After a two year hiatus from music and enduring lockdowns, Kendra Fewster returns with a solo project under the new moniker Kaeda Daze. The track sees the young Melbourne singer via Western Australia step into her own, delivering a commanding vocal performance of self-empowerment similar to artists such as AURORA, Gordi and Gretta Ray. Emotive lyrically and sonically she wants this new project to show that through some form of fragility there is an extreme amount of strength.
“This first release is extremely important to me,” she says. “The day I began to write the song is so completely vivid in my mind. It’s funny how certain moments can stick with you. In the moment you’re so channelled toward the living and creating aspect that you don’t realise it was going to be a seminal moment for your silly little life journey.”
Blending her love of lo-fi and cinematic pop overtones, ‘Running From Something’ is raw and introspective, her lyrics deeply personable but relatable. This is Kaeda Daze operating with a refreshed sense of confidence in her songwriting.
“The song itself sat incomplete for six to eight months. The first half was written in Melbourne and finally completed while I was home in WA. I sat there for hours collecting visual inspiration and a playlist of songs that spoke to me. My mind tends to work quite visually so when it came to the essence of the song I wanted to see it vividly in my mind. I ended up with a theme of blue haze, pearly white and silver armour. I wanted the track to sound like a slow motion battle in the fog; a chorus that became the clarity, the strength of the song.”
She wrote the song whilst killing the minutes, hours, and days during Melbourne’s gruelling lockdown last year. She was kept afloat during these dark days by having her sister in the next room. “We’d both been struggling with our mental health and she was my safe space during that time. Some days I’d sit there and feel so inept, feeling I was failing her and myself when I watched her struggle. Some days we were the only reason one another laughed or even spoke at all and I won’t forget how important her presence was for my sanity.”
Powered by insatiable rhythms and hypnotic vocals, ‘Running From Something’ had a dream team bringing the track to life, it was produced by Sam Burtt (Sam Phay, Stellie) and mixed by ARIA, AWMA, and Music Victoria Award nominated engineer Becki Whitton (Tash Sultana, G Flip, Allday) with mastering by Wayne Sunderland Suture Mastering (Pnau, Disclosure, Motez).
“I have always been drawn to songs with a dark moody tether and worked to implement that with Sam (producer of the track) through atmospheric pads and textures. You will notice the idea of slow motion running is emulated as an echoing rhythmic pattern that almost sounds like waves crashing behind it.”
Kaeda wants her new track to be a reminder to herself, her sister and the many others in lockdown that when things get tough, but regardless of the predicament you can push past that fog. “I like to imagine that we have metaphorical swords in hand, ready to take on whatever bullshit we have to face. I am an emotionally charged person and wanted to create something that did in fact reflect that.”