Emily Smart, vocalist for Adelaide pop-electronic duo Nakatomi, says their upcoming six-track, self-titled EP is the product of a new-found love for collaborative songwriting.
“We know all these great people that are great writers, let’s just see what happens when we get in a room with them,” Emily says.
“We had, I think, about 12 or 13 artists or producers that came in with us and spent the day writing and seeing what would happen.
“We did a lot of collaborations last year and these are the ones that sort of developed the most. They were all sort of worked on in the same period, so I guess they all have a similar feel and vibe but they were all written with different people and in different places.”
Most of these collaborations occurred when the duo were part of Music SA’s Artist in Residence programme at Adelaide’s St Pauls Creative Building.
One individual who played a heavy hand in the writing and production was JP Fung, a writer and producer who has formally worked with Silverchair and Last Dinosaurs. “[JP's] very efficient.
"We had an artist in residence collaboration last year, so we were working with Music SA and we got him down to spend about five days with us working on the tracks we were writing.
"We usually got one done a day, sometimes two, so it was very productive when he was around,” Emily says.
Nakatomi will be celebrating the release of the EP at Ancient World in Adelaide. Emily says it was important to her and the other half of the duo, Hamish Cox, that the first show be at home in Adelaide. “Adelaide’s been our biggest supporter.
"Arts SA has been really great to us in supporting our music financially and also with the artist in residence stuff here, which has all worked towards this EP.
“We’ve built our sound here so it’s really important, I think, to be able to show it to all our peers and friends here first and say ‘thanks for supporting us, this is our new thing'.”
Something that is also important to the duo is bringing their live presence into the studio, an idea often easy in theory but elusively difficult to pull off. “Our live show is really energetic, we like to move a lot and really get into our music. Particularly when I’m doing vocals, I try to bring that energy to the actual recording.
“Sometimes when you go into the studio you can make it a bit softer or a bit more pulled back. I think we try to translate what we do when we do it live as how we would do it in the studio.”
The EP has led the band in a lot of new directions. Emily says they focused on bringing some light into the darker themes of the duo’s writings.
“There’s a slight sort of darkness to the way we both write, so we decided to try with some of the people we worked with to work some lighter shades into that darkness.”
Overall, the duo is excited to share their new work with the world. “[It’s] very different from things we’ve done in the past because we’ve had these external writers working with us to create these songs.”
