Two of the biggest stories to arise in Australian music in 2016 are the explosion of Tkay Maidza onto the world stage with the release of her debut album and easily the long-long-long-awaited return of plunderphonics legends The Avalanches, who finally dropped their second album this year.
And as it turns out, the two almost collaborated in a big way. According to a new interview with Avalanches member Tony Di Blasi and The Music, Tkay almost took up a gig as the group’s frontwoman, but then that whole thing we mentioned about her blowing up kind of got in the way.
According to Di Blasi, the Avalanches and Tkay were in talks to recruit the Adelaide native as their live vocalist on their current Wildflower tour. This was at the beginning of the year before we even knew that Wildflower was a thing and was going to be released in 2016.
“We actually were in talks with Tkay to be our live frontwoman/MC/singer, I think at the start of this year — we just couldn’t, I mean, I guess she’s got her own career. But she was definitely someone we looked at,” Di Blasi told The Music.
Tkay finally unveiled her self-titled debut earlier this year after initially scrapping the album after 12 months’ worth of work was put in. “For a long time it just felt like some of the songs wouldn’t be done, and it wasn’t because of me, it was just you had a lot of people you had to depend on,” she told Tone Deaf.
“I also had to adapt and work in a lot of different places and force myself to work a lot as well,” the talented young rapper and vocalist also told us, “which is really different ’cause when I first started I just worked whenever I felt like it.” Check out our full interview with Tkay Maidza here.
