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Virtually famous: Tash Sultana

Raisin star: Melbourne singer-songwriter Tash Sultana
Raisin star: Melbourne singer-songwriter Tash Sultana

With Melbourne’s Tash Sultana, it’s more the case that you won’t believe your eyes than your ears.

The singer-songwriter’s reggae-influenced pop-rock is decent enough but it’s when you see how she makes it that she becomes someone special. She’s a one-woman band, with loop pedals like a cobbled street at her feet.

The solo song-building technique isn’t uncommon these days thanks to Ed Sheeran’s efforts but Sultana throws the kitchen sink at it, beatboxing, singing, playing guitar, bass, keyboards and even flute and trumpet on stage.

A guitarist from the age of three, she became a self-confessed “complete drug addict” in her teens. A breakdown left her unemployable, she has said, and saw her turning to busking for cash. Filming her performances with a GoPro camera, she soon found the internet was taking notice.

A video of her playing her song Jungle in her house last year has been seen 5.4 million times on YouTube.

This weekend she will show Shepherds Bush Empire how she does it, and she already has a bigger gig booked at Brixton Academy next year. As if you needed another raisin (sorry) to check her out now.