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Tiny Ruins is the artistic pseudonym of Hollie Fullbrook, an English-born/New Zealand-raised up-and-comer. Her eerie, haunting melodies have an insistence that renders one both relaxed and pensive at the same time. Eat your heart out Runga and Moa! Her album Some Were Meant For Sea is released this week and is a must-have if you like the alternative folk sound of Joanna Newsom or Cat Power. Just take Georgie Fenwicke’s advice and check it out. Georgie Fenwicke spent a lovely evening cooking dinner (spinach and pumpkin risotto, thank you) listening to her beats, and wasn't stressed once.

I hate misrepresenting styles of music and I couldn't put my finger exactly on a definition of your work, so would you mind describing your sound to us here in Dunedin?
When people ask what type of music I play, I usually say “alternative folk”…the songs are quite delicate, quite lyric focused [with a bit of] acoustic fingerpicking guitar. They are quite simple. It is hard trying to describe your own music; I find it is better to play something.
 
And let the music speak for itself in that regard?
Yeah, I mean I think genres are a good way of helping people see where [music] sits.
 
What got you into music and this particular style?
It was around three, four years ago. I had written songs as a hobby for a long time and I had grown up playing the cello and the guitar, but I was actually studying theatre at Vic Uni in Wellington. Because I am not that confident an actor, I convinced my lecturer to let me do the music for a particular production to try and focus on what music was going to be accompanying the play. It was a production of Twelfth Night, so I ended up writing a song for the play called “The Bird and the Play” and it's on the album. When I played that to people and got a good response to it, I decided to focus a bit more on my song writing.
 
Your grandfather encouraged you to pick up your mum's guitar at a young age; do you come from quite a musically-minded family?
My granddad taught me my first chords on the guitar and I have always loved hearing him play because he has this beautiful, deep voice – even though he is from Devon, he sings with a deep American accent, Johnny Cash-esque. So as a child I always loved hearing him play the guitar. When he came over for a visit, I took to it really quickly after he had shown me a few chords. But generally speaking, the family is not super musical. Actually, no, I guess you could say it is. My mum plays the cello now. She has had lessons for maybe three years.
 
You recently recorded Tiny Ruins' debut album, Some Were Meant For Sea in a little school hall in rural Australia, why did you choose to record there?
I wanted to record quite a raw sounding album in the same spirit as the demos that Samuel Patton recorded in Wellington. I talked to the record label, Spunk, and Aaron suggested Jay Walker who lives down in South Gippsland mainly because he is renowned for doing quite raw-sounding records. He likes to do things quickly and without too much analysis beforehand. I just tried what Aaron said and went with Jay Walker. I just turned up in rural Australia about an hour south of Melbourne. We got straight on to it and we were done in about a week and a half.
 
The one and half week’s work you spent recording your tracks sounds like it came out of a year of travel and touring overseas. Tell me about the twelve months you spent before recording your debut album.
The album was the result of more than twelve months, some of the songs had been rattling around for about four years and the demos had been recorded about two years ago. But last year was definitely quite a busy one. I graduated in January and then as soon as I graduated, I shifted myself back to Auckland from Wellington and worked on an EP that still hasn't been released but probably will be at some later point. I went on an OE where I recorded and did a bunch of shows with a friend of mine in Barcelona.
 
Cool! How was that?
It was just a really fun five weeks. There was another girl, Anna, who was also involved in the tour we did. I hadn't been to another country that I was completely unfamiliar with before. I was surrounded by another language and it was great being with someone who was local who could show me the little alleyways. It was during the World Cup so there were lots of crazy football games to watch in these tiny bars. The music was just a part of this big experience and I can't think of a better way to see a country than playing music and travelling around with your guitar. You meet interesting people and you just see a country through a different lens than if you were a tourist or if you were just travelling on your own.