‘I Know Why I Took My Time’: Ninajirachi and Daine Go 1:1 to Talk Rise of Electronic Music in Australia
Few artists feel as naturally in sync as Ninajirachi and daine, whose separate journeys are marked by a shared creative energy
Few artists feel as naturally in sync as Ninajirachi and daine, whose separate journeys are marked by a shared creative energy.
A triple j Unearthed High finalist in 2016 and 2017, Ninajirachi been releasing music officially since the age of 18, citing her primary influences as “nature, fantasy, science fiction, ideas of occult and magic.” It makes a whole lot of sense when you hear her music: each song is a fantastical world unto itself, like a hyperpop soundtrack to the world’s most deranged video game.
And since 2023, she has been steadily breaking into the US market — the electronic artist was one of four Australian acts recently named on the Coachella 2026 lineup. Having also recently won the coveted Australian Music Prize as well as three out of eight wins at this year’s ARIAs, it’s no wonder we’re seeing her name everywhere.
Daine, meanwhile, is Australia’s coolest purveyor of hyperpop. Praised by Vogue, BBC Radio 1, Kerrang!, NME, and more, the “future emo icon” has a growing collection of irresistibly stylish songs. Their music drifts between genres with ease, pop, metal, and punk notes being wielded with glee.
With mentors like Charli XCX, daine’s artistry shines most intently in their music, as if the listener is in the studio with them, diving deeper and deeper into the world they have so intricately crafted. Named among Rolling Stone AU/NZ‘s Future of Music list in 2024, daine continues to push their sound into bolder, stranger, more expressive territory, always a step ahead of whatever anyone expects.
To celebrate their chemistry, Ninajirachi and daine sat down together to discuss their parallel careers, shared internet upbringing, finding their sound, and how so much can come down to a person’s intuition.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
View this post on Instagram
Daine: We have these parallel timelines and it’s been really interesting over the years witnessing both of our careers moving along. It’s been a privilege to know you throughout all the craziness. I think our little timelines sort of glitch into each other sometimes, we have similar worlds, we’re kids of the internet, should we talk about that?
Ninajirachi: Yeah well, a lot of people probably don’t know that I worked on one of your songs five years ago. Like, lot of people are like, my God, they finally collabed on “It’s You” [2025], which we did, but the seeds were sown in COVID. I know that you’re potentially working on your first album and I just made my first album, but both of us released a lot of singles and EPs for years, even a mixtape as well.
I’m personally really glad I did that, I feel like I made my album at the right time, but doing a lot of interviews for the album, [I had] people asking, “Why did it take you so long to make an album?” I know why I took my time and I’m glad I did, but I was wondering if you have any feelings about making your first album and if you had a similar experience of “well, now it’s the time?”
D: My god, it’s so scary. Yeah, I have no issue admitting that I’m terrified and I think that I put it off this long because I feel like an album is something that needs to have a cohesive concept and a sound. I think that my sound has been kind of all over the place and I’ve been trying to find what it is. So like mixtapes and EPs are just what naturally comes out, because there’s not that pressure for it to be this fully fledged out thing conceptually.
I don’t think that I’m ready for an album, but I think that there’s never going to be a time when I am. And I think with all things, especially [in the] music industry, you need to jump before you’re ready. I wasn’t ready for a record deal when I was 17. I wasn’t ready to do music at all. I wasn’t ready to perform in front of people. I didn’t know how to do anything, didn’t know how to sing. But I just have to do this even though I don’t feel ready, so I kind of have that same mentality about an album. And I don’t think I chose this, I fell into it. And my team is just like, ‘yep, it’s time mate, get to it’. What do you think was the catalyst for you that made you feel like, okay, now’s the time?
N: Yeah, relate on a lot of what you said… It was just an inkling for me. I made the song “All I Am” and it was a jam session with a bunch of people, and some of them I was only meeting for the first time that day.
D: That was with Ben Lee, right?
N: Yeah, it was with Ben and a bunch of other people. This was in 2023 and I was still working on Girl EDM at that point. But it felt like, this song is really nice and feels like the next thing after what I’m working on now. ‘Cause in the moment I was like, “Well, this is really cool. Maybe I should put it on Girl EDM.” And I thought, “No, this is for after that.” So there was a lot of crossfade between the projects. I don’t really like to have ‘errors’. I like the idea that everything is referencing itself and everything’s intertextual.
D: I was about to say your project is like it’s an ecosystem and always has been and it’s like feeding itself.
N: Thank you. I guess that was the song where I could imagine ten of these all fitting together. And then that obviously didn’t end up… that was just the first idea I had, that song. And it just felt like the right time. I don’t know what it’s like to feel maternal, but maybe it’s like when people just wake up one day and they’re like, “All right, I’m ready to have a baby.” I’ve never felt that, so I can’t really say if that’s the relevant comparison, but yeah.
D: I also think that your album came at the right time, in terms of world events and the cultural climate right now, because I think there’s a lot of anxiety and mass psychosis around the threat of post-humanism that we’re experiencing kind of for the first time with AI. And your album, I think consciously and subconsciously, it’s this really comforting way of looking at it because it’s a way that people can have fun and connect with the idea of post-humanism and computers and have fun in that instead of being terrified.
And it just feels sort of cheeky and comforting, do you know what [I] mean? Was that something that you thought about it all? Because obviously we both love our computers, but this AI apocalypse vibe, there’s something very strange going on in the 21st century that we’re experiencing and a lot of people are freaking out, but it’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
N: My album ignored that part of it all a bit, I don’t know if I address that kind of stuff head on in any songs. I mean, I would like to now that you say that.
D: I think not touching on it was great because it made me think about it. I was like, “Oh, this feels good.” And then it’s like, “Well, why does this feel good?” This feels good because it’s in a way some alchemical shadow work vibe, you’re transmuting something into something more positive.
N: Maybe the omission of it is what it was actually, I guess because that’s kind of the headline a lot of the time at the moment when people were talking about the internet and the future, it’s a lot of scariness. But I only really made songs about the stuff that I like or even just my experiences from when I was younger when all that stuff didn’t happen. I wasn’t like consciously ignoring that topic, but maybe the omission of it did make the album feel more hopeful, that’s really cool that you say that. Thank you.
D: I think that’s why it’s so successful though, because it’s what people needed at this exact moment. We need that comforting, we need that hopeful nostalgia futurism in a time where it’s just like post-humanist terror, you know? It’s like we’re in a sort of unsettling post-humanist absurdism vibe culturally so what is resonating with people is nostalgia and fun human-ness, I guess. And I think that your album transports us to a time where computers were really fun and exciting.
N: That was just so important to me growing up and I think they are really fun and exciting now too, there’s always going to be like doom and stuff if you look for it and like in the headlines, but I still love my computer now and it’s kind of magical what we can do.
D: There’s never been a time to be alive like this, you know. It’s the best it’s ever been.
N: In your music, I kind of see a lot of themes of post-humanism and magic and the occult and you have 11 hour scream time. How much of that is influencing the music you’re making currently, or which older versions of daine are you pulling from at the moment, what from your discography feels the most current daine?
D: I don’t know, because I don’t know where I’m at currently and starting the album is really confusing to me because I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what sound I want to lean into. I think being chronically online has informed a lot of my sound, but I think it’s just like intuition, I want to reflect what’s in the collective unconscious, and make people look at what they’re feeling that they might not realise they’re feeling.
At least conceptually in my lyrics, I’m trying to explore things that are a little uglier and more uncomfortable, but in a really cheeky, fun way. And just like push boundaries. Even though I feel like it’s really hard to push boundaries nowadays because everything is just so intense and over the top in media, which is kind of frustrating. But then again, I think the only way to make something feel like it’s boundary pushing is to also like understate things in a way. And I think I want my sound to just be really simple and direct.
N: How do you decide when it comes to that, pushing boundaries and stuff, how do you decide how much to share of yourself and how much do you decide to take from your own life and share publicly? Where do you find the bravery to do that as well?
D: I think first of all, you have to pretend that you’re really brave in this job. You have to do everything really scared. Do you feel like you’ve been like scared a lot, in your career? Like you’re like, “I don’t know if I can share this, this is like really vulnerable kind of thing?”
N: I did when I first started putting my voice on my songs, because it used to be just music.
D: I still can’t sing in front of people properly. When I have a session with someone I’ve never done a session with before, I’m like, “Oh my God.” But in terms of how personal everything is, I kind of try to obscure my own feelings in my music, but then I look at the lyrics and it turns out that subconsciously I’ve actually spilled all of my business in there.
I try to write just from like a random place, but in doing that, I think I’m actually just pulling from my subconscious on accident and then end up revealing way more than I would have revealed if I was just writing direct lyrics. Yeah, it’s an interesting catch-22. Even when you try not to write about your feelings, they will show up in an even more intimate way. Do you feel like your intimate thoughts and feelings end up in your songs on accident when you’re not even trying to pull from those?
N: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I’ve been trying to make that happen more though because even if it’s not something I’m going to share, it makes the process of making music more interesting because I think a lot of the time all people need to make their most interesting music is already in them. And that was something I found making my album. I’m just talking about what I felt, not necessarily what was the most popular songs, but the moments of songs that felt the best to me were always when I feel like I tapped on something, like a theme or a lyric that was a bit like scary to say, even if it didn’t read that scary to someone. Do you make music to find meaning or to express meaning that you already know?
D: Ooh, dude, both. What about you?
N: Both, but I think more the former for me. I think I’m more finding meaning. I’m just pressing buttons until I discover something, or noodling with my voice until I discover something. But you find the latter.
D: Yeah, I’ve spoke into a lot of artists about this. A lot of people that I look up to creatively, they describe themselves as like, “I’m just like a vessel or an antenna.” And a lot of artists will say that the songs just come to them and they’re not making the song, it’s just coming from this other place and they’re just the channel for it. Which I definitely feel, because I look back on everything that I’ve written and I’m like, “How the fuck did I write that? Like that hat didn’t come from me at all.”
So I think that, not to be a woo woo freak, but I think that when we’re writing a song, it’s coming from this collective consciousness, this like God force that already exists and we’re just tapping into something… I mean, obviously it is creating something, but it’s creating something that’s ancient and intelligent, not something that’s new. This is something intuitive and that we just have this deep inner knowing of how to do it, it’s not like a learned skill.
Do you think that you were born to be a musician or people in general, do you think people are born to be musicians or that it’s just this intuitive part of being human that like everybody has the capacity for and is honestly meant to do when they are the most uninhibited version of themselves?
N: I think everyone was meant to do it to some degree. Obviously being a public facing artist, like a career artist, where you tour… that is a whole other job, that’s a whole separate thing. But in terms of just actually making, I think everyone can and should do it at some point in their lives. It’s funny, I love these conversations and talking to people about this exact topic because everyone does have a different visual idea of what the feeling is. Like some people say “I’m a vessel, I’m an antenna, I’m a scribe.” Everyone has like a different visual for that feeling, but the the fact that everyone has one means anyone can have one, you know what I mean? Anyone in the world can tap into that ancient God force some way, like my visual is a river above my head and I stick my finger up and touch it.
D: That’s so beautiful Nina.
N: And then like there’s maybe the God forces on the other side of the river above it and we meet there halfway. I feel like for making music I just have to kind of show up to the river and just hope that we’re both gonna meet there.
D: I think that’s a really good way of putting it. I definitely resonate with that a lot.
N: Yeah, some people talk about it like they have the genie in the wall, like the original etymology of the word genius, but everyone seems to have a different idea of the same thing, which makes me think that really anyone can do it and everyone should, because you know, people don’t have to make music as a job or to even release or show people. You can make things just because you’re doing it to find meaning or transcribe something from your life. When you translate it into lyrics or something, you said, you’re like, ‘Shit, I didn’t even realise I was thinking about this, but there it is on the page.” And that is a really cool experience that everyone should and can do.
D: Yeah, it’s a really good practice for you know, Jungian shadow work kind of thing. Even if you just start with the idea of exploring a dream or something. And again, a dream is something that comes to you. I feel like dreams and music are two sides of the same coin in the way that they just, they appear and they visit you and they’re a reflection of you. But they’re also from this ancient God-force thing. I also think about children and how intuitively everybody, I don’t think there’s any child in the world that doesn’t sing and dance, and people forget this.
I’ve been babysitting a lot in New York and I have noticed through that that kids make up melodies all the time, what I’ve noticed with toddlers is they’re just always singing something random. They’ve barely been alive and their natural instinct is to make up melodies and words and to draw and to have these ideas. Kids accidentally say things that are really poetic all of the time.
So when people are [like] “you’re so amazing for being a musician, I don’t know how you could ever do that, I could never like it’s so impressive,” I’m like, “Dude, I guarantee you when you were two or three years old, you were doing the exact thing that I’m doing.” It’s something natural and human, it’s an organic process and it’s not this huge, scary skill that you need. Skill level is totally irrelevant when it comes to music anyway, of course there’s very technically skilled musicians, but the musicians that I resonate with, they’re doing something intuitive at the end of the day.
N: It’s exactly what you said, just take the guardrails off your mind. You did this as a kid, you made music when you were three years old, whether you knew it or not. You mentioned New York, which I know you just moved to, how is that? I’ve got a million questions in one really, but what do you miss about Australia? And what do you love about New York? And what in New York makes you feel like an alien? And in New York, what do people think of Australian music? What are the preconceptions that people have?
D: Well, it kind of pisses me off that people don’t really have an idea of Australian music because I think we are so awesome and we come up with such great artists. They’re like, “Oh, I’ve never heard like any Australian music,” I’m like, “Yes you have — INXS, Savage Garden, Kylie Minogue, like what are you talking about?” And they’re like, “Oh shit, I didn’t even know that they were Australian, I thought they were American,” and I’m like, “Dude, we’re lit!” There’s something in the water out there, I guess our music industry is a lot smaller, like our music industry doesn’t even crack a billion dollars a year compared to the US industry probably breaking hundreds of billions. That’s my rough estimate.
I don’t know. But in New York, I definitely feel like an alien. I kind of miss how utopian Melbourne is and how things feel accessible, homely. But New York reminds me a lot of Melbourne and reminds me about all the things I love about home because it’s just a creative, connected, walkable place where there’s lots happening all the time. I’m starting to really love it. Finding my feet, it’s a process. Like people are always talking about moving to New York, but no one’s talking about how you’re actually gonna have to adjust and find new friends.
You’re gonna have to be really resourceful. You have to come from generational wealth probably, otherwise you’ve gotta really hustle. I love being in movement, it feels like tour isn’t over. I spent most of this year traveling and being in New York, I still feel like I’m in this momentum and holiday mode. I know you spent a lot of this year touring as well. What’s it like being back in Australia? What are your favourite things about home?
N: Yeah, we’ve both been on tour this year. Hey, I think we might have even just missed each other like every time we were going somewhere.
D: We need to get better at like routing this, or we should just go on tour together.
View this post on Instagram
N: Well, wouldn’t that be something? We definitely have gotten better at routing it together. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It’s nice to be back in Australia. I did the Australia shows first, they were pretty much straight after my album came out, I went to New Zealand the following weekend and did the first shows there and Australia was all the first ones, and then I went to America and did heaps there, came back. Now the set is more dialed in, I just feel more familiar with everything. So I’m excited to play in Australia again. You know how it is, every time you play a show, it like feels more locked in then the first ones, they’re always kind of going to be a test run in a way. A very rehearsed test run, but yeah, it’s nice to be back. I know what you mean, Australia’s super cozy.
D: I think two years ago, you just moved to Melbourne and I was asking how it was and you were like, “It’s just so utopian.” And that’s now the word that I use to describe it all the time.
N: It is pretty utopian. Even my American friends that have come to visit have said that. Australia is so, so nice and cozy, but, but also I understand what you say about New York. It’s amazing, I hope you’re having the most lit time there. I mean, it seems like it. What would you say is like the main thing that made you leave?
D: I fell in love. It’s that simple. My partner is out here and he’s awesome and he’s lived here for like 15 years. But I needed this, I tried to move to New York in 2023 and I crashed out. I was lonely and I was bewildered. I was like clumsily socialising and it was weird, but it was really good as well. Then I had to come home and then I went on hiatus and then blah, blah, blah, blah. Like now this time I feel like I’m ready and I have more of like a base here. But I’m really excited to go home in two weeks for the holidays.
N: I’ll see you in Melbourne, mate.
D: There’s just been so much buzz about you constantly, you’re absolutely inescapable and it’s amazing. Seeing you at The Roxy in Los Angeles, I’ve never seen a show that lit, genuinely, they are obsessed with you. What does that feel? It’s been such a long journey for you. You’ve been at it for seven, eight years?
N: Yeah, so crazy.
D: Now there’s this huge buzzy moment where big crowds are screaming and everyone is really into it. Does that change how you feel about your project or the whole journey?
N: Thank you for saying that. That’s cool. Thank you for being at The Roxy show, it was awesome. I don’t want it to change how I see anything because nothing about my practice or mentality really changed when I made this album that brought all of that new attention, really. I just kind of locked in more. I don’t think there’s anything that needs to change. I just hope I can maintain the conditions and state of mind that I used to make this work that I’m really proud of and that I really like and that I think other people have enjoyed.
That’s always kind of been the focus, I guess, but now that’s, particularly the focus. I just got to maintain me and keep doing the same thing I’ve always kind of done, I guess. It is kind of crazy because the tour was so fun and there were some venues that I did where I played the same venue like a year or 18 months ago, and there was like ten people there. And then I would play them again this time and they were oversold.
And I met some of the people who were at the ten people shows and that was really cool. I could have never expected it would go like this so quickly. But yeah it is sick because any one of these shows a year ago would have been the best show of my life maybe, and now people have learned the songs and been singing them and it feels awesome. Says you though, you had an amazing tour and you play live, I was DJing like I’m doing a lot less than than you are, you’ve got a whole band. It must be the best being able to travel around with them.
D: We drove all the way back from Seattle to New York, which is crazy. I like to think about art and a career in music as more of a practice than performance, people focus so much on the performance aspect, but really it’s a daily practice in how you live.
And I think that your consistency in doing that has made your career now get to the self rolling wheel stage where the momentum is feeding itself and it’s just continuing to flow on. So you actually have to do less work than you were doing before to maintain it because it’s now this self-nourishing ecosystem which is so sick and so inspiring, so congratulations.
N: Thank you.
View this post on Instagram
D: That was my first ever world tour. So I did not feel ready and I was like, “What is happening to me?” And it was tough coming out of a really hard year last year mentally, but it got me out of myself. I actually journaled a year ago that I would go on a road trip with this boy that I was talking to on the internet and that it would be amazing.
And then somehow we ended up doing a world tour together… I just think if you have an idea and you write it down and you delude yourself into thinking, “Okay, even though I’m in severe debt right now, I have no job, I’m in and out of hospital, my life is in the fucking shitter, I’m screwed, but I wanna go on a world tour next year and I also wanna fall in love with this guy and travel the world with him.”
I didn’t think any of this was going to happen, but it did happen. Do you ever think about how your life is this really global interconnected thing that is so beyond anything you could have imagined?
N: Yeah, it’s really absurd. I definitely know what you mean. It’s kind of ridiculous, especially because it always just kind of starts as a hobby for everyone. You kind of get assigned this stuff more than chasing it. It definitely feels crazy. You’re a very powerful manifesto, everything you just said is amazing. How is your love influencing what you’re making at the moment?
D: Love now is like something that’s inspiring my music, it used to be pain that was the main thing or romantic suffering being in my head about a relationship or a guy, but now I am really connected to another human being, he’s really good at music, we have seen so much together, traveled the world, he’s in my band. It’s interesting. I’m always worried when I see a couple is in a band together, they’re like making music together, that it’s messy. Like, don’t shit where you eat.
But sometimes when something’s really healthy and you’re inspiring each other and have a really intimate understanding of each other creatively, it can actually be fucking sick. One of my last questions for you is, have you started getting hate, any hate whatsoever? How do you feel about stuff like that?
N: I don’t think I get hate, I think people have just been really nice and gracious to me so far. But someone sent me a hate tweet about me a week or so ago, and I quote tweeted it because I thought it was funny. Like wow, I’ve entered that echelon, you know what I mean? I’ve never been perceived like this before is the way I of took it, I guess. My last question for you is what do you think people misunderstand the most about daine?
D: A lot of people get this idea somehow that I’m a villain or that I’m really rich or powerful in some sense, which I’m flattered by, but I’m pretty vulnerable and I’m very afraid and I have no qualms with telling the world that I am quite existentially terrified and sensitive and I love it. I’m leaning into that. That’s one of my gifts that helps me make music and transmute these confusing feelings into art. I’m not the evil genius mastermind that some people think I am.
N: It’s always a projection, some people can maybe just feel threatened. I feel like you deal with it really well.
D: This is actually the final question now. What’s one misconception about you that you’ve seen?
N: I’m so new to being perceived. I’ve put out music for so long with only a handful of people looking at it who have all looked at it with really kind eyes. This is the first time anything I’ve made has reached maybe beyond my immediate circle. I don’t know if I’ve seen any big misconceptions so far…
D: Is there something that you think that people might not know about you or something that would surprise people?
N: I guess because a lot of what my album is about is that like I make music with my computer and that’s the thesis or the mission statement of what I’m communicating. Every now and then I’ll meet someone or I’ll have an interview or have a session or something and they’ll ask, ‘so who produces your music?’ And I’m like, “Oh my God, I failed, I’ve like failed to communicate.”
D: It’s because only 3% of producers are women. That is abysmal. It’s not women’s fault, it’s just not a thing that’s culturally encouraged. Girls don’t think about becoming producers.
N: No, totally. And that’s why I’ve never ever taken it as shade. I more just take it as, I’ve failed to communicate what my music is about if that’s what they’re asking, but it’s chill.
D: I think about you as a producer first and foremost. So like, I don’t know what people are talking about. People just ask dumb questions all the time.
