Q&A: Boomchild, the collective that met on the net

Smooth, breathy vocals layered over the top of melodic disco beats is the type of music you can expect to hear from BoomChild.

The New South Wales Collective have just released their second single and we’re here for it.

It’s tasty, delicious and just the snack we were looking to binge while stuck indoors.

BoomChild draw their unique flavour from a profusion of genres, although early into their career, you can hear it throughout their two singles. Cold Shoulder, their latest release, starts off as a light soulful whisper and transforms into a funky disco beat that is perfectly balanced throughout.

Picture a cowboy themed disco on Mars, sounds fun right?

Currently the collective consists of six members, Charbel, Rico, Finbar, Ben, Riley, & James.

We had a chat with Rico towards the end of March, here is an edited exert from our conversation:

How did you guys meet?

Honestly I love telling this story. The way we met was myself and three of the other boys, Ben, Riley and Finn, who make up the music group Sumatra, pretty much connected via the social networking platform, Instagram.
At University I had to develop an online presence for a project and in doing so caught the attention of Sumatra.
I produced some beats and rapped over a track, getting featured on the same page as Sumatra, we were both in the first few posts of the account. Finn reached out to me and essentially asked to link up. He then sent some music across and I thought it was awesome. You could just tell from the get go that the chemistry was there.
We didn’t even know each other, then a week later we were making music and it felt right and we connected. From that day on we have just been jamming and creating music.

Do you generally tend to meet up to create music or do you do it virtually, considering the way you met?

Definitely both, in terms of right now obviously we can’t physically see each other but we still remain in contact daily. If anyone has an idea or a beat for song we bring it to the table and generate a conversation around it. We have a really organic feel to the way we create music and I feel like it doesn’t necessarily matter if we do it online or in person. Regardless of how it is made we still feel something authentic being generated, but in saying all that, in person is preferable.

So I guess due to the current climate you’re not too heavily impacted creatively?

I think the fact that we met online has created the basis of something quite unique. Even if we were on opposite sides of the world we could probably still create music. There is no border of separation between us, even with how limited we are in todays climate we’re still creating music. Only a few hours ago Finn sent a beat and I was thinking of ideas of what to overlay. We have no cookie cutter way of doing things and we always find that songs are all created in their own individual way.

How was the name Boomchild birthed?

It’s funny we didn’t even talk about us being thing, we sort of just kept seeing each other and creating music because we were having fun. We knew something was there. Essentially we had our first song Every little thing (their debut single) ready to go and we had all these labels reaching out asking us “what are you called?”, and one afternoon we just had to have a name. So it was a conflict, at that point it was either going to be Laika or Boomchild. We obviously landed on Boomchild because it kinda represented us as a collective, we’re playful young dudes. But honestly there’s no real meaning behind it, it just sounds cool.

Is there a festival you’d like to play at in the future?

We were meant to play a festival in Wollongong called Garden Party as the third headline spot. We were going to play right before San Cisco but it was cancelled due to Coronavirus. We were really looking forward to it, the gig was being held at my university so that would’ve been such a crazy experience to play a sold out show at the uni I go to. Next year though it would cool to play at Groovin the Moo or Listen Out.

Is your new track ‘Cold Shoulder’ based on a real-life experience?

Yeah, it’s loosely based off an experience I’ve had but also what most people seem to go through towards the end of a relationship. When things get complicated people tend to give you the cold shoulder and sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you want and that can be a positive or a negative thing.

The Collective inspire creativity and originality in their music and we can’t wait to see where they take us next, both as a group and individually.

Listen to their latest release below and follow our Vibes Vibes Vibes ✨ playlist to discover more tracks like this one.

By Samuel Seedsman.