Abby Skye

"I've been writing for some of Australia's most respected music publications for a very long time now and if that counts for anything, I want you to give me your complete attention for just two minutes.
Abby Skye is the musical equivalent of a nuclear blast – you will be blown away. She can seemingly sing any note in the audible spectrum and has mastery over any genre you care to name. But if that Isn't enough then I have to risk starting to sound like one of those late night TV ads, because there's more. Much more.
Skye is a masterful songwriter with a grasp of dynamics and hooks that will give Noel Gallagher sleepless nights. She is a multi instrumentalist, an accomplished sound engineer and sublime producer.
When I first heard her EP I assumed it was a major label promo from some truly huge artist.
But she did the entire thing herself! Sang, wrote the tunes, produced it…how does someone so young wind up being so good?
Well it helps if you start young. Mozart was writing symphonies when he was five and Skye was bringing the house down at the Parent Teacher Association Christmas bash! From that moment on she was going to be a musician. She joined the grade 4 choir and learnt flute, guitar, piano and classical and contemporary voice as well as studying poetry. She was soon lead voice and conductor of the school Concert Band and Madrigal Choir. She studied music assiduously and passed every exam with high distinctions. As a member of the Australian Girls Choir she had performed with Symphony Orchestras at the Melbourne Concert Hall more times than she can recall – and all by the age of 12!
By the age of fourteen Skye had formed a duo called 'Hacking Daisies' which won musical competitions and played countless festivals and live shows. She was already a seasoned performer. At age fifteen she had started doing 'solo' shows, even performing for the President of Hungary! No wonder the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts beckoned and she easily gained acceptance, studying with the highly respected Brian Hasford, Head of Opera. Increasingly her heart lay with performing her own music and she went full time at the tender age of seventeen.
Skye immersed herself in a world of studio and live work, voraciously sucking up the knowledge that would make her such a formidable talent. Not content with just being a performer she learnt every aspect of production and engineering as well, and equipped with Pro Tools and some decent microphones recorded the EP 'Addicted'. High profile artists like Renee Geyer, James Reyne and Mental as Anything were sufficiently impressed to book her to support them. Skye's career trajectory seemed exponential.
But here's the thing. Any normal highly talented person at this point would be signing a record deal and going into some well established studio with a top gun producer, resigned to a few compromises in their art. Not Skye. That's because 'highly talented' doesn't begin to describe her.
Get this…she built her own studio from scratch so she could create an EP that was the perfect embodiment of her musical vision. Wrote, sang, engineered and produced the whole thing.
And is it any good? Like I said at the start it's like trying to ignore a nuclear explosion. I've reviewed every musical act you've ever heard of over the years and I am left wondering how someone this young can be this good. When they were handing out the talent I think they just stopped at Abby Skye and said 'here, you may as well have all of it!'
What do you want me say? To paraphrase the mighty Mr. Meldrum, 'do yourself a bloody favour!' Check out this extraordinary talent. Do it NOW!"
-Baz Bardoe
Australian Musician magazine journalist Sept 2006.