Recently playing this year’s Sun God Festival, Giraffage, offers a fresh, sample-rich sound of dreamy pop beats, sensual synths and lush experimental electronica.
The creation of 23 year-old Charlie Yin of San Francisco, Giraffage is an exciting new producer with an intuitive grasp of modern music manipulation, delivering beats that are dripping with vibes and accessible to all.
So tell us about Boards of Canada – what makes you like this band so much? Are they a huge influence on your music?
I like them a lot, they aren’t my favorite band ever by any means, but I have many fond memories of grooving hard to Roygbiv in high school around the time I started getting heavy into electronic music.
Playing and touring with guys such like XXYYXX, Slow Magic, Blackbird Blackbird and Flume, what did you take in from being around them, musically and personally?
One thing that struck me as being really cool is that we’re all roughly around the same age and we’re all pretty similar in a lot of ways. We’re basically all kids that locked themselves in their rooms and just made music instead of doing things a normal kid would do. Being on tour with them was awesome because it was pretty much just a bunch of friends hanging out and traveling the world together.
We’re huge fans of your album NEEDS. What do you think of trap music and where it’s at today? Do you see yourself doing more trap in years to come?
I don’t really think too much about genres, if it sounds good to me then I’ll listen to it/make it.
We were both sad about DJ Rashad passing last month. What were your thoughts on this guy and his impact your music and just music in general?
Rashad was a pioneer and he was in his prime too. I didn’t know him personally, but I still felt pretty bummed that day. A lot of the 160bpm type stuff people are making these days wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for Rashad.
How was Lighting in a Bottle last year? Are there any festivals that you would love to play here in the states or anywhere else?
Lightning in a Bottle was awesome, I road tripped down with a bunch of good friends and we ended up camping and getting in touch with our hippy side together. BFD is a festival I’ve always wanted to play and I actually am playing it in a week. It was the first festival/live music show I’ve ever been to so it’s pretty surreal that I get to play it this year!
What’s next for Giraffage? We’ve heard you’re working on some side projects. Is there new music/albums on the horizon?
I’m making a lot of music these days. I’m sitting on a bunch of new songs. Expect a lot of cool things coming out soon 🙂