The Filipino-Australian artist discusses angel numbers, Charli XCX mentorship, and Midwestern emo
Photos by Phebe Schmidt
Melbourne-based vocalist and songwriter daine has spent 2020 carving out an alluringly dissonant niche that sits somewhere between the bittersweet melodramatics of emo rap and the unrequited intimacy of bedroom pop. Initially tapping into the DIY scene’s collective consciousness on her morose debut single, “Picking Flowers,” she’s since unveiled a concise catalog that’s grounded in strikingly contemplative sentiments.
While daine’s sound is immediately distinguishable if placed within a lineup, it’s intriguing to trace her influences toward the present. Prefacing it with a laugh as she exclaims “I don’t know if I can be honest about this,” she admits she was originally a fan of boyband staples like One Direction and 5 Seconds Of Summer throughout her childhood. As daine emerged from adolescence, her taste markedly shifted toward the alternative community with the beckoning of metal and punk subgenres around the corner. After going to a Neck Deep concert with local hardcore bands as support, she was immediately attracted to the energy and ethos of the scene, which she remembers as “really exhilarating…it was a world I hadn’t explored before.”
Another formative influence that actively reverberates through daine’s work is emo. As she explains, “as a guitarist I was never really too engaged by really heavy riffs…I just really love the sound of a Roland JC-40 and good twinkly [guitar].” The genre’s inspiration can be inherently sensed throughout her catalog as her words are streaked with reflective melancholia, a notion that hasn’t changed since she wrote her first “soft and sad” song at the age of 15. Coincidentally, that first song would eventually become one of daine’s breakout singles in “Ascension,” a track given a self-described sonic “glow up” while retaining its daunting lyrical core. The track’s opening lines pang with vivid imagery as she croons, “It’s like an ascension is ripping out my bones/Demons coming forward to hollow out my heart,” laying bare a chaotic illustration of internal turmoil. Beyond its poetic lyrics, “Ascension” is a brilliant microcosm of daine’s work in its entirety as vocals inflected with emotional pain drift atop gritty Lonelyspeck production, all complemented by the Parent Company © artwork where violent hues of red cut through black.
While on the topic of artwork, it’s worth noting that the perspective that daine’s visuals invoke is essential when it comes to experiencing her music. She broke onto the scene with a 3D-generated avatar for “Picking Flowers” that positioned her as a mystic being flanked by flora and fauna, eventually rising to the heavens and disappearing from sight. That forward-thinking mode continues through her sophomore single “My Way Out” as self-shot footage is interspersed with Google Earth recordings, again disintegrating the boundary between daine and the natural world. Explaining the thought process behind the self-imposed veil of her visuals elements, daine says, “I try to mask myself a little bit more to keep myself in that internet realm [and] so people don’t confuse me as this real life Australian performance artist.”
daine’s enchanting mystique has continued to blossom with “Angel Numbers,” a brand new single animated by a range of coincidences too staggering to ignore. She explains that she had “a really weird, crazy ego death experience that started me off in music…all this crazy shit started happening…all these crazy synchronicities started lining up.” Upon recognizing a range of angel number patterns in particular, she felt it important to document her experience via song, and thus “Angel Numbers” was born. The track is not only a manifestation of her spiritual life, which includes frequent Tarot readings and a Reiki healing the day before we spoke (“it was really insane, the vibes are high”), but also the beginning of collaborative work with Danny L Harle. While known for bright wisps of lightning-fast pop, the PC Music affiliate’s production fully realizes the bubbling atmospherics of daine’s previous work as her vocals are assimilated into a beautifully distorted wall of sound. daine acknowledges that her aesthetic isn’t an obvious fit with Danny’s on the surface, but “it makes sense socially and culturally” due to PC Music’s community embracing her alongside simply being fans of one another’s work.
In relation to the PC Music sphere, daine has also found a mentor in frequent label collaborator and all-around icon Charli XCX. The two hung out at Laneway Festival in Melbourne before bonding over a game of minigolf, eventually leading to a connection where daine says “she’s [now] like my musical mum.” Charli has outright proclaimed “if you like my music u will like this,” and while her spastic style of electro-laced pop doesn’t necessarily mesh with daine’s from a quick stylistic glance, she’s absolutely correct. Much like her guide, daine creates a brand of iconoclastic, genre-defying pop that not only bends boundaries, but breaks them in the process.
With genuine support from prominent figures like Danny and Charli, the universe’s momentum is obviously in daine’s favor, so she plans to steadily release more singles into the beginning of 2021. It remains to be seen what her next work will sound like as she reveals she’s dabbled into hyperpop and glitchcore to alleviate the emotional weight of the present lockdown, but she quickly confesses that she hasn’t decided if it makes sense to publicly unveil her experimentation. Regardless of whether that left-field turn sees the light of day or daine opts to continue building out her emo-laced aura, exciting times are ahead in the blooming talent’s future.
Listen to daine’s single “Angel Numbers” below.