Track By Track: E^ST - Get Money! EP

Forget money, get this EP, it's a pearler.

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It's been a huge year for Central Coast artist E^ST. From touring to studio time to collaborating with artists such as Club Cheval and Japanese Wallpaper and now releasing a new six-track EP, it's safe to say the teenager has pretty much skipped past the "one to watch" radar to get around this girl now. She also just released a video clip for the title track of this EP, featuring fellow rising star Mallrat.

To mark Get Money!'s release today, E^ST sent us a little behind the scenes look at the six-tracker and how it came to be, and if you're vibing you can grab it from iTUNES.

HERE COMES KARMA

I wrote this song with Jon Hume, who I worked with on The Alley. We found that old strings sample in one of Jon's sample packs, and as soon as we heard it we knew we had to build a song on it. I guess this song is basically a big "fuck you" to judgemental hypocrites… Like don't judge and criticise other people's actions and decisions when you're such a big fuck up yourself (but ya know, probably don't do it anyway).

THE MONEY SONG

This is a mini cover of the song from the musical Cabaret! I grew up in the theatre, and I'm always looking for ways to bring it into my music. I've been using the original as an interlude in my live set, and then thought it would be cool to somehow get it onto the EP. So I recorded the vocals in Garageband, made a shitty stomping beat and added some sounds here and there, and then I sent it to Jon to see if he could make it sound a little better (which he did, cheers man).

GET MONEY! featuring MALLRAT

This song came about while I was working with Jim Eliot in the UK last year. I love my life and I love what I do, but sometimes I get this anxiety over some of the decisions I've made, like leaving school and committing my life to such a risky and unpredictable career path. And this song is me reminding myself that I've got one life to live, and I shouldn't waste it doing things I think I "should" do. But after writing it, it felt like something was missing from the song, like it needed another element. My label then discovered Mallrat and asked her if she would be willing to try out a verse on it, and I'm so glad she did because she totally completed the song, and now we're really great friends.

ALL THE GIRLS DRINK

After deciding on using The Money Song as an interlude, I got to work on making an interlude from Get Money! into Screentime. I wanted there to be an old school Hollywood vibe to it, so I scouted out some old Marilyn Monroe samples, and chopped them up over some strings and a beat. Not wanting to deal with months of trying to get clearance to use the samples, I wrote a new script and found a voice actor (Steph Smith) to perform it. I then sent the parts over to Christina Thiers, who added a few things and just generally made it sound better.

SCREENTIME

I wrote this song with Paul Herman and Justin Broad in London. After touring and playing festivals, I realised that I wanted more high energy songs in my set, and I wanted to move away from the strictly electronica sound, so we pulled out some guitars and got cracking. This song is telling someone who's always causing drama and just generally being manipulative and fake that you ain't got time for that (fun drinking game: take a shot every time I say "ain't" in this song).

E^ST is playing a heap of shows with Japanese Wallpaper in August, check the dates below: