On the back of the Atwood Magazine Premiere and DMY Bedroom Pop Playlist, Australian solo-artist  ANT ENOCH looks life straight in the face on ‘Natural Light’, the most meditative moment of the upcoming debut EP ‘Big Talk Big Party’ coming out on 17 May via Embassy of Music. Laying the foundations on the flickery triplets of vintage drum machine and trusty old upright piano, ‘Natural Light’ sees Enoch’s sound outgrow the confines of Bankstown DIY-studio and develop into ambient, cinematic textures of slow-burning chamber pop by Julie Byrne, Beth Orton, and Agnes Obel.

“For me this song is about holding the people we love around us in their natural light” Enoch gives the gist of the single. “That can be difficult sometimes, we create certain narratives and stories we want the people around us to fill when in actual fact, they’re often not true. Authenticity and clarity is blindingly beautiful but can be scary at the same time. This song is about having the courage to see people for who they are, not what we want them to be”

What takes a lot more guts, according to Enoch, is to hold ourselves in that same light. “Within my life, there’s always been this journey of self-esteem, and a lot of these themes of self-acceptance and transparency around people I’ve been in love with ultimately reflect back on myself of having transparency and acceptance to love myself for who I am and what I’m choosing to do in my life,” he recalls. “I find it quite difficult to accept things that I want to do with the courage and conviction. I wish I could just more often hold myself in natural light, you know.”

“Devoted to the truth, Yet the truth keeps changing,

It doesn’t have to be this hard, You shouldn’t have to lie

You shouldn’t have to dim your light”

Being true to oneself involves an element of risk Enoch has become all too familiar with. “When we’re talking about transparency and holding yourself in a natural light, sometimes that takes you away from security in relationships, that takes you away from security in your own life,” he points out, adding that sometimes, just sometimes you have to fly halfway across the world for the gamble to pay off.

“This was the first song Julia Borelli [mixing and mastering engineer at Riverside Studios] and I sat down with,” Enoch recalls. “I’d met Julia at Fluxbau and we’d started talking about music and I said I actually got these songs that sound like Bon Hiver and Phoebe Bridgers, and she was like: Oh my gosh, I love that style of music! So we went to the studio and instantly started vamping. I pulled out the SM7B, worked a bit on the chorus, and once the day was finished she said: I’ll clear my schedule to work with you on this.”