Ninajirachi is having a dream run with her debut album I Love My Computer \u2013 and between leading this year\u2019s Aria nominations with eight nods and the rapturous crowds at sold-out shows, she knows it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to live up this one before I move on, because it might be hard to come back to this headspace and time,\u201d says Nina Wilson. \u201cI don\u2019t want to rush into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Released independently via NLV Records this August to international acclaim (including the Guardian\u2019s own five-star review<\/a>), I Love My Computer\u2019s high-octane, innovative take on 2010s EDM has helped position the 26-year-old as Australia\u2019s next big dance export.<\/p>\n Not that she\u2019s an overnight success. Since gaining prominence as a Triple J Unearthed High finalist in 2016 and 2017, Wilson has steadily established an audience through a series of playful, floor-filling releases, as well as sets at EDM festivals across the US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But things have ramped up of late. In the past three months, Wilson has toured relentlessly across the US and Australia, locked in slots at both Coachella and Primavera, and started raking in trophies ahead of the Arias this Wednesday, where she is up for album of the year, breakthrough artist, best solo artist and more.<\/p>\n I Love My Computer has already won both Triple J\u2019s album of the year, alongside the prestigious Australian Music prize (AMP), a $50,000 award inspired by the UK\u2019s Mercury prize given \u201cpurely on artistic merit\u201d.<\/p>\n Wilson says the AMP \u2013 in addition to alleviating her budget, which is \u201cin the red\u201d after the two-month US tour \u2013 validated one of the major driving forces behind the album.<\/p>\n \u2018Because I was in this semi-isolated place with no friends who liked the same music as me, I felt like it was happening just to me\u2019 \u2026 Ninajirachi. Photograph: Passive Kneeling<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted to make an Australian album,\u201d she says. \u201cI use my accent when I record, and there are a few lyrics that couldn\u2019t be talked about by anyone else in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s quick to place her music within a lineage of Australian electronica<\/a>, having grown up on Flume\u2019s glitches, Pnau\u2019s irreverent house and the future bass perfected by Wave Racer, who mixed I Love My Computer.<\/p>\n They\u2019re all part of Ninajirachi\u2019s wonderfully bizarre grab-bag of sounds, an idiosyncratic mix of crystalline synths, sirens, mechanical whirls, eurotrance, obnoxious EDM drops and more intricate sequences that Wilson jokingly calls \u201cgirl EDM\u201d.<\/p>\n Pooling together both banal and monumental memories, I Love My Computer features lyrical references to Supr\u00e9 shorts (iPod Touch), failed music assignments (Sing Good) and even an Australian computer that was the first in the world to play music (CSIRAC) \u2013 a collage of Wilson\u2019s adolescence on the New South Wales Central Coast.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the hours of \u201cme and my computer hanging out till late\u201d (to quote iPod Touch) that shaped I Love My Computer, right from the moment Wilson accidentally stumbled across a Porter Robinson track online at 12 years old and was immediately hooked to EDM\u2019s sugary drops.<\/p>\n Sometimes Wilson wonders whether she would have still spent hours scrolling, learning everything she could about this distant subculture, if she lived somewhere more vibrant.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Saved for Later<\/p>\n Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was discovering that [music], it really felt like an original experience,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cBecause I was in this semi-isolated place with no friends who liked the same music as me, I felt like it was happening just to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone can relate to the specifics of becoming a preteen electronic music producer because of YouTube. But I Love My Computer\u2019s propulsive tracks tap into a more universal sense of childlike excitement, of waiting and wanting to connect to a world bigger than your surroundings \u2013 even one that\u2019s dangerous, as on Infohazard, an eerie eurotrance record where Wilson recalls seeing a decapitated man online.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up [in Australia] was a big inspiration for my music, but it\u2019s almost because of the absence of what was there, and having to fill it in with internet surfing,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s why people from different places and cultures have liked the songs? Because we all grew up on the internet together, whether we knew it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018There was a time when I never thought I\u2019d even have a picture of myself on my artwork\u2019: Ninajirachi on her album cover for I Love My Computer<\/p>\n For Wilson, I Love My Computer marks a new artistic frontier. \u201cThere was a time when I never thought I\u2019d even have a picture of myself on my artwork before,\u201d says Wilson, who appears on her album cover for the first time, albeit with her hoodie sleeve covering half her face, while she\u2019s swallowed by a tangle of digital detritus in her childhood bedroom.<\/p>\n \u201c[Before,] I didn\u2019t have my voice on my music. It felt very separate from me, the person. I just couldn\u2019t have even imagined getting to this point, being this comfortable being perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n While Wilson continues to adjust to bigger stages and more eyes, she\u2019s hoping to keep her own focus on what\u2019s worked so far.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve released music that I like for so long, even if not many people paid attention to it. I just hope I can keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ninajirachi is having a dream run with her debut album I Love My Computer \u2013 and between leading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-297996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}