A Quick Chat with Selve

Huge congrats on your second album Breaking Into Heaven and on being the first Aboriginal artist to EVER record a full length record in the iconic Abbey Road studios - what does this mean to you, and what can you share with us about the incredible global  journey this record has taken?

Loki Liddle: It means a lot, and it means a lot for it to be coming out now under a year from since we recorded there. I mean, we got to record our album in the same room Dark Side of The Moon was written, use the piano John Lennon used on ‘A Day In The Life’, the Mellotron from ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and celeste from a bunch of cool things! It was wild, especially as an independent and self-managed band to get the opportunity to create a work of art in the halls that have birthed some of the greatest records of all time.

However, Abbey Road was only one part of the journey. The album was written over the course of a 3-stage residency series across Broome, France and London which culminated at Abbey Road. First myself and Selve’s guitarist Reece spent two weeks in Broome where we went to find the inspiration, the first ember, the north star of what the album would become. We spent time out on Country and with my Elders Aunty Pat Torres and Uncle Wayne Barker.

Following this the whole band travelled to France where we lived in a little cottage for 6-weeks at demoed out the album in Midnight Special Records, a recording studio converted out of an old barn. After writing 25 songs here and whittling it down to 13 we then took it to the hallowed grounds of Abbey Road to seal the deal.

I went into Abbey Road with a balance of awe and critical thought. Yes Abbey Road has this rich legacy of incredible music over the past 100 years or so, but what is that next to the rich 60,000 + year old culture of songs, music, stories I was connecting to up in Broome? And why were we to be the first Aboriginal artists to do a record here?

The album was inspired by the Nina Simone quote “The people who built their heaven on your land are telling you yours is in the sky”. It felt like we were getting to bust into Abbey Road, the absolute nexus and central nerve at the heart of the core narrative and mythos of rock + roll history, and getting to use that formerly exclusive space to platform a First Nations story. An opportunity that we only had because of the legacy of incredible First Nations artists, musicians, activists who have paved the way before so I could have this opportunity to lay my small stone for generations to come.

This sense of responsibility, balanced with the desire to make the best music we could in the best studio in the world, is what informed the album and the music that has become Breaking Into Heaven.

There are six members of Selve - so many different tastes and influences that come together prismatically across the album! How did you approach the creative process of pulling the album’s sound together this time, compared to your debut Red Desert Dream? 

Reece Bowden: In Red Desert Dream we literally had 13 songs, so we put them on the album. This time, we wanted to go miles and miles beyond our comfort zone. Push ourselves to be creative, weird, innovative and throw everything at the wall and see what stuck.

We would basically wake up every morning in France, sit around the breakfast table and say “right, what are we writing today”. The main principle that guided us was a provocation from Loki’s Uncle Wayne Barker: “What are you risking? When writing a song or performing a song ask what are you risking, cause if you're not risking anything, you're not putting skin in the game.”

That inspired us to keep things changing at different. One day we might be risking something by making a super bold punk rage banger like ‘Natural Born Killa’. So next we’d be like right, now what feels risky is making a super sensitive pop love song, because the punk spirit would turn its nose up at that. Right! So lets punk the punk spirit by being pop! Then the next day we’d do an EDM song like ‘Strange Romance’. Then the next an acoustic song with 6 vocals. Then the next a big Floyd-y piano ballad and so on and on until we had all this wild variety, and were really able to distill from the 25 songs only the very best songs for our Abbey Road album. And it was certainly a hard process to make those decisions. There are some songs that made the cut which will certainly still need to have a life outside the album.

We heard Loki is a poet and draws a lot of lyrics from this - what can you share with us about these works and how they weave through the album? 

Loki Liddle: Well specifically, right before we went away for this project I had a 6 x month poetry residency at HOTA, where I was basically paid a wage 3-days a week to write poems. It was crazy. The result is my poetry book Damn Good Television which is being published by Magabala Books in 2026. 

This specific residency gave me 6 full months to seriously contemplate who I was and what I wanted to say. So that by the time the album rolled around I was spoiled for material and ideas to draw from. There are in fact many lyrics that are directly drawn from the manuscript. When we were in-studio in France demoing the songs I always had the Damn Good Television manuscript with me and if I ran out of improv ideas I would pick a random page and draw from that, or do some exquisite corpse from a few different poems.

Specifically ‘Natural Born Killa’, Friday Night and ‘Willem Dafoe’ came about through this method.
- Loki Liddle

As a fully independent band as well with no management or anything, with this album you’ve done something a lot of musicians might think is unachievable - what do you hope your fellow musicians and artists get out of this project?

Creation Saffigna: We hope that fellow musicians just feel inspired to make great art and not ask for permission to do incredible things that they love. There are so many arbitrary rules in the music industry, and so much bullshit. This project was about not waiting around for the fabled hand to discover us and carry us into the candy kingdom of our dreams. It was about saying right, what can we make happen off our own backs? No doubt it took a lot of hard work, Loki was working on the grant for about 3-months, but still. We hope it inspires fellow musicians to believe in their music and fight for their art tooth and nail.

We notice a LOT of other art forms like film, TV etc influence / showing up in your music - what are some of your favourite movies/shows currently?

Loki Liddle: Currently watching Alien Earth, Dexter Resurrections, Platonic, Peacemaker, The Studio. Favourite movies of the year: Weapons, Eddington, Sinners.

‘Leading Man Lost’, the focus track of Breaking Into Heaven comes alongside an incredible video starring actress/model Charlee Fraser - how did collab come together, and what were you hoping to achieve with the video?

Loki Liddle: Man, it was one of those brilliant universal magic tricks that leads to something special. Leading Man Lost was not even going to be a single, then I had this vision of taking a Weapon of Choice style video, and subverting the ‘leading man’ trope by having the role played by a strong Blak female lead, and instantly thought of Charlee.

We’d never met or spoken. I put together a pitch deck and quite literally reached out to her agent. We ended up lining up a meeting and I was like, ok, need to pitch this strong. But then Charlee got on the meeting and was like: I love this idea, I love the album, lets talk about it more and make it happen.

Next thing you know Charlee is flying over from L.A and we are filming her strutting about in a powersuit in a casino and she’s just absolutely killing the role and bringing it to life. It was also a meeting of kindred spirits. Myself, the entire band and Charlee are now great and I reckon life long friends.

And really, what I hope to achieve with this video is: Deadliness.

The album is self-produced by the band’s Scott French - doing this in the infamous studio 3 of Abbey Road must have been a trip! - how would you describe this experience, and your approach to production across it?

Scott French: The opportunity to produce an album at Abbey Road is obviously a dream come true for any producer – to work in arguably the world’s most prestigious and famous recording studio – one I never believed would actually happen! The weight of it really hits you as you enter the building and see the halls lined with photos, and you begin to appreciate the history and the contribution it has made to contemporary music lore. And so with this came a strong sense of responsibility to make sure we absolutely smashed it out of the park and created an album we were all be super proud of, and would reach a wide audience with a strong message. 

Luckily the band members were all on the same page, putting a lot of time into preparation to make sure we knew exactly what we were going to do when we got inside those hallowed walls, while also allowing time to be spontaneous and experimental in the moment – whether it was exploring the unique sounds custom made 1968 Mellotron (a kind of tape loop keyboard sampler), the Hammond B3 organ used on Dark Side Of The Moon, or the original EMI mixing console that’s produced countless hits in that room since the 60’s! It was important to us to capture some of that history in the recordings, while also producing something modern, new and exciting with big energy transferred from live performances, but also attention to detail and finesse. I’m extremely proud of us as a team and what we've created here and can’t wait to share it…

You’re about to head out on tour! You already sold out your album preview show last month and played it in full alongside a 33-piece orchestra - what was that experience like, will you ever do it again? What can folks expect from the album tour shows?

Creation Saffigna: What was it like performing our Abbey Road album live to a sold out 700 crowd room with a fricken 33-piece orchestra? It felt like what it sounds like: unreal.

Seriously a moment of total unreality. Reading that above sentence back is a total trip. But, in all seriousness it was one of the most special moments of our life. It was affirming for all the hard work we’d put in, and beautiful to get to showcase this album and its absolute peak manifestation to a packed out room.

We’re so glad we filmed in so it can be shared with the world, and so we can watch it back.

And on our tour shows, folks can expect to have their socks rocked off. We are renowned for our live shows, its the friggen main event, and these shows are all free so there is no excuse. Get there.

Can each member of Selve please share with us one thing that makes you laugh no matter what?

Liam Kirk - Big Lez Show, makes me laugh every time!
Michael Baldi - Spongebob grossups and Tropic Thunder Shorts
Loki Liddle - The ceaseless barrage of memes sent to me daily by Michael Baldi
Reece Bowden - Early Beatles press conferences and interviews
Scott French - Can I pat that dawwwwwwwg
Creation Saffigna - The Selve group chat

If Breaking Into Heaven was a movie, who would direct it and why?

Well, we made Breaking Into Heaven into a bunch of music videos. So I would say it already is a movie and it was directed by Josh Tate and Loki Liddle!!! Watch it below:

Selve - Breaking Into Heaven Album Tour + Live Dates

Tickets available here
most album tour dates free entry

Fri 12 Sep - Strange Days Vintage - Gold Coast, Yugambeh Country QLD*
Fri 26 Sep - Princess Theatre - Meanjin/Brisbane, Turrbal & Jagera Country QLD*^
Sat 27 Sep - Gloucester Country Club - Gloucester, Guringai Watoo & Kabook Country NSW
Thu 2 Oct - The Lass O'Gowrie Hotel - Mulubinba/Newcastle, Awabakal & Worimi Country NSW
Sat 4 Oct - Vic On The Park - Eora/Sydney, Gadigal Country NSW
Fri 10 Oct - Felons Barrel Hall - Meanjin/Brisbane, Turrbal & Jagera Country QLD^^
Sat 11 Oct - Mo's Desert Clubhouse 6th Birthday - Gold Coast, Yugambeh Country QLD*^^^
Mon 13 - Sun 19 Oct - SXSW Sydney - Eora/Sydney, Gadigal Country NSW*
Fri 7 Nov - Lulie Tavern - Naarm/Melbourne, Wurundjeri Country VIC
Fri 14 Nov - Elsewhere - Gold Coast, Yugambeh Country QLD
Sun 28 Dec - Thu 1 Jan - Lost Paradise - Glenworth Valley, Darkinjung Country NSW*

non album tour date
^ with Winston Surfshirt
^^ with J.B Paterson
^^^ with The Delta Riggs