Electronic musician Banoffee aka Martha Brown has quickly gained a lot of respect in the electronic music world. Over the last year the musician has released a couple of high quality tracks that showcase her love of slick electronic sounds.

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Banoffee told us that she can’t wait to come to Perth. Her promotional tour for her first EP only  takes in the east coast, but she’ll finally make it to the west coast for St Jerome’s Laneway early next year.

In the meantime fans of her smooth sounds will have to make do with her in recorded form. Banoffee chatted to OUTinPerth’s Graeme Watson about her latest recording.

The title of your new EP is ‘Do I make you nervous?’, what’s behind that – who are you making nervous?

That’s a line from my track ‘I’m Not Sorry’ which is about a lot of different things, but there’s a bit at the start. I started getting quite obsessed with this idea. I started to realise that I’d speak I’d begin by apologising.

It’s something you see a lot of women do, a lot of men do it too, but there’s something in my female community where I see woman making an apology for even taking up space.

You walk into a room  and say “Sorry guys, I’m just doing this…” or I’d put up my hand to ask a question in class and say “Sorry, but” and then begin my question.

So the beginning of the song ‘I’m not sorry’ is about the fact that we’ve learned to apologise for taking up space in the world. We’ve learned to apologies for having a question or verbalising anything that comes into our head.

For me I was saying – I’m not going to do that. Does that make you nervous? I’m not going to apologise for speaking or taking up space..

It’s funny how we develop those little habits but they can be very telling of something bigger.

It’s easy to see them as just that, little habits and say ‘Oh I don’t know were I piked that up from, I just do it’. But it’s teaching younger generations and constantly confirming to yourself that you don’t deserve that space.

You’ve said you’d like to just make lots of EPs, collections of a few songs, rather then committing to a full record. Is there still pressure in the music industry to make an album?

There definitely is pressure, I get asked in most interviews “When’s an album coming?” I find it funny, it’s almost like when you’re in a relationship and people ask “When are you going to get married?”

I’m like realllly? You still think that’s where you go next?

I think you some bands the whole album thing makes sense, I’, not sure whether for me right now it does. It might in the future. right now I’m like a wild eyed child, I see something and I want to do it straight away, and then I want to get it out straight away, and then I want to start working on the next thing.

I want to keep it fresh, I want to keep it moving an EPs do that for me. Sadly I’m a child who grew up in the TV era, I probably have mild ADD.

I like to get things out as soon as a can. I take three times longer than most people to work on a track, I’m quite a perfectionist. So when I can get something out, I want to do it and then move on.

Bringing on tracks in small chunks gives me more times to work on the clips and focus on the entire package rather than just the audio release.

When you make the video from ‘With Her’ I’m presuming you had to spend a lot of time in that swimming pool, most people would have looked at that treatment and turned it down. 

Oh my goodness, i was so excited  about the concept that I really didn’t think about it until I got in the pool. Then  I thought “Oh, fuck – this is going to be a long day.”

We filmed that in about five hours, five hours of swimming, but it’s pretty short compared to what some people have to do.

I’m guessing that’s the longest you’ve ever been in a pool.

Definitely, and without goggles. I’d bleached my hair the day before, so my hairdresser through I was nuts and they were tearing their hair out about the idea of my hair going in chlorine.

I wear glasses, but obviously i didn’t have them on for the whole shoot. By the time I came out it was like I couldn’t see anything. I was wondering around in a blur.

Where did you get name Banoffee?

Well obviously it’s a desert, banana and caramel. I chose it for lots of different reasons. A lot of it just had to do with the sound of the word. I really like the double letters, I like the way it looks – it’s sort of chunky and strange. I like the way it sounds.

But also, Banoffee when I first started it, it was just a project for me, I didn’t want to make it marketable. I didn’t want it to be about being cool.

I just wanted to make music for me, so it’s like my desert. It’s my little treat.

Did you ever consider just being Martha Brown?

I think my name is super dorky.

Everybody thinks their name is super dorky.

I’m really glad I didn’t use my name though now, because it allows me to have a disconnect. Banoffee isn’t  a 100% reflection of Martha Brown, it’s become it’s own thing now.

‘Do I make you nervous’ is available now. Follow Banoffee on Facebook, check out her Soundcloud page too.