Emma Volard

Deity, the debut album by Melbourne-based vocalist and songwriter Emma Volard, is a record of tensions: caught in the push-pull between light and shade, joy and sorrow, chaos and order, it’s an album that draws power from the divine messiness of the human experience. Synthesising acid jazz with modern R&B, dub with pop, and future soul with old-fashioned grooves, it’s a statement of profound artistic intent for Emma: a 12-part journey of self-expression and hard-won self-determination that combines the classic and the cutting edge to build something sleek and scintillatingly new. “This album is a revolt against oppressors, particularly those in the music industry — an f-you to anyone who tries to tear us down,” she says. Cathartic, vulnerable, and deeply, defiantly empowered, it’s a definitive document of feminist soul: a call for listeners to “discard the judgement of others, and embrace their bodies, their minds, and their souls.”

This record was created on the stolen land of the Bunorong people of the Kulin Nation. We'd like to pay our respects to elders both past, present and emerging, and to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It's a privilege to be able to live, create and flourish on this country. Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.