A Quick Chat with Raindrop

Your new single "I Might Be Wrong" has just been released. Can you share the process behind its creation?

A few years ago I got to borrow my friend SPOD's Linndrum, and it was the first beat that came out when I started playing with it.

I spent a while forming the track around this new found sound I'd fallen for and decided that I needed to get a Linndrum of my own. Once I recorded a demo I sent it to SPOD, who helped kraft the drum pattern even further and gave it a bit more of a Daft Punk- style Edge. I then took it back to continue sculpting it lyrically with Hunter Atari, who filled the gaps and helped tell the story I wanted to tell. I also spent a lot of time working on a new vocal sound for this song as I wanted my voice to sound almost alien- like, which I feel is where I landed. This helped convey the detachment from reality that I wanted the song to have.

I then had the opportunity to go to The Grove Studios to finish the track off with Scott Horscroft, who mixed the song for me on the day I took it to him. It was loads of fun.

Legendary music producer Scott Horscroft recently worked on some new songs with you. Tell us a bit about this?

In 2022 I was showing my brother-in-law Dan Sultan some new tracks I'd recently recorded. It was around the time he was recording his recently released Self-titled masterpiece that Scott was mixing at the time. Hearing Dan's songs was a hugely inspiring thing to me as I really look up to him in so many ways, and one day when we were hanging out listening to some mixes of his songs and my demos, Dan was like, "Hey , can I send a track to Scott to see if he would mix it? "

I was then contacted by Scott soon after who asked me if I'd like to go to the paradise that is 'The Grove Studios' to work on a bunch of songs with him. This was a pretty huge deal to me at the time as Scott had produced some of my favourite albums ever, like The Sleepy Jackson's 'Personality- One was a Spider One Was a Bird' and The Presets debut album ' Beams' just to name a two!

Scott helped take these songs to new levels and brought a certain electricity I'd never heard in my music before. His deep understanding of rhythm and its effect on the movement of a song was mind blowing. He taught me lots of very cool tricks and we were done mixing the tracks by the time I left The Grove. 

Who's another Australian artist you're a huge fan of and why?

The Avalanches are a group that have always had a huge impact on me. I find their music to be very much like a soundtrack to my life. Their production skills with sampling are still revolutionary to me in every way. Their ability to craft songs that compile such a range of genres , singers and textures but yet still sound so "avalanche" is so special to me. I love that I can hear their music and it's not the singer's voice that makes me realise I'm listening to them, something that is very rare in the world of music. It'd be a real dream to collaborate with them one day.

The lyrics of this song were written by Hunter Atari. Can you tell us a little bit about this mysterious collaborator?

Hunter and I have been writing music together for a long time now.  It started off when I was writing my first album and was having trouble writing lyrics that conveyed the emotions of some songs, so she stepped in and as soon as the first few words were written I knew from then on that she could write lyrics to any  melodies I'd come up with.  Since then our partnership grew into further creative collaboration by her being a major part of the art direction, production and management of Raindrop. She writes lyrics to most of the music I write to the point where I feel a song is the most 'Raindrop' if she wrote it.

I’m really proud of the upcoming video clip we’re about to release as it was the first one directed and shot by her to go with a video game she wrote the concept for. A big strength of Hunter's is her ability to see so much deeper than what’s on the surface of an idea, to be able to challenge something that always results in a stronger outcome. It seems that every time we combine our abilities , our chemistry works perfectly and it’s something I’m very lucky to have and very thankful for.

What's coming up for Raindrop?

Raindrop has so many exciting ventures on the Horizon. I will return to playing live shows again this year with a more electronic approach to the stage. The Linndrum will now be my drummer, my Juno 106 will now be my bass player, and the rest will be revealed when you come to the show!

I have more material ready to release that I am so excited to put out into the world. I am currently putting together the final pieces of a mini album that I plan to release soon that will include my latest 2 singles 'Feel Enough' and 'Might Be Wrong' along with a bunch of other incredible new tracks.