“With her debut single Cool, Vigilantonie has burst onto the scene with the confidence and prowess of a bonafide star... The simple question “am I the bullet you dodged?” hits like a shot of its own and stands alone as perhaps one of the best lyrics of the year. Simple, powerful, and unlike anything else out there, Cool is a perfect amalgam of so many styles and influences, all the while remaining wholly unique” - themusic.com.au
WHO IS VIGILANTONIE ?
Blending devastating lyrics with big girl dance beats, Vigilantonie alchemises hard life lessons into dank pop to get heavy hearts high. Vigilantonie music is like if Lily Allen and Ke$ha had a baby but neglected to raise her so she Matilda'd herself into a girlboss obsessed with toxic relationships until she found therapy, doobies & b00bies. Raised below the poverty line in small town rural NSW, Vigilantonie makes unignorable pop for the ignored & non-popular.
This project is completely independent & self-managed, written/performed by Eloise Vigilantonie & produced/co-written by Barnaby Matthews (fortunes., Annie Bass, Hancoq).
By day, Eloise manages Andrei Eremin’s Carriage studio. At Carriage, she’s set up recording sessions for artists such as Charli XCX, Baker Boy, Flume, Becca Hatch, Daine, Mr Carmack, The Operatives, UMRU, Thrupence, Fractures & CLEWS. In between sessions, she uses the studio to develop my prod and engineering skills. By night, she’s got this whole pop star thing going on. Vigilantonie started as a blues pop alter ego, but over the past 4 years, Vigilantonie has become a thicc + holisticc dank pop experience, with music videos, some healthy social media attention and a 14-track electropop album, written/performed/managed by Eloise and produced/playbacked by Barnaby.
Thanks to Barnaby's lush live music experience (Splendour, Laneway, Pitch, Let Them Eat Cake, Strawberry Fields, Gaytimes etc) and Eloise’s clown years doing live comedy, they’ve built out a batsh!t high-energy live show. Full of fun, f*ckery and feelingz, we serve memeistic audio-reactive visuals, pop choreo n costumes, air horns, and their insane sticky beats. They’ve played alongside local legends Djanaba, yergurl, Tamara and the Dreams, Nightlight, Rude Baby, Parlour and Swayfever. Vigilantonie’s first headline show, a Hyperbarbie Bimbo Party to launch her single Peroxide was best summed up by Farrago writer Joel Duggan,
“A sense of unfulfilled want animates the Vigilantonie project, but it is in the live performance that we see articulated a vision for something real and different… For the hour that she performed, Vigilantonie transformed that small bandroom in that battered building into something experiential. It’s raunchy, it’s real and there was never a dull moment. Vigilantonie probably isn’t going to get us out of the cost-of-living crisis, but at least she gives you something fun to listen to while you’re waiting for your Centrelink to come through.”
HI HI HIGH ACHIEVEMENTS
Hiiii, it’s me Eloise - it’s always just been me and I’m sick of speaking in third person to pretend it’s not. Here’s some things I’ve done over the past years I’m super proud of.
My debut single 'Cool' was a top 40 finalist in the Vanda and Young Global Songwriting competition, which helped secure a $20k Creative Victoria Music Works grant to develop and produce my debut album Ex Nihilo, due for release later this year. For my sophomore single ‘Dump Him’, I commissioned a custom Vigilantonie Dump Him Cowboy Hat Instagram filter from AI filter queens sashandiana. For that release, I also collabbed with film photographer Ece Mustafoff on a shoot; the super8 footage became a lyric video and the pics became the cover story for Canadian art journal Mob Magazine.
For my third single ‘Cooked’ (which featured in heavy rotation on Triple J Unearthed), I worked with some of my fave comedy-inclined queer creatives to create my first full-production music video. The incredible team for this included acclaimed theatre artist & comedian Vidya Rajan (director), award-winning filmmaker Liam Fitzgibbon (DOP/editor) and multi-talented visual artist Stephanie Crowe (production design) and powerhouse film multi-hyphenate Molly Daniels (producer). To celebrate its release, I collabbed with two rad Naarm-based producers to release a Cooked remix EP, Deep Fried which I recently released along with re-cut music videos for each song.
My fourth track ‘Sugar’ is a catchy country pop bop about the sticky lengths a small-town country girl in the big city has to go to realise her sweetest dreams and pay rent. Debuting on ‘The Hoist’, Sugar received a lotta love from SYN and TikTok, landing two Spotify editorial playlists independently - Viral Hits and Hit Italine. The music video was made DIY with queer film creator Leeav Henzel and props and jewellery borrowed from friends.
My fifth single ‘Peroxide’ was released in alignment with the Barbie movie, to celebrate the weird synchronicity of recording it the day I met Charli XCX and set her up at Carriage to record her Barbie movie track. It was launched with an iconic single launch at Mamma Chen’s, and the music video was made with Leeav, zero budget and a hi8 camera. The song was included in triple j Unearthed’s Mardi Gras playlist with Vigilantonie as the playlist cover girl.
I know that being unashamedly self-confident in a country that froths tall poppy syndrome is a bold move, but I do think it’s one of my biggest achievements to date; how much I still want this and go after it despite everything I’ve been through. It’s difficult to articulate how much harder welfare kids need to work to not only survive, but love ourselves, believe in our voice, and know that we deserve to spend life doing what we love! There have been truly farked extended periods of my life when my autonomy was removed and my self-esteem was held together by girlie pop bangers. Now, I feel more alive than ever being able to independently write, make and perform my own girlie pop music. I adore the community, magic and silliness it fosters and I want to be a positive part of that by being the pop star I’ve always wanted to see in the world.
To give it a proper red hot go, I’m always open to finding new people to work with who vibe with this vision, know how to help, or just wanna come on this wild adventure with me.
If that’s you, let’s chat :) x vigilantonie[at]gmail[dot]com
