After being one of 30 artists worldwide chosen for last year’s JBL Music Academy, a week-long intensive with music industry experts held in Amsterdam hosted by Dutch DJ Martin Garrix, Adelaide-born, Sydney-based musician and producer KCH (aka Kyle Charles Hall) has now been tapped by JBL to attend SXSW in Austin, Texas this month.
One of only six 2025 JBL Music Academy attendees to be selected for SXSW, and the sole Australian in the group, KCH will be performing as part of a JBL x Rolling Stone Future of Music event.
“Being selected for the JBL Music Academy was a bit daunting, but I think in retrospect, going over there blind was really cool,” says KCH. “It was a really amazing experience and very inspiring. They’ve been very generous in flying me and Christian [Meares, collaborator, manager and KCH band member] over and we’re going to do a full band set over there, which will be really cool.”
The SXSW appearance comes right after the release of KCH’s long-awaited debut EP, my head is a jungle in a deforestation way, a collection of exquisitely produced indie pop songs he says were created to help him get through a particularly difficult time in his life.
“I had a series of unfortunate events about a year after moving to Sydney in 2022,” he says. “I had a really big breakup and my dad got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s all in the same month, which was crazy. I think music became an escape for me. But because I wasn’t super mentally well, I didn’t want to release any of it, even though I’d recorded about four albums worth of material. It was just like my precious little baby that I used to make me feel good.
Although created under tumultuous circumstances, songs like “see i’m OK” and “these days” are upbeat in nature, something KCH says was intentionally done to help keep his spirits up.
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“There were songs that I was writing about how shit life was, but then they were also bangers and bops, and I would then listen to them when I was running, and I wouldn’t feel so shit,” he says. “When I eventually got my act together and decided to put an EP out, I was like, ‘What songs champion that feeling the most, and what ones tell the story?’, ‘cos I think hope is a very important thing.
“I remember Noel Gallagher talking about Nirvana once and basically saying ‘what are you complaining about?’ Even though I like Nirvana, that resonated with me. I really enjoy it when a song makes you feel uplifted after listening to it. Even though I was covering pretty heavy themes, I was picking the songs for the EP that would make me feel like, ‘Oh, it ain’t so bad, there’s other stuff that could be worse. I got this,’ you know?”
After recent tours with Sydney-based musician Charlie Pittman supporting LA band Fly by Midnight, KCH will soon be playing more shows with Pittman supporting Sydney Rose, in addition to an upcoming residency at Sydney’s Pleasure Club.
He’s also keeping busy as an in-demand producer and collaborator for other artists.
“The production stuff has been semi-recent,” he says. “I was obsessed with Call of Duty on Xbox when I was a kid, and then I realised maybe four years ago that producing music was kind of like the ultimate video game. ‘Cos instead of prestiging and getting new guns, you get a sick song. I was like, ‘Wait, this is the best game I could ever want.’
“I’ve made a lot of really beautiful friends here who all happen to be super talented artists, and in the last year I really learned to love collaborating and working with other people, which is funny because this EP was mostly a solo venture. I think that helped in a lot of ways because it meant I wasn’t leaning on other people, and I had to find my own ways of doing things.
“But since then, I’ve been producing for other artists and playing on their projects and just learning things from them. There’s a very beautiful sense of community, a lack of ego and just love for what we do here, which really inspires me.”
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Before he starts turning his attention towards putting together a second EP consisting of older and “very, very new” tracks, KCH will be celebrating the release of my head is a jungle in a deforestation way now that it’s finally out in the world.
“I’m in a better emotional space, which is why [the EP] is coming out now,” he says. “I was in the trenches and then went back into a cocoon for a bit, but now that I’ve started [releasing music], I feel like I’ll just keep going because sharing that cocoon phase has now become a part of my process.
“I hope ultimately that people can see themselves in [the songs] and maybe just feel a little bit better about whatever makes them feel shit. That would be cool.”
KCH’s My head is a jungle in a deforestation way is out now. He performs at Pleasure Club, Sydney on April 2nd, 16th and 30th, with more shows to be announced.
