One of Australia’s most highly acclaimed and hardest working musicians Ben Salter has released his fourth solo album The Mythic Plane. The album sees a departure from Salter’s previous three studio albums The Cat, The Stars My Destination and 2017’s Back Yourself, being largely self-recorded and wholly self released. It was partly recorded during and inspired by Salter’s epic tour of Japan & Europe, where he performed 106 shows over seven months across fourteen countries - an average of nearly one performance every two days. For seven months.

Of the Album Salt says: “The Mythic Plane was very much informed by the rather long and exhausting tour I put myself and my partner through from July 2018 until February this year. I was having regular crises of confidence almost from the get go, where the sweltering heat of a Japanese summer, combined with acute culture shock, language alienation and some fairly inhospitable touring conditions conspired to end the tour before it had really begun. As we traversed some of the most expensive places in the world (Japan, Scandinavia) playing to very few people I continued to question what the hell I was doing and who the hell I thought I was doing it. Even the amazing experiences we were having on a daily basis in some truly remarkable locations - the craziness of Japanese night life, a visit to (and subsequent appearance on) the filming on an episode of Antiques Roadshow in the UK, a trip to Parc Asterix outside Paris, a gig in a massive sheep shed in rural Brittany, a series of house concerts across Switzerland, and two performances at the restaurant of a celebrity chef in Lisbon, among many many others - were often not enough to counteract the intense self-doubt and fatigue that I found myself experiencing during the trip."

The album has a much looser feel and more basic production approach that Salter’s previous three albums- the songs were written and recorded very quickly and mostly mixed by Salter himself along with a few close friends and collaborators including Chris Yates (Dollar Bar, The Weak Boys, Vape Dadz) and Jamie Trevaskis. The result is an immediate, spontaneous sounding album that simultaneously features some of Salter’s most accessible and esoteric compositions.

“I am continually trying to approach a point of complete freedom in my writing, an almost jazz-like approach to lyrics and melodies, a complete destruction of conscious thought and a total embrace of chaos and immediacy. I have a long way to go, but this album is definitely the closest I have got so far. I am hoping to produce more albums more quickly from now on; to labour over them less and let all the elements that I find the most interesting in my own music as well as others’ - spontaneity, playfulness, individuality & character - come to the fore.” says Salter.