Gold Coast (Yugambeh/Kombumerri)-based six-piece band SELVE have released their historic second album 'Breaking Into Heaven'.
The release is the first full-length album by an Aboriginal artist ever recorded at renowned British studio Abbey Road, with the new album already gaining attention with fans and followers alike.
'Breaking Into Heaven' punctuates and refracts the listener's consciousness like a glass brick through a window: a showcase of the uniquely prismatic range of Selve's sonic and cinematic universe, all tied together with a central dualism of subversion and love.
The album's focus track and video 'Leading Man Lost', stars Indigenous Australian actress/model Charlee Fraser (Mad Max: Furiosa, Anyone But You).
'Breaking Into Heaven' also features previous singles lush post-nihilist love song 'Friday Night', moody rave-rock track 'Strange Romance' and the hyper-camp 'Loki Horror Picture Show'.
Charlee Fraser said she was thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with the band, saying it felt less like a decision and more like a calling.
"The story was instantly familiar to me," Fraser said. "Reading the concept for the first time felt like someone had distilled a part of my life into a narrative.
"The shoot itself was profound—it wasn't just a performance, it was an embodiment. I got to live out a version of myself, to walk through a story that felt deeply familiar.
"And what's most beautiful is the ending—that return to self, to truth. That's been my journey, over and over again. I don't think we ever fully lose ourselves, but sometimes we forget. And projects like this remind us. They ground us. Being part of Leading Man Lost felt entirely meant to be.
"It was serendipitous, powerful, and healing in its own way. I'm just incredibly grateful that our paths crossed, and that I got to tell this story—not just as an actor, but as someone who's lived it."
After being announced on lineups for SXSW Sydney and Lost Paradise, Selve will kick off their official album tour this month, spanning dates in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria across both September and November.
The tour comes following a support with Velvet Trip and their sold-out exclusive live album debut at HOTA, which saw the band perform 'Breaking Into Heaven' in full alongside the 33-piece Australian Session Orchestra.
Liddle shared his excitement surrounding the album's release.
"It's super surreal that Breaking Into Heaven is out in the world, less than a year since we wrapped up our recording at Abbey Road," he said.
"It's been a big, profound, emotional journey that has taken myself and the band to places and into spaces we never imagined we'd get to tread. I am really really proud of the album we've created, the music, the stories, the messages, the whole wild dream of it.
"We poured all of ourselves into every song and I hope that people listening can find something they connect with among the embers.
"Ideal listening is headphones in and a walk by yourself under the stars, or to your favourite spot broad daylight, or somewhere where you can feel and dance like nobody is watching…I think in that environment you'll be able to absorb what the album's really about and who Selve really is.
"This album doesn't exist without the legacy of incredible First Nations artists who have come before me so that I can lay my small stone in the path for generations to come.
"For my people, this album is about giving you love, and power. Breaking Into Heaven is about claiming what is ours, rejecting and subverting the false heavens, ideologies and systems used to control us on our own lands.
"We come from the oldest continuing culture on Earth, and our stories more than deserve to be platformed in spaces such as Abbey Road and beyond."
'Breaking into Heaven' was penned over the course of a three-stage residency between Jabirr Jabirr Country/Broome, France and London and culminating in recording at Abbey Road.
The album's first demoes came from trips to Liddle's Jabirr Jabirr Country where he spent time with community and Elders.
He said the experience "gave the record its soul".
"... taking the embers of songs sparked on my Jabirr Jabirr Country and recording that at Abbey Road, this amazing ideal and root of Rock N Roll mythology: a reclamation, reimagining and subversion of that ideal through an inspired First Nations lens has taken place," he said.
Made up of Jabirr Jabirr man Loki Liddle (lead vocals/guitar), Anaiwan man Reece Bowden (lead guitar), Creation Saffigna (vocals), Michael Baldi (drums), Scott French (bass guitar) and Liam Kirk (keyboard), Selve are close friends who have continued to assert themselves as a formidable force of easy creative chemistry, capable of brewing an inimitably tantalising musical soup of sounds, cinematic aesthetics, characters and themes thanks to a shared curiosity, disparate influences and the freedom to "paint however they like with their instrument".
The project was supported by the Queensland and Australian Government through Arts Queensland and Creative Australia.
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