Reetoxa takes deeply personal experiences and makes them wide and emotionally accessible on “Double A Side 2 (Akaroa / Erica And The Stars),” a four-song EP that runs 14 minutes long. More than just a collection of tracks, the project offers a glimpse into times when music was a way of coping with uncertainty, spirituality, pain and hope. The EP was recorded at The Avenue Recording Studio in Cheltenham, Victoria and orchestral sessions were completed in Budapest. It marries intimate songwriting with ambitious musicianship. As you move through the project, there’s a strong sense of sincerity behind the arrangements, and Reetoxa lets difficult experiences become creative material without losing the beauty within them. The result is a short but meaty dispatch that asks us to slow down and appreciate just how potent music can get when it comes from something really lived.
The word ‘Akaroa’ is an immediate entry into that world, evoking a reflective, almost dreamlike atmosphere. It was born out of a very difficult time in a very difficult period, in a vivid spiritual dream. But the story did not end here. Years later in the coastal town of Akaroa, New Zealand, Mckee experienced an inexplicable presence that brought back the memory of the song with renewed force. That history adds an interesting emotional weight to the piece, because the path from dream to unfinished idea and finally to finished recording parallels the unpredictable way that inspiration can strike us when we least expect it. The arrangement is spacious enough to let that feeling of mystery breathe, but the songwriting has a solid emotional core. You could look at “Akaroa” as a pretty piece of music, but knowing where it came from adds a little more, making the song a meditation on memory, timing and the strange links between place and creativity.
“Erica And The Stars” brings the emotional journey to somewhere even more intense, coming out of a period of mental health crisis and becoming a beacon of hope during an extremely difficult chapter. What makes it stand out is the full Budapest Orchestra, playing an arrangement that is exactly what Mckee had heard in his head at that moment of change. That detail lends the piece an extraordinary sense of vision: something first imagined in a deeply personal moment was eventually translated to a full orchestral performance. The song points to possibility and renewal rather than allowing the difficult circumstances of its creation to define the entire experience. The orchestration offers scale, but the songwriting underneath keeps the piece grounded in the human experience that sparked it. For us, one of the EP’s strongest qualities is the contrast between vulnerability and grandeur.
The EP “Double A Side 2 (Akaroa / Erica And The Stars)” clocks in at just four songs and 14 minutes, but it doesn’t need to be longer to make a point. The addition of the karaoke versions also provides an interesting extension to the release, with the compositions themselves being able to shine from their original vocal presentations. More importantly, the EP shows how creative expression can turn experiences that would be hard to put into words into something positive. Reetoxa is not just polished recordings, the project has a sense of history, of recovery and imagination. ‘Akaroa’ links spirituality and memory, and ‘Erica And The Stars’ turns crisis into something grand and hopeful. Together they demonstrate how personal songwriting can be universal when it’s honest enough to let its flaws, its questions, its moments of light through. Thus, “Double A Side 2 (Akaroa / Erica And The Stars)” is a short but meaningful release about where music can take us when we need it most.
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