Humble Katikati kid takes NYC
As electronic producer Montell2099, Katikati’s Montell Pinny has found fans in far-flung places. He tells Chris Schulz why he’s not letting success, or a dose of writer’s block, faze him.
Montell Pinny played more than 50 shows across the United States last year, but one stands out more than the others. ‘‘New York – you dream about that city,’’ says Pinny, a home-taught electronic producer and DJ from Katikati, who thought he might never get the chance to go to the Big Apple.
On a blistering hot day in July, the 23-year-old fulfilled that dream after being invited to gig there.
Pinny jumped at the opportunity. He was jumping at every opportunity, keen to play as many gigs as he could while exploring America at the same time.
That scattershot tour took him from Seattle to San Francisco, Atlanta to Orlando, and Houston to Jacksonville, spreading his brand of moody, ethereal, bass-driven trap to as many ears as he could.
When it came to New York, Pinny was just happy to be there, and the city lived up to his expectations.
‘‘It’s amazing,’’ he says.
But New York is known for its discerning music trends and, with a population of more than eight million, it heaves with live music opportunities across multiple genres every night of the week.
Pinny wasn’t sure many people would know who he was.
He discovered that gig was going to be a little different from the others he’d been playing.
‘‘It was a boat party – it was a massive boat, too,’’ he remembers. As he performed, the boat left Pier 17, headed out into New York Harbour, and sailed past the Statue of Liberty.
After his set, there was another surprise: fans surrounded him, wanting to talk to him about his music.
When one mentioned a song called baebae, Pinny’s eyes widened. Clearly, his boat fans knew their stuff.
Pinny has been posting songs on Soundcloud since 2015, but baebae was one of the first.
‘‘This song is my spirit animal,’’ posted one listener of the bouncy song full of skittery synths and warped vocals.
Baebae took off, and it led him to where he is now, one of New Zealand’s leading exports of electronica, with official remixes of songs by Lorde, Post Malone, Charli XCX, and Diplo, under his belt.
‘‘I made that in my bedroom in my auntie’s house, and these guys knew what it was in New York City,’’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘‘It’s insane. I’m just surprised people know who I am and know my music.’’
Meeting fans at a New York boat party was just one of many magic moments Pinny has experienced in the past 12 months, the most hectic year of his career to date.
Along with his 50-stop American tour, Pinny has become a mainstay of New Zealand’s festival scene, with summer performances at Rhythm & Vines, Northern Bass and Bay Dreams.
Right now, he’s in the middle of his own tour, recently selling out a Hamilton show for
1300 people. He heads to Womad next weekend, will then tour Australia with fellow electronic musician What’s So Not, and is set to headline an Auckland show for the first time in April.
In July, he’s performing at Belgium’s Tomorrowland, one of the world’s biggest music festivals, with 400,000 people attending across two weekends.
But that’s not all.
This week he released Forces, his first EP for the record label, Sable Valley. He signed on after being headhunted by the label’s boss, trap producer RL Grime.
All of this is the kind of success most artists dream of, but Pinny says it isn’t going to his head.
Growing up on Te Rereatukahia Pa¯ in Katikati, a town with a population of fewer than 5000, Pinny – who is Nga¯ ti Ranginui and Nga¯ i Te Rangi – says his destiny seemed a little more humble.
‘‘I was pretty content staying in Katikati and picking kiwifruit,’’ he says. ‘‘That’s what all of my mates were doing. I didn’t have any ambitions at the time.
‘‘When you grow up in a place like that, you can’t even really dream.’’
He couldn’t dream but he could get obsessed.
That’s what happened when, stuck at home one day, he pushed his grandfather, George Burt, too far.
‘‘I was just being a little 12-year-old kid, just bored, annoying my Pops,’’ says Pinny.
Fed up, Burt pushed Pinny into the spare room of their home, sat him down at a computer, and opened up the music-making programme FL Studio, also known as Fruity Loops.
‘‘He said, ‘have a play with this’,’’ Pinny says. It was a moment that would change his life.
‘‘I had to drag him out of there,’’ remembers his grandmother Mabel Wharekawa-Burt, a singer and actor known for roles in the movie Whale Rider and TV show Hounds.
From that moment on, Wharekawa-Burt says Pinny became ‘‘obsessed’’.
‘‘[It was like] someone had lit a candle . . . the whole world opened up.’’
Pinny made his first beat that day, and he kept
going back to make more. He couldn’t stop.
‘‘Hitting a button . . . hearing the sound of a snare, or a high hat, or a kick – it was like, ‘Oh s..., that’s crazy – that’s what they make music out of’,’’ he says.
Eventually, he moved in with his grandparents so he could be closer to the studio.
‘‘I spent too much time in there. After school, weekends, unless I had to go somewhere, I’d go in there, make music, shoot a couple of hoops outside, go back, make music, play some PlayStation, go back.’’
It became an obsession that annoyed his family. ‘‘The blimmin’ studio’s right next to my office,’’ says Wharekawa-Burt. ‘‘He just drove me mad. I’d be banging on the walls, ‘shut up’.’’
He annoyed his grandfather, too.
‘‘My Pops’ desk is right next door,’’ Pinny says. ‘‘I could tell he’d get angry. I’d leave the door open. I’d be making a bunch of noise, and he’d slam the door shut.’’
Others, though, were listening more closely. On Soundcloud, he racked up fans in high places as fellow producers started sharing his songs.
He received production offers. One included making the song Hunnid on the Drop for big-name American rapper, 21 Savage.
Gig offers followed. Eventually, he had to leave Katikati and move to Auckland, then Los Angeles.
What has he learnt from all the shows? That he doesn’t need to follow trends. Instead of hammering audiences with bass, riffs and drops, Pinny prefers the ‘‘quiet times’’ in his set, when he lets the tension ‘‘build and build’’.
He knows he could join the bandwagon and make crowd-pleasing bangers full of riffs and drops. He’s chosen the harder – and more rewarding – path. ‘‘Don’t be predictable,’’ is his motto. ‘‘If there are 20 acts that day and they’re all doing the same thing, why not be that one guy who does something different? Let it breathe, play a five-minute intro, a two-minute breakdown . . . then you’ll stand out.’’
The sound he hears from the crowd when he knows he’s doing his job isn’t screaming, it’s ‘‘oohs and ahhs’’, he says.
All that music, all that travel, all those gigs, and all those fans – it could easily go to his head. Wharekawa-Burt says that will never happen. ‘‘He’s behaving in a way in which we raised him,’’ she says. ‘‘He’s totally grounded . . . he’s kind, he’s humble. Most of all, he uses his music to make people happy.’’
She finds her grandson’s success ‘‘overwhelming’’. But she loves showing off his latest videos to her pa¯ neighbours.
‘‘They all sit outside our pa¯ , and they all watch the video . . . they’re all goggle-eyed,’’ she says.
‘‘Pride is in there, but there’s total knowledge that we’re helping him to reach his potential.’’
In conversation, Pinny is shy and reserved. He admits struggling with writer’s block in the buildup to the release of his EP, something that made him feel ‘‘lost’’.
Sometimes, he struggles to let those closest to him listen to his music. Recently, his nan asked to hear his new EP, and Pinny changed the subject.
‘‘I was too scared to show her. I don’t know why,’’ he says. ‘‘I played her the intro then made up some excuse to go somewhere.’’
It makes sense, then, that Pinny’s favourite moments remain those when it’s just him and his music.
A few weeks ago, he was lying on his bed in his Westmere flat in Auckland, when he received an email, at 2am.
It was from his label boss, RL Grime, who’d sent him a song that needed the Montell2099 remix treatment.
Inspired, Pinny shut the door, lifted his headphones over his ears, and got to work.
‘‘I usually get most inspired at that time. Everyone’s asleep. It’s really calm. It’s cool,’’ he says.
The next time Pinny looked out his window, his remix was finished, and the sun was coming up.
‘‘It didn’t even feel like five hours,’’ he says. ‘‘That’s a weird feeling.’’
His next thought was: ‘‘Oh s..., I’d better go to sleep.’’
Montell2099 performs at Womad in New Plymouth next weekend, and at Studio the Venue in Auckland on April 3. His EP, Forces, is out now.
‘‘I made [baebae] in my bedroom in my auntie’s house, and these guys knew what it was in New York City. It’s insane. I’m just surprised people know who I am and know my music.’’
Montell Pinny