EP Walkthrough: Donatachi chats his bubble debut EP, Taste

Since his debut releases through Sydney club label/party-throwers Sidechains back in 2016, we've constantly been mesmerised by Donatachi's ability to stay ahead of the pack; his productions and remixes consistently forward-thinking and left-field as he marries PC Music-adjacent bubblegum beats with saccharine sweet pop melodies, often featuring collaborators which over the years, including Tashka, Gustine and more. His approach to bubbly electro-pop feels like a guilty pleasure of sorts, but it shouldn't - it's just fun, club-ready pop music that'll never fail to lift you up and put you back on your feet when you're feeling down.

Last Friday welcomed the long-overdue arrival of his debut EP, Taste. Inside, are six tracks that encompass the many sides of Donatachi and his productions thus far, from quick-firing hyper-pop to Dance Dance Revolution-inspired instrumentals to forward-thinking, finger-on-the-pulse collaborations - internet sensation Slayyyter being an example. "Pop music is important to me because it is always evolving, and this EP is a love letter to a genre that is indefinable, a reflection of a sound that is constantly shifting, and a homage to the forward-thinking artists I aspire to. I’ve been blessed to create these songs with so many talented friends and it would not be what it is without them," he says on the EP, you can feel (and hear) how this has shaped the EP as you dive into its quick-firing beats and soaring top-lines.

Throughout the EP's duration, you can hear Donatachi's experimental approach to pop music which always puts those bright hooks front-and-centre, capturing rising pop talent from both near and far and warping them for that distinct Donatachi touch - creative and boundary-pushing, but unashamedly pop. You also get a sense of the friendship that drives the EP's many guest spots. Enlisting guest collaborators can be tricky and often, you can feel when the artists have no chemistry - it feels stagnant, and lacking the emotion of that friendship that gives collaboration its extra special touch. On Taste, however, you can feel that chemistry. This isn't an EP built upon A&Rs and boardroom-built collaborations, but one centered around friendship.

Get swept up in the EP's colourful rush below, with a track-by-track EP walkthrough from Donatachi himself. Grab the full EP here.

Do What I Want feat. Evangeline

This song is the perfect opener because it really helped me to define Donatachi as a project and I am so thankful to Evangeline because her voice and writing were so instrumental to the process.

The lyric ‘doing what I want’ is so simple but has grown to mean so much to me, I had almost decided to give up music all together when she sent me the top-line and it really triggered something, I knew I had to make a beat to reflect the feeling of the song. I always want the Donatachi sound to be forward thinking production and experimental soundscapes with a classic pop sensibility and this song perfectly encapsulates that.

In Love feat. Rosebud Leach

I had to work with Rosebud again because we clicked so well when we worked on one of my earlier singles, Bubblegum. She has an angelic voice, and she sounds even more incredible with hard tuning and harmonizers that I love experimenting with.

I had always wanted to be a singer myself and I learnt a lot of vocal fx in attempts to make myself sound good, but now I see autotune as an instrument and approach it like playing the guitar, you can communicate so much emotion and thought through it. Like most of my music, I started the beat in Japan where I was constantly hearing 80s ballads everywhere, and the last chorus is really inspired by that, I just wanted Rosebud’s reverbed vocals to seem like they were looping forever and ever.

Taste feat. Genes

This beat started out as a bootleg of an underrated Britney Spears deep cut Anticipating which I loved so much but could never seem to finish on my own. The first time I met Genes we got drunk at a Maribelle show and knew instantly that we had to make a song as fun as the night we had. I had this idea of creating a song that literally sounded like bubblegum pop, and it ended up fitting perfectly with the top-line that she wrote. I know it sounds like it’s about oral sex, but it’s actually about us being lactose intolerant and longing for triple cream brie.

Precious Metal feat. Rromarin

I had been working on this beat on and off for almost a year before I sent it Rromarin and I have so much attachment to it. We met through mutual friends and she had this ethereal vibe that I was so drawn to and I knew she had to be on this weird new age trance track I had put so much work into. It’s a seemingly straightforward dance beat but it’s laced with pops, squeaks and processed textures from old horror movie foley.

Rromarin has one of the most stunningly perfect and unique voices I’ve ever heard and I was so lucky to have her on this. We bonded over star signs and spirituality, which is why I think this song has some new age trance flavour to it.

Crush on U with Slayyyter

This is definitely one of the most experimental releases I have ever done and I am really proud of the sonic palette. Slayyyter and I were both on Boy Sim’s Pink Noise mixtape and we really bonded over our love of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I sent her the beat I had made on my old dying laptop (RIP) and by that night she had written the song and recorded the vocals in her closet. In one day we made the kind of forward-thinking pop I had been dreaming of creating my whole life from our own bedrooms.

DDR

This felt like the right way to end the EP, something completely Donatachi, no verse/chorus topline to carry the song, just a sticky elastic beat and some HI NRG 90s rave synths.

The song is named after a Japanese arcade game Dance Dance Revolution and the soundtracks are full of techno, hardstyle, euphoric trance, d&bs with sugary sweet vocal samples and it just felt right to pay homage to this huge influence on my music.

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