The Ballarat-born musician, formerly of Fire Underground and Dancing Heals, found the seed of his debut album Paradise in “song fragments” recorded in his phone’s voice memos. 

Paradise, produced by Gotye’s producer Joshua Barber and featuring The Waifs’ Ben Franz, Melbourne singer songwriters Emilee South and Brooke Russell and Hilltop Hoods’ Nick Pietsch on trombone, drops this Friday.

The album’s is drawn together from memos and demos kicking around since his band days, Trakell says.

“I kept writing songs and it got to the point where ‘I really need to decide to do something with this or not do it’,” he says.

“By that stage I met Josh (Barber) and he was really into the idea. I only sent about 10 tracks and they were the ones I sifted through and picked out but there are definitely more, I’ve just got a whole lot of voice memos on my phone, some will just be a chorus and a verse and they haven’t been thought of past that, there’s just hundreds of song fragments.”

Sometimes a fragment, backed up to his itunes, would pop up on shuffle. 

“It’s happened when I’ve imported to a computer and backed it up, all of a sudden there’ll a little voice memo that will come up on my itunes playlist . I used to put it on at work and occasionally something would come on and I’d quickly change it.”

Going alone was daunting, but also freed him up from getting consensus from the band, he says.

“It was a lot easier to do it (release an EP) with a bunch of people on stage as opposed to going out alone.

“It was the same thing with playing live, if people didn’t like a live set you think, I was just part of that it’s not like it was completely up to me but if you make a mistake when you're by yourself, it’s definitely on you.”

Paradise’s theme of dying – the album has been described as “funereal” – was a product of subconscious.

“I got to the end and I realised quite a few songs were about dying, not in a heavy way but they tend to be concerned with death. When I write lyrics it comes out as a stream of conscious that fits in with the melody - I don't sit down and think ‘I’m going to write a song about this’.”