After a long break from touring, Drapht is back with new material. ‘Tasty’ and ‘1990’s’ are the first tracks from the Perth artist since his award-winning 2011 album The Life Of Riley.

While ‘1990’s’ reflects some of Drapht’s older work, his song ‘Tasty’ takes the artist in a whole new direction. With fellow Perth product Ta-Ku in control of the beats, ‘Tasty’ experiments with electronic music within the hip-hop genre.

His latest song ‘Salute’ was released last week. Produced by Ta-Ku and featuring Suffa from The Hilltop Hoods, the song has somewhat of an electronic vibe.

Drapht and his four-piece band, including long-time collaborator N’Fa Jones, are set to embark on the Uni-Verse tour tomorrow. With Bundoora La Trobe’s Oh! Fest celebrations the second stop on the line-up, Drapht is looking forward to rehashing some of his older songs with a fresh new spin.

It’s been a while since you last toured, why did you decide to do a tour around universities?

My last national tour was for Big Day Out and festival tours aren’t the same as your own tour. When you play festivals, they expect you to play only the songs that are on the radio. It gives me an awesome opportunity when I play my own shows to delve back into my back catalogue and rehash some songs that mean a lot to me and to other people that know the entirety of my catalogue. But it’s also an opportunity for me to give back to the people that have supported me over the last ten years and at a somewhat affordable rate.

So tell us about the new songs ‘1990’s’ and ‘Tasty’? Will this be the first time you are playing them to a live audience?

Yeah, I’m so stoked to be doing so too. We’ve been rehearsing them and they’re really coming to large (sic). ‘1990’s’ features a friend of mine N’Fa Jones who was also the front man of 1200 Techniques many years ago.

‘Tasty’ is very different. I really wanted to push myself as an artist and think out of the square and not cater for any specific market — but more so just write for myself.

In a recent interview you said you came close to quitting music commercially due to the pressure of being a solo artist. Would you ever consider becoming part of a group act?

No, I don’t think so. I think in terms of writing with other people, I’m such a perfectionist, I like how my stuff sounds in a particular way. I think it would be a bit too hard, even in terms of writing songs with Urthboy and Mantra — who are two of my favourite artists who I really enjoy working with.

We’ve all got our own set ways in how we like our finished product to sound. Especially when you’ve been doing it for ten years, you’re so set in your own ways that it’s hard to take other people’s vibe on board.

Your more recent albums, particularly The Life Of Riley, showed a change in your music writing, from songs based around drunken antics to music about your personal life. What inspired the change in song writing?

I think the lack of alcohol. I haven’t drunk for two years now and my lifestyle has changed a lot — it has given me a lot of time to contemplate and just work on myself. I’ve always liked to be fairly honest and in terms of my music it’s always been a venting process for me.

So you feel more comfortable about putting your personal life out there?

I don’t really feel like I’ve got anything to be ashamed of or anything that I want to hide away from the public. I’m fairly honest and I think it’s a good way to be. With songs like ‘Rapunzel’, it’s okay because I gave her the opportunity to not have that song released and I didn’t mention her name so only she knew that song was about her.

It was your single ‘Jimmy Recard’ that changed everything for you, but you have since tried to distance yourself from that song. Why did you write a song detailing Jimmy’s death?

I love that song, it’s still one of my favourites and in terms of performance it’s one that I would never stop performing because I have so much fun doing so.

‘R.I.P J.R’ was more of a case of people within the industry trying to place pressure on me to back it up. I had to put Jimmy to sleep so I could move on as an artist. I didn’t want to work on the same formula — I wanted to change it up and put a fresh new spin on my music. I feel like I have done so from ‘Pale Rider’ to where I am now with ‘1990’s’ or ‘Tasty’ — it’s constantly evolved into something different and something I’m really proud of.

Finally, what can fans expect to hear from you in the near future?

The next song is ‘Salute’ and then I’m going to have a bit of a break. I’m set to open up a café in Perth when I get back from the tour in April, so I’m going to have a bit of a break before releasing some more music about the middle of the year.

You can catch Drapht at La Trobe’s Oh! Fest celebrations on 27 February starting at 5pm.

Betony Pitcher is a Bachelor of Journalism student at La Trobe University. You can follow Betony on twitter @betonyjade