Artist Profile: Way Dynamic

Way Dynamic, the Melbourne-based indie artist, has oscillated between an orchestral serenity and an obfuscating simplicity throughout his short discography, and, now, with the release of his newest project Massive Shoe, has added another sonic notch to his belt: a direct forward step propelled by his distinct creative process.

Growing up, his father had a taste for blues and fusion guitar records, but, apart from the occasional guitar-spun tune, Way Dynamic does not consider himself to have grown up in a musical family.

Nevertheless, he began guitar lessons at eight years old, slowly feeling out the instrument for himself in the years following while, simultaneously, falling in love with songwriting as an art form. Although he eventually would pick up bass and drums as well as a teenager, enabling him to begin fully recording his own tracks, it was always the lyricism, rather than the instrumentation, that progressively drew him deeper and deeper into his creative intention.

By the time he moved to Melbourne, he had already found a somewhat refined sound: a blend of soft rock, folk guitar, and more traditional indie, over which he learned to lay a floral arrangement of his various lyrical entanglements.

“[Over time], I’ve been slowly collecting what I enjoy and honing in on interesting concepts for melody and arranging. I try to not show any sort of prowess on the guitar; it's not necessarily what I respond to in music when it's impressive… [I enjoy music that is] just hooky or it makes you feel something.”

His debut album, So Familiar, represented some of his first concrete attempts at actualizing these fragments. Across 13 tracks, the album displays a deep affinity for intricate arrangements and instrumental layers, and, while Way Dynamic’s songwriting certainly doesn’t take a back seat, there’s a certain relationship between the lyrics and their underlying melodies that defies what is seen in his two most recent records.

His second record, Duck, takes almost the opposite route. The project’s 10 tracks take on a deeper, less refined simplicity, swapping out many of the prior album’s bass and drum grooves for strummed guitar and taking on a distinctly more acoustic feel in the process.

Yet, Massive Shoe, his newest project, takes a middle road between these two, combining the intentional arrangements of his first album with the rawness of his second. In fact, Way Dynamic refers to Massive Shoe as his “Goldilocks album” insofar as it threads this particular needle.

Still, throughout the course of his discography, his creative process and openness to discovery in the studio have remained the same. His last two projects were each written and recorded in about six months: an expedited process that allows Way Dynamic’s songs to effectively capture his current mode of life.

Moreover, his practice of recording to tape has also allowed him to forge a willingness toward mistakes and flaws in the recording process: an inherent feature of tape that has become an integral part of his creative approach.

“We record pretty quickly to tape so that we don't get the chance to overanalyze things and have to return to the song with a different mindset and then second-guess ourselves. [We normally] just start the song in the morning and end it that day really for the most part. It's a really good way of committing to something and embracing mistakes that very often just become a feature in the song.”

In a somewhat counter-intuitive manner, it is this commitment to imperfection and rawness that has allowed Way Dynamic’s sound to settle comfortably into its niche, teetering the edge between instrumentally sophisticated and lyrically uninhibited.

Yet, apart from his engineering partner Stefan Blair, Way Dynamic takes on almost all of the arranging, playing, and even the mixing process on his own, citing an ease of intention and a sort of nebulous clarity of his sonic missions in his own mind.

In fact, across all three of his projects, it is this distinct intentionality that serves as a common thread between them, a mode of and an approach to the creative process that, in many ways, serves as the defining mark of Way Dynamic’s individual prowess.

“I like the idea that I can really set out to create something that is really specific, and it can be almost impossible to try and get [other musicians] on the same page when maybe I don't even have that page fully formed yet… So trying to set those goals requires doing a lot of things myself. I even mix myself as well, and I don't think I'm the most amazing mixer, but I am able to approach that sound that I have in my head. Even if I don't nail it perfectly, the intention is all there.”