Aubrie Mitchell
For 23-year-old Aubrie (Ngāti Raukawa), creativity is about entering a flow state. With her electronic singer-songwriter records, she transforms her personal experiences into universal truths, all aptly couched in grandiose melodies and shuffling rhythms.
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Aubrie Mitchell (Ngāti Raukawa) is a 23-year-old Māori producer, songwriter, and audio engineer who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Over the last year and a half, she has worked in studio supervision, audio engineering, and music producer roles at Joel Little’s BIG FAN, a not-for-profit, multi-purpose music space located in the Auckland suburb of Morningside.
Since 2022, Aubrie has collaborated with New Zealand musicians Alayna, A M I L A, Troy Kingi, Anna Coddington, Ria Hall, Teeks, Chaii, and Louis Baker while determining that the elastic potential and possibility of pop make it her natural musical home. “For me, pop can be anything,” she says. “Pop takes so much from every other genre, and the popular music of today I enjoy the most borrows a lot from dance, house, and electronica. I love how you can mix and match whatever you want within it.”
Before working at BIG FAN, Aubrie completed a music degree, majoring in classical theory and music production at Auckland University. “I view producers and writers as in service of the artist,” she says. “We help them make something they want to make. If they’re happy with the session, I’m happy.”
As a twelve-year-old, Aubrie’s first major musical eureka moment was hearing the sleek, minimalist art-pop sound of ‘Royals’ by Lorde. Three years later, as a high-schooler, she had the opportunity to participate in a series of lunchtime Music Production Masterclasses before taking part in the New Zealand youth development programme IGNITE’s Music Production stream, where she had the opportunity to create a song with Benee producer Josh Fountain.
Having studied Painting, Graphic Design, and DVC (Design and Visual Communication) alongside music during high school, Aubrie originally intended to complete an architecture degree before making a last-minute decision to follow her passion for music.
Drawing influence from Joel Little and Josh Fountain, whose distinctive production palettes have inspired her to pursue a music career, Aubrie understands her artistic approach as a form of service. “I view production and songwriting as very powerful tools for bringing out the best in a song,” she says. “If you have good chords and textures and bring them together with the right songwriting, that’s good production.”
Equally comfortable helping coax a deeper lyrical sentiment out of a collaborator, refining raw melody and harmony ideas, generating musical moods, or revelling in the textural elements of production, Aubrie is ready to step onto the international stage. “Until now, my mentality around my career has very much been about being in the background making music for other people,” she says. With an ever-growing portfolio of work behind, she’s ready to make the shift.