Name: Hana Stretton
Occupation: Producer, composer, multi-instrumentalist
Nationality: Australian
Current release: Hana Stretton's new album tiarn is out August 7th 2026 via Briarfield Flood Press.
 
If you enjoyed this Hana Stretton interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram.



For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I usually start with daydreams of a place (often not real). I get into details. What's the weather in this place? Daytime or nightt ime? What does it smell like? Who am I there? (often not me) … clear enough to make something to. Sometimes the details are obvious from the start, sometimes it's vague and the music shows you as you go along.

For this album I imagined a very specific place. Summer, forest, fog, mountain lake gorge, blue hour, water, quiet with one large concrete slab structure. As much as I tried to steer the songs to this place, some songs did not want to go. In half of this new album tiarn, I got close to the scene and feeling I was hoping for (“Nojiri 1993,” “Stove,” “Midnight Swim,” “From”) but I'm new to production, and some of them escaped my grips and ran somewhere else.

Songs like 'as it was before this’ and ‘salt’ - I tried very hard to tie them to the place but music is stubborn and dictates what it is and where it wants to live.



They wanted to live in the day, surrounded by people, not on a quiet mountain-side. I can actually hear the fight between us in the production.

My problem is that I deeply love album formats and the feeling of a cohesive body of work. But I would have had to wait untold amount of years to have enough songs matched one particular scene. And the music industry isn’t that patient.

If I had my way - I’d much prefer to just make music the way I’d like to ... free of any concepts or album structures. Then when I’m 90, I can gather up everything I’ve ever made in my arms, all giddy, and finally lay them all out on the floor, and put them in their right place ... their right colours.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I try not to overstimulate myself when I’m in a period of making stuff. Not too much TV or radio. I don’t listen to music. Typically I am living alone, somewhere rural. I also use a dumb-phone (which was a life changing move).

I try not to do early versions. As much as I can, I want to record what I’m writing as it's happening. But I’m often failing at this, as life is distracting.

When I have to re-recorded things after the initial inspiration has worn off, it sounds like a rude mocking imitation of myself. I listen back with one eyebrow raised.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

I love to hear musicians crafting their lyrics so beautifully. Some of my favourite music is lyric based, like Mount Eerie (USA) or The Finks (aus) or Seagull (aus).



[Read our Mount Eerie interview]

Some songs come with words built-in. Often smaller community-based songs like as it was before this, or come home or salt. Songs that want many voices. But when lyrics don’t come like this, it becomes a very tense process. It starts to feel very awkward, placing words on top of music - like putting makeup on a pig.

But this makes sense to me. I spend so much time in silence; going weeks without using my voice. It just doesn’t feel important to say anything most of the time. Singing lyrics over my music often feels as foreign and futile as talking out loud to no-one. I spend most of my time in nature.. and she's laughing 'so hun, you’ve got something to say do ya? that's cute ...’

At most, my lyrics feel like loose ribbons hanging off of the rest of it. Someday soon, they might just fall off entirely.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

On a good day, I will try not to disturb or judge the things that I do and just let it happen. Like using my own out-of-breath running as percussion (“forest to the sea”) or yelling into the void (“right whale”).

So much of what I do when I’m producing would be considered ‘embarrassing’ ... if anybody witnessed.

But that's the real stuff ... just got to let it happen.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Creativity allows you to just play. Like I'm 5 years old and I’m in my imagination pretending to be somewhere else, someone else.

I always come out of that having made something that's trying to help me navigate something or trying to remind me of something important I had forgotten. Like some kind of oracle-card on what I should do next.

I’m grateful, Its been very kind and useful.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece?

Completely different experience per production. Some songs are finished before you’re even aware that you made it. My song “ducks” was like that. It took a few hours between writing it and finishing the final mix.



“Can II” on the other hand, had to be re-recorded and re-recorded over years, making it the most frustratingly long process I’ve ever gone through on a song. The musical equivalent of bashing your head on a table over and over.



I’m still glad I did it! But I try not to let the process get that graphic anymore.

In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (including production, mixing and mastering)?  

I consider arrangement to mean placement of every tiny thing in your field of vision. So arrangement is really everything to me.

I don’t ‘know’ how to produce. My understanding of Ableton is very rudimentary … I have been told by other producers that I approach the DAW ‘strangely’. Not to say that this is bad. I’m just not technical.

I'm interested in how it sounds and how something in the recording is in play with everything else.