Recorded at Pots & Pans Studio (2018)
Mastered at Stepford Audio (2019)

The Hangman

Work & Emptiness

Against Me Now

Two Lines

Old Timer (Mainland)

Kester Rafferty puts emotional, searching lyrics and a rich, moving voice to country rhythms with that old-time feels.

It’s fair to say, the debut EP for Kester Rafferty has been a long time coming. Inspired by a deep-dive into song writing, on a search for authenticity and truth, that meant leaving behind more contemporary sounds and voices, finding a destination in the works of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. 
Most of the songs were written in-and-around the time of packing-up and moving from Adelaide to the Huon Valley in Tasmania. Old Timer (Mainland) deals directly with that journey, and the stories of others who have started-over. Two Lines is a reflection back on childhood and simpler times.
Against Me Now is the outlier, written twenty years ago about heartbreak and rivalry across the Nullarbor.
Work and Emptiness was part of purple patch after listening to the Hank Williams Revealed albums, all safely stored in a red leather-bound book. The Hangman was written the night before making the trip across the Bass Strait. Frenetically (but very quietly), strumming a guitar, propped up against a bed in a hotel room on the outskirts of Ballarat with an old Ford Fairmont parked outside, loaded-up from floor to roof with worldly possessions.
The recording was done over three sessions with Joe Hammond at Pots and Pans Studio in 2018.  The Mastering was done at Stepford Audio.


Its broken masculinity seeking divinity.

Born of tragedy, set in the Mallee, boarded at Marist halls, set free by punk, of failing education, doomed to a mop and surgeon’s instruments, to the cemetery of New Orleans and Manhattan shadows.

Broken hearted to the west, broken again, back to the old life, hospital rooms and last breaths. A recovery, then a decline, chemicals and deprivation, the graveyard shift and brain waves.

Cast off to Van Diemen’s land, to a farm of rotting fortune, then beset with grey skies and tram bells. The squeak of hospital beds and broken wires. Isolation, a howl, a black moon and decent.

Kester Rafferty

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