Did your journey with music begin when you attended festivals as a kid?
I was going to festivals quite young, between 4-5 years old till I started school so music wasn’t much of the focus back then, but I loved the atmosphere, the lasers, and the bass. Later when I got a bit older I got a CD player and started making my own CDs to listen to (I was 8 or 9). Then the iPod wave happened which elevated that, looking back I guess it was a precursor to DJing.
Then when I was 14 my dad took me to a festival called Rainbow Serpent. That was when it clicked that electronic music was what I wanted to do with my life. Before that, I knew it was music but I was writing a lot of lyrics and thought maybe I’d be a different type of artist.
I went from living in the mountains and attending a standard suburban high school to moving to the city and going to a music, arts, and drama school. I dropped all my normal subjects (math, science, history, etc.) for music and started playing instruments, writing lyrics, and composing on Logic Pro.
Once I finished high school I got on to Ableton, started DJing, and released music. I did that for a couple of years in Melbourne then came for an extended holiday to Berlin in 2018 (still going haha).
I wasn’t doing a whole lot with music during my first years in Berlin, a lot of sound development was happening because what I was hearing at parties was all new to me. I knew I needed to do some serious work if I was going to create something that would set me apart from everything else. It was probably the best thing I’ve done for my music, taking a couple of years to pull back and reassess what’s going on and what I want to convey to people.
When 2020 happened I knew it was time it get some shit happening as there was finally this break and potential for a new wave of sounds. I bought a Digitakt and got on to making live jam videos and started doing more work with hardware in my productions. This elevated my music to a different level and also made me have to reprogram (again) how I produced since I was now making tracks from jam stems sometimes 30 minutes long.
When the jam videos started to take off online it forced me into getting tracks done from certain videos and gave me a new booster. I was doing all this without even thinking about playing live since the pandemic was fresh and it was all strange. By the time the pandemic cleared, I had a whole new following based on these jam videos and tutorials I was putting out. It didn’t click for me till I was at a bit of a rock bottom moment with music that the obvious direction is playing live. Once that clicked a bunch of things unfolded in front of me and it was super clear this is the way to go.
You came to Berlin from Down Under for a 5-week trip 5 years ago and just decided to stay. What made you stay?
There were a few factors, I was looking for an ‘out’ of the craziness I was living back in Australia. You wouldn’t think so, but my life chilled out a huge amount when I came to Berlin. In Aus, I was DJing all weekend every weekend and it felt like the party was never going to stop. At 22 years old this is fun but I knew it was bad news if I wanted to take myself seriously as an artist. In Berlin, I had way more control over my life and I felt like I was in a place where I could steer my future in a better direction.
I knew a lot of people who were in town and a fair few who lived in Berlin, so that made it feel instantly like home even though I’d never been. I also never bought a return ticket either because I thought I’d go travel Europe, that didn’t happen haha.
I felt like I was in the right place no matter what musical direction I wanted to take. So many opportunities for growth and personal development in this city. It was a crazy choice since I was not prepared at all, but there was something that kept me here. It’s crazy since I only really hear stories of the opposite, but the club scene and party scene never really took over my soul here in Berlin the way it did in Aus. I have developed such a business relationship with clubs and event spaces and that has been the difference between keeping my mental state intact when having to be in nightclubs all the time. I thank Berlin endlessly for teaching me that.
You’ve been a DJ for a while but recently decided to focus on being a live act. Why?
Honestly, I had been stuck with DJing for a long time. It became a major source of anxiety for me because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play anymore or if it represented my taste at all. I just knew it didn’t feel as authentic as it should. When I started DJing Instagram and social media weren’t like it is now and post-pandemic I felt fake trying to sell myself as a DJ when I knew I didn’t have the same passion for it that a lot of my friends and colleagues do. In saying that I do still love it and will still use it as a medium to play my music and music that I love.
So in 2023, I went back to Australia to visit home for the first time since the pandemic. I had a lot of time to think. I initially thought DJing was the only way I could be performing. But my roots come from live music and live jamming, and I never felt very authentic as a DJ due to this. Having the realization that what I am doing in my bedroom with my machines for fun, I can do how I would as a DJ. It clicked in my head that this is what I want to do next.
Once I communicated my decision to play live publicly It happened super quickly. I got picked up by the agency Cura Berlin and within a month of being back in Berlin, I had gigs confirmed for Watergate, Tresor, aboutblank, and Hoppetosse.
Doing this run of shows in such a short amount of time, at some of the most renowned clubs was wild and has been a huge motivator for getting live hardware music into clubs
What do you love doing besides music?
I have a super hyper brain so if I’m not doing something creative I like to be in nature to recenter myself a bit. I love wild places and get a lot mentally out of going somewhere other people aren’t.