New album for Conway and Zygier
Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier, who have released eleven albums together, found themselves drawn to honest presentation after years of touring with full bands.
After four decades of musical exploration, Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier are returning to their roots with their new album Right Wing Propaganda, due for release on August 8.
The album is their most intimate work yet – a raw, acoustic collection that deliberately eschews the polished production techniques dominating today’s music landscape. Working entirely from their Melbourne home studio, the couple has created what Conway describes as “an act of musical reductionism in an age of technological excess.”
The album’s 14 tracks feature only Conway’s vocals, Zygier on guitar, and the voices of their three daughters, Syd, Alma, and Hettie Zygier. It’s a deliberate stance against what Conway sees as music’s increasing mechanisation.
“Machines are making music right now, with and without human intervention, with no ‘care’ about connection, audience, or even remuneration,” Conway said. “Music without body, without ego, without soul… We retreated inwards, no other musicians, a guitar on our laps just to see what we could wring out of the old ways.”
For Conway and Zygier, this isn’t nostalgia but necessity. It’s their way of finding an authentic connection in an era of “whirling plenty.”
The couple, who have released eleven albums together, found themselves drawn to honest presentation after years of touring with full bands.
“Right Wing Propaganda was always going to be a recording project that we kept in house,” they explained. “This is the way we have been performing for years … it felt honest and in some ways more intuitive to let audiences hear them that way.
“These are songs from the point of view of people who would tear this place down, those who wish to enforce utopia; songs of human vs machine; songs that address those who can only see war,” they continued, adding they’re also “songs of love, the middle aged to elderly kind.”
The inclusion of Syd, Alma, and Hettie’s voices adds a certain magic to the project. Recording on April 13, the girls arrived at the family studio and, true to sibling form, immediately launched into a dispute before seamlessly transitioning into perfect three-part harmonies.
“The three of them then proceeded to sing harmony vocals on five tracks they were only just hearing for the first time with an unerring instinct for timing, tuning, blending and emotional savvy,” Conway recalled with evident pride. “Singers who are not siblings work very hard to create the perfect ease that sibling singers are so blessed to effortlessly master.”
The album launch coincides with Conway’s 66th birthday celebrations, and will be supported by a national tour beginning August 16 at Melbourne’s Memo Music Hall and August 17 at Sydney’s Camelot Lounge, with additional dates planned through October.
For more and tickets, visit deborahconway.com