“The last tour that I did was about a year and a half [long]. By the time I got to the end of that, I was mentally exhausted and all I wanted to do was go home and start writing new material and stop playing old songs,” says Grossi. “I didn’t really do much of anything else but stay at home and write. I became a bit of a hermit for six months.”
Active Child’s early material is distinguished by Grossi’s tenor-like vocal innocence and focal harp playing. However, resisting simple classification, Grossi indicates the harp has largely taken a backseat in many of his recent compositions. “There’s still elements of the harp, but for a lot of these songs it was more of an afterthought, as opposed to the first record where a lot of the songs started with that or it became a main melodic element for the song.”
Grossi’s debut record paired anachronistic sweetness with a sultry R&B undercurrent. He reports that over the last 12 months his interest in the world of synthesisers has intensified. “For these new songs I became a little more interested in studying synthesisers and modulation and getting a little more involved in sound design with analogue synths. I bought a bunch of different stuff, different Moogs and old Rolands and random stuff. There’s definitely a lot of layering of analogue synths, so I think it has a little bit of an ’80s gloss to it.”
Grossi is responsible for composing everything that falls under the Active Child banner, and operating as a solo practitioner enables him to effectively chase his creative ambitions for this project. He discusses the value of roaming through ideas with total solitary freedom.
“I need to not have any external distractions so that I can almost have an outer-body experience, where I don’t have to worry about anyone being around or eaves-dropping and I can really disappear for a little bit.”
Although Grossi’s creative process is free from outside intervention, he does have an acute internal monitoring mechanism, which he suggests can sometimes offer rather harsh feedback. “Something that I continually struggle with is not to question too much what I’m making and not overthink things. Some days I’ll listen to songs I’ve made and I’m so excited and the next day I can’t listen to a single thing; everything sounds awful. It’s a little bit of a rollercoaster.” Existing in a self-contained bubble can make it difficult to evaluate the quality of one’s own output and Grossi admits he wasn’t sure what sort of reaction his new compositions would garner. “I didn’t have a whole lot of people to bounce ideas off of so it was interesting hearing people’s reactions when I came back months later. You don’t really realise what you’ve made until a lot of people have given you some feedback on it.”
Active Child expands into a four-piece band on stage and Grossi explains that after touring You’re All I See he was prompted to broaden the stylistic terrain of his music to better suit live performance. “For me, being on the road and playing music from the first album, some nights I felt like I wanted to have more energy, I wanted to see people moving a little bit more, I wanted to have more variety in the show so it wasn’t always so down-tempo and moody. I wanted to have moments where it could be more euphoric and more of a celebration, where people are dancing and kind of getting crazy.”
The desire to inject more energy into his live show led Grossi to fantasise about comprehensively revising the Active Child sound. “Some nights I wished that I was in a rock band and I could plug my guitar in and we could all stand up there and just rock out for a little bit,” he says.
She Cut Me’s layered atmospherics illustrate that it’s unlikely the next Active Child album will be a conventional rock album, however Grossi reveals that the live sound will be more evident on the new recordings. “My drummer was involved when it came time to get into the studio and actually record the album. He provided a lot of live percussion, which didn’t really happen as much on the first album.”
The startling impact made by You’re All I See has generated weighty expectations for a substantial successor, and Grossi indicates Rapor represents his commitment to artistic progression. “I think for this EP I did my best to try to expand on where I was before without diverting too much, but also I wanted to grow as an artist. I wanted to be able to reach more people, I want more people to be able to hear the music. I feel, from my perspective, I’ve definitely grown as an artist and song writer. Hopefully everyone else gets to see that too.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
