NINAJIRACHI - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us a bit about Ninajirachi.

NINAJIRACHI

I have been producing music since I was a child and when I was really young I would upload songs to Soundcloud with whatever random artist name sounded good to me at the time. When I was around 16, I started uploading as Ninajirachi because I love Pokémon. I put my first song on Spotify using that name when I was 17 and it blew up, so the name stuck. I’m really glad that it was the one that stuck, because some of the others were pretty dumb lol.

I am from a small coastal town in Australia where there is no electronic music scene at all, so I got into electronic music and producer culture entirely via the internet as a pre-teen. In school, my only friends who liked electronic music were on the internet and to me it was a secret world untouched by my irl friends and life. So I do like that my artist name is half Nina, which is my real name, and half Jirachi, which is a fantastical thing that only exists in the digital realm. 

I think it’s really cool when artists have highly curated projects that are like performance art or an ARG, but I don’t think Ninajirachi is really like that. When I’m producing I am just trying to make my own favourite music by distilling and combining all of the different things I like.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Talk to us a bit about your ‘Second Nature’ EP.

NINAJIRACHI

It’s 12 songs that I started and finished between 2019 and 2022. I’d only released shorter EPs up until 2022 and I had so many spare demos that didn’t fit on any other release, but all sounded pretty good when put together in a sequence.

Generally, Second Nature is less DJ-friendly than most of my other music, but the song Start Small is one of the more dance-adjacent songs on there and it’s still one of my favourite things I’ve ever made.

I really love the ambient moments too, and there’s so much more room for those on a longer project like this one.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

A lot of your recent art direction has been more ethereal in nature...

NINAJIRACHI

True.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us a bit about this stylistic preference.

NINAJIRACHI

The Second Nature artworks were made by Chinese artist Jingxin Wang who I discovered because they had made cover artworks for my friend Daine. Jingxin’s style incorporates lots of sci-fi and fantasy elements. I am a massiveeeeeeee fan and so happy we got to work together. We also met in person this year which was amazing!

All of the music I’m releasing this year features cover art by Japanese artist Jyoucyo, who I discovered on Twitter. Jyoucyo’s art always features a natural landscape or the sky and it’s really ghostly and beautiful.

I love working with artists like Jingxin and Jyoucyo who very much have their own style, identity and online presence. It feels like a collaboration and meeting of worlds just like it is when I collaborate with a music artist.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

You have an upcoming fourth EP set to release in November.

Talk to us a bit about it.

NINAJIRACHI

Yes! It is out now and Jyoucyo did all of the artwork like I mentioned.

It’s 5 songs and they’re all amazing. I made them with my friends Ravenna Golden, Jack Laboz and Kota Banks and it was literally the most fun I’ve had making music in years. All of the songs are very DJ friendly and have been going really well at my shows.

I love Second Nature, but making it felt more grueling and I lamented over some of those songs for months and years. I am in a much better headspace now than when I made Second Nature and 4x4 didn’t feel like so difficult, it was easy and fun.

All of the 4x4 songs were made in the last 6 months, except 1x1 which we made in Nov 2022, and all of them were literally made in a day (other than the final touches n mixing n stuff). 

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us a bit about the track Undo U.

NINAJIRACHI

I made Undo U with my friend Jack in April 2023 and it was the first day we had ever met. We were put together in a session in Los Angeles and we literally made the song in a few hours.

In Australia, the music industry is comparatively very small and there aren’t as many collaborative songwriters and producers.

Most of my life I have produced music on my own, so it’s fun to work overseas and meet musicians like Jack, who isn’t an artist and instead prefers writing and producing for other artists.

Being a good collaborator and being a good artist are two very different things and those kind of musicians are such skilled collaborators because they literally do it all the time, I learn a lot from working with them.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Why do you choose to explore more abstract / avant garde themes within your EDM tracks?

NINAJIRACHI

It’s not a choice, I just make what sounds good to me.

I am influenced by EDM because that’s the music that got me into producing as a kid, but as a fan I don’t really listen to EDM unless it’s a bit left field or weird or something.

It’s just my taste. The whole reason I got into electronic music was because it sounded completely novel, and I have the most fun producing when I am trying new things.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Do you think the mainstream EDM landscape is changing towards experimental aesthetics? 

NINAJIRACHI

I hope so !! I would love to see the mainstream favouring more interesting artists.

It also kinda feels like the “mainstream” as we know it is dissolving though, because thanks to the internet peoples’ tastes are more diverse than ever and there are many waves passing at a time and so quickly.

People my age and younger have grown up online and been able to discover every kind of music imaginable so easily, which has never been so possible before.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What sounds / styles have you been exploring recently?

NINAJIRACHI

I was in Amsterdam last month for a songwriting camp with a lot of European and UK dance music artists, and I made heaps of music there that was a little more in that vein.

But generally I’m still making a lot of music that sounds like it could’ve fit on 4x4 EP.

I think I’ll stay in that world for a little while yet.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us a bit about your collaboration with ISOxo.

NINAJIRACHI

ISOxo is my good friend and a crazy talented producer. He is also really kind and humble, I’m so happy seeing him have so much success.

We were in the studio together in April this year and he played me his album demos, we talked about the themes etc. and I played him a few demos too.

He really liked the shypop demo vocal (it didn’t have a title at the time, the name shypop came later) in particular because of the lyrics so we took it apart, rewrote some lyrics and produced the instrumental around it.

It’s awesome that we could meet in the middle with this song because for me, it’s very EDM, and for him, it’s very left field.

I got up during his Hard Summer main stage set to debut the song a few weeks before it came out which was mental.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

On your YouTube account you made a short about voice memos you use to create rough outlines for tracks

NINAJIRACHI

Yeah, all of my songwriting starts in voice memos.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Talk to us about creating in this incremental process.

NINAJIRACHI

When I’m songwriting it feels like collaging, because I rarely sit down with intention to write a whole song in one go and actually pull it off.

That’s only happened to me a few times and when it does it feels like magic. But most of the time I think of melody and lyric ideas while I’m going about my day, not working on music at all, like walking to the shops or something, and it’ll only be a verse here, a hook there, sometimes just a single line, etc.

When I’m recording these scraps throughout my day I’m not thinking about what the next part should be, or what the beat underneath it should sound like. I’m just collecting materials.

Then I might think of a verse that connects to a line I recorded 3 months ago, and omg that connects to that hook idea from July 2022, and all the scraps come together very suddenly like a collage to form a song. That’s how it happened with SHYPOP. 

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What’s next for Ninajirachi?

NINAJIRACHI

I’m playing a handful of shows over the Australian summer and then coming back to North America to tour my new EP.

I have soooooooooooooo much planned for after that, I don’t want to spoil it yet, but I can’t wait for you to see !!

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Ninajirachi Links: Website - Instagram