If you were online at the top of the year, chances are high you watched Ecca Vandal screaming her lungs out on “CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE” in one — or maybe all — of your friends’ Instagram stories. Singing in a skatepark atop a kid’s mini train ride, the South African-born, Australia-based artist captured so much in a short burst: angst, confusion, exuberance, affirmation.
“I was really excited to see that there was an audience that were ready for something that was just a bit raw and abrasive,” she says of the viral wildfire. “That’s exactly what I wanted to do, just actually express my feelings 100 percent, you know? Not hold back, not worry about whether it’s pretty or perfect.”
Ecca Vandal truly defines what it means to be an artist, using multiple genres like colors of paint. While studying jazz at the Victorian College of the Arts, she discovered Bad Brains and Björk, who showed her the possibilities when borders between genres are broken down. Her 2017 self-titled debut album reflects that epiphany, weaving between punk, hip-hop and soul in a pure flow state, punctuated by guest spots from Refused’s Dennis Lyxzén and Fever 333’s Jason Aalon Butler. Vandal’s recent singles have been similarly adventurous — from the raging “BLEED BUT NEVER DIE” to “THEN THERE’S ONE,” which plays with Portishead-style trip-hop.
Such exploration has earned her a growing legion of fans, including Limp Bizkit, who’ve taken her out on multiple legs of their Loserville tour, and a certain musician who she happened to run into on the street. “I just walked out of this café, and Chino Moreno was right outside walking toward it,” she recalls. “I didn’t clock it was him, but then he was like, ‘Ecca!’ He knew my name, he knew the songs, and I was just so spun out that he knew my music.”
The next day the offer to play Dia De Los Deftones came through — an opportunity Vandal has described as “truly wild.” Deftones have “soundtracked so many beautiful, messy years of my life,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I pretty much grew up screaming their songs in my bedroom, now I’m screaming on a stage AT THEIR FESTIVAL.”
“The serendipity of that moment was crazy,” she says of the chance encounter. “I’m just excited to play in front of a new audience of actual music lovers.”