Indie electronic duo, Golding, is back with their latest track ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’, a collaboration with Aussie favourites, Boo Seeka.
The band’s previous release, ‘Alone. Together.’, amassed over 1.6 million streams on Spotify. It featured on editorial playlists and received plays on triple j, cementing the song as a success for the Gold Coast-based band, and the pair are showing no signs of slowing down.
What a killer duo – two respected Aussie acts at the top of their game delivering a new seductive dancefloor anthem with an intense and sombre backstory. Jay from Golding reflects,
“Don’t Waste Your Love came about when I was going through a tough time. I was experiencing this uncomfortable anxiety that made me feel detached from both my surroundings and my emotions. Not being able to feel the love of my family around me created a shocking, yet somehow empty feeling, to the point where it was almost a physical numbness.”
There’s a delicate vulnerability to to the track, fearless and unflinching. It pushes the sound further than just to the dance floor. The sound is delicate and raw, with thought-provoking lyrics which will resonate with the masses.
Since the release of their sophomore single ‘Alone. Together.’, Golding has continued to garner attention with their enchanting sonic style. The music encompasses a culmination of flawless production by Matt Bartlem and also the velvety vocals of Orange County native Jay Bainbridge.
Their latest single, ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’, sees Golding and Boo Seeka combine their multifaceted sounds to create an outwardly-joyous electro-pop tune, with a darker underlying theme bubbling beneath the track’s glossy exterior. Inspired by the groups’ individual influences – Frank Ocean, Glass Animals, Chet Faker & RÜFÜS DU SOL, the track has been deemed undeniably fearless with a special rawness to the song which speaks to the listener in a powerful way.
We sat down today to talk to Golding’s Jay about ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’ and Golding’s musical journey thus far.
So, tell us a bit about your backstory
I grew up originally in Southern California and moved to Australia when I was 13 years old. If you can hear a little twang in my voice, that’s where that comes from. I met Matt by working with bands. He had a recording studio called Loose Stones recording studios on the Gold Coast and basically I was assistant engineer to him, working on projects. I was also recording with other bands I was in. We were always hanging out. In between sessions we started messing around in the studio, working on songs together. We’ve always had a very aligned musical taste. It was a natural progression to start making music together. In the last 2-3 years, we put together a group of songs and started to pass them around within the industry and that’s basically how it started.
My dad is an Aussie and my mum is from the states, so when we were born over there they made a pact that by my brother’s 15th birthday, they would move us over to get taste of both cultures. I love California and really do miss lot of parts of it. I think I really would’ve missed out on some important developmental stuff if I didn’t move over here. Aussies are incredible people, very personable and kind. I obviously live here now – laughs. So if that tells you anything, I guess that I do like it a little bit better over here. It was a family move and I’m thankful they did it.
In terms of your recent collaboration with Boo Seeka on ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’, what did that process look like?
It was actually a really easy and organic proces. Matt (the other half of Golding) is actually recording Boo Seeka’s album right now. He’s producing that, they’ve basically been working together, going out and having drinks to get to know each other like that. Eventually I obviously went and hung out with the guys. They were at a party I think, at Matt’s house. Matt played them (Boo Seeka) the demo I had which was just the hook for ‘Dont waste your love’, the first vocal and synth stuff. Ben was like “What is that? Who is that? I want to work on that”. We basically collaborated from there. Ben just came over one day to my little home studio, it was a very cool experience. We opened up personally about what we had been going through the last few months with mental health stuff. It was actually a big release writing this track with Ben. I think we both talked about some stuff which really helped each other and to have a product at the end of that which we can share with the world, I think that means something. It’s special. For me, it’s one of my most favourite projects I’ve been a part of.
‘Don’t Waste Your Love’ focuses on mental health, it’s a big topic isn’t it?
It is, there’s definitely an undertone in the world right now, just the shake up we’ve all had. It’s a moment for us all to check in and break the stigma that you can’t really talk about it. The one thing that shocks anyone when you fall into mental health problems is that you feel very alone, you instantly feel alone and alienated from people. You almost feel like you shouldn’t talk about it, or that it’s kind of taboo to speak about it in public. Especially in your career, I think with talking about it in music, I’m very thankful that I have a platform to talk to people about it. At first, I was a bit scared about doing it, I was wondering “what will people think?”. All that. It’s easier when it comes straight from the core of you. Going through the stuff that I’d gone through in the last 6 months, it felt very natural to talk about it. It still does. I’m still getting better day by day, if anyone ever wants to chat to me about it or hit me up on socials, I’d love to chat.
So who do you see as your biggest inspirations sound-wise? Where do you see yourself genre-wise?
It’s definitely a mix match of sounds. Matt comes a very electronic background, he loves hard techno. It’s stuff I don’t usually listen to. I like some of it, but it’s not what I’d put on if I’m just cruising around town. But for me, I’m into R&B. I’ll have on Frank Ocean, even some 90s R&B. I like old class stuff like The Eagles, I grew up listening to old classics. I gravitate towards interesting melodic stuff, harmonies and I tend to notice that in the music I’m listening to. Matt is more production focused, sound engineering and sounds. I think in a lot of ways, that’s where our sound comes from and I think it’s a really good mix to have. I’m focusing on the more melodic stuff and he’s working on sonics. For ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’ he did the mix for it and I just sat there and was like “Dude, I’ve got no tweaks”. He’s such a genius, for him to do a lot of the production and writing a lot of the track then mixing it like that himself. I’m lucky to work with him.
Outside of music, what do you do to keep the songwriting and creativity flowing?
I surf, I’ve grown up surfing. My whole life. It’s my main hobby. I also have a 2-year-old at the moemnt. He takes up a lot of my normal hobby time. But to be honest, there’s no greater inspiration to me than watching someone experience life, those small experiences we all take for granted. He’s experiencing those for the first time. For me to see that again, through his eyes, I’ve noticed it’s opened up a whole bunch of new channels for me to write. I just really enjoy it too, before you have kids you have all of these different things and hobbies which take up your time and fill up your day. Then you have a kid and all of a sudden you have no time. I was a little bit shocked by it. I was thinking “I don’t even have any hobbies, I’m just taking care of a kid.” But you do really fall in love with it. Like going to Seaworld, I haven’t been to Seaworld since I was a kid and I took him to Seaworld with my wife and it was the best day ever and I loved it.
So you’ve got a EP coming out, is that right?
Yeah, we’re basically just trying to get together as many tracks as we can. We’re not too sure if we’re doing a EP first or an album. It’ll be the end of this year for sure. We’ve been slowly releasing tracks. We feel a bit guilty, we put out our last single ‘Alone. Together.’ out almost a year ago. We’ve been kind of really wanting to put more music out. That was the first release we did and we thought “Oh, shit, people like this.” We thought we should put some more attention into it. Thats when we started to get serious and started to put this collection together. So we’re looking to release this EP at the end of the year. We really just want to carve out 2 months of out year to make an album and create some really strong, cohesive work. We’ve really just been doing these tracks in between other work and day jobs.
Is the sound of your upcoming tracks similar to your current sound?
It’s definitely similar, there’s always room for us to grow in different directions. Working with the Boo Seeka guys has inspired me in a lot of ways. I’ve been going to a lot of their shows over the last couple of months. Just seeing that high energy performance, I’m starting to think more about our live shows. There’s definitely some more high energy tracks that are on the way too from Matt and I. Definitely still the same vibe, just a little bit more up tempo stuff.
Are you gigging at the moment?
Not at the moment, but we definitely have some dates booked in for the end of the year. I’m not sure if we’re allowed to say or who we’re doing them with, but we’re playing support shows with a friend of ours – Laughs. It’ll be around the country, I can’t tell you how excited I am just to be able to travel around the country. Even to see places that I haven’t been. Go to Tassy, I’ve done a bit of travelling in Australia but probably not as much as I should have.
Are you guys collaborating with Boo Seeka any further?
Yeah, I think we always are. Ben and I realised, after ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’, that we have a very similar way of writing. We collaborate really easily together. I feel like we complement each other. So when we’re writing demos right now, I send them stuff and they send me stuff. We kind of share notes and that sort of stuff so that’s been like, really incredible. I know for sure that we’ll do another track probably at some point. I don’t know if it’ll be on this album we’re doing now but it might be the next piece of work.
Has Covid affected the ways in which you work and interact with artists and industry professionals?
Yeah, we do a lot more of this, Zoom-type calls. It’s good and bad I think, obviously there’s always a yin and yang to every situation. For me, Covid has shown me that we can still stay connected online and get a lot of work done online, even with studio stuff. When it was really bad, we were basically just home based. For ‘Alone. Together.’, I did a lot of the skeleton of that song at home actually and I sent it to Matt at his studio. Whereas before, we would be in the same studio together. It’s kind of opened doors to do that and the benefit of that and everyone has seen that it kind of makes the world a lot smaller. There’s people that we can collaborate with in the States and we actually have. Our next single actually has someone from the US on it as well. That was literally just us hitting her up over Instagram and asking if she would be keen to sing on a track with us. Literally, we did a Zoom call, just like this and we were in a recording studio and we had an engineer over there who recorded it. It was like, pretty similar to doing a session with someone but you’re online.
Do you feel that Covid restrictions have brought about any new creativity in yourself?
Oh, absolutely. The last track that we wrote was really about embracing the time at home. Thats what ‘Alone.Together.’ is about, trying to see the positive in a real giant, negative shitstorm that’s taking over the world. Like, it can be bad if you look at it in the correct way it can be an opportunity to grow and become something more than you were before. For me, creatively, it’s crazy. I feel really inspired to even take new angles with doing live streaming. I’ve gotten a little more active on my socials, I’ve done a few live shows on my Instagram and stuff. It’s just kind of trying to make that world a little bit smaller by connecting online. I know it’s not the same as going to a show and seeing someone in person but it’s definitely better than nothing. We are so excited to get on the road and tour again.
What do you enjoy the most about what you do?
For me, it’s the expression about what’s inside. It’s a release of what I have going on in my brain. I’m very vocal about how I’m feeling with my friends and people around me with what’s going on I my life. I definitely wear my heart on my sleeve. I don’t hold anything back and am quite blunt about what’s going on. So for me and my art, I feel very lucky and thankful that I get to address what’s going on inside me in that form. Not only that, I feel that it’s something that I can always look back on. The older I get, I’ll look back at ‘Alone. Together.” and think, “Oh, that’s the song I wrote during Covid, that was that weird Covid time” and it’ll bring me right back. Or this track that I’ve done with Ben (Boo Seeka), I’ll think “that’s that time I was going through that crazy anxiety cycle and I wrote a track about it”. They’re like little chapters in my life, so to have that is more important than any success that this music could ever bring me. I think that looking back, later in my life, I’ll be very thankful that I did this as an art form.
And tell us about the video.
The mannequin idea came from a friend of ours, Pixie. She’s a really clever girl. We were trying to figure out what to do as an idea for ages and she knows what to do. She suggested a video where we were partying and hanging out with mannequins. Um and so, we did it and it looks incredible. It really nails the detached, kind of separation of a social anxiety when you go out. It nails that feeling of hanging with people. It’s one of my favourite things we’ve done is that clip, it’s super cool I’m thankful to her. Also to the guys that made it too, Jellan (of Clash Studio), this legend of a guy. He captured it for us really well.
Check out the clip for Boo Seeka x Golding’s ‘Don’t Waste Your Love’ below:
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