An icon of Melbourne’s underground dance community, Simona Castricum has spent the last 20 years crafting otherworldly soundscapes and inspiring dance floors with her penchant for imaginative and turbulent electronica that blurs at the edges. On ‘Grateful For The Heartache’, this ability to blend opposing moods is perhaps most evident; written in the wake of Melbourne musician Daphne Camf’s passing, the track encompasses feelings of loss and grief, yet with its vibrant undercurrent, simultaneously plays like a celebration.

After opening amidst a swirl of ghostly synthesisers, ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ takes shape around a vivid, glitchy pulse, instantly embedding the track with a restless sense of movement that tangles evocatively with the meditative swelling chords. Moments later, the dreamscape expands further, with a stark beat that cuts the track wide open and leaves plenty of space for Simona’s poignant lyrics to pour through the middle. Sitting somewhere between a whisper and a croon, Simona’s vocals refuse to overwhelm the track, yet as they broaden open at lines like “it's the best of you I'm thinking of”, her voice feels loaded with emotion and power; which means that when the beat backs off and the layers dissipate at the track’s conclusion, the devastating weight of the song finally crashes over us.

Paired with a new clip created by visual artist Carla Zimbler, the video plays as a captivating visual accompaniment to ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ that places the unexpected intimacy of Simona’s live show front and centre, while also doubling as a preview for SINK, Simona and Carla’s upcoming collaborative project. To learn a little more about the new track, her friend Daphne and the forthcoming collaboration, we chatted with Simona below.

TJ: Hey Simona, how’s it going? A lot has happened since the release of Panic/Desire in the middle of last year - how has the past twelve months been for you?

SC: It’s been a real challenge to be creative. But somehow I’ve found a way. I was lucky to get to play a few shows between lockdowns that I never would have imagined. The Melbourne Music Week shows at The Capitol and playing Sidney Myer Music Bowl with MESS Orchestra was such a highlight.

It’s quite exciting to have you back with new music so quickly, but ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ comes with some pretty important significance which makes the release rather timely. If you’re up for it, could you share a little about your relationship with Daphne? How did you become friends and what drew you towards working together?

Daphne and I met in 2013 at a photoshoot with Elliot Lauren. Daphne also did my make up for my first video for ‘Still’, so we were in each other’s orbit. We both admired each other as musicians, but as friends we had a great connection. Just the mischief, the comedy, we had fun. She was a sister in that way. I think being queer and visible in music bought us together to explore different parts of ourselves together through SaD and be the artists we felt we couldn’t be through our other projects. We both loved the goth romantics, the dark poetics of synth pop. We looked to demystify it in our own wry way by leaning into that genre. SaD just felt like a very easy thing to do.

Could you share how this track came together?

In the month after Daphne’s passing, I just wondered if I had the capacity to make music again. I didn’t know if I could. I’d really lost confidence and felt so alone without her. One night I felt this need to write, to light a candle, set up my keyboards and drum machines and see if I had the energy to continue. Just to see what might happen. So I wrote from that place, through the layers of sounds, as if to write a song with Daphne posthumously. A lot of what I learned from Daphne is in there. The piano, the bongos, are all symbols of her to me. She would often demo on piano. The bongos remind me of distant NO ZU or Rat V Possum shows. They sit in a reverb space as if they are not too distant memories, but memories I hope never to leave my subconscious. I had to punctuate this moment before time passed.

I feel like your music has always been loaded with some real emotional weight. Is making music the main way you deal with heavy emotions? Does releasing a song like ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ feel cathartic to you, or was the act of writing the song itself the important part for you?

I write from raw emotion. I don’t hold back. I don’t edit even if where I’m over sharing. I don’t care how cheesy it might sound or how vulnerable I am. Songs are archives, pillows for my emotions to spoon at the end of the day when all there is left are myself and my memories. There was nothing else I could do but find a way through the abyss via music.

I think there’s often an assumption that music relating to loss or grief needs to be gentle or tender, but that’s not something that always translates in your style of music. However, there’s still a real sense of intimacy in ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ while also feeling somewhat joyous. Is there ever any difficulty navigating these seemingly conflicting emotions when making the type of music you create?

Contradiction at the essence of emotion. This song needed to create a space to feel the gamut of experience, grief in all its complexities and multiplicity. Those opening and closing atmospheric sounds are of abject grief, of cries we release in the moment of realisation. When all we can do is grab the nearest thing and scream at the sky in disbelief. There is nothing there but our own heartache in that moment of loss. But Daphne taught me radical acceptance - yes to be grateful for the heartache. Love and life is so precious. We gotta be grateful things like friendship, and love even happen. Songs are gifts, vessels, nuggets, archives.

The single is also the first taste of your forthcoming project SINK - could you tell us about this project?

SINK is a project I have been working on with Carla Zimbler at Arts House since Jan 2021 in Naarm. It’s a new multidisciplinary work across music, architecture, staging and visual projection. We looked to reimagine the relationship between performance, audience, projection, and staging. Like, it’s stadium techno, only intimate. Rather than being 100 meters away and experiencing the stage obliquely, we want a small audience underneath the drums and staging, they could almost touch them. I’m performing in this percussion circle under this rotating string curtain above me with this wireframe city projected onto it. We worked with Cody McConnell to generate a dystopian city modelling that is almost like a gaming environment. The piece is a metaphor for how queerness is so often produced in hostile environments - what ever that may be. It’s pretty open ended. Lockdown sadly has put it on indefinite hiatus. We were so close. The video for ‘Grateful For The Heartache’ is an excerpt from SINK, so it’s a taste of where the live show is going. SINK has helped me realise the vision of how music, performance and architecture come together.

It’s a pretty strange time to be putting out new music, but how are you feeling about the rest of the year? Anything you’re looking forward to or hoping for?

Terrible. I’m losing hope. 2021 is worse than 2020. I’ll spare the toxic positivity about it. I’m hoping there’s something to salvage from the wreckage. I just hope 2022 brings opportunity and consistency.