Louder Than The Music

'Australia's most important voice', indigenous artist Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, will release his third studio album, The Gospel Album, on 31st July 2015. Gurrumul’s dedication to his mother and aunts, who brought him up with songs and lullabies from the church at Elcho Island, was the inspiration for the new album.

As a small boy Gurrumul was not only influenced by the traditional music of his clan but by the gospel music he heard every Sunday at the local Methodist church. Gurrumul’s The Gospel Album is a re-imagining of the spiritual songs that came to north-east Arnhem Land via Christian missionaries.

In a musical setting that will be familiar to fans of Gurrumul’s music, comes a uniquely indigenous approach to gospel songs with an expanded sound that combines new hymns, and reimagined gospel songs of his Elcho Island community.

Discussing the creation of The Gospel Album, Gurrumul’s long-time collaborator, Michael Hohnen said, "The process we took for the making of this album was very organic. We worked with Gurrumul for a little pre-production of any Gospel songs that he knew or remembered. We entered the studios not knowing what would come out, but we did know that inside Gurrumul’s mind and memory was a body of work that had never been revealed before to mainstream audiences. 

The studio sessions were musical, improvisational and pure in their exploration of creating music, rather than recording in a predetermined way. Outcomes were unknown until we recorded them!"