Sitting right at the forefront of the new wave of talented and genre-bending electronic producers coming out of Australia is GRMM and he’s packing a hot new EP that’s poised to take him to new heights.
GRMM’s debut release, ‘Electrify’, his Number 1 on the iTunes Electronic Chart, amassed over 800k SoundCloud streams and featured in the top 50 most played songs on triple j for 2014. Not bad for a first release.
GRMM is now back with his debut EP, titled Die Young, and we caught up with him to give us a walk through what’s sure to go down as one of the most anticipated electronic releases of the year.
Electrify
Electrify was the first track I did with father dude so it will always be special to me. The song came about after I contacted Father Dude on facebook when I heard him on a friend’s track. I sent him the instrumental and a few days later he sent me back Electrify. This track wasn’t inspired by anything else. At the time I just wanted to write something different and something a bit random.
Level Up
Father Dude and I decided we would team up again and try to make ‘another Electrify’. I was inspired by a lot of the new music coming out on soundcloud that for me pushed the boundaries of electronic music. Level up is a reflection of electronic music that pushed boundaries by mixing genres. Although by comparison it was very similar to Electrify, I used simpler instruments and sounds which effectively made the song more a lot more chilled.
Die Young
I found Wild Eyed Boy on Cosmos Midnight track ‘Snare’ (which is a personal favourite) and decided to reach out to Wild Eyed Boy for vocals by sending him a very basic instrumental of Die Young. Over the past year I’ve been listening to Maribou State a lot and I think you can hear that in Die Young. Their sound design inspired me to use unusual sounds like the weird sweeping bass synth in the track.
Gold
Gold was the last track I finished on the EP. I really tried to make this one similar to Electrify and Level up in a structural sense which seemed to have worked really well in the past. The main synth in this track was inspired by flumes track ‘On Top’, which has that really interesting wavy pad. I remember hearing Erin Marshell on Paces song ‘Julian’ and her voice just stood out to me. When we gave her the instrumental of Gold, she managed to nail the topline pretty quickly. Her tone is a perfect fit and adds energy to the entire song.
Travolta Cool
I remember hearing Pham and Yung Fusions track ‘Movement’ and being inspired by the use of triplets in the track that give it that swing. Initially the song didn’t have vocals but it sounds loads better with Phil Slabbers smooth vocals and they completely changed the overall feeling of the song. This is probably the most the strangest but coolest song ive made to date in my opinion.
Circles
I’ve been a huge fan of a track by Gorgon City called ‘Real’ for a long time, which featured Yasmin. Her vocals that feature on Circles gave it a really cool RnB vibe that I think makes this track what it is.
