Freyja Garbett - Sowden House

The worlds of jazz, cinema, and video-game storytelling collide in Freyja Garbett’s extraordinary new album Sowden House. Originating from a collaboration with Brendan McNamara - founder of Team Bondi and writer/director of the acclaimed video game L.A. Noire - Sowden House began as the score for an immersive VR game set within Los Angeles’s infamous architectural landmark of the same name. The house, designed by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) in a dramatic Mayan-Revival style, once belonged to the mysterious Dr George Hodel, long rumoured to be linked to the Black Dahlia murder. Garbett’s music, conceived for this imagined world of shadow, memory, and intrigue, has now emerged as a cinematic, stand-alone album: a sonic journey through mood, atmosphere, and the blurred line between reality and imagination.

Across the album’s lush soundscape, Garbett blurs the boundaries between jazz, orchestral composition, psychedelic funk, and cinematic ambience. Drawing inspiration from the psychological thrillers of the 1970s and the house’s ominous grandeur, she crafts both noir mystery and spectral beauty. Snowden House features two distinct ensembles: the groove-driven Sydney funk collective Mister Ott, and a large hybrid ensemble of some of Australia’s most accomplished jazz, classical, and contemporary musicians. The sessions, recorded at Golden Retriever Studios and Rancom St Studios in Sydney, were engineered and mixed by Richard Belkner and Simon Berkelman, and mastered by Lachlan Carrick. The result is a record that feels expansive and cinematic, yet deeply personal - a sound world of layered harmonies, rhythmic experimentation, and hypnotic orchestrations.

“The music has found its own life beyond the game,” says Freyja Garbett. “I was invited by Brendan to compose and record for a video game titled Snowden House. Thanks to his generosity, I was able to write for two very different groups - an incredible funk band and a large ensemble of remarkable musicians I brought together for the project. These tracks were carefully edited and mixed over many hours with my friend Richard Belkner. The music has found its own life beyond the game and I will always be proud of this body of work. Best enjoyed with attentive ears, through quality speakers, and with a glass of red in hand.”

As McNamara reflects, “In video-game and virtual-reality production, sound is as vital as what you see - it shapes mood, tone and timing. The game can’t truly exist without it, yet a great soundtrack can also stand alone. That is what we have here with the Sowden House project: music that is moody, evocative and full of character. We needed a composer who could capture both the era and the haunting atmosphere of the house - and we found that in Freyja Garbett.”

A boundary-pushing composer, keyboardist and producer, Freyja Garbett has become one of Australia’s most distinctive new musical voices. Her work merges improvisation and electronic production with influences drawn from modern jazz, cinematic scoring and contemporary classical writing. Snowden House sees Garbett at her most ambitious: crafting a multi-dimensional narrative that invites listeners to close their eyes, step into the labyrinth of sound, and imagine what might have taken place behind the eerie façade of Hollywood’s most mysterious house.