a glint in your eye, something that gave the days a sense of wonder; otherwise, as Blake explains, the search for stimulation led some of his friends down dark paths. “You can get lost in the sauce. And you just have to pray you don’t end up in the wrong crowd. Some made it out, some didn’t.”

Thankfully, Blake found skateboarding. First through the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater CD-ROMs tucked inside boxes of Nutri-Grain, before the PC game soon became something tangible. Enter the neighbouring Stewart family, whose two sons, Ignatius (Naish) and Bede, absolutely “ripped” on a board. Beyond their prowess on four wheels, Blake remembers how precious it felt to find people with a shared sensibility who also helped pull back the curtain on untapped creative culture.

“They showed me what else was fresh. Jimi Hendrix, rock guitar, their dad John was a master woodworker, and their house was designed by McGlashan Everist in Ararat of all places – my favourite modernist architecture studio in the game.”

Although the number of skaters was limited in these places, the hobby was like a bonding agent, a super glue. More than two decades on, the handful of fellas Blake rolled around with then are still his best mates today.

From the outside looking in, I can imagine the banter among his homies must be a hoot. Soul Wun is his pure self online, leaning into the larrikinism, shit-stirring and self-deprecating humour he shares with his nearest and dearest. On the rousing opener of ‘Kaleidoscope’, “Tell Your Friends You Love Them,” the producer sprinkles in field recordings of cackling laughter and wheels crunching on concrete – sonic fingerprints of the world he inhabits, and proof that this isn’t some carefully constructed persona.

For Blake, the skatepark is a place to work things out physically. Every ledge and landing offers another opportunity to shake off whatever life has accumulated. A purge, essentially. Watch a few clips of him shredding on IG, and it becomes pretty obvious: Blake doesn’t do anything by halves. He rides hard and fast with reckless abandon. This attack on pavement started with his big brother, James Carthew. “I really attribute a lot of my drive and my ability to persevere and keep trying because I was just trying to live up to my brother’s expectations and ultimately earn his respect. He would try more intense stuff, and then of course, so would I”

Blake's real hunger for dance music was born through another set of siblings, John and Fred Stokes. John, the eldest, had a bedroom in Ararat like none I’ve ever heard described. “He had a smoke machine, a massive 12-deck sound system, a strobe light, throwups of graffiti on the wall. We’d literally close the blinds in the middle of the day, spray paint and just crank techno in there.”

What Blake fell for first wasn’t the music, but the space it scored. An ordinary bedroom turned day-rave haven. Their own little world, sealed off from everything else. “It was ours and no one else’s”, he remembers fondly. There is a sacredness to that.

‘Kaleidoscope’ was forged in much the same fashion. Saying sayonara to his 9–5 in Sydney, Blake skipped town for Lorne and shut the world out completely. No phone, no distractions, no one to answer to but himself. He wrote for up to ten hours a day, fed by introspection, and emerged with 18 tracks, 12 of which made the final cut.

There’s a theme here. A doggedness to lock in and see what happens when you give yourself entirely to the thing in front of you. Blake operates on the basic principle: go and go again. “At times it felt like mania, but I feel like greatness comes from madness. I cherish those pockets of crazy; they’ve served me all throughout my life.”

Soul Wun approached the month on the Great Ocean Road with a military mentality. He adhered to a strict regimen, writing in slots every day. Once a demo was finished, he’d file it away and refuse to listen back until the end of that week. Combine the intensity of being alone with the initiative and discipline to keep creating, and you get an idea of how deeply Blake is invested in making this work.

The more Soul Wun spills, the more obvious it becomes how much stock he puts in the people around him. The friendships and the mentors, the key pillars of his life, are all “kings” in Blake’s eyes. Throughout our conversation, his gratitude oozed through the screen.

One such king is Jackson Fitzsimmons, co-founder/creative director of the prominent label Steel City Dance Discs (SCDD). All it took for their worlds to collide was a global pandemic, a long neck of beer and a session at Mayfield Skatepark in Newcastle. From that moment on, Blake and Jackson started skating together multiple times a week. With COVID bringing the world to a standstill, there wasn’t much else to do. “Honestly, everyone in that crew are the best fucking people. I can’t speak highly enough of how much I love those cunts.”

Through this blossoming relationship with SCDD, Blake has found himself playing gigs he could scarcely have imagined. Most recently, supporting DJ HEARTSTRING at Sydney’s Turbine Hall in front of thousands of people, and before that warming the room for KETTAMA at Amnesia in Ibiza – even boarding a private jet along the way. Just three weeks ago, Soul Wun flew to Berlin to skate with DJ HEARTSTRING’s Leo and Jonas for an upcoming project. The same kid who grew up skating dusty country towns is now crossing continents to pursue that same passion alongside top-tier producers.

Lovingly, Blake hands the project's creative reins to the people around him. Longtime friend Will Vallender and Nikola Jokanovic deliver gripping visuals across the rollout, including the official video for “When The Rains Begins To Fall.” While Blake’s good pal Joel Lumbroso created the medium-format frame emblazoned on the cover, a rainbow confetti photo that bottles the LP's essence superbly.

Over the course of our chat, Blake repeatedly returns to the phrases: “shout out” and “power to”. Each time, it’s a virtual hug for the friends who have helped make this all possible. I get the sense that he could spend the entire interview rattling off names and big-upping every single person who has played a part.

For all the momentum surrounding Soul Wun now, his success has taken more than a decade to build. Long before his debut album ‘Blue Light’ struck a chord, Blake was quietly building his catalogue through a series of smooth, lounge-like EPs released on labels including Sloth Boogie and clipp.art. The breakout LP with Gallery Recordings burst the door open, but he’d been rapping his knuckles on the wood for a while.

Looking back at how ‘Kaleidoscope’ came to be, it’s tempting to call Blake’s decision courageous. Walking out of a steady job at an architecture firm in Sydney and going all in on music looks brave to an outsider. However, this isn’t one of those chase-your-dreams, reach-for-the-stars stories. Blake wasn’t armed with a grand plan; naivety and hope drove him. If anything, it was an act of desperation – a need to put some distance between himself and his current situation.

That headspace led to blissful and untethered creative expression. ‘Kaleidoscope’ is defined by tantalising builds and firework-like crescendos. The kind that make you want to swan dive into a body of water. Resounding piano chords, the fullest of drums and chanting vocals bear hug one another, making for a record that, above all else, feels free.

It’s funny that an album bursting with joy was born from such stark circumstances. Blake, alone in a cabin, sectioned off from everyone and everything. In some ways, that makes the record even more special. Strip away the place, the people and the noise, and this is what came out. This is the music Blake was meant to make.

As for verity, Blake has it in spades. While we chat, I’m met by a gregarious and eager jokester who makes little effort to be anything other than himself. Presenting as ‘cool’ in electronic music has been talked about until the cows come home – the aloofness, the calculated nonchalance. Blake isn’t interested in any of that. In fact, he seems intent on pushing back.

Blake’s merch reads SOUL WUN IS A_____. An open invitation to roast the bloke. The colder or more ridiculous the answer, the better, which feels very Blake. A couple of variations that have me giggling include SOUL WUN IS A PONZI SCHEME and SOUL WUN IS A 2019 HYUNDAI TUCSON WITH 5-STAR ANCAP SAFETY RATING.

That willingness to cop shit from his own community is what makes Soul Wun feel close to the people listening. In Blake’s eyes, there’s no divide between artist and fan. The people drinking up his music are less an audience, more companions – able to rinse him to their hearts' content.

I can’t help but think this trait also comes from skateboarding. Of all the hobbies out there, it has to be one of the most humiliating. You can spend hours upon hours trying to land a trick, wrecking your body in the process. If you can’t chuckle when your board comes cannoning into your shinbone for the umpteenth time, you’ll struggle. There’s barely any room for disguise when you’re throwing yourself at the concrete for enjoyment. Skating has a funny way of stripping all that away.

True to form, Soul Wun celebrated the release of ‘Kaleidoscope’ with a series of no-frills pop-ups at his favourite pubs across Naarm/Melbourne, Eora/Sydney and Mulubinba/Newcastle. No grand production, just an excuse to rub shoulders with real ones and sling tees, stickers, vinyl and even CDs.

This too feels fitting. Yes, the project has more eyes and ears on it than ever before, but that hasn’t changed the way Blake operates. The get-togethers still feel homespun. It’s as though the audience has grown, but the circle itself hasn’t really changed. As his profile balloons, Blake hasn’t suddenly built a moat around himself. If anything, he’s been widening the drawbridge, making it easier for more people to stroll across so he can welcome them with open arms.

As we near the end of our chat, I’m curious how Blake is finding all of this. The notoriety. The profile. The surging feeling that more and more people are rocking with Soul Wun.

“I’ve cried a few times this week; I could cry right now just thinking about it all…I’m just so grateful – this is what I’ve dreamed of for so long. People have been so, so generous with their time. ”

I believe him, wholeheartedly. There’s no attempt to downplay any of it, nor any false modesty. Only after returning home last week, following four months gallivanting around Europe, are the feelings catching up with him. “Being able to swim in the ocean and be around friends and family has made me realise this is actually pretty cool.”

The gallivanting I refer to was not always positive. Blake shares that he’s long struggled with burning the candle at both ends – the partying and aggressive socialising that can feel like an inescapable magnet. Especially when the EU summer is at its height.

“People see the flashing lights, all the vibes; what they don’t see is the aftermath when the loudest sounds are the voices in your head. There were times when I wondered if I could do this long term.”

Thankfully, HMAS Soul Wun has made it through the storm; the ship has steadied. Blake now understands that a life in music doesn’t have to mean being permanently swept up in the noise surrounding it. More importantly, he’s learning to wave the gratitude flag harder than ever before – to recognise just how lucky he is to be living the life he once dreamed about. A rare few get that chance.

When you peer into a kaleidoscope, what do you see?

Fragments of the world, tumble-dried in colour. The country towns, the skateparks, the bedroom raves, the writing sessions, the mates, the madness – as isolated incidents, it’s hard to see how they all marry up. But turn the tube, and suddenly a pattern emerges. Blake has spent his life collecting these “points of chaos”, never quite seeing how they connect. Refracted through ‘Kaleidoscope’, those fragments are finally beginning to form a picture.

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Will Bentley-Hawkins, based in New York, is a freelance writer and currently a Managing Editor at Phelt Magazine. Find him & Phelt on Instagram.