A Chat with Goldrain (08.07.2020)
Goldrain is a three-piece band from London and are breaking the mould in a time when music is often expected to conform. Their upcoming debut single ‘Dragonfly’ is the first off their EP Mysteries that looks at different emotional processes. We sat down with Goldrain to talk about their new single, their future plans and much more!
OSR: What first got you into music?
Goldrain: We all grew up in musical families where something was always playing, probably to drown out the cacophony of our youthful zeal. We picked up instruments from a young age and quickly realised that we weren’t good at much else.
OSR: What is unique about your music?
Goldrain: It can give you a moment of stillness. It can make you want to get up spin around. It can make you cry. It can turn you into Rodin’s The Thinker. All simultaneously.
OSR: How did the band get together?
Goldrain: We all went to the same uni, although Harry and I (Owen) never really came into much contact with Barbs during our time there. She did pretty well to avoid us for that long to be honest. She approached Harry around the beginning of last year with the idea of putting a band together and Harry proceeded to throw my name into the guitar player hat. We met up, played together, and now we’re all stuck with each other.
OSR: Does ‘Dragonfly’ hold meaning and does it convey a specific message? If so, what is it?
Goldrain: Barbs wrote ‘Dragonfly’ after having a conversation with a friend about the specific type of pain you get when you’re a kid and your bones grow and drawing parallels between that and pain we experience as adults. Many of the lyrics are born out of the compassion we offer when a loved one is going through a tricky time.
On the other side of the coin, it also reflects the tenderness we feel for ourselves when reflecting upon how far we have come in our lives and how we find ourselves wishing we could be there for our former selves during those past moments of struggle. It’s that sort of introspection that allows us to
form a stronger identity and feeling of self.
OSR: What difficulties, if any, did you experience while recording ‘Dragonfly’?
Goldrain: Time! Always time. I hear it waits for nobody. Not cool, time. We had 6 days to record our 6 tunes, so we knew it would be a challenge but we pulled each other through with real panache. We were also in great hands at Impression Recordings in Berlin with Robbie Moore and Sam Vine as our recording engineers and those guys move fast.
Oh, hostel bed bugs were a bit of a drag though.
OSR: Going forward, do you intend releasing videos for your music?
Goldrain: Indeed. We’ve been working on some live lockdown performances along with further live and animated music videos for future releases. We’re super lucky to have been able to work with friend and artist Kay Humelt who has put an enormous amount of effort into designing our artwork for our album cover and individual single posters. The pieces she’s produced are phenomenal so we’re making her artwork the centrepiece of most of our visual content. Go Kay!
OSR: How was the release date chosen? Is there a reason?
Goldrain: Well, we recorded the whole EP back in October and there were a few things we needed to get our heads around with trying to really pin down and translate what we were hearing in our heads to the final product. Recording additional parts, further production, that kind of thing. It’s an unprecedented time for new music as a whole and we wanted to make sure we were able to adapt to the current circumstances and not let it get in the way of our music.
OSR: This is your first single, so why this song?
Goldrain: It can be a bit tricky to try and speculate how certain tunes will be received by our fellow humans before they’re actually released, but we figured that ‘Dragonfly’ has got this pull to it that draws you in from the get-go. Our tunes are also generally more lengthy and this one is a bit more bitesize. Straight into the main course.
OSR: What type of music do you generally listen to?
Goldrain: David Byrne writes about using music as a means to aestheticise the space around us, which is a view we all subscribe to, so I suppose it depends on what sort of space we’re in at any given time. Physically and mentally. That being said, some artists we’ve been consistently listening to recently include the likes of Depeche Mode, Joni Mitchell, Sir Was, Daniel Lanois, Crumb, Andy Shauf, the Beatles (always). A bit all over the place, eh?
OSR: What are your plans for any future releases?
Goldrain: After ‘Dragonfly’ is out, we’ll be releasing 3 other singles every three weeks before eventually releasing the full EP in October. During those three weeks between single releases we’ll be putting out other content to go along with it, even a remix competition which we’re pretty psyched about. You know when you used to come away from a birthday party with a so-called ‘party bag’?? These next couple months of Goldrain releases will pretty much be exactly like a never-ending birthday party with bottomless party bags.
Thanks to Goldrain for chatting with us! You can find more about them on their website, Facebook, Instagram and Soundcloud.
