Ecca Vandal ‘Looking For People to Unfollow’ Album Tour

About

For Ecca Vandal, punk was a way in – and a way out.

Born to a Sri Lankan family in South Africa, she moved to Australia at a young age, and faced pressure to assimilate. “There were just so many restrictions and limitations growing up in such a strict cultural and religious upbringing,” says Ecca. “When I discovered punk rock, it was so much about expressing yourself against those boundaries, against those things that actually suffocate you. I realized that actually my journey is what I had to talk about. I don't want to see Women voiceless.”

Ecca came to punk from jazz training and music school orthodoxy, from weighty first-gen parental expectations, and other places far from the Melbourne home studio where Ecca first screamed her feelings into a microphone. “What I was taught as a child is the exact opposite of like, "Fuck it, I exist and I make noise and I'm loud and I'm going to take up space.” Seeing Ecca’s kinetic energy live, the way she owns the entire frame in videos and as she sings “CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE” – it’s hard to imagine there was ever a time where she was tentative about any of it. The singer/songwriter remembers “Just being so scared to make noise and say something. I wanted to exist as raw, unapologetic and brash, but also have beauty and poise and refinement at the same time. Those things co-exist. That's what I tried to express with my vocals across this album. That, to me, is freedom.”