The fog is lifting; the haze is clearing – piercing through it all is Authentic Natural Tradition, Romy Church’s fourth full-length album. Known for making music under his moniker, e4444e, Romy sits down with us for a chinwag ahead of the album’s release this Friday, May 30th.

How did the e4444e project come about? [e4444e] was my first Soundcloud name. I was making music – I don’t know why – to put on Soundcloud and show my friends. I’ve always made music in my head. The first instrument I played was the drumkit. I would come up with lyrics while I’d play, and I would come up with stuff in my head in general. Then I started fumbling with a guitar, then a Roland SP-303 sampler. I got more gear and would just make stuff.

How did dreams inform Authentic Natural Tradition? There’s one song, “Fox”, on this album that was charged with the energy of a dream. I dreamt I was a fox deep in a trench, like a groove in the earth. I looked up over the top and saw the sun rising. The earth was a vast expanse and I could see its curvature. Every now and then, I'll have a dream that will open my heart up a bit. Those dreams are true gifts. I didn't try to make the song literally about that dream. I guess I try to have a more hands-off approach, so there is a respect for the subconscious in my “process”. I was thinking about the fox, then I saw a fox a few days later.

Another song – “Sunday Taking Me to the Mangroves” – on my previous album is pretty dream-charged too. I think being aware of my dreaming can elucidate things about my waking, too. I am excited to make stuff when it feels like there is a clearing to roam in, and experiences like dreams can open up the space.

What makes this album different from the music you’ve made before? Maybe a sense of self-awareness? There's a feeling of directness which I don't think is present in previous albums. There's a sense of definition, whereas I think (and maybe I'm remembering wrong) my music previously was blurrier and hazier. This one has big clouds of mist hanging over the songs, but there’s more space and contrast between instruments, melodies and big washes of “colour” – however you want to call it. At times it feels like things are brought into focus on this one.

What’s your favourite lyric from Authentic Natural Tradition? I wouldn’t say I have a definite favourite, but at the moment it would probably be this from the first song, “Skink”: “On this lonely carousel of dreams we all ride / it’s so confusing / to trace before”.

It feels like most people are working with an assumption that we understand our past, ourselves and what we are, and are making well-informed decisions in order to go towards a future that is built on all of that knowledge. And with respect, I think that's total bullshit. I think that we are living in an unknowable, unfathomable place, where we don’t even know what “living” is. I think we close off our hearts by feeling like we have to know, to not “miss it”, to perpetuate this thing we don’t understand. Isn’t this crazy???

What is a tradition of yours that you’ll never be able to shake? I'm not sure I know myself well enough to answer that question. I hope I can shake pretty much everything about my music. I'm excited by the prospect of making all different types of stuff in shapes and forms that I can’t even conceive of yet, which feels strange to say. But I can feel a certain “mode” that a lot of my music has – maybe a melodic sensibility or some vague atmosphere. I appreciate that mode, but I would love it if I could fly all over music and make things with all sorts of feelings and moods.

One thing that I think is a thread through most of my music is a want to capture what life actually feels like for me – a feeling of expansiveness or mystery, looking over a large vista. It’s one of those things I feel like I’m trying to do in every song and simultaneously I feel like I’ve never been able to properly do it.

What did you learn – about you or your music – in the making of this album? This was my fourth full-length made mostly by myself. It was like a crystallisation of a half-known image. I was trying to accept everything that came, and I still am. I’m not sure – I still can’t really see the picture, anyway. But since making it, I’ve felt a lot more open to different ways of making and seeing things. It felt like looking at what I was doing in the eye.