‘Our music doesn’t have to be defined by our gender’: The rise of Australian female music producers who rule the industry
Electronic-driven pop and dance music has long been dominated by men but a raft of Australian female producers are now marching to their own beats.
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Australian electronic music producers Alice Ivy and KLP are our biggest new musical exports right now.
If you’ve caught Apple’s latest Shot On iPhone ad, the retina-busting burst of colour is soundtracked by the Melbourne-based musician’s track In My Mind, featuring the vocals of another Australian chart star Ecca Vandal, and is currently screening in more than 170 countries and on millions of devices worldwide.
Meanwhile, KLP and her good mate Stace Cadet have a global smash on their hands with the kinetic club track Energy blowing up in America and the UK, with more than six million streams on Spotify alone.
Alongside pioneers such as Nina Las Vegas, Alison Wonderland and Anna Lunoe, a raft of emerging beats and melody makers including Ninajirachi, Sycco and Tkay Maidza are not-so-quietly reshaping the sound of electronic pop music.
After releasing her debut album I’m Dreaming two years ago, Alice Ivy and her team fielded emails from around the world asking a question which illustrated a common frustration experienced by female producers and artists.
“In electronic music, I do feel there’s a gap between male and non-male artists that needs to be closed,” she says.
“After my first record came out, particularly Chasing Stars featuring Bertie Blackman was getting quite a lot of radio play, we got a bunch of emails from managers asking ‘That Chasing Stars song is so good, who produced it?’
“I’m not singing on the song but my name is on it, so what else could I have done on it except produce it?
“From the beginning, there’ve been so many misconceptions and a lack of understanding of what I do just because of my gender. And I feel like male producers don’t go through that.
“Having to explain that is like ‘She’s pretty much Flume, she does what Flume does.’”
Alice Ivy’s second album Don’t Sleep features predominantly female and non-binary collaborators including Thelma Plum, Montaigne, Ngaiire and Odette simply because they were all the artists on her wishlist.
“I feel like I had a really positive experience in every single one of these writing sessions and as an artist when you go into this, producers as well, you’ve got to leave the ego by the door and just be real. If there’s a hierarchy in the studio, it’s not a vibe, it’s not as fluid,” Ivy said.
Plum said writing and recording their track, the haunting, emotional song Ticket To Heaven relished the experience of working with a female producer in the electronic music space.
“We spoke about this afterwards, when we were having a little spritz in (Kings) Cross, the differences between working in a studio with men and with women – and it’s something I’ve spoken about with my friends who do the same thing – and there is something about it that feels special. And really safe,” Plum said.
“I remember thinking afterwards I didn’t feel as exhausted as I thought I would.”
KLP, who mentors aspiring female and non-binary artists through her Richochet song camps, said fearlessness and collaboration has helped drive her career through its triumphs and missteps.
Energy reflects her mission to put positive, feel-good vibes out into the world when people are restricted from clubbing or dancing together because of the pandemic shutdown but still want music to lift their spirits.
“Our music doesn’t have to be defined by our gender and we can be acknowledged by our strengths and accolades without having to point that out,” she said
Leading Australian DJ, producer and label owner Nina Las Vegas, who has been built her brand of club bangers over the past 13 years said electronic music still faced barriers to mainstream acceptance despite its pervasive nature in culture.
That is reflected in the fact KLP and Stace Cadet’s energy has yet to feature in the Top 50 despite amassing millions more streams over the past four months than some current Australian pop singles which are in the ARIA chart.
“I think we are at a point where platforms and companies and media are all wanting to do the right thing but then I will see things like a Listen Local campaign on Spotify and someone fantastic has curated this great playlist but wow, there are no dance tracks,” Las Vegas said.
“I don’t know why dance is the category that’s slipped through the cracks when it’s in every gym class, shopping centre, every radio station is playing it and look at the TikTok top 10 – it’s all dance songs and pop songs are getting inspired by us.”
She signed rising Central Coast electronic producer and DJ Ninajirachi – who released her first music while still at high school – to her NLV Records last year.
Ninajirachi recently dropped her Blumiere EP which marked a transition to more pop-flecked electronica from her harder-edged club beginnings.
Like the majority of her generation of electronic musicmakers, she taught herself how to make beats and create soundscapes thanks to access to technology in her teens.
“I remember when I was really young, like in primary school, I would play with GarageBand on my mum’s computer … and when I was in Year 7 and started being allowed to use YouTube more, I found all this crazy electro house and complex music,” she said.
“And I think I remember like one really hectic lightning bolt moment. I was watching Porter Robinson’s Language tour documentary on YouTube and at 12 I’m thinking ‘Oh, my God, I want to do that. so I just watched all the tutorials I could find.”
Sycco, who has become a Triple J staple with her electronic-influenced pop singles Nicotine and Dribble, agrees technology has been a driving force in levelling the playing field for aspiring producers despite starting off with the guitar as her primary instrument.
“When I first started music, rock music was what I was listening to but then I saved up all year and got a Mac and started producing on there and that’s when I started to open the door into the keyboard world,” she said.
Hip hop star Tkay Maidza straddles the worlds of electronic and pop music with her latest EP Last Year Was Weird (Vol 2) and exemplifies the drive and ambition of the rising crop of artists in the new music movement.
She tapped breakthrough American rapper JPEGMafia for her track Awake just as he was “blowing up.”
“I see myself as a person that dreams big so I think I’ll always have the ultimate person for each feature on a track,” she said.
“We were lucky to get JPEG on that track just as he was blowing (up) and it has become like a big moment for me because I’m sitting in the world that I want to sit in.
“So many unknown artists get their big push because they pushed a bit harder and it worked out.”
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Originally published as ‘Our music doesn’t have to be defined by our gender’: The rise of Australian female music producers who rule the industry
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