It’s difficult to believe that Eddie Johnston is just 25.

The songwriter and producer behind Lontalius has already released four EPs and three albums, plus several more EPs and many remixes as his electronic producer alter-ego Race Banyon. More than many artists will release in their careers.

His music has attracted over 110 million streams, with over 650k monthly listeners on Spotify, and yet Lontalius is better known in America than his homeland. He was signed to Brooklyn-based indie label Partisan Records for his first album I’ll Forget 17, then spent five years in Los Angeles, collaborating with the likes of Grammy Award winning producer Om’Mas Keith (Frank Ocean, Erykah Badu) and Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy, Modest Mouse) on his sophomore album All I Have, which he released in late 2019 upon his return home to Wellington, New Zealand.

The homecoming allowed Lontalius to begin a new season of independent songwriting, with the knowledge gained from his collaborative projects embedded in his mind to draw upon. Moving to Auckland in March 2020, he almost immediately went into lockdown in his new home, emerging two months later with a new collection of songs. He took these songs