A bit of wholesomeness to start your day…
The Aussie music scene is a promising wealth of talent to say the least. A reassuring garden of support and collaboration, it has a certain magic spread throughout its soil that our local acts bloom and flourish with; and two artists that are blossoming with that stardust are none other than Sydney queens Kota Banks and Ninajirachi, and they radiate its luminescence more than ever on the deluxe version of their 2020 EP True North.
Unveiling three additional tunes in what’s one of the most dynamic projects to hit the Aussie music scene in recent years, the two innovators (and super adorable best friends) have thrown out the rulebook and set it on magical fire on the latest release. From the mind-bending production on tunes like ‘Middle Of The Night’ and ‘Holy Water’ to the beyond-fierce vocals on ‘Secretive!’ and ‘Kissing U,’ the duo have the full range of the ethereal world mapped out on the latest release, and it shows in spades that above all else, they’re committed to the craft (as well as each other). And luckily for us, they’re gonna be showing us that magic in person, making laps around the country for some bumping shows that are gonna totally blow the socks off anyone lucky enough to be in attendance.
We caught up with the duo over Zoom to get deep on the deluxe, pick their brains on what it was like to create together and get super deep into How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days (It’s the best rom com ever and we’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).
Check it below.
You guys are one of the most prominent BFFs in Aussie music. Just to start things off on a wholesome note, when was the moment that each of you realised that the other was a total legend and that you were properly head over heels?
Kota: Good question. The first time we worked together we ended the session after like half an hour because I felt really sick. We must not have hit it off very well because we didn’t speak for another year after that [laughs]. I think the first time I met you Nina I definitely thought you were cool and I really respected your production, but it was a slow burn friendship.
We went through a lot of the same experiences with boys and just other shit in our lives at the same time. So, it really formed a special bond over time, which I think is much more precious than being obsessed immediately. So yeah, it took its time, but we flourished.
Nina: Yeah, for sure. I definitely loved Jess’s work straight away, even before I met her. But initially, I would say, I was a little bit intimidated by you, Jess, because I just thought you were so confident and cool, and so feminine, and I was just spooked by it a little bit. I don’t why, I think I am just intimidated by people who are really outwardly confident, when I don’t know them straight away, but then, yeah, the more we worked together-
Kota: You realised I was a loser!
Nina: No! [laughs] I think I just take a long time to settle into friendships and stuff anyway, but it just helps that we were working together all the time, so it kind of fast tracked it.
I also wanna mention your legend of a label head Nina Las Vegas who’s sort of responsible for you two finding each other. What role has she played in the formation of the True North project, as well as your own individual journeys as artists?
Nina: She’s been so integral to this. We probably wouldn’t have even met if not for her. Or if we did, we would have met under completely different circumstances. She’s also done so much for us as individual artists for ages, before we even met. Maybe she didn’t even know that this would happen when she set us up. She was just like, “Oh, you guys should do a session together because you like similar music.” And then, what do you know! But then even after we had all these songs and we were like, “Oh, we might do a project,” she was the one who sat us down and asked us, “What’s the ethos of this? What are you guys trying to say? The music’s sick, but what do you want to do with this?
And she just helped to drive it, even helped hook us up with the artist who did the artwork, the engineer who mastered it, and all of the extra team who came on board. She’s just been such a great centrepiece to this.
Kota: I pretty much echo Nina’s sentiments exactly. She manages me, and she’s the best manager in the whole fucking world. She’s incredible. Yeah. She’s been integral in so many parts. She has so many different hats that she wears as well. She’s the master of everything. She has her A&R hat, and I trust her ear so much, and she has great taste in music. So it’s amazing to be able to get feedback on everything that Nina and I make.
She just knows everyone, and she’s a social butterfly in the purest sense. Everyone just adores her, and she just forms really meaningful connections and is always putting people together. She’s like the Cupid of the music industry, I like to say, and just as a woman in music who’s really experienced and been through it all, she has the most valuable stuff to share with us. She’s done music videos, she’s been on the radio, she’s done this, she’s done that, so she’s just, in every sense, the most valuable member of our team. We love her.
Nina: Yeah. And she’s just so generous with all of that experience. So many people in her position gate keep their expertise, but she’s just so generous and selfless, and just wants to lift people she believes in up, so we’re so lucky to have her around.
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Now to dig into the album, it’s lush, complex, empowering, fun and just really honest. It feels like writing a project like that would just be totally transformative. Is there a way either of you have changed throughout it all?
Nina: Before collaborating with Kota… I’d never worked with someone consistently for a year long, or anything like that. I’d never built a collaborative relationship before, and this was my first experience of that. I found that after months of working with the same person, you can experiment more and compromise less. All that stuff. It just makes me excited to collaborate and do more of that.
Kota: I popped your cherry. Your ongoing, collaborative, cherry.
Nina: Exactly [laughs].
Kota: I was kind of the same with you, Nina. I’d never… Actually, no, I worked with Swick a lot, and that was amazing. But it’s just a super different experience working with a woman, and having something be a collaboration in the sense that we were both putting our names to it. So I guess the dynamic was different when I worked on my previous projects, because Swick was just as much a part of the collaboration, but it wasn’t a joint project. So I think there’s something that comes with that. It’s a girl band type vibe.
And when you ask how we grew together, there were so many ways, both as collaborators and friends. When you work with someone on an ongoing basis, you get to know how you can best communicate with them, and the way to get your message across. You can compromise and bring out the best in each other and just push each other forward, and just compliment each other in the room. So in that sense, I think there’s such value in an ongoing collaboration, just putting time into something with one person, as opposed to just going around and doing little fleeting sessions like that, in a personal and professional sense.
But also individually, it was just great because I’ve never felt so comfortable with a collaborator in the room. I think when you feel comfortable and secure and you just feel completely free to be your truest creative self, you just feel like you can express anything you want. So that’s why ‘Slytherin’ for example probably came out the way that it did. It’s ridiculously unhinged. I don’t know if a Kota Banks song would have ever produced fruit like that, for me, lyrically, because I just wasn’t in that mindset. It’s what your collaborator can bring out in you, energy-wise, in an intangible sense, just as much as the physical attributes or qualities that they have. So it was so fruitful in so many ways, both personally and as a team.
I think I saw you say in that Women In Pop interview Kota that the main message of True North for you was creative liberation. How did that mantra affect how you approached the project and how you worked on it over time in a sonic, lyrical and even emotional sense?
Kota: I’ve been obsessed with the idea of just being free in the studio, or being free in my creative process, because it hasn’t always been the case. Because I’m super sensitive, just as a person and as a creator, which is why I’ve always usually preferred to write alone, because other people’s energy just affects me so much. It can throw me off, it can power me forward, it can push me, it can do one of a million different things.
So I’m feeling so great with Nina, and it’s not just that we connect as collaborators, but she has a very unique, special energy that is very rare in a person. I just love that about her. So she brings something out of me that’s really unhinged, and I have access to a part of myself that I don’t always have access to. So Nina kind of owns that part of me, as an artistic collaborator.
But it fed so much into the process, even the way that Nina and I would push each other and even though we were definitely writing a pop EP; structurally, sonically and lyrically, we both never took no for an answer, or the first idea was never enough. We’d be like, “Okay, well, what section can we do next? Should we slow down the BPM? Should we speed it up?” We threw the rule book out, and we did that on principle, and we did that a lot. I think we held each other accountable to keep pushing each other forward as well. Which is awesome. What do you think, Nina?
Nina: I felt really accountable. I hadn’t really collaborated a lot up until I started working with Kota, and Kota is just so fucking fast. It’s a bit stupid how fast she writes. She’ll just be chilling, I’ll be working on a beat, and 15 minutes later, she’s like, “All right, I’ve got the pre and the chorus.” And I’m like, “Oh my God. Okay.” So I felt this need to just be really on my A-game as well.… She’s so fast and prolific, and everything that comes out is amazing. So I feel like, “All right, let’s go, let’s go, go, go, go,” and it has made me faster in general.
I’ve implemented that practice into when I go to other sessions, and when some people say, “Oh wow, you’ve produced that so fast,” it’s like, “Yeah, because I’ve learned how to do that from working with Kota.”
I’m not just saying this because it’s the latest single, but ‘Kissing U’ is my absolute favourite off the deluxe. It’s got such a ‘How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days’ type feeling. What were the vibes like in the studio halfway through that session and when you were both caught in that groove?
Kota: Before we say anything, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, is my favourite fucking movie ever. I could recite that movie word for word. So that’s awesome!
It’s the best movie ever!
Kota: Love it. But to be honest this is the only song that we didn’t write from scratch together. So I had the chorus and the pre on the piano, but I just didn’t know what the hell to do with it. And then you, Nina, were just the perfect person to make it into something.
So I went up to the Central Coast one day, and we started this session on it. And it was a struggle for the first 20 minutes, and then once Nina got what I was trying to go for, the sentiment of the idea, then she just started with these really groovy sounds and it just flowed really naturally from there. We actually worked on the verse lyrics together a lot for that one, too. So it was a really fun session. I think we were both… were we feeling romantic at that point in our lives Nina? Was there anything going on at that point.
Nina: I’m not sure, but I remember we were really giggly because, well, I won’t repeat what the lyrics were, but I remember we were making up joke lyrics for the verses and they were a little bit silly. We were really giggly, and maybe we did have some crushes going on…. Very cute day. Like you said, I didn’t figure out what you wanted at first, but then once I was like, “Oh, she means this kind of production,” it just happened very quickly.
That is the simplest song, production-wise, easily, on this whole project as well. Or maybe ‘Vice Versa.’ Like in ‘Kissing u,’ there’s maybe less than 10 instrumental layers, whereas other songs like ‘Middle of the Night,’ will have over a fucking hundred. ‘Kissing u’ was just so nice and simple and easy. It’s such a pleasure song.
The production heights you go to on this project are mind-bending, like you have these lush ambient chords and gentle verses on ‘Holy Water’ but then you have these dark hip hop beats on ‘Slytherin’ and even a two-step vibe on ‘Opus.’ It’s literally impossible to describe this EP. Was there ever a worry about sonic cohesion at all?
Nina: I guess we were never too worried about them sounding different, because it was the same voice and the same producer on every song. Obviously Kota has her writing style and her voice, which is distinguishable and you can hear that in her singing. I guess I have sounds and methods that I like, so I would subconsciously use those over and over again throughout all the tracks. We just like so many different things, so we were like, “Oh, fuck it. This project is, if nothing, it’s just something to have fun with. So why don’t we just have fun with it, and throw in everything that we can that we enjoy?”
Kota: That’s exactly it. Also, I was just so excited. I think I wanted Nina to flex all of her production chops, because this bitch really can produce it all. There’s really nothing she can’t do. This doesn’t even scratch the surface, as well. There’s so many songs that we haven’t released, or that I’ve heard Nina work on for her own project. She’s the best producer in Australia/ the world, in my opinion. So it was so sick, I think that was the point, I think we’re both really dynamic as artists, and I often view myself as a chameleon in an artistic sense. I think I’ve struggled with cohesion in the past because I don’t want to fucking to be cohesive. I just want to make everything, and like be completely free and not have anyone have a problem with it.
Nina: Same goes for Kota, she can just write anything. We both like a million different things. So every day that we were writing, I’d come in and try to produce something different from the day before. And every time she would be like, “Okay, I’ve got something,” and then just lay down the perfect thing for the beat, no matter what it would be. And like you said, there’s songs like, ‘Vice Versa,’ and there’s songs like, ‘Slytherin,’ and she just embodies both of them. So what can you do?
Kota: Me and Nina, we do all these interviews. We just get on the Zoom call, just gas each other up for half an hour straight. It’s our modus operandi.
Nina: It’s so true. We mean it from the heart.
You’ve got another round of shows coming up next month. How are we feeling? What’s the difference vibe-wise between now and November last year?
Nina: It’s going to be way more fun, because people will be standing! We played two sit-down shows last November, and they were great, so, so great. They were sold out, everyone there was amazing, but it was just a little hard, because we both love upbeat work. We both make a lot of upbeat music and we both love to jump around on stage and hype people up. We couldn’t really do that though, because they were all in their seats, and it just would’ve been a bit awkward. So we rejigged and made a show that worked for sitting down, and that was really fun. But it’s so exciting that this time we’ll get to just make it a big party and just hype people up, so that’s going to be fun.
We also played ‘Secretive’ as an unreleased demo at the sit-down, and the only reason it came out in the end, and the whole reason the Deluxe thing happened, is because we got so much good feedback on it, which is just so sick to me. This time we get to actually play ‘Secretive’ as a released song. We have a longer set this time as well, so we get to play more tracks, and we’re playing around Australia too. There’s so many new things that are going to be on this tour; I’m super excited.
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Just to cap this off with some wholesome stuff, what are you most thankful for in the other, and how do you see each other’s creative journeys panning out as a part of this duo and as solo artists?
Kota: I love this interview. It’s my favourite interview I’ve ever done, Nina.
I really am thankful for her in every sense. It’s funny, because they often say ‘don’t mix business with pleasure,’ but it’s been the best. It’s been such a unique experience in that I’ve never found the two more mutually inclusive. I think as we’ve grown as collaborators, we’ve grown as friends, and vice versa. So I’m just thankful for… just Nina, man. She’s just a very rare, special and unique person. She has this energy, she’s so humble, but she’s a genius and she’s so intelligent, but she’s so young, and she’s so supportive and just, it’s really hard to embody it in a sentence. I guess everything that I’ve said throughout the interview, that can be a reference.
I get put on the spot and I freak out. I’m like, “Fuck, I’m so overwhelmed by every single quality about Nina that I can’t put it into words,” but that’s what I’m thankful for. Just everything about her.
But in terms of how I see her solo career panning out, obviously I think she’s a genius, and she’s just a really unique artist. Even Nina’s top lines by themselves, and the way that she sings on her tracks, and writes lyrics and melodies, that’s disgustingly amazing in itself. She’s really a one-woman show. She does it all. So I’m really excited and I think the possibilities are endless, and she can really do whatever the fuck she wants. So I’m just excited to watch. I know whatever she does is going to be huge, but I don’t want to limit her, or pigeon hole, by making any predictions you know.
Nina: That’s too nice. That is really too nice. I’m just going to say all of the same things and I don’t know how I’m going to add to that. I guess I’ve also just learned so much about being a woman from Kota, because you feel very big sisterly to me, Jess, in so many ways. I’ve learned so much about the music industry and collaborating, but also about navigating relationships and other random life stuff. And even spiritually, I’m so grateful for Kota as a sounding board for my life. I feel like we can just talk stuff out and do therapy with each other, which then translates to our songwriting together, which is just so special. And I’m so grateful for that because she’s just so kind and open-minded and ridiculous, and just so talented.
And I’m going to go on the record now and say that I just can’t wait until she’s writing for the biggest pop stars in the world, or not even the biggest pop stars, the biggest any stars, because she can write anything and she’s such a hustler. I’m on the record now. I can’t wait to see it in the years to come, because we all know it’s going to happen. I’m putting it out there.
Kota: I love you, girl.
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Lastly, we’re at a time in Aussie music where people are finally waking up to the immense talent our female artists have. Considering you guys have been doing this for a little while now and are both powerhouses in the Aussie scene, what would you say to upcoming female artists who are where you might’ve been five years ago? What advice would you give to the Ninas and Kotas out there working on their own True Norths?
Nina: I would say to keep going, and that the craft comes first. And even if you feel like you’re doing so much and not getting anywhere with it, just keep going. Because you just don’t know when you’re going to strike gold or when you’re going to meet the right person. You might’ve already met the right person, but you don’t even know it yet. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So, all you can really do is keep going and focus on the craft, and your love for it, before anything else. Because in the end it’s just about good music, or good art, in whatever capacity. Don’t let anyone intimidate you or make you feel like you shouldn’t. Even just do it for fun, do it for love, and the rest will come after.
Kota: Love that. I would say all of that as well. But also, I remember when I was really young, I had all of these flickers of inspiration that I felt were really unique, but sometimes I would surround myself in sessions with people that would dim or dull it, or not bring the most creative thing out of me. And I think just being really protective of your unique, creative energy, and working hard to cultivate that into something even more unique, as opposed to letting that spark dwindle in the wind; just really working on not being afraid. If you have a gut instinct, creatively, to just flush it out and take it as far as you can and just make art that’s really going to contribute in a unique way to your community. I think that that would do so much good.
Ninajirachi and Kota Bank’s deluxe version of True North is out now. You can buy/stream it here. Be sure to cop tickets to their rescheduled Sydney and Melbourne shows to see the two BFFs in all of their magic up close & personal.
