“I fucking hate interviews,” reads one of Charlie Yin’s tweets from a couple weeks back.
It’s an understandable that Yin, better known as Giraffage, would be suffering from interview fatigue. The South Bay-bred producer is fresh off a world tour with Skrillex protege Porter Robinson, he released his Fool’s Gold Records debut, No Reason, today, Nov. 18, and he’s been answering the same questions over and over again, day after day.
Fortunately, Yin was happy enough to discuss his frustration with Metro—explaining that beyond the simple fact that interviews can be monotonous, he feels that the articles which follow the interviews impact the way he and others feel about his art.
I fucking hate interviews
— Giraffage (@giraffage) November 5, 2014
“When I do read interviews it kinda changes my perception of the music a bit,” Yin says. “I don’t like it.” Yin has said that he feels it’s up to the listener to interpret any narrative or meaning behind his work, so he tries to avoid coloring anyone else’s perception of it.
Back when Yin started composing beats, he didn’t have to worry so much about these kinds of things. Giraffage began as a solitary activity, with Yin composing fuzzed-out, sample-based beats and remixes by himself in his UC Berkeley dorm room. He would push out his beats via the web where they could stand on their own, independent of him.
But shortly after graduating in 2012, things took off in a big way. He left his dorm to find a full-time music career awaiting him, complete with attention from the likes of the taste-making blog Pitchfork and FADER.
Now 25, Yin has been moving away from samples and toward original production work—for both legal and artistic reasons. “It’s more true to me,” he says of the music he’s making now. “It definitely helps reinforce a distinct sound.”
That sound can be heard in the two lead singles from No Reason, “Chocolate” and “Tell Me”—a pair of future bass numbers, which feature elements and textures that sound as if they were plucked straight from the glistening fractal waters of the Nintendo 64 game Wave Race, or perhaps Dance Dance Revolution. These shimmering sounds are mixed with laid-back dance grooves, rolling high hats and bent vocal samples.
Now that he’s back from tour and has the backing of Fool’s Gold, Yin says that he is looking forward to chilling out, hunkering down at his new home in San Francisco and producing some new music. “I’m feeling good,” he says, reflecting on his career. “I never thought that my music would have taken me this far.”
Then again, perhaps it makes sense. “I just really like music,” he shrugs. “It’s what I naturally do when I get bored. It’s just the most fun thing to do.”
