INTERVIEW: Amaya Laucirica on her new album 'The Blue Hour': "It's a more confident album...a real reaffirmation of my identity as an artist and as a mum and as a woman."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 2 September 2025

Every so often, a collection of music comes along that is breathtakingly beautiful in that intangible way music often is. You don’t know why it moves you, it can’t be put into words, but the beauty and the feels that wash over you as you listen are unmistakable.

Melbourne based artist Amaya Laucirica creates just such music and today she releases her first album in over seven years, The Blue Hour. Produced by James Cecil (Architecture in Helsinki), the album draws inspiration from such diverse artists as Serge Gainsborough and Kylie Minogue and across nine tracks delivers an absolutely beguiling soundscape that will quickly take over your heart.

Written over several years, the album explores monumental changes in Laucirica’s life, including the birth of her daughter and reaching midlife, and how these changes impact on life, love and relationships. As Laucirica says, “It’s my middle-aged coming-of-age.”

Part of the charm of The Blue Hour is the way Laucirica blends genres and evokes a sense of nostalgia, melancholy and hope, often all at the same time. While most of the album has a foundation that brings to mind 1980s synth pop, there are also ample helpings of indie pop, trance, electronica, country and disco.

The album opens with a mini drum roll and a smooth, almost jazz sound on ‘What I Cannot See’ that speaks of feeling lost in a relationship and your place in the world: ‘what I cannot see / I cannot feel’. ‘When I’m With You’ explores similar themes of being in a relationship that does not make you feel good - “i guess I was hungry for your love and it clouded all my thoughts / I was just a shadow of a girl” - contrasting the sorrow with a gorgeous trip-hop sound, all playing out through a run time of almost six mesmerising minutes .

‘Here I Am’ and first single ‘Now or Never’ lean heavily into a synthpop sound, the 1980s nostalgia sound created so perfectly while remaining contemporary. ‘Now or Never’ mixes guitars with the synths and remains a highlight of the album six months after it marked Laucirica’s return to music in March. Laucirica sings of the fear of getting older and the changes it brings in life and relationships. There is immense sadness and melancholy in the lyrics - “The years will tear us away / It’s time for change…I can’t pretend how I feel” - but paired with hope and a sense of pushing forward “This feeling won’t last for ever / This feeling will subside.” It is a truly beautiful song that will stay with you long after the last note fades.

‘Time It Takes’ ramps up the beat and takes Laucirica firmly onto the dancefloor. A shimmering, electronic beat with a keyboard straight out of a house classic and a left of field structure with an ever changing rhythm. It is followed by perhaps the complete sonic polar opposite on ‘Tumbling Light’, a mellow electronic balled flecked with country and strings, it is a tribute to a musician Laucirica once knew.

The album ends with perhaps the most experimental songs on the album. The six minute epic ‘On The Edge’ begins as an ethereal, stripped back electronic song before a piano creeps in with the soundscape eventually swelling into an electro-synth-strings otherworldly gem as Laucirica repeats ‘this world’s so sad without you / This world’s so sad.’ ‘Fallen Night’ has a similar dreamy, disjointed, throbbing electronic sound with Laucirica’s vocal taking centre stage as she reflects on life, self-discovery and self-forgiveness: ‘There’s a path I will find / There’s a truth / There’s a light.’ The song fades with the discordant sounds of a harmonica as the album ends.

It may have been a seven year gap between albums for Amaya Laucirica, but The Blue Hour is undoubtedly worth the wait. It is quite simply a stunning album that does what really great pop music should always do - connect with your emotions, tell a relatable story with music that is both fascinating and a joy to listen to. An album to cherish, we recently sat down with Laucirica to chat all about the creation of this beautiful record.

Hi Amaya! It is so delicious to meet you, because your music is divine. The Blue Hour is such a beautiful creature, congratulations first of all.
Thank you so much!

Tell me a little bit about your blue hour and how that translates into the title?
That's a really good question. It was really hard to find a title for the album. Usually the title just comes to me, but it took a while to think of the title for The Blue Hour. The album is quite eclectic, and it varies in style, and when I was doing pre production with Laura who I was collaborating on the songwriting with, she referred to the album as being in stages of light. Some songs feel like they're the sunrise, and some songs feel like they're the sunset, it felt like there was phases of light and dark, uplifting and introspective on the album. I was thinking of golden hour on the beach, and how that's such a lovely time of the day. You have these moments that are just magical, and they're there every day, but just temporarily. That image kind of suited some of the songs, but the concept of golden hour didn't. And then I just stumbled upon this expression called the blue hour, which is this time just after golden hour. It’s a time of transition where there's this amazing light, and I thought that lends itself to the introspection and atmosphere of the album and I just went: that's it, it’s The Blue Hour. I just think that sums it up perfectly.

You open the album with ‘What i Cannot See’ which feels like the final breath of the day, you're sprawled out on the rug, and it's the final breath. But of course, because where it's placed, it's eventually the breath that takes you onto the dance floor in the centre of the album. I think that's really cool to kick the album off on an almost collapsed state and I was just curious about how you plotted your track listing?
Oh, that's amazing, thank you. Actually, my producer came up with a track listing initially with what he thought were the hits on the album, and I wasn't quite happy with it. I have a friend nearby is a bit of a DJ and I asked him if he would like to have a go at doing the track listing? Sometimes you can be too close to the work to hear it properly. What he did worked amazingly, it just kind of changed the whole mood of the album. I now understand how important sequencing can be to reveal the mood of an album. The sequence he chose takes you on this journey, it goes up and down and up and down, but you can anticipate the next song, which I really liked.

So the track listing actually wasn't all my idea! I think it was a really tricky album to sequence initially, because all the songs are quite different, it's like, how are these songs going to fit together as a whole? You've got country ballads, you’ve got disco tracks, and then you've got really sad, emotional music on the piano. But I think it turned out really well.

it is really beautifully done. You have said this album reflects your middle aged coming of age, which I love because we as people never stop coming of age. Tell me a little bit about what that is for you.
I felt in my 20s when I was releasing albums, it wasn't that I was immature, but I was very young. In my 30s, I started feeling a sense of identity, but I felt like I really found it when I turned 40. Having a child just prior to turning 40 turns your world vision around. I felt more assured of my identity as an artist, and more assured of my identity as a woman. I feel like this album is quite feminine, I just felt more mature with this album. I felt like the I made more choices and tried more different things with the songs. My previous albums were all written with the context of a band, and this is my first album where I've done it solo, and I've done everything the way that I've wanted to do it. I just feel it's a more confident album which reflects my age. I'm in middle age, and you know yourself a bit more by then. I felt like it was just kind of a real reaffirmation of my identity as an artist and as a mum and as a woman.

You speak on this album about motherhood, existence, life and death, which I think is really beautiful. When writing it, was it predominantly melody and music led, or are you going down an almost poetic, lyrical rabbit hole?
It's a really good question. For this album, and for all my albums, I've just sat down and created a song based on a mood that I'm feeling. I might have been journaling about some things that I'm feeling about, but when I go to sit down to write a song, more often than not, I don't know what I'm going to be writing about it. Often it is melody first and I think what is that trying to say to me, that sounds sad, or it sounds happy.

I always feel when I write music, it's quite therapeutic. I write all the things that I can't say in conversation, but it's something that I can do with music. I can sit down and pour something out that I'm feeling that I can't express in other ways. So often, that melody is based on a feeling that I have, or what I am going through. Because of the timing of the writing of the album and having a child, there's obviously parallels with what's happening in my life, and I'm exploring that, but I never actually go to sit down and go, ‘Okay, I'm going to write a song about my daughter’. It just kind of happens, and then I realise what that song's about after I finish writing it. I analyse it afterwards.

It's a really interesting question, because I've just started writing in a different way recently with a poet, I've been creating music based on her poetry. So I'm actually dealing with the lyrics in front of me and creating music, and that's been really inspiring as well. So who knows, with the next album, I might sit down and know what I'm writing about!

On the track ‘Here I Am’, she sing about the identity crises that one has, particularly women, when they become mothers because suddenly everything you know, who you identified as is is taken away. I's such a beautiful track, but it's also such a hard topic to bring up because of society's expectations on gratitude and that position of parenthood. How was that song put together?
When I wrote that song, I didn't even think I was writing it about being a mum. I just sat down and wrote it, and it revealed itself to me later, I guess I was portraying a domestic scene which is, which does tie with motherhood strongly. This is where I am every day, this is where I’ll be, if you want to come find me, I'll be here in my home.

It was capturing a moment in time and I think the beauty of that song was, when we were recording it, I had to think what's this song about, what's the feeling you want to capture? And it was then that i thought this is a song about my identity and being a mother. So this song revealed itself when we were recording it. Sometimes just the delivery of the lyrics can change the attitude of a song.

The song sounds quite woozy and the producer had done that so you felt a little bit unsteady and unsure. Somebody said to me it feels like that time you've just come home from the hospital, and you don't know where you are. It’s nice that people are hearing these things that I don't hear, but that's the beauty of songs, is that everybody is connecting to something that they can relate to.

In the best possible way, that wooziness and sense of being unsteadyI runs across the album, and maybe that ties in with the blue hour, that late night, witching hour, when there's suddenly this kind of pulsing possibility. And here, that takes a big disco foot stomp onto the dance floor, particularly with ‘Time It Takes’ which feels like a big step from what we've known from you in the past. How was that to put your glittery, pop diva onto the album?
It's a song that's my favourite on the album. When I demoed it, it didn't sound as dance and disco, it was much slower and more rocky. When I played it to the producer, he was just like, ‘this is your Kylie moment’. I love Kylie, but I couldn't hear what he heard. I was a little bit scared, but I trusted him. When he sent me the initial take, I was not sure at all with the direction. it really took me by surprise. At that’s the great thing about collaboration, when you collaborate with somebody, their perspective is not yours. They hear something that you can't and sometimes those ideas are magical, because you're trying things that you wouldn't have tried on your own. You're taking a risk.

In the end, we dialled back the Kylie factor to the point where I was comfortable with it, and we made it more ‘indie Kylie’. I fell in love with it, but it took me a long time. I felt like it was out of my comfort zone. And then I remember a David Bowie documentary where he speaks about if you're creating and you feel like it's safe, you're not in the right zone. When you're a little bit out of your depth, when you're in the water and your feet can't quite touch the bottom, you're in the right place. You just have to push yourself a little bit to get to that amazing next phase. And I remember thinking, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take the risk. It sounds really Kylie, but I was inspired by David Bowie and that is also in the film clip, I'm wearing a blue suit that was based on David Bowie

Your music has also featured in movies and soundtracks and television as well as your solo work. How is it for you as a creator to know that your music isn't just like coming into speakers and headphones, but it's also coming through dramatic scenes and screens? Is that just a whole world you didn't see coming when you first started making music?
When I first started making music, I was with a publisher, and they placed my music in TV shows like Home and Away or Neighbours. It kind of makes sense, because I always felt my music is very spacious, and I can see how that works in cinema, you know, when there's a build up in a scene. My songs, by their nature, are really quite open to interpretation about how you feel about them, and I think it works with images really well. I would really love to have my music in more film and TV. Around the time we were recording The Blue Hour I made some music for a theatre production and that was really fun. It's such a different process because you're making music for the play, it's not about you anymore. You're kind of removed from it, this song has nothing to do with you, it’s just about what's going on on stage.

Also with this album, it kind of marks a time for me where I'm so open to the idea of collaboration and working with other song writers and working with different types of producers and maybe collaborating on film or theatre. My music was played at the end of [TV series] The Slap once, and so many people discovered me because they watched that show. That's such a great way to discover music, and I’m so excited at the prospect of having people listen to my music that way.

Absolutely, it's another avenue of emotional connection to a song. You will soon be taking The Blue Hour on the road. This album is just so alive, there's a colour to everything. How is that space going to play out on stage?
It's really exciting, because I've put a new band together, and it took a long time, because on the album, a lot of the tracks are programmed drums that sound real drums, so I needed to find a drummer who could play real drums and do the programming element as well. I’m so luck to have found this musician called Matt Watson , then I found a bass player Matt Sigley, who’s an amazing musician, and the producer of the album is going to join us for some of the album launch shows. It's going to be quite magical bringing it all together. We had our first show months ago in a small room in Melbourne. It was very intimate in front of friends, and it was really exciting to preview the album to people. But with the album launch shows, it's going to be extra exciting, because we're really going to try to represent the album as it was recorded.

It's been really exciting putting it together because I've been in bands where we've just literally demoed the songs as a live band, then gone into the studio and recorded them as a live band. So we already knew how to play it live because we recorded it that way, whereas this recording was how are we going to put all these recorded elements into a live show? We had to deconstruct it a little bit to put it back together, if that makes sense. But I'm playing with such talented musicians that have been able to do that really well and I'm just really looking forward to doing these live shows. It's going to have a great energy.

The Blue Hour is out now. You can buy, download and stream here.
Follow Amaya Laucirica on Instagram and Facebook.

ALBUM LAUNCH TOUR
4 October – Tanswells, Beechworth, VIC
11 October – Major Toms, Kyneton, VIC
25 October – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne (with special guests Phia Exiner and Punko)