Jackson Dyer is an Sydney, Australia-born, Berlin, Germany-based singer/songwriter and is part of a growing number of Australians who have relocated to the Germany city for a creative and personal renewal and to advance their careers; in fact, since Dyer relocated to Berlin three years ago, he has opened for Grammy-nominated acts and countrymen Hiatus Kaiyote and Hozier, and has extensively toured throughout the European Union with Berlin, Germany-based indie folk act Mighty Oaks and Jamie Cullum. Adding to a growing profile, the Sydney, Australia-born, Berlin, Germany-based singer/songwriter has played at several European festivals.
Dyer’s third EP, Compartments was released earlier this year to critical praise, as the effort thematically and lyrically may arguably be one of the most personal efforts he’s released to date. And as Dyer explains in press notes, “Compartments is an EP of self-reflection that I wrote at a time when I faced a lot of uncertainty and questions about my place in the world. Far away from home, often spending long hours in my studio on the industrial outskirts of Berlin, it was a period of introspection when I experimented with production and songwriting. In this space, I wrestled with many of my misgivings about the music industry, the nature of humanity and my own personal motivations. The title Compartments refers to the lyrics in “Pariahs,” which is about how close many people live to each other in cities and apartment blocks, but still lead very enclosed lives, unwilling to engage with even their neighbours. Ironically, I spent a long time in my own ‘compartment’ writing these songs and it wasn’t until I collaborated with others that they really came alive.”
Compartments’ second and latest single is EP opening track “The Absolute” and sonically speaking the track nods at the work of renowned Swedish singer/songwriter Jose Gonzalez and his work both as a solo artist and with Junip, as the song has Dyer pairing bluesy guitar chords played through generous amounts of reverb, swirling electronics, glitchy and stuttering drum programming with his soulful vocals to create a song that’s deeply introspective and achingly earnest; in fact, the song captures and evokes a narrator, who feels profoundly lost and alone and wrestling with the sort of existential questions that don’t have an easy answer. And while capturing someone at perhaps one of their darkest periods, the song manages to possess a resoluteness that suggests while many answers won’t come quickly, the song’s narrator will move forward and many of life’s most difficult questions will resolve themselves accordingly.