PA777IENCE

The Generations Fellowship connects artists with established industry experts and mentors to pass on intergenerational knowledge and create pathways in the music industry. During their residency from October 2023 to March 2024, Pa777ience created new music and a new artist identity, and discovered new ways of collaborating with other creatives, including musicians, photographers and music video producers.

I moved into the residency studio at Powerhouse Museum and it took me the first few weeks to really set up my space and settle in. I wanted to make sure the vibes in there were immaculate so the energy of the space could welcome in some great creative flow.

For the first month I was mainly hanging out in the space with friends and my collaborator GLO, speaking about all the things we hoped to create over the next year or so. It was a month of setting up, manifesting and building. It was all well worth it

I had my first meeting with Astral People, introducing myself and my aspirations for my time at Powerhouse. Some key things I learnt during this session were to collaborate, put myself out there and really build a community around me.

I started the inception of my project that I’m intending to release. I invited GLO to the studio, who is a close friend and collaborator of mine, and the creative director and co-writer of the EP I’m now working on.

We sat down and brainstormed everything I wanted to do during my residency which included writing up to 50 songs as well as re-branding as an artist and changing my artist name from Clarissa Mei to PA777IENCE. I also had some of my friends who are musicians come into the studio to collaborate and make music.

I spent some time on my visual branding. As I started to envision what the name switch would look like I also started working on what my image would look like, making Pinterest boards and doing a photoshoot so I have some new press shots and extra images for content on social media. I also played the very last Powerhouse Late event for the year accompanied by two musicians: Wesley and Holly.

During my time here I’ve been liaising with my Generations Fellowship mentor Trey Thelma, who has been guiding me throughout all the processes and helped me connect with the Astral People team and the First Nations team at Powerhouse. I’m super grateful to have had her guidance during these last few months.

I met with Daniel from Astral People to talk about creating a new EP and the best way to roll out my name change and do a rebrand.

January was super fun: I got to invited by my friend GLO to join her on stage for a song we co-wrote, which is going to be featured on the project I’m currently working on. It was at the Nu Dialects event by Astral People [during Sydney Festival], and I got to meet and jam with artists who flew up from Melbourne. I even got into the studio with them to hang out and create – moments like these are my favourite parts about music.

My good friend and collaborator Mehmet worked with me on a new logo for the name change to PA777IENCE. We bounced around a few ideas and ended up with an amazing final product.

Chris from Astral People shared advice on releasing new music as an artist who is re-branding, and I also had some time in the studio with my mixing engineer Antonia Gauci. We tracked the vocals to some songs I wrote in the studio at Powerhouse so they would be ready to be mixed and mastered for release.

I was rehearsing for a show for Lunar New Year in Canberra with my band. It was really exciting to be turning the songs I’ve been working on for the past few months during my residency into a live set.

I was grateful to be able to borrow some instruments of my choice from Roland during my residency. Having access to the instruments sparked a lot of experimentation and content creation. I was even able to connect with the Roland team for potential collaborations, as the marketing team really enjoyed the Instagram reels I was creating that featured Roland instruments.

In my last month of my residency I spent some time in sessions with two friends of mine who are very talented local Sydney artists: Rissa and BVT. Being able to use the space to help work on their music was refreshing and nice to do.

I also spent time planning and meeting my team who are going to be working on the visualisers/music videos for my next few singles that I got to work on during the residency.

The end of the residency is a very full circle moment for me: to have been able to work on a body of work I can now release into the world is very exciting and I’m so grateful for the past 6 months I’ve had at Powerhouse Museum.

The Generations Fellowship connects artists with established industry experts and mentors to pass on intergenerational knowledge and create pathways in the music industry. Established in 2020, this is a partnership between Create NSW, Powerhouse and Australian music management and touring company, Astral People.

Valued at $100,000, the Fellowship supports three early career solo artists or groups to carry out six months of professional development. Each Fellow is provided with $25,000 in financial support, and in-kind support in the form of studio space at Powerhouse Ultimo or Powerhouse Castle Hill, with industry mentoring and networking facilitated by Astral People throughout each residency.