IKSRE (Interview)

Today we’re listening to IKSRE, an ambient project from Australian musician Phoebe Dubar. A classically trained violist and multi-instrumentalist, she played in ensembles and bands of all stripes growing up. She was drawn to making ambient music by her love of nature, starting her first ambient track by spontaneously hitting record on her laptop next to a forest stream. Her IKSRE moniker stands for “I Keep Seeing Rainbows Everywhere,” which expresses the feeling of wonder the project channels and evokes. Dubar’s approach to ambient music percolated through influences like Helios, Massive Attack, Enya, and Marconi Union. Her latest two LPs, expansion a (south) and expansion b (north), were recorded during a four month family road trip across Western Australia. She made music when the environment inspired her: “The songs aren’t just influenced by their surroundings, they are the surroundings,” she told us. We’re playing those two records beginning with expansion b. A conversation with Phoebe follows the streaming links.

expansion b (north) - IKSRE (33m, light vocals on tracks 3 and 6)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

expansion a (south) - IKSRE (36m, occasional ahs)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

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What’s your earliest memory of music?

Music has always had a profound impact on me. When I was four years old, I remember hearing a pianist in a hotel lobby playing “Memory” from Cats, and crying and crying, and not understanding why it was affecting me so much. At a similar time, I vividly remember grabbing my big sister’s ukulele and a chopstick, and awkwardly trying to play it like a violin. Mum saw it and instantly started hunting around for a violin teacher.

What were your first musical recordings like, and how did they come about?

I’ve been making music for as long as I can remember. My big sis had a grand piano, and I used to take any opportunity to make up little melodies on it from a very young age. And between then and eight years ago when I started IKSRE (almost to the day! 31 January 2018!), I’ve played in every type of musical ensemble or band genre imaginable: classical, jazz, funk, soul, electronica, indie pop, alt country – I even played viola on a metal release.

IKSRE came about one day when I was sitting by a stream in the forest with my laptop and struck by the gorgeous natural surroundings, hit record on Ableton and using my laptop mic, created the bare bones of the song that would become “ALONE. at Paradise” from my debut album, Unfurl. The natural world has always been my haven, my escape. Same with music. So it makes sense that these two things have come together in such unity with this project.

What were the artists / albums that got you into ambient music and made you want to make it yourself?

I remember a friend giving me a copy of Helios’ Eingya when it came out and I was blown away. Having come from a classical music background but firmly entrenched in the electronic landscape, I loved how that album incorporated elements of both of these seemingly contradictory musical realms that I loved to inhabit. As a HUGE Massive Attack fan, I also fell in love with Craig Armstrong’s The Space Between Us when it came out. Earlier on, I loved Enya when I was a kid, and also had a CD of Australian rainforest sounds that I loved.

With IKSRE, it kinda came together as me wanting to write music for my yoga practice. I had a playlist of stuff including Garth Stevenson’s Voyage, Marconi Union’s Weightless – plus lots of Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, East Forest, Max Richter, and Jon Hopkins – and I used it for my at-home yoga practice and also to calm my new baby daughter. So those artists definitely informed my early music. But coming from an electronica background at the time, I wanted to add an element of (almost) danceability. You can hear that in the song “Tall Roads” on Unfurl. That’s where my ambient bangers originated. I wanted them to be the kind of songs you could listen to at breakfast, or to wind down at the tail end of a big night out.

Tell us about the origins of your artist name, which is short for “I Keep Seeing Rainbows Everywhere.”

I had a young baby at the time and was walking the streets with her in a pram – a lot. I kept noticing prisms reflected in street signs and windows and one day, thought, “I keep seeing rainbows everywhere: IKSRE.” But it’s only been in recent years that the name’s significance has fully revealed itself to me. I’m a very positive person on the whole, so seeing beauty in the ordinary (like a street sign) is very much my outlook on life. As an aside, I love that when I do sound baths, people regularly see colours.

You recorded the expansions records on the road. How did your surroundings influence your compositions and recordings?

Oh man! The songs aren’t just influenced by their surroundings, they ARE the surroundings! I wanted it to be an aural souvenir of a very special journey my family and I undertook in our caravan over four months to some of the most remote, wild places on earth: the Western Australian coastline and outback. I wrote, recorded, and produced every song after I’d been awestruck by something in the natural world. Some songs literally sample the landscape with field recordings – “lake cave (last winter’s rain)” has a stunning field recording of droplets of water from stalactites falling into an underground lake. And “kakadu (golden hour)” features the wild water bird sounds of Jim Jim Billabong campground at Kakadu National Park as the sun was setting.

Other songs have birdsong incorporated into the music – “karijini (iron. spinifex)” for example, the first vocal you hear, the main melody, is the sound of the local Butcherbird. They are found all over Australia, but each have different calls, depending where you are. The song “rubibi / broome (butcherbird)” has the melody of another Butcherbird which is local to that area, as the main synth melody. It’s a 950km drive from Karijini National Park to Rubibi/Broome, so it’s amazing to hear how the birdsong changes over that distance, and is totally unique to the area. Other songs like “bardi (night sounds)” or “elephant rocks (wading tides)” were simply me finding a way to put those moments into musical form. I love these albums so much. When I listen to them, I’m instantly transported to the places they were written in and about.

How do you discover new music these days? Any recent notable finds?

I love local, community radio. We are so lucky in Naarm/Melbourne with two incredible stations: PBS 106.7FM and RRR-FM. I have them playing in my house for most of the day. Some of my favourite shows are Deeep Space, Mystic Brew, Boogie Beat Suite, Tomorrowland, Breakfast Spread, and Passing Notes on PBS. And Stolen Moments, Breaking and Entering, Get Down, and Stylin’ on RRR. I have a very, very diverse musical taste, and these shows are so great for new music (particularly local stuff). I also stream Alex Ruder’s exceptional Pacific Notions on KEXP, which is where I keep up to date with new ambient releases. I’m also so lucky to have a wonderful network of musician mates who send me their new albums when they come out. So my Bandcamp is pretty stacked with amazing ambient albums.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

Radiohead? lol. This question took me a really long time to ponder. And this is where I ended up. All ambient artists are underrated. The whole genre. Ambient is having a moment – on streaming, anyway. It’s helping so many people deal with the stresses of the modern world. They’re streaming ambient playlists to help them sleep, meditate, study, practice yoga... not only are these playlists populated by muzak-esque stuff made by mass music houses or AI, but those real artists who are featured on them would be completely unknown to the listener. They listen without really engaging with it. Without a second thought as to what it is, or who it was made by. This is why shows like Deeep Space and Pacific Notions are so important – they give otherwise faceless ambient musicians the opportunity to be showcased to an audience who cares about them.

What are you working on next?

I’ve got a couple of collaborations that I’m finishing off, and a solo album that I finished two years ago, which was delayed but is finally coming out later this year. And a collab track coming out on a compilation very soon. Alas I can’t quite give any details on any of them but suffice to say, 2026 will feature plenty of new IKSRE music.