Selfless Orchestra - Terra Nullius: Embodied
w/ Boss Arts Creative
The Rechabite
Friday, February 20 2026
Perth collective Selfless Orchestra launched their sophomore album, Terra Nullius: Embodied, at The Rechabite, with a live performance that exquisitely wedded music with video, dance, and performance art, delivering a searing vision of modern Australia through a post-colonial lens.
The evening was constructed as almost a double-bill collaboration with Boss Arts Creative, a First Nations-led not-for-profit which, though there was a deep intersection of themes and topics with their headliners, took a much more traditional approach to how the art was presented. The night was very much of two equally committed but significantly different halves.
Boss Arts began their set with all members of Della Mob emerging from the audience, singing a cappella, and making their way forward to The Rechabite stage. Co-founder Della Rae Morrison introduced the troupe, acted as MC, and gave a brief history of the collective.
The flow of the performance began with Della Mob, split into several individuals, reformed as four-member Rhythm Tide, and then returned to solos. One of the artists stated it had been a dream of theirs to perform in tonight’s venue, and at multiple times someone on stage lit up with absolute delight, only for that to be reflected with interest from the rapt audience.
From gentle Noongar-language lullabies through nineties-style rap to haunting acoustic melodies akin to the most modern of singer-songwriters, this portion of the evening was a fantastic display of talent bubbling away in Boorloo, potentially on the cusp of an epic breakthrough.
All singers acquitted themselves superbly, but mention must be made of two to keep an eye on into the future—Iconyx and Bella-Rae. The former probably brought the biggest personality of the evening, with impeccable crowd work between some fabulous songs, whilst Bella-Rae gave the night powerful, soaring vocals, with both her influences and heart showing to the world blatantly, authentically, and unapologetically.
The brief fulfilled—a celebration of mob, culture, everything, and all the important stuff—Boss Arts and their performers descended back to the audience to await what was to come.
Album opener Kingdom Come began gently, with chirping crickets, the sound of raindrops, one guitar, and a campfire shown on the video screen above—Selfless Orchestra had arrived.
A project that contained minimal vocals, with those that were in the piece mostly subsumed under the music, Terra Nullius: Embodied often acted as an immersive soundscape to almost lose oneself in, while drawn deeply to the themes the band wished to explore.
For long stretches of the visual display, there was a strong sense of wonder at Australia’s landscapes, flora, and fauna, harshly contrasted with power stations, the mining sector, and the destruction of the original natural state. There seemed a distinct effort to find film footage from the 1940s to 1960s, either black and white or jarringly overexposed, an anachronistic golden age for the country during which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures were minimised to near non-existence via government fiat, both at federal and state levels.
At another point, coverage of the Queen’s first royal tour as monarch was split with visions of Indigenous daily life from the same era—very filtered, very paternalistic, and still very colonial. At no time did the visions intersect—all the people meeting the Queen were white, middle-aged, and mostly male. It was as if two different nations were passing each other in the long night.
Four dancers came to the centre of the venue, to a raised B-stage outlined with sand, to accompany the mournful, jagged music and often challenging visuals. They interpreted several of the tracks via movement, most strikingly during We All Bleed the Same and Yeelirrie, about the Maralinga nuclear tests and the mining of uranium. The dancers fell to the ground, one by one, as a narrator spoke of birth deformities, while the archival mushroom cloud grew on the screen behind, which, taken all together, gave an absolute visceral gut punch.
Selfless Orchestra had given the passionate audience exactly what it seemed they desired: an intense musical journey they could either dance to or ponder over—or both. Violin and cello were to the fore for most of the night, yet the piece also had memorable contributions from didgeridoo, flute, and even handpan.
A wonderful and immensely engaging production, both as an album and a live performance piece, one can but hope the team does not wait another five years until their next full release.