Joshua Bowyer and Jamie Kuzich are Anton Franc. This musical partnership was created at the beginning of 2010, when each found himself thrust into the Kimberley (far northwest Australia) under the guise of 5th year medical school. In this barren but mysteriously enticing environment, they discovered a shared love of the song and a desire to explore new musical directions.

Letting Go was conceived and recorded alongside the mudflats of Derby, in the Kimberley region of Australia’s North-West and is the first song to be lifted from their forthcoming debut self-titled EP. This folktronica anthem was nominated as a finalist in the 2010 WAM Song of the Year Contest and was also recently chosen for inclusion in a compilation CD due for release in April by Space-ship news and dotdotdash.

Balancing delicate instrumentation against a driving core, Letting Go was the first collaborative effort between Jamie Kuzich and Joshua Bowyer – the two core songwriters of Anton Franc. Following a chance meeting wandering along the road between Broome and Derby and a day of failed barramundi fishing, the two musical vagrants spent the following 4 days writing and recording the tune. This sparked a new musical relationship that was to become Anton Franc, and resulted in the production of their debut EP over the coure of the next few months.

With a firm footing in the pair’s pop/folk upbringing, Letting Go was written and constructed around a Bolivian Charango progression that had shadowed Kuzich’s every move throughout his recent solo adventures from north to south of the Andes. His fortuitous pairing with Bowyer in early 2010 constructed an avenue of escape for this motif and it soon found itself married to the sounds of western folk instrumentation along with a surprising but confident step into the realm of electronic tones. Lyrically this marriage inspired imagery of isolation and wanderlust from Bowyer’s recent solo adventures throughout Eastern Europe and further resonated with the pair’s new-found isolation upon relocation to the Kimberley. The result is a song that captures both the frustration and difficulty of conjuring even the simplest of phrases when trying to communicate with someone who has broken your trust. Yet along with this despair is an unidentifiable sense of hope. The ingredients of this song – experimental instrumentation, electronic tones and traditional songwriting with an emphasis on melody have become the hallmarks of Anton Franc’s sound, and are further explored in the band’s debut EP.

Now relocated back to Perth, Anton Franc are gearing up to launch their debut self-titled EP in mid-2011. Self-recorded in bedrooms and basements of Broome, Derby and Perth, the EP explores themes of isolation and loneliness, with tongue frequently hovering over cheek.

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