Donatachi Talks Us Through ‘Taste’, His Scarily Sweet Debut EP
"That knife going through flesh sounds exactly like what I want."
“I think there are some flesh sounds in here as well,” Sydney producer Donatachi tells me as we listen to Taste, his debut EP. The ‘flesh sounds’, sampled from horror movies, are surprising, as the whole EP’s sweeter than the stacked lolly bag I’ve been handed at the door.
One member of Sydney’s Sidechains collective, Donatachi has slowly but carefully carved out a distinct brand of bubblegum pop since 2017 via a trickle of singles, radio mixes and remixes for the like of KLP, Brux and Kate Miller-Heidke.
Since 2017, he’s collaborated with a series of Australian artists, including Evangeline, Mallrat, Oh Boy — people he’s mostly connected with online, which makes sense, since Donatachi is extremely online.
Whether DMing or chatting face-to-face, Donatachi talks in speaks in memes and truncated internet jokes, describing one song as “bubbly, but a lot more ‘give the gays and girls what they want'”. In fact, his persona is so established that earlier this year, his identity was stolen online.
In possibly one of the most bizarre, innocuous catfishes we’ve heard of, someone called ‘Danatuchi’ was claiming his music and aesthetic as their own, posing as a cute American producer. Taste, then, is a pretty definitive arrival for Donatachi — a pointed way to establish that ‘It’s Donatachi, bitch’, as underground pop-siren Slayyyter says on lead single, ‘Crush On U’.
The tight six-track EP pushes beyond just PC Music aesthetics to play with ’00s pop, as well as elements of ’90s rave and trance, as well as “the new pop queens” like Kim Petras, who he supported on her mini Aus tour this March.
Taste is a definitive arrival for Donatachi — a pointed way to establish that ‘It’s Donatachi, bitch’.
There are more eclectic influences, too; when we chat about the EP closer, ‘DDR’, he says the Mortal Kombat theme’s “high ’90s energy” was a big inspiration. And yes, flesh sounds, which you can hear in the Slayyyter track, as well as ‘DDR’.
“I got some foley sounds from horror movies of punching dead bodies and flesh,” he says. “There’s gore samples playing over the snares…I wanted it to sound kind of wet, like punching a wet sponge… [but no] water samples were really working. I came across the horror stuff by accident, but I was like, ‘that knife going through flesh sounds exactly like what I want’. It’s pretty fucked up but it just kind of worked in the end.”
What are the other unexpected parts of Taste? Well, the title track — a collaboration with Melbourne’s Genes, co-written with Maribelle — started out as a remix of Britney Spears deep-cut ‘Anticipating’. It was made specifically to play while supporting Mallrat, but then it became something else completely.
“[Genes] says she wrote it about her love of cheese,” he says. “But she’s lactose intolerant”. It’s perfect pop fodder: forbidden love is even more tragic when it tastes (and sounds) so good.
Listen to Donatachi’s debut EP, Taste, below.
Donatachi’s Taste is out now, via etcetc.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and co-host of Sleepless In Sydney on FBi Radio. Follow him on Twitter.