PH-00700.jpg

Scope it

'TIOLI' / RONA. [Visualiser]

Kaytetye musician and producer RONA. announces her debut EP Closure alongside a mesmerising visualiser for new single '“TIOLI”.

Coming off the heat of her debut single “Closure”, RONA. returns with a plaintive electronic track to tease her eponymous debut EP, releasing May 20th via Rose Avenue Records. Titled “TIOLI”, the second track from the forthcoming EP is a keen addition to the first, guided by a yearning for Country that manifests itself in a surfeit of haunting synths, field recordings and melodic percussion.

Support Closure and “TIOLIi” here and watch the visualiser below.

Like the rest of the EP, “TIOLI” was written as RONA. was in-between Mparntwe and Naarm, where she uses dance music to talk about personal stories of connection and disconnection between these places, particularly insofar as they embody a grounding in Country.

Though while cut from the same thread, “TIOLI” adopts a more sombre tone than the debut single “Closure”, which features the gripping the gripping vocals of Eastern Arrernte knowledge custodian Helena Buzzacott alongside spiralling synth melodies, melodic beats and pan flutes, all the while melodically considering tensions between self-identity. RONA. comments on the single:

“In writing this track I wanted to embody feelings of tension between where you currently are and where you want to be. The atmospheric groove of breakbeat percussion, organic instruments and dreamy vocals shapes a journey between strong energy and stillness”
— RONA.

Despite being her debut EP, RONA. produces a mature body of work in Closure, demonstrating her ability to create rich and vivid sonic universes that explore both the more meditative sides of electronic music fit for contemplation in solitude, as well as the terpsichorean sides more suited to dance-floors.

Throughout the past few years, I have been constantly pushing to create more and do more - this EP was written in a moment where I was beginning to recognise that stillness and connection is more important. It articulates these moments through a melodic and euphoric journey of place and memory.”
— RONA.

RONA. has already made festival appearances at some of so-called Australia’s best including Strawberry Fields and Sun Cycle as well as having played in club shows supporting the likes of Flume, Bradley Zero, Chaos in the CBD and Tornado Wallace. In 2022 RONA. will debut her new music supporting John Talabot on May 28th, as well as when she goes on tour with RÜFÜS DU SOL and Jon Hopkins this coming November and December.

Keenly, she is not one to be missed.

Stay up to date with RONA. on Instagram and their Website.


Header image by Dylan River (@riverdylans)

Article by Margarita Bassova (@rxtabass)


Thank you for reading this article. Before you leave the page, we’d like you to take a moment to read this statement.  We are asking our readers to take action and stand with the BIPOC community who fight and endure the oppression and injustice of racial inequality. 

Here in ‘Australia’,  Indigenous people are the most incarcerated population on Earth. Countless lives have been murdered by white police, white government policies and this country’s white history, institutionalised colonialism and ongoing racial oppression. Racial injustice continues today under the phoney, self-congratulatory politics of ‘Reconciliation’ and the notion that colonialism is something that must be denied and forgotten, an uncomfortable artefact of the past.

Feeling guilty is not enough. We must take action, pay the rent, educate ourselves and acknowledge that empathy and sorrow for past actions is insufficient if this does nothing to prevent our current reality from extending into the future.

Please consider making donations to the following organisations (the list is so small and the work to be done is so large, do your research to find more grassroots, Indigenous-lead community organisations):