Thomas E. Flatman Album launch

Thomas E Flatman entered the Melbourne music scene as a young songwriter fronting the band Durbeyfield, in which he supported the likes of Claire Bowditch, Pete Murray and Missy Higgins and cut his teeth on a range of Victorian and interstate festivals. His lyrics and heartfelt melodies don’t shy away from the overtly emotional, and his arrangements are often richly layered. His debut album, “Homekeeper” brings together folk driven melodies and orchestral nuances and spans songs written over the past five years.

As well as being a musician, Thomas has worked as a mental health support worker in psychosocial recovery centres, as a high school teacher in Frankston and the Western suburbs and knows what it is like being a father and husband trying to pay a mortgage. The writing of the album draws on experiences, storytelling and characters from these facets of his life and make for unique songwriting perspectives. Tracks such as “Night with the Wolf”, “Queen of the Arcade” and “No one thinks about the Mums” attempt to capture the quiet humanity of characters living on the edge of acceptable community life, whilst tracks such as, “Afterlife” and “Regular Man” document the tension of struggling with the duality of domestic responsibility and creative freedom.

A multi-instrumentalist, Thomas produced the majority of the album from his home studio, a ramshackle converted garage lined with leftover cutoffs of Baltic pine floor boarding. His production style somewhat resembles this space itself, in its evolved layering of textures and organic flow of its arrangements. “Homekeeper” has been many years in the making, worked on around the aspects of life which happen when building a home, the act of which has inevitably shaped the stories and sounds of the album itself.

With his live band, accompanied by orchestral arrangements with clarrinet, cello and violin, this is bound to be an engaging and intimate show for all.