FEATURE: Spotlight: Freak Slug

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Freak Slug

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I am…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Palm

going to start out with an interview from 2025. Loud Women spoke with Freak Slug as she was on a U.K. tour. On 18th September, she releases her second studio album, Amulet. You can pre-order it here. Last year, she released I Blow Out Big Candles. Whilst many are aware of Freak Slug and love her work, there are some who may be new. This is a tremendous artist who I am fascinated by. She is absolutely wonderful:

“Xenya Genovese, better known as her stage name Freak Slug, caught up with LOUD WOMEN before her show at the Brudenell, Leeds.

From back-to-back tours to cinematic features, Freak Slug is only going from strength to strength in her career. She delves into what it was like growing up in Manchester’s vibrant music scene, and how the magic has been fading for new generations. Genovese’s way with words is not limited to her songwriting skills but extends to how she describes her experiences in the music scene as a woman.

I’d say you get this asked all the time, but where does your name come from?

Thank you very much. It just came from me not taking myself too seriously. I noticed a lot of the time that there were a lot of serious sounding names, and I didn’t particularly want to be that poetic or deep with the name. I wanted something stupid and eye catching.

Do you notice any difference in the reactions of the crowds? Not necessarily a negative difference, but just in how responsive they are?

I think American crowds are more responsive. I just think they’re louder and naturally by default in everything that they do. So naturally, it would bleed into the way that they are in the crowds. I think in England we are just known for being prudish and rigid, and it reflects in the crowd for sure. But I still think a good crowd, especially if people have bought tickets to see you, it’s not really going to go down that badly, is it? Do you know what I mean?

Were there artists for you, musicians like that, who changed your life?

I think the first artist that I discovered when I was in my really early teens they were called the radio department, and they’re a dreamy band somewhere from Europe. They’re not English or from London. But they were amazing. They touched me, and every single song is incredible, and I still love them. That was really me finding my own music and not showing anyone. I didn’t care, it was about me. Some people think they’re cool because they listen to music that’s sort of bollocks. For me, it’s just listening to music is soothing to me feeling emotions.

So you rereleased your latest album, ‘I blow out big candles’, but you made the extended edition, with Cherry on top. What was the thought process behind that? Were the additional songs ones that you’d been originally working on before, and then went back to, or were they a clean slate?

I had one of the songs written for so long, and it had to come out because we’ve been playing it in the live shows for so bloody long. And do you know what? It came out at the Perfect Time because it’s going to be on this movie that’s out in July called I Know What You Didlast Summer, and it’s the new rendition of that nineties fucking thing. And it’s just fresh out the fucking womb, this song that’s only been out not even a year. So it must have come out at the perfect time because it’s going to be in this film. But it must all be Divine timing. Killer is the song that I’m talking about, and it is literally about a psycho killer, and it’s a horror film, which was perfect because I wrote that song inspired by the Series YOU, and I was like, oh my God, I just wanted to write. I’m not into tense films, I don’t like the anxiety and things like that.

Have you got any musical influences when it comes to your writing, or do your influences match your writing style?

I think I am just inspired by the Manchester scene, so I am inspired at the moment by Oasis. I just really like the direct style of Liam Gallagher, and well, to be honest, it’s Noel’s writing, but I just really liked the Manchester sound and the nineties sound specifically or early two thousands as well. I just really like the two thousand nineties stuff. I always say this, but it’s just true. Nothing else really touches me like that music.

Just as you mentioned, do you find any kind of roadblocks being a woman in the scene or the music industry?

I think there are definitely. My manager was speaking to me, and there is still misogyny that exists in the music scene. I think the problem is that you have to try 10 times harder if you’re a woman to get respect from men, which is sad. And I think men need to do much less to get the same level of respect, which is a tough thing, but I try not to let it get to my head. I think being a woman’s fucking lit and I don’t give a shit, I wouldn’t trade it. I think we’re blessed. Periods included, I don’t care. We’re blessed. So if someone wants to be misogynistic at the end of the day, we’re winning. So I don’t really care. To be honest with you. Sounds sexist, but it’s just how I feel. Do you know what I mean?”.

This Manchester-born artist is someone who I feel is going to have a massive career. I have never seen Freak Slug live, though I am going to rectify that. Last month, Monster Children spoke with Freak Slug. There is a lot of new interest ahead of the release of Amulet:

“Is there a mood or a life event that you imagine this music would help others through?

I processed a lot of anger with this album. To put it very briefly, this whole album concept is about a past life. One that involved organised religion. My sister was killed instead of me when I ran away. We were both condemned but I got to realise music was a healer. And it channels a lot of the anger of a woman, especially those healing archetypes that are shamed but probably add the most value to society. It’s just that classic bullshit of how as women we are never being valued for how much we are worth.  So, that's what it's about. I was processing a lot of anger about that, like how the world still suffers from those beliefs. It also explores love and destiny and just generally about where we come from. It’s a very spiritual album but whether or not somebody is spiritual, I'd like to think that the energy travels to somebody who maybe doesn't understand it, but they can feel it. Or somebody else can interpret the lyrics on the level that they're at. It doesn’t matter, ultimately it will do whatever it needs to do for the people who hear it.

That's what the power of music and art is, right?

Exactly.

Even just hearing that response, but also within your lyrics, you are someone who expresses a lot about the extremities of yourself and the world around you. Is that how you have always been?

I've always been really direct. Sometimes it's gotten me into trouble, but now I just love myself more and I’ve accepted that sometimes I might appear as the villain by being honest. I don't mind playing the villain in somebody's life now. I explore being a villain in this album actually. We need to come to terms with the fact that we're all going to play villains and heroes in other people's lives. We are teachers to each other. Being a villain or someone being a villain serves us lessons.

I don’t know how to ask this in not in a corny way, but how did you love yourself more?

That’s a good question. I think by overcoming a lot of pain and realising that I was actually making the effort to change patterns. I think self love is self understanding and also forgiveness. If you have a willingness to move on and grow and you actually prove to yourself that you’re changing than you can have forgiveness for whatever parts of yourself you don’t love. If you can say oh two years ago I would’ve made a different choice in a situation than it proves you’re getting there.

I like that. Okay this is a bit off tangent here, but have you seen the recent rom com ‘Finding Emily?’

No, why?

Okay so it’s a film based in Manchester and the leading actor Spike Fearn did this interview the other day talking about how it’s really nice to see Manchester filmed with all this colour rather than the dreary way it is usually represented and it got me thinking about how with your early music you subdued your Northern accent because typically people have thought down on it. But with your recent music, it’s quite obvious the shift to your native accent. Why did you decide to do that?

I think it’s just be trying to be more authentic to who I am so naturally my accent has to come in. And to be quite frank I see all the men doing it. I see so many men doing it in all kinds of accents like Northern English, Irish, and I don't see as many women do it. And I was like well why? And I don’t mean to be rude, this is just how I have experienced my accent but I feel like people look down on a Northern accent and historically as common. Men tend to be able to get away with those gritty accents, but I don't think women can be because women are supposed to be soft and nice and feminine. Well fuck that. I’m going to do what the fuck I want because this is who I am. Not doing it feels like bowing down to the really subtle undercurrents of misogyny and the southern and northern divides. So fuck that”.

I am ending up with The Forty-Five and their recent interview with Freak Slug. She spoke about “Northern pride and embracing spirituality on album two”. If you have not yet heard this artist then you really do need to connect with her:

“The choice to become a musician may seem an unusual one for someone who hates to be looked at, but Genovese explains that music is a powerful tool towards healing, allowing her to be seen through her craft without those physical eyeballs on her.

“I can’t escape [being seen]. We have to choose to face up to these things in some incarnation, and Freak Slug is mine.”

Even in the modern day, public perceptions of spirituality are a bone of contention for Genovese. ‘Black Eyes,’ a track from the upcoming album, delves into the uncomfortable truth that dismissal is not only frustrating, but dangerous. While the lyrics could be understood to explore male violence against women in a way that feels relevant to the present, Genovese reveals this wasn’t the vision she had in mind.

“‘Black Eye’ is about my past life. It’s about anger towards a man who is so dismissive of a woman and her spirituality, and just has none of it. It pisses me off to see these men still lingering today, because back then they would’ve been a danger to society; men were scared of the female intuition, and because of that, they killed women. Some men, and women too, are still so unaware and unwilling to learn about these other worlds. That back then would have cost our fucking lives.

“I do encourage people to interpret the lyrics in their own way; wherever they’re at in their lives, as long as it’s helping them process something, that’s cool. The lyrics all across the album are so potent and deep, and will speak to anybody regardless of spiritual beliefs.”

Elsewhere on the record, lyrics explore the many facets that make up femininity. ‘Girl, Intentions,’ the first single, features an interpolation of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,’ while the title is a nod to seminal film Girl, Interrupted.

Genovese highlights the importance of meshing together these contrasting examples of womanhood, which led her to sing more prominently than ever in her Manchester accent.

“I have seen so many men singing in regional accents but I don’t see that on the female side. That’s a load of bollocks. Why isn’t it happening? I think I know why. Politically and historically in England, Northerners are seen as more common. Men are allowed to be boisterous, blunt, rough and ready, whereas women need to be soft and sweet. All the history and judgement live inside you on a subliminal level. So men can get away with expressing their Northern-ness, but as a woman, it’s like, woah. I just decided, fuck that, I’m going to sing how I speak. If not me, who? They have been doing it since the fucking ‘90s, that was 30 years ago, and [the double standard] is still never spoken about. It’s time for change; women are going to get away with it too. It’s what the world needs.

‘Amulet’ was recorded in London, then finished off in Los Angeles. Being in the overly-polished LA presented difficulties in maintaining the grit of the album’s sound.

“Going forward, I want to record in England. LA’s sunny vibes are really affecting. I’m mostly inspired by Manchester music — I love the attitude and charm — and it saddens me to think the world doesn’t know the extent of how sick English music is. Like, why are The Libertines not worldwide? I want to keep that grit and charm [in my own music], and its not easy when you’re affected by the everyday sun.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Alice Palm

Despite bringing together such contrasting aspects of her identity, cohesion was never a concern for Genovese when making the album.

“I don’t ever want to make an album that sounds like one song 12 different ways. Albums need high moments of tension and then release; beauty and then ugly. Somebody criticised my previous album for not being cohesive. Fuck that, why should an album be anything? Why are we sticking to what albums were 50 years ago? It’s 2026, wake up. Albums should be whatever the fuck the artist wants them to be, and this is what I want.”

Letting go of traditional structure afforded her further sonic experimentation straying from the shoegaze path and veering into punk-edged guitar pop.

“I’ve always loved shoegaze and always will. It’s still a sick vibe to have on this album even, if it’s just in moments. But because the album is processing such deep anger, the grit and attitude and heaviness need to be there. There’s a juxtaposition of light and dark, as there always will be with me.”

The experimentation reached further heights on the track ‘Serpent:’ “Serpent was not meant to be an album song; it was like ‘Planet Caravan’ by Black Sabbath, we were just playing around with bongos. But I couldn’t let it go. We kept that psychedelic part, put autotune on my voice and I sang through a megaphone. I hate the word ‘psychedelic’ — it gives me the ick — but that’s what it is. We tuned it up and we saved it.”

Genovese is certain that being a musician is her destiny, but that doesn’t mean it comes without its challenges.

“Touring is really hard: being in a new place every day, tired, hungover, losing my voice, and still having to play a show. It’s debilitating for my health, which is hard for me as I love to take care of my body. But that’s the sacrifice; every job takes a toll in some way. It’s the nature of having a physical vessel and doing things that aren’t natural; the world today is not a natural world, so everything we do goes against our bodies.

“You just have to fucking keep going. The closer you get to a place you want to be, the more you want to give up. It’s not for everyone, though. A lot of people want to be a musician, but some do it for the wrong reasons — for ego or to look cool — and your spirit won’t reward you for that, because you are going against your own destiny. You have to follow what you think is right”.

On 29th August, Freak Slug plays Victorious Festival. That is going to be a huge gig. I might try and catch her when she plays London’s Rough Trade East on 20th September. I can see her playing Glastonbury next year. I feel Amulet will be an album worthy of Mercury nomination. This year they have been criticised by being too mainstream. No heavier music. Metal not represented. Lacking rising artists. They need to react to that, so I feel Freak Slug could be in with a shout next year. She absolutely is…

A titanic talent.

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FEATURE: Heirloom: Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Heirloom

  

Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty-Five

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OFTEN ranked…

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 2001/PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle

alongside Björk’s best albums, Vespertine turns twenty-five on 27th August. I want to go inside this album for an anniversary feature. I shall end with some reviews. Hugely critically acclaimed, Drowned in Sound placed it first when deciding the best albums released between 2000 and 2005. Slant Magazine placed Vespertine third when ranking the 250 best albums of the 2000s. Quite an honour, but not that surprising. Björk is one of the most consistent and brilliant artists in music history. Vespertine is one of her most astonishing releases. I am starting out with The Guardian and their 2001 interview. They chatted with Björk ahead of the release of a simply mesmeric album:

“We hook up in St John's Wood, where finishing touches are being put to some adverts for Björk's new album, Vespertine. When I get there, several people are musing over video images of Björk with some kind of sci-fi maggot slithering out of her nose and into her mouth. Björk sits before the screens, as quiet (natch) as her gorgeous stripy coat is loud. Her hair is longer, more rock'n'roll, than usual, tapering down her back in Ronnie Wood tendrils. When the time comes for us to retire upstairs and talk, she turns to smile 'Hello'. Not for the first time, her gothic prism of a face, with its up-turned nose and Slavic cheekbones, seems like something half-seen, half-sensed, lurking in the woods of a Grimm's fairy tale. If nothing else, Björk is the undisputed Blair witch of pop.

The maggot imagery in the video having been so repulsive, I can't help but wonder what Vespertine could possibly be about. I expect Björk to say 'death' or 'decay', something cheerful along those lines. However, she tells me that the new album is dedicated to 'worshipping the home, hibernation, finding paradise in your kitchen, magical moments on your own, that kind of thing'. Following this theme, Björk almost called the album Domestica but changed her mind. ('It was too much.') Then she found Vespertine in a dictionary. 'It means: "Things that come out of the night", like an owl or the northern lights,' she says. It's certainly gentler-sounding than previous material.

'Well, yes, my other albums, especially Homogenic, have been very extroverted, very bullet-proof. But that side of me has been captured so many times.' So is Vespertine the private Björk - Björk unmasked? She rubs her face nervously and considers. 'It is one side of me,' she says. 'A side of me that can't be captured by going out and being sociable. Something quite quiet and unexpected. Hidden things, just to do with the things that we dream about at night, the more Nijinksy sides of us.' Now Björk is warming to her theme, smiling sweetly. 'Sometimes they are subdued, but they are always there.'

If you're sitting at home reading this and thinking 'Crikey', then I can confirm that this is the way Björk speaks and thinks. Her private conversations with her friend Thom Yorke, from Radiohead, must be frightening to behold. On the other hand, it does lead to some interesting discussions that you just wouldn't have with Atomic Kitten.

Famously raised by her progressive hippy mother in a commune-style environment just outside Reykjavik (her estranged father, now a trade union activist, saw her almost on a daily basis), Björk was classically trained in music from the age of five, which stood her in good stead for later work with the likes of The Brodsky Quartet and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. At 11, Björk became a national child star after recording some traditional folk songs. Björk happily admits to banging on and on about Iceland in interviews as a mask for shyness, and denies that she is irritated by her homeland's current ultra-fashionable state. 'It is probably my fault. I've talked about it the most.' Like many young people in Iceland, as a teenager, Björk bounced for a few years between jobs to pay the rent and her creative pursuits. The early success of The Sugarcubes paved the way to a solo career, which is when Björk decided to move to London.

'When I moved to London in 1993, I was having the most happy life,' says Björk. 'I was regularly on tours with The Sugarcubes, seeing the world, but always having a safe nest to go home to. And that suited me, because I was so introvert. As a kid, I had this fantasy that I would end up living alone on an island, writing symphonies and just walking around in nature, tripping, singing at the top of my lungs in the blizzards, bumping into horses, whatever. But because I was so safe, there was a side to me, certain aspects of my character, that nobody had ever seen and nobody ever would. I knew I had to make a sacrifice, become more extrovert, push myself to the limit.'

Isn't sacrifice a big word? 'Not at all,' she says, surprised. 'To me, communication is all about making a sacrifice. A very beautiful sacrifice. That's the whole point. It's like love. For two people to synchronise so extremely, they both have to sacrifice their personal needs, they both have to celebrate each other's different sides, the different colours we have in all of us.' By now, it should be obvious what Goldie, one of Björk's exes, was going on about when he called her 'intense'. Mind you, in the same interview, Goldie gloated about the time he bedded Naomi Campbell, so Björk seems to be well out of that one.

If things are happier, less tortured, now, Björk prefers not to comment. 'I try not to talk about these things, I'm sorry,' she says, quietly, when I ask if she is currently in a relationship. The same intensity that evidently comes so naturally to Björk could account for her triumph as the blind mute Selma in Dancer in the Dark , not to mention the fraught relationship she had with von Trier. During the making of Dancer in the Dark , the on-set rows between director and star were legendary. What happened?

'I am used to the creative process,' says Björk. 'I work with a lot of people who are as strong, if not stronger than me. So I am used to disagreeing and working things out. But, with everybody except him, it would always stay creative and positive. Whereas with him, maybe it wasn't, it was quite destructive.' Is she saying that von Trier tried to destroy her? For the first time, Björk's face clouds over. 'I don't know,' she says wearily. 'It's, like, almost three years since I've been shooting this film, and I'm really bored talking about it, I'm sorry.'

There's the same muted, weary reaction when I ask about Ricardo Lopez, the obsessed fan (of whom Björk seems to have more than her fair share) who, in 1996, sent a letter bomb to her home, then filmed himself with a video blowing his brains out with a pistol. This upset Björk badly, prompting her to leave London, first to Spain to record Homogenic , then back to Iceland.

'It wasn't just the letter bomb,' she explains. 'Things were happening all around me, and I realised that I'd come to the end of the extrovert thing. I had to go home and search for myself again. My job is essentially about generosity and when I went to London, I had a lot to give, and it turned out I had given it all. If I'd tried to give any more, it would have become bad energy. So I left at just the right time. I'm not saying that I was responsible for the letter bomb, or that I saw it coming, but it didn't surprise me either, because something definitely wasn't right. I am much much happier now.'

And she seems it. As an artist and a person, Björk no longer seems inside out. As the world's leftfield chanteuse of choice, Björk's albums routinely sell a healthy few million internationally. Meanwhile, Björk the human being is at her happiest talking about Sindri, the son she adores. Back in 1997, she famously attacked a journalist at Bangkok airport for harassing him. 'I just flipped. She was pushing my boy, trying to get an emotional reaction out of him. I take the bullshit that comes with my job, but when it starts affecting the people I love, that's different.'

'Being famous is like 9 billion volts of electricity going through you,' she says earnestly. 'You feel it like that. That's what it feels like. There are people who are born to do it - the Lady Dianas and Mother Theresas of this world - who really have that level of communication, that talent to communicate 24 hours a day, and let all these people live through them. And it's actually a very positive, not a negative, thing - a self-sacrificial thing they are doing.' Hmmm, I say, carefully, maybe that is true sometimes. But what about the people who only want attention and glory? Björk shakes her head emphatically. 'Most people who have been in the limelight for a long time do it in a good way. They enjoy it and it's also a generous act, very self-sacrificial. I really believe that.'

This debate rages pointlessly on for a couple more minutes, until it finally dawns on me that Björk and I are just going to have to differ on the self-sacrificial qualities of modern celebrity. To be fair to Björk, it could be that she is thinking of Mother Theresa and I am thinking of Westlife. To be even fairer to her, fame never seemed to be the point for her anyway. 'You can't write a lot of songs when you've got to do all that,' she shrugs. 'And I guess if you were going to ask what I wanted to do with my life, a big question like that, I would say that I wanted to write songs, and keep writing songs until I die. I'm an explorer. I want to see how far I can go, and I what I can do.

'The very best thing about music,' she continues, her eyes gleaming, 'is that you can express all this kind of abstract stuff that everybody lives every day. So I think most of the time I would consider myself "happy", if that is the word. But I've always been happy, silly, sad, boring, furious, ecstatic, in love, the whole scale, all at the same time. So if I'm not happy all the time, it doesn't make me unhappy, if you see what I mean.' And now Björk touches her face for the last time. 'If I'm unhappy, it doesn't mean that something is wrong”.

I am going to come to Beats Per Minute and their assessment about Vespertine. In terms of when it was written, it was a slightly difficult period. Involved in a film that was not an especially happy experience, Vespertine was perhaps an escape. Or a chance for Björk to immerse herself in something different to a somewhat dark and traumatic film:

“In a way befitting of its creator, it was daring to release Vespertine in the dog days of summer. Released 20 years ago today, on August 27, 2001, Björk’s fourth full-length album took the icy exteriors of 1997’s Homogenic and went even further. She wanted to craft an album bound by domesticity, inspired by her newfound partnership with avant garde artist Matthew Barney, and delivered a record overflowing with wintry choirs and strings, icicle-delicate music box keyboards and beats. These tones and arrangements provided an idyllic backdrop to songs that mostly take place inside the home, wrapped up with a lover.

Conceived while filming Lars von Trier’s divisive musical, Dancer in the Dark, in which Björk starred and for which she wrote the film’s melancholy, whimsical soundtrack, Vespertine is a respite away from the business and chaos of the world. It may be a frosty record — the title literally means ‘relating to or occurring in the evening’, when the air is coolest and quietest — but it’s not alienating. There are moments here that may seem eerie or strange, but Vespertine also happens to be Björk’s most accessible and cohesive record in her sizeable catalogue. It has a welcoming character, feeling less like being stranded in the snow in subzero temperatures and more like pondering life from inside the warm cabin in the woods.

The album got a similar type of critical response as her prior records. Homogenic and Post in particular received the kind of critical adoration that artists can usually only dream of, but Björk continued her streak with Vespertine. From here, Björk would continue down her own various rabbit holes, experimenting with the human voice on the dense Medulla, creating obtuse pieces about the natural world on Biophilia. She got almost perversely personal on 2015’s abstract and winding Vulnicura, a heartbreaking sequel to Vespertine in that it found her constructing brutal orchestral pieces to background her processing her split from Barney and what it meant for her family. It was something she was still working through on her ninth album, 2017’s Arca-assisted Utopia.

Vespertine is, by some metric, the final album of hers that feels like a ‘pop album’ in any traditional sense. That it happens to be her strongest statement in a career of strong statements is testament to its timelessness – although that was achieved somewhat fortunately. Björk was aware that, in 2001, most people acquired their music on CDs or through illegal download platforms like Napster, and ultimately would listen to compressed files through computer speakers. She wanted to create an album using instruments she believed would be less compromised by these listening circumstances, and opted for minimalist beats beneath light, glistening, delicate sounds, created by harp, clavichord, and custom-made plexiglass music boxes (seen in the image above). Of course, Björk being Björk, they were recorded in pristine fashion, and still sound gorgeous, if not better, today in the age of audiophilia where this kind of instrumentation is much more commonplace in popular music.

In recent years, Björk has finally begun receiving her rightful recognition as a composer and producer of her own music. When Vespertine came out, her male contributors often got the majority of the credit. Electronic duo Matmos, for example, worked with her on the beats, but despite Björk laying claim to about 80% of them, she got almost none of the credit. In light of this, and simply because the record has aged beautifully, Vespertine’s 20th birthday is surely cause for celebration. Now go bundle up and luxuriate in its humane, tender, and emotionally resonant winter light”.

Albumism celebrated Vespertine’s twentieth anniversary in 2021. I would urge Anyone who has not heard the album to go and listen. In terms of its production and sound quality, it is such a transformative listen. The album was recorded at quite a few studios. Dividing her time between London, New York and Iceland, Vespertine does not sound disjointed. It is this magnificent and cohesive album:

“Vespertine was forged in the twin fires of a burgeoning new relationship (with artist Matthew Barney) and as an escape from the professional discomfort of working with Lars Von Trier on his film Dancer In The Dark (2000). Both influences can be sharply felt throughout, as she captures the intimacy and sexual frisson of a new relationship and produces music of an intensely personal nature as a reaction to the hours of grueling acceptance of the role she played out to award-winning effect.

Initial ideas were tentatively titled Domestika, as Björk sought to capture the homely and comforting existence of domestic life. This can be heard in the adoption of household sounds as the basis for some of the songs—the cracking of ice, the shuffling flick of playing cards. She had also tired of the big beats that dominated her previous work and opted instead for hushed, whispered snatches of vocals with electronic bleeps, whirs and pulses.

Furthermore, Björk had become acutely aware of the new technology associated with downloading music and used only instruments that would not be compromised in any way by the inevitable downloading that would unite listener and artist. So, she used harps, clavinets, strings and even used custom built music boxes—anything that would remain as it was recorded once the files were transferred for download.

Above all though, it was beautiful. All the ingredients that ensured the required homeliness resulted in an album that embraces and exhilarates at every turn.

And yet, I only listen to the album during four or five months of the year, and it seems ridiculous to be writing this anniversary piece during the summer (however typically British the summer may be), as I identify it so closely with the autumn and winter months. The album manages to be simultaneously cold and warm—the aural equivalent of plunging in the virgin snow and then recovering in front of a roaring log fire. It is a visceral and unique experience that is never lessened by repeated listens.

Vespertine is the very definition of an album with no skips—not just because every song is vital and filled with beauty, but also because it would just seem, well, rude to listen to any song in isolation or in the “wrong” order. It is (seemingly) built from a thousand different strands of sound and to tear the fabric of it by skipping or playing in a different order would be to denigrate the time and effort put into the artful construction of it.

Trying to distil the beauty into a tribute of this length is almost impossible, but “Hidden Place” that opens the album is emblematic of all the things that make it so special. The opening lyrics reveal that rush of new love: “Through the warmest cord of care / Your love was sent to me / I’m not sure what to do with it / Or where to put it / I’m so close to tears / And so close to / Simply calling you up / And simply suggesting / We go to that hidden place.”

As she sings those words, a ululating electronic bass throbs, percussion chirps, flickers and choral backing vocals swirl around to create a concoction of purest love. Love turns to physical intimacy on the charmingly explicit “Cocoon” before the closest thing we get to a big beat turns up on the opening to “It’s Not Up To You,” whose chorus is a dreamy delight with strings, harp and her uniquely surging vocals soaring skywards.

The same sense of upward trajectory is plotted on “Undo.” The final two-and-a-half minutes is a staggeringly wondrous piece of work, with magnificent choral voices and celestial strings ascending upwards for what feels like a weightless eternity. “Pagan Poetry” meanwhile revels in its pizzicato harp strings, as Björk’s voice runs wild and free like the wind, rising and falling in steep spirals of adoration while the backing vocals swoon dramatically.

The aforementioned music boxes turn up on the irrepressible elegant beauty of “Frosti” before my personal favorite (if I must choose one) “Aurora” takes center stage. The last remnants of the music boxes accompany another throbbing electronic bass line and plucked strings and the heavenly mélange of voices creates a magic carpet ride through the crisp arctic skies, bending every which way at will.

Elsewhere, there are wonders aplenty to imbibe. The lo-fi beat and lupine howl of Björk’s voice on “Heirloom,” the shiver-inducing strings at the conclusion of “Sun In My Mouth,” the eerie, foreboding feel of “An Echo A Stain” and the gradual climb to the restrained climax of “Harm Of Will.” The final act of the album is a jolly, even jaunty, celebration of unexpected love on “Unison,” as Björk reflects, “I thrive best hermit style / With a beard and a pipe / And a parrot on each side / But now I can’t do this without you / I never thought I would compromise.” As lyrics go, it is typically unique and somewhat unorthodox, but its power and wit are unmatched”.

Let’s finish off with Stereogum and their twentieth anniversary feature about Vespertine. Last year, Albumism asked its readers to decide on Björk’s best albums. Vespertine came second. In 2022, Rough Trade placed the album sixth. An artist who releases so many masterpieces, Vespertine stands up there with her very best work:

“In practice, you can still strap on some fancy headphones and lose yourself in Vespertine. In fact, Vespertine might be Björk's ultimate headphones record, if only because the whole thing is so soft and comforting. In outsourcing the remaining 20% of her beats, Björk called on the glitch wizards whose bugged-out beatscapes she admired: Matmos, Matthew Herbert, Opiate, Console. Vespertine sounds nothing like any of the music that any of those producers made on their own. Björk used them for texture, just as she used harps and clavichords and choirs. She even used her own voice that way. On Vespertine, Björk largely keeps her self to a murmur, never exploding and only bringing the passion where the songs truly demand it. The end result, an album of welcoming and reassuring pings and bloops and hums and twinkles, is closer to pure ASMR than to pop music.

Those blissful textures worked for Vespertine because it's an album about bliss-states -- and about one bliss-state in particular. Just as much as Let's Get It On, Vespertine is an album about fucking. Björk never hides that in allusion or innuendo. There's no symbolism in the imagery. Instead, she's talking about a boy entering her lightly, restoring her blisses: "He slides inside/ Half awake, half asleep/ We faint back into sleephood." The actual act of sex gets plenty of burn on Vespertine, and Björk never draws lines between physical and emotional connection. When Björk sings that she's close to calling this boy and simply suggesting that they go to a hidden place, she's talking about an imaginative zone of refuge, but she's also clear about what they're going to be doing in that hidden place.

All of Vespertine buzzes and ripples and plings beautifully, but it buzzes and ripples and plings most beautifully on "Pagan Poetry." Ostensibly, that's a song about how it's not easy to get close to Björk, about how she can be mysterious and difficult to interpret: "On the surface, simplicity/ But the darkest pit in me/ And it's pagan poetry." But she's not being a pagan poet when she stops the song and chants, simply and directly, that she loves him. That might be the most nakedly vulnerable musical moment in a career full of them.

Upon its release, Vespertine got awestruck reviews. Björk had entered the stage of her career where it was part of a music critic's job to properly explain how great her music was. Anecdotally, though, I remember a sort of muted confusion around Vespertine. The tracks on Homogenic had been weird, but they'd been weird in anthemic ways. Vespertine was inwardly, meditatively weird. It was Björk whispering about sex and flowers and glaciers over music boxes and soft jitter-bursts of programmed drums. You had to be in a particular zone to lock in with the album. You had to surrender to it.

Not everybody wanted to surrender to Vespertine. Björk's three previous albums all went gold or platinum, though it often took them years to sell that much. Vespertine never did, and neither did any of the Björk albums that followed. Even if Björk made Vespertine with Napster in mind, Napster wasn't the reason that Vespertine didn't become a dorm-room staple.Instead, Vespertine was a contradiction: an album of challenging serenity, an avant-garde meditation. That's exactly why Vespertine has kept its peculiar power. On Vespertine, Björk never bothered to sound futuristic. Instead, she built a beautiful bubble, a crystalline sanctuary, and that sanctuary remains pristine”.

Vespertine turns twenty-five on 27th August. I am curious if Björk will write anything about the album on its anniversary. How she sees it looking back. It is one of my favourite Björk albums. Every song on Vespertine is staggering and leaves an impression. It still sounds flawless…

ALL these years later.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Susanna Hoffs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

 

Susanna Hoffs

__________

THERE are a couple of reasons…

to include Susanna Hoffs in this The Great American Songbook. One reason is that her band, The Bangles, formed forty-five years ago. Formed by Hoffs and sisters Vicki Peterson and Debbi Peterson, The Bangles began as part of the Paisley Underground scene, a Los Angeles music movement heavily influenced by 1960s Rock and Psychedelic music. On 1st September, it will be forty years since one of their best-loved singles, Walk Like An Egyptian, was released. The band’s last album together was 2011’s Sweetheart of the Sun. I do hope that they perform of perform together. However, Susanna Hoffs has released some brilliant albums. I want to bring in this new interview from Los Angeles Times. Hoffs has announced a new album, The List, which arrives on 18th September. You can ore-order it here. Casablanca is a single from the album and is absolutely gorgeous. I will end this feature with a twenty-song solo mix (including original songs alongside some covers) from one of the greatest ever songwriters. Someone I have admired since I was a child. I have edited some of the text out, as we jump between her upcoming solo album and words about The Bangles:

“Susanna Hoffs calls it “the list”: a faded piece of paper ripped from a Filofax day planner on which are scrawled the names of every guy she’s ever gone out with — some famous, some not, some “kind of douchey,” as she puts it with a what-can-you-do shrug.

“It was like a dating profile but pre-internet,” Hoffs says of the tally, which she composed sometime in the late 1980s as she was racking up hits — among them the chart-topping “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Eternal Flame” — as the frontwoman of the Bangles. “I’m a nice Jewish girl,” she adds. “I was just keeping track, doing my homework.”

Today at the bottom of the list in all caps sits the name of Jay Roach, the movie director whom Hoffs met on a blind date in 1991. He’s the subject of a new song called “None of Them Were You,” in which the singer runs down some of Roach’s predecessors — “a very dapper Brit,” “a suave and handsome actor” — before musing on her deep connection with the man to whom she’s now been married for 33 years.

“I ended up with such a good guy,” she says. “It almost brings a tear to the eye.”

“None of Them Were You” isn’t the only tune with that potential on an album Hoffs is preparing to release next month. Due Sept. 18 from her Baroque Folk label, “The List” — Hoffs’ first set of original material in more than a decade — collects a dozen touching and witty songs based on tales from her life as an artist, wife, businessperson and mother. At 67, her winsome singing voice is remarkably unchanged from the era of big hair and dangly earrings. Yet the music reflects an emotional wisdom that had to be earned through experience, as in the folky “Time,” which ponders her and Roach’s relationships with their two adult sons.

“I see you dancing in the kitchen / I feel your tiny hand in mine,” she sings, “What if you fly back home this summer? / We could spend a little while.” (Beware, parents — this one will wreck you.)

A voluble presence with an easy laugh, Hoffs points out that she’s hardly been “hiding in a cave” since 2012’s “Someday.” In 2024, she put out a long-shelved solo record of songs she’d cut back in 1999; before that, she made a series of expertly curated covers albums, including three she recorded with the power-pop maestro Matthew Sweet. But publishing her first novel in 2023 — “This Bird Has Flown,” a charming bestseller about a one-hit wonder looking for a comeback — rejuvenated Hoffs’ devotion to songwriting.

“I never thought the book would sell, and I never thought it would get great reviews,” she says on a recent afternoon at her home in Brentwood. “That was a big turn career-wise.”

For “The List,” Hoffs teamed with CJ Camerieri, a musician and producer known for his work with Paul Simon and Bon Iver, among others; Camerieri in turn recruited an array of songwriters to collaborate with the two of them, including a couple of Grammy winners in Dan Wilson and Jesse Harris.

“Sue has built up decades and decades of goodwill in this town,” Camerieri says, seated next to Hoffs on a sofa, “so you call up somebody like Dan and you say, ‘Hey, you want to write a song with Susanna Hoffs?’ and he goes, ‘Great, yeah, I’m in.’”

The process was simple, the producer explains: “We’d start in Sue’s kitchen with coffee at 10 in the morning —”

“I’m really good at coffee,” Hoffs interjects. “I mean, I use Nespresso. But I’m good at being a hostess to all the lads.”

“So I’d give everybody a yellow legal pad and Sue would start telling stories,” Camerieri continues. “We’re all scribbling notes, and after about an hour, we’d go, ‘I think we got enough here,’ and we’d go write songs about what she’d told us.”

They recorded at Hoffs’ place — “We’d move this couch and the drums would go right here,” she says — beneath a vaulted ceiling that provided just the right ambience. First-call players like Greg Leisz and Wendy Melvoin stopped by to take part in the sessions; for harmony vocals in a country-ish ditty called “Bad Case of Loneliness,” they got Rufus Wainwright, with whom Hoffs had done a version of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” for Roach’s 2025 comedy “The Roses.”

The dreamy-rootsy arrangements are never less than handsome — and never prettier than in “Fool,” which Hoffs says was inspired by her love of the records Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach made together. Yet “The List” was built to showcase Hoffs’ rich storytelling.

The LP opens with “Casablanca,” in which she recounts a run-in with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in New Orleans in the late ’80s. The Bangles were on tour opening for George Michael; the Dead had a gig at the University of New Orleans’ Lakefront Arena. After Hoffs and Weir ended up at a crawfish boil put on by the Neville Brothers, the two took a walk along Lake Pontchartrain — “He was very cute,” Hoffs says — then later strolled again through the French Quarter.

“At one point, I looked back and there was a sea of Deadheads who realized it was Bob Weir,” she says. “But I was with him. I got to be his pal, which I just couldn’t believe was happening. It was delicious.” (Between the two walks, the Bangles famously jumped onstage with the Dead to perform “Iko Iko.”)

After eight Top 40 singles and a triple-platinum LP, the Bangles split in 1989 amid differing ideas about the band’s creative direction and ambitions. The members pursued solo and other projects but reunited to record a song for 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” which Roach directed; two more Bangles albums followed in 2003 and 2011, the second minus Steele, whom Hoffs says she’s not in touch with at the moment.

Compared to the Go-Go’s, whose parallel career was detailed in a 2020 documentary and who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a year later, the Bangles haven’t quite cemented their legacy, though an authorized biography came out last year and a doc is currently in development.

Yet Hoffs doesn’t seem especially troubled by the possibility that the Bangles might be underappreciated, perhaps because she’s got plenty of her own stuff going on. Before “The List” comes out, she’ll play her old hits in a Sept. 5 gig at Largo at the Coronet and in a handful of dates opening for Billy Idol; after the new album drops, she’ll head east for a residency at New York’s Café Carlyle.

She and Camerieri are also at work on a musical adaptation of “This Bird Has Flown” for the stage or the screen. And just the other day she found a folder on her computer full of songs she wrote years ago with her friend Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice.

“I don’t like using the word ‘bucket list,’ but all these things are labors of love,” Hoffs says.

What’s the trouble with “bucket list”?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, smiling. “It just seems, like, death-y”.

I am excited to hear The List. One of my favourite memories from childhood was seeing the video for The Bangles’ Eternal Flame. That single came out in 1989. It reached number one in multiple countries, including here in the U.K. As a solo artist, Susanna Hoffs has released some incredible work. Her eponymous album turns thirty on 24th September. Arguably her best album, this is a music icon who I hope releases music for years to come. That is why I wanted to show love…

FOR a true music queen.

FEATURE: Spotlight: iKeda

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano

 

iKeda

__________

HERE is an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano

who you know is the real deal. That their talent runs so deep and they have the potential be making music for many years to come. That is the case with iKeda. I am new to her work but, like so many, I was hooked on her recent single, Go!. I want to come to some interviews with her. First, Loud Women said this about an artist who is very much someone you need to know about:

“London artist iKeda shares ‘GO!’, the latest single from her forthcoming sophomore EP Bangs N Braces, out via Orbit Artist Group.

Following her breakout moment as the official opening act for PinkPantheress across her UK and European tour, iKeda continues her rise in London’s underground pop scene. With a sound that blends electropop, electroclash, Caribbean influence and club culture, iKeda creates a vibrant world of her own.

‘GO!’ is a glitchy electro-pop earworm with heart-pounding beats and sweet melodies.

“‘GO!’ is for the gyal dem, for all the unbothered girls. The girls who do things because they want to do them and aren’t pressured by what other people think. They’re naturally cool because they’re just themselves. But they’re kind, too. They have a pure heart.”

iKeda”.

I do want to get to some interviews. I would urge everyone to follow iKeda. She releases her hotly-anticipated E.P., Bangs N Braces, on 28th August. I really love the cover of it and, on the strength of Go! and Red Red, this is going to be an extraordinary release. One of the best E.P.s of the year. Not only is iKeda someone who makes this incredible and distinct music. She is also a wonderful interviewee from what I have read. I would love to see her live one day.

In the first of three interviews, I will come to CRACK from April. This was ahead of her supporting PinkPantheress. There was discussion about her previous E.P., Pretty Little Problem. I am listening back to that and sort of playing catch-up. It is bold, effervescent and punchy Electro-Pop/Dancehall. You are helpless but to resist its power and brilliance:

“She’s excited to be back out there, building confidence, dancing, visiting new cities, meeting new fans – something she got a taste of in Brixton. “There were so many people coming up and being so lovely,” she recalls. Some were a touch younger, admittedly, which was slightly daunting, she says, “because I can be a little risqué!”

But iKeda was once that same open-minded, music-hungry kid, too, growing up between north London and Cambridge, picking up influences from everywhere: a “music head” mum tapped into club culture; an older sister “into loads of different” things; friends from both cities with disparate leanings – indie on the one side, dancehall and garage on the other; and the radio. An accumulation of all sorts – probably why she finds it tricky to describe her sound, her reference points as scattered as the light still bouncing around her room.

A love for creating with those closest to her, though, is far easier to pin down. She got an early start singing at home with her younger sister, while DJing – mainly at little clubs with her friends – came later. A decade-long bond with musician and performance artist Babymorocco has stretched between life stages. “He’s like my brother,” says iKeda, whose previous releases have been supported by his PhatBoy collective, with other link-ups and appearances dotted about. “There are lots of things people haven’t seen,” she admits. “We’ve done a podcast together. We’ve done a comic together…”

For iKeda, a self-confessed art girl and “very contextual person”, the visual side of what she puts out is a forever focus. She wants to inspire. Make things that last. Be it illustrations for comics or high-drama videos like the one for RED RED (another close-friend collaboration, with photographer and director Erika Kamano, that saw Lady Gaga’s Telephone tacked firmly to the moodboard). Especially now, with a brand-new EP just around the corner.

In typical iKeda fashion, her forthcoming release, Bangs N Braces, is inspired by just about everything: children’s books (see: The Tiger Who Came to Tea), love triangles, Find My Friends-assisted cat-and- mouse games. Plus Major Lazer on the sonic tip – and, erm, cockroaches, at least in the case of Go, a track about dancing but also survival of sorts. Hence the bug comparison. “I know it’s like the worst way to describe yourself,” she laughs. “But me and my friends always say we’re like cockroaches!”

It’s the exact song she’s always wanted to make. And it’ll feel even sweeter to see how it – and the EP at large – lands live. “I feel like I’ve really stamped out my identity,” she smiles. “People are going to be like… they’re just going to see me”.

Last month, FADER spent time with iKeda. She discussed, among other things, “fusing dancehall with electropop, and her upcoming EP Bangs N Braces”. I do think that it is going to be one of the most acclaimed E.P.s of 2026. One that will lead to huge international dates:

“Can you tell me more about bubble riddim?

Bubble riddim. I'm half-Jamaican, so I'm really inspired by a lot of Jamaican dancehall, classic reggae, and stuff like that. But then I feel like I also have this other part of me that's so obsessed with electro-pop. In my head, bubble riddim is this fusion of the two. There was a lot of artists, not really right now, but more in 2010 to 2012, where there was a lot of German and Dutch producers working with dancehall artists. And also Major Lazer and stuff like that, where they were making this fusion of dancehall and electro-pop.

We saw that you were in the studio with Oscar Scheller here in New York. Can you talk a little bit about that session?

Oscar is so amazing. He's such a versatile producer, songwriter. I can really appreciate when a producer can make the beat in the session and not take up the whole session doing it, and we're making it as we go along. 'Cause that's something that I do a lot with Tausha, who I collaborate with [on] all my music.
But yeah, Oscar, just instantly comfortable with him, and we already know each other, have some history together. We did a photo shoot together like a million years ago. [laughs]

Your upcoming EP is titled Bangs N Braces. What was the inspiration for the title?

Bangs N Braces is an evolution from my first EP, Pretty Little Problem. I'm really obsessed with shorts with braces – I think you call them in America, uh, suspenders.

I like to have fun when naming my EPs. I don't really take it too seriously. Whenever I'm thinking of a name, it will just come immediately, and I'm like, "Right, I'm doing that," and I'll stick with it. But I've been working on this EP for a really long time. I think a lot of people thought I wasn't releasing or doing anything since Pretty Little Problem, but I've been working on them for like a year.

[But] Whenever people hear about the braces, they think I'm talking about the teeth braces! It's not that! [laughs] 'cause a lot of my music is inspired by nursery rhymes and stuff like that. So some people are like, "Oh, is it braces because of that?" And I was like, "No, it's literally just because I'm obsessed" with the preppy [look]— I just wear a lot of them. And especially when we were in the studio, I was wearing them every single day. And then "Bangs" was because I had like a thick, thick bang. But also 'cause bangers, like big tracks.

I feel like my look plays a big part in my music as well so I was like, I got to include my braces, honey”.

Last week, NME spent some time with one of our most talented and instantly lovable artists. In the sense that she seems to have this mix of incredible charm, wit, intelligence and personality. Such an incredible human who is also one of the most promising artists we have produced in years. NME wrote how iKeda “is on the path to pop stardom. She’s taking each step in her stride – and very seriously”. I will drop in the second half/latter parts of the interview, as we get to learn new things about iKeda:

“Single ‘Tiger Tiger’ epitomises both iKeda’s approach to storytelling and her newfound boldness: “I was going down memory lane with old childhood books, and I saw The Tiger Who Came To Tea. The story morphed into this whole thing, like there’s this secret club and you can only go if you’re a bad girl.” Beyond psychedelic imagery of perception-altering potions and spiralling white rabbits, iKeda emphasises the way the track signals her new outlook on life: “It’s part of my new path of just completely feeling myself.”

Ahead of the EP’s release later this month, that self-assurance has got iKeda feeling free – something that’s translating directly into her songwriting approach. “I just want to make feel-good music because that’s how I’m feeling right now,” she shares. But while her music evokes a fun-loving club pop sensibility, simple melodies are serious business for her. “People don’t understand how hard it is to write a catchy hook without it turning into slop,” she explains. A consummate perfectionist, iKeda is dialled into the details, focused on particulars like “the little intros and interludes, which labels don’t care about but that listeners love”.

While she might not accept herself as a pop star yet, the way she talks about her music and what she wants to do with it in the future points to an artist who’s more than fit for the role. “I just want to improve everything. I want to put on an actual production. I want to make bodies of work with coherent eras,” she replies, her relentless creative drive evident when conversation turns to what’s next. “Right now I’m trusting more in my ideas. I’m eternally grateful for all of the good times I’ve had, but I definitely have more to say”.

There is no doubt that, when iKeda releases an album, it is going to win awards. I feel she will appear at next year’s Glastonbury and will collaborate with other huge artists. Going on her own headline tour and getting a lot of love across Europe and the U.S. I feel she is this international sensation. No wonder so many people are following and showing love for iKeda. As a songwriter and artist, she is…

TRULY monumental.

____________

Follow iKeda

FEATURE: It's a Mistake in the Making… Kate Bush’s Experiment IV at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

It's a Mistake in the Making…

 

Kate Bush’s Experiment IV at Forty

__________

I will be repeating…

myself a little for this feature, as I have written about Experiment IV a few times previously. However, as it turns forty on 27th October. It is a little way off still, but it is a big anniversary. It will not get the same attention and focus as Hounds of Love did last year for its fortieth. Experiment IV is a unique single for Kate Bush as it was added to her greatest hits album, The Whole Story. We celebrate its fortieth in November. Most artists who release a greatest hits album put in a new track. It is quite odd I guess, as it is not one of their ‘greatest hits’, though it allows an opportunity to pop in a song that may not have fitted on an album or was written between two albums and has a place to go. Blur put Music Is My Radar on their greatest hits collection in 2000. It came the year after 13, and a few years before Think Tank. For Kate Bush, perhaps Experiment IV was something she could not fit on Hounds of Love (or was not written at that point) and it had nowhere else to go. Many feel the song is nothing more than a filler or not Kate Bush cannon. I feel it is far stronger than that. We have aspects of suspense and horror working through a song whose video is pretty intense. I will come to that. Experiment IV charted simultaneously with her duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up. That reached number one in the U.K., whereas Experiment IV got to twenty-three. Not too bad considering that she had all this momentum with Hounds of Love and this single arrived after that period. Fans still eager to hear new Kate Bush music. The Whole Story was a major success and went to number one. I shall bring in other features about it. This is what Kate Bush said about Experiment IV in 2019

“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.

The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine – a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used – me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result.

KateBush.com, retrieved 28 February 2019”.

It does not rank too highly among her singles. I shall come to a feature from The Guardian, where they ranked her singles to show what they said about Experiment IV. There were some kind and perceptive reviews in 1986. This is what Edwin Pouncy wrote for Sounds: “The first lady of progressive rock warbles out another chilling fantasy. Kate crams more into seven inches of plastic than most science fiction writers could fit into a trilogy of novels. An epic to curl up with on some storm torn winters evening”. Kate Bush directed the video and many have compared it to Stranger Things. Bush’s Running Up That Hil (A Deal with God) appeared on that show in 2022. Maybe the Duffer brothers got some inspiration from Experiment IV’s video, which chronicles the destruction of a secret military installation by a creature made of sound. It features cameos by, among others, Dawn French and Hugh Laurie. Bush a huge fan of comedy, bringing together some heavyweight British comedic talent. Top of the Pops banned the video as it was seen as too violent and scary. Quite ordinary today, sensibilities were more delicate in 1986! Kate Bush’s then-twenty-nine singles were ranked in 2019 by The Guardian. They placed Experiment IV at twenty-one: “It’s tempting to see Experiment IV’s lyric – about scientists impelled to make a lethal sonic weapon – as a kind of allegory for Bush’s perfectionist approach to recording and belief in music’s power. Either way, it’s a more direct and undemanding piece of music than her preceding singles, from Hounds of Love, its mid-80s sound more dated”. Not too much has been written about Experiment IV, so forgive repetition and bringing in stuff that you may already know! Kate Bush explored Horror right though her work. One could argue her debut single, Wuthering Heights (1978), is Horror in the way she depicts Catherine Earnshaw and he ghost trying to grab Heathcliff. Her most recent single, Little Shrew (Snowflake), deals with the horror of warfare, but there is a connection. So many of her songs explore suspense and Horror. The dark and unnerving. I do want to revisit this piece from last year that took us inside Experiment IV:

“Bush herself directed the video in which she stars as the apparition conjured by the strange experiment: at first a beautiful siren, then a monstrous banshee. The screams of this creation - signified by the piercing violin - immediately fry the brain of the unlucky test-subject, and the monster then breaks out and pursues the scientists themselves. The result was ‘too violent’ for Top of the Pops who refused to air it, which is a shame because this is essentially Kate Bush’s own mini horror film, and although it’s got a DIY B movie feel, it’s making an important point about the capacity of humans to turn things ‘made for pleasure’ into weapons capable of great harm.

This is very much a songwriter’s version of a dystopian nightmare and there’s a sense of sacrilege in the idea that the monster was composed from sampled sounds:

From the painful cry of mothers,
To the terrifying scream,
We recorded it and put it into our machine.

There are some wonderful details in the video. I love how Dawn French’s lab assistant character brings her boss a cup of tea as they prepare to record the sounds of suffering and insanity. Both she and her supervisor, the elderly man we saw at the start, (Richard Vernon) are framed as conflicted participants, like the real-world scientists who have come to regret their role in the development of new weapons. Just sip this tea, they seem to be telling each other, it’ll all be okay, won’t it?

By the end of the music video, bodies line the corridors of this secret institution. The creature is indiscriminate and kills everyone who crosses its path, military personnel, scientists and soon - it is implied - civilians.

We won’t be there to be blamed
We won’t be there to snitch
I just pray that someone there
Can hit the switch

And the public are warned to stay off

It’s a melancholy ending. As the music fades it melts into the sound of helicopters rushing to the scene and the music video gives us one final bitter joke – you’ll have to watch it to see.

Released as a single in 1986, ‘Experiment IV’ is a bit of an anomaly since it doesn’t quite belong to any particular Kate Bush album, but it was included as a bonus track on the best hits record The Whole Story the same year. It’s a strange, moody, story-driven piece, an odd thing to release as a teaser for an upcoming collection of your most popular songs.

Dubious experiments and reckless uses of technology have long inspired threats and monsters in horror films like the well-worn association between zombies and biohazards or between kaijus and nuclear war. There’s really no reason why songs shouldn’t also address these fears, nor why they shouldn’t form their own gnarled branch of the horror story tree, and this wasn’t the only time Bush explored dystopian science fiction terrors in a pop record as we will see later in this series”.

Even though Experiment IV was banned by Top of the Pops, Channel 4's The Tube aired the video in its entirety. Wonderfully, it was also shown in cinemas as an accompaniment to a feature film. I have shared this article before. It is Kate Bush’s KBC article for Issue 21. She was interviewing herself as Zwort Finkle. Kate Bush was their ‘cousin’. It is a nice way perhaps of directing an interview but still giving fans some insight and personal revelation. This is what she said of The Whole Story and Experiment IV:

“Zwort: Only teasing. How do you feel about the video compilation?

Katie: Again, I was worried initially, because of the release of The Single File and Hair of the Hound, but with the opportunity of getting Experiment IV on it, and the record company being sure there was a market, I felt it could be a good idea. We spent a lot of work on Experiment IV, and because of it almost being an "adult" video, we were sure we'd have trouble getting it shown on TV.

Zwort: Did you have trouble getting it shown?

Katie: Yes. The video took a long time to make, and with having to write and record the single with the tightest deadlines I've ever had, the video was needed before we'd finished it. But we did get a minute clip ready in time to be shown when the single was charting, but Top of the Pops refused to show it, saying it was too violent! It's not violent at all, but we expected a response like this. Pop promos are in a very sensitive area. They're considered "family viewing", but there are many sexualy ambiguous videos shown on children's TV--yet this was considered too extreme. However, The Tube showed it in its entirety, and it's now showing at the cinema with a feature film, so we've made a sort of B-film!! That's quite exciting.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Zwort: I noticed that instead of the Wow video you've pieced together footage from the live shows. Why is this?

Katie: Two reasons, really. Firstly, I really don't like the promo we did for Wow. I think it's silly. And also, looking through the videos I noticed a great absence of "performance" promos, and the tour was an important part of the story. Also, it makes it a more interesting item for people who have some of the other videos. That way it's not just Experiment IV that is a new visual.

Zwort: I understand you directed this clip. How did it go, and why did you direct it?

Katie: Directing is a new experiment for me--actually, it was Experiment III--and with this track I had such strong visual ideas while I was writing the song that I wanted to give it another go. It's the first time the video and song have come together. It was very hard work, but a lot of fun.

We filmed in an old disused hospital, and the conditions were very cold and damp, but everyone got very involved and we had a great time.

The cast included Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Richard Vernon, Peter Vaughan, Del, Paddy, Jay, Lisa and many friends. It was wonderful to work with people who I admire so much, and a very exciting experience. Paddy played the lunatic, and in every take his sounds were just as impressive as his visuals--I wish I'd put it onto tape. He literally "threw" himself into the part, and the crew were so impressed they applauded him--a great accolade!

Although this was the most complicated of my directions, it was so much easier for me because I appeared in it only briefly, so I could concentrate on being behind the camera, which I really enjoy. And it's so nice to involve the people I like--not only are they great performers, but they're good to be with.

There were some wonderful moments, like filming in East London. We had a field full of "dead bodies" who kept moving about to get more comfortable, so we had to shout out over a loud-hailer, "Stop moving--You're supposed to be dead!" And the music shop that we created for the shot [ Music For Pleasure ] was so realistic that passers-by kept popping in wanting to buy some of the instruments”.

On 27th October, it will be forty years since Experiment IV was released. The Whole Story arrives on 10th November, 1986, so that fortieth will get slightly more attention, though I am not sure if anyone will write about it. I wanted to discuss the brilliant Experiment IV as it is a wonderful song with an epic video directed by Kate Bush. By no means the last of her videos she would direct. An underrated masterpiece from…

OUR fair queen.

FEATURE: Running Down That Hill: How Kate Bush’s Integrity and Multifaceted Brilliance Has Affected So Many Artists and Influenced a Lot of Modern Pop

FEATURE:

 

 

Running Down That Hill

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

How Kate Bush’s Integrity and Multifaceted Brilliance Has Affected So Many Artists and Influenced a Lot of Modern Pop

__________

I do still feel…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

feel that there is a book to be written that solely examines Kate Bush’s influence. Artists who are either inspired by her or are fans of her music. Perhaps impossible to list all through popular culture, there has not really been anything like it. Modern artists like PinkPantheress and FKA twigs are definitely fans, as is Olivia Rodrigo. In another feature, I did say how Charli xcx was the modern embodiment of Kate Bush. In the sense that she evolves between albums and is someone that does not listen to other people’s music when creating her own. Her attitude and fearlessness. So many aspects of her music and personality are reminiscent of Kate Bush, yet she is an original. Perhaps the greatest modern Pop artist. You can see how so many artists have been influenced by Kate Bush. We often think about the music solely. All these diverse elements have affected scores of artists. Though I think there is an attitude and aesthetic that is alluring. How many different sides there are to Kate Bush. I can imagine the Pop landscape was quite bland when she came through in 1978. Mainstream Pop not as exciting and meaningful as it would become. Many artists writing cheesy, depressing or cliché love songs. I feel this is a reason why so many people piled onto Kate Bush and ridiculed her. Someone who was not like everyone around her and there was something special there. It is true that there are artists today who different sides and personas. In the sense that Kate Bush could be witchy and weird. A queer icon or someone who goes beyond the mime. I will come to an article from PROG that was published in July. They quote from a 2010 book about Kate Bush called Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory. Perhaps one reason why she has such a wide fandom and captivates so many different people is that she never confirmed or was this singular artist. In the sense that you could define her or lump in with other artists.

One of the things that was clear is that Kate Bush was being touted as a sex symbol. The press practically drooling over her. So many questions and comments based around her beauty and sex appeal. This prurient and disgusting attention that has afflicted female Pop artists for decades. How they are reduced to their looks and bodies. In addition, Kate Bush was offered acting roles, big opportunities and sexy photo shoots. Kate Bush rejected these because she did not want to be a commodity. Or what people felt a star of the day should do. Now, you do get artists who record Bond themes, star in films, have their own product lines and do all sorts of different things. They create their own brand and diversify. It can be beneficial to their music, though you see them as celebrities and perhaps it does distract slightly from their primary passion. Kate Bush could have been one of the list of artists that would have made great actors but turned down roles (I always wonder what could happened if Gwen Stefani was offered a tonne of film roles). Although she did do the occasional advert, for the most part, Kate Bush was focusing on her music. To her, the brain and mind was more important. Her beauty a biological thing that has nothing to do with music. Let’s get to that PROG article. EMI, like labels today, trying to make Kate Bush part of an assembly line. She had other ideas:

“While the marketing men and mainstream media were far from subtle in their slavering celebration of Bush’s obvious sexual appeal, she was already proving to be more enigmatic and far smarter than the mindless pop star hoped to make her. When The Man With... won her an Ivor Novello Award and she swiftly followed The Kick Inside with second album Lionheart, the critical acclaim grew.

“EMI really had no idea,” says Carder Bush. “It was run by salesmen who saw her as part of an assembly line – they had obviously never studied her lyrics! So once Kate became a success, they barged in with sexy photo shoots, offers of Las Vegas residencies and Bond themes. She said ‘no’ to all of them because it was the brain and not the body that was Kate’s real quality.”

Rush-released in November 1978, Lionheart was accompanied by a rigorous six-week tour of heavily-choreographed shows involved multiple set and costume changes, along with an onstage magician. They represented the most ambitious live extravaganzas since Bowie’s earlier in the decade.

“The tour was utterly exhausting and utterly successful,” says Carder Bush. “That success changed all of us – we were wary and we kept everything close. Kate has never dealt with bullshit; and promotion is 99 per cent bullshit. She hated it. So after that it didn’t matter what the record company said – she paid no attention to them.”

Spent, she vowed never to tour again. Instead she and her family took control of all her affairs, and relations with the media were similarly pared back. And so a dichotomy emerged: at the age of 21, she was a bona fide pop star about to embark upon a hugely successful creative run of albums; yet one who would become less publicly visible the more famous she became.

As she retreated to the studio, rumours abounded and she did little to dispel them – like the apocryphal anecdote about EMI executives arriving at her house, demanding to know what she’d been working on, to which she’d produced some cakes from the oven. Ultimately though, her reclusive tendencies would be the making of her. As chart music went through a period dominated by glossy pop that was all veneer and little content, Bush’s outsider status worked to her advantage.

A string of albums throughout the 80s went to Nos. 1, 3 and 1 respectively – Never For Ever (1980), The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds Of Love (1985). No one song was easy to pin down as she drew on murder ballads, the childhood wonder of nursery rhymes, her part-Celtic genealogy, the mythology of a lost Albion favoured by some prog and pastoral folk singers, the ethereal end of goth, the organic tones of early music, digital synth pop and emerging sequencing technologies.

Hounds Of Love alone spawned three classic singles – Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting and the tumultuous, dramatically-heightened title track – and further reiterated her prog tendencies by devoting the entire second side of the album to a an experimental opera, The Ninth Wave, the name taken from a Tennyson poem. She also helped define the 1980s whilst being unlike anything else in that era: her skill was not to experiment in the live arena but by embracing emerging technologies in the studio.

“For three or four years it was a rollercoaster,” says Carder Bush. “She was being sent all over the world, and fortunately she had stockpiled a lot of songs. But when that stockpile ran out she was expected to come up with an album, then promote it, go on TV, all within a year. The type of artist Kate is meant that just couldn’t work. That’s why each album has taken longer and longer to come to maturity.”

It mattered little: many agree that anything she does is always of interest. In an age of over-exposure, her relative seclusion offers a continued sense of intrigue and mystery.

Twelve years of Garbo-like silence fell between between 1993’s The Red Shoes and 2005’s Aerial. Bush has managed to maintain her position for over three decades without ever once being sucked into the creative vacuum of celebrity culture. The less we see of Kate Bush, the more we want to know.

Writer and academic Deborah M Withers recently published an analysis of Bush entitled Adventures In Kate Bush And Theory that considered “the polymorphously perverse Kate, the witchy Kate, the queer Kate; the Kate who moves beyond the mime” and in essence suggested that Kate Bush is many things to many people.

“She supplies me with all the clues and it’s up to me to put the answer together – well, that’s like the Quran of music,” says John Lydon. “Surely that’s what we’re all looking for? No easy answers to anything. It’s not about rolling in the money, it’s about the joy of knowing that what you’ve done really touches people’s hearts.”

There’s not enough room to list those who Bush has influenced – but she can certainly be heard in prog singers such as The Reasoning’s Rachel Cohen and Mostly Autumn’s sometime triumvirate of Anne-Marie Helder (who says “Kate’s legacy is one of total creative freedom, taking risks and keeping her integrity”), Olivia Sparnenn and Heather Findlay and beyond the genre to Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Bat For Lashes and thousands of others”.

That blend of integrity, purity and no compromise. How many major artist today can claim that holy trinity?! She retains all of these to this day. As we speak, Kate Bush has not released an album in almost fifteen years (2011’s 50 Words for Snow). The last time she was photographed in public was at Elton John’s marriage to David Funrish. That was November 2014. The same year was her residency, Before the Dawn. And yet, she has given interviews and interacted with fans. Such a groundswell of new fans. Hordes of artists and those beyond music that share their admiration of Kate Bush. It is because she has all of these aspects and characteristics. Different types of Kate Bush that appeal to a variety of communities and people. I find so many Pop artists one-dimensional and lacking in real intrigue. Perhaps they are moulded by their label or feel they need to follow others or make music that appeals to a TikTok demographic. Whilst there can only be one Kate Bush, you can see so many artists today embodying so much of her. How easy is it for artists today to do what Kate Bush did and focus on music and not be turned into something commercial and regular?! You can see some homogenisation and so many short-term or limited artists. There are some who are very much focusing on music and not being led into a world of film offers and anything like that. That being said, artists like Charli xcx can balance a variety of interesting acting roles and also put out this unique and incredible albums. She is a massive film fan, like Kate Bush, so it is understandable that she has stepped into acting. However, the way she makes music and conducts her career does remind me of Kate Bush. There does need to be a documentary or coffee table book that deeply explores Kate Bush’s influence and why she is so beloved and popular. Those various sides to her mean she can speak to a massive demographic. Her strength of will to eschew trappings and shallow ventures to focus on music. See herself as a serious artist with a great mind and not what the press wanted her to be. I feel this is why Kate Bush’s influence will grow and expand…

FOR decades more.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Asha Banks

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Asha Banks

__________

I am…

PHOTO CREDIT: Kyle Galvin

revisiting artists that I spotlighted last year. At first, I am hearing the buzz and seeing the potential and then, soon enough, they start to explode and began known more widely. That is the case with British artist, Asha Banks. She released her E.P., How Real Was It?, last November. She has released a string of singles since then and has some international tour dates ahead. Included in her diary are some huge dates in the U.S. I am re-exploring Asha Banks because she is one of our most promising and talked-about young artists. She is also an accomplished and prolific actress. I am starting out with All the Things Music and their interview with Asha Banks. They spoke with the Hertfordshire-born artist about her new E.P. It is a phenomenal work:

“Asha Banks has spent years captivating audiences on screen, but now, she’s letting the music take center stage. With the release of How Real Was It? on November 14 via Island Records, the British singer-songwriter leans into raw emotion and intimate storytelling, highlighted by tracks like “Rerun” and “Mascara Tears.” While many recognize her from Prime Video’s My Fault: London and Netflix’s A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder, music has long been her creative anchor.

For Asha, music functions as a kind of emotional release, something deeply personal, yet meant to be shared. When asked which lyric felt the most brave to put out into the world, one song stood above the rest. “The whole of the song Delay felt really honest and sort of everything was very much on the surface. Even the process of writing that—it was my first time writing with Taylor and Mason, who I co-wrote it with, and who are amazing. I was already nervous to be writing with them because I love everything that they've worked on. I think they're so talented. And then that song had been brewing inside of me, and it was one of the days that I just needed to write it. I remember feeling nervous and a bit scared in the room, so I tried to hold on to that feeling and realized that that means it’s probably a good one, and something I should be brave enough to write down, get out of my brain and my mouth, put onto paper, and release to other people. It’s been very nice, and I think people have connected to it in a way that I really hoped they would.”

That vulnerability is closely tied to Asha’s experience as an actress. After years of stepping into other people’s lives, music has become a way for her to reconnect with her own. “I've learned so much about myself through the music that I make and through kind of, you know, the forcing myself to dive deeper and to really think about everything that's happening and know my own brain,” she says”.

Even though this GLASS interview was published in March, they say how Asha Banks is talking about her upcoming E.P., How Real Was It? That came out last year, so I am not sure if there was some confusion or if the interview was republished or what happened. In any case, I did want to highlight it here:

“The EP explores emotional distance – how she once felt in past friendships, relationships and breakups. “It’s a more detailed picture of those situations but in a nostalgic way,” she explains, expanding on how truth, time and connection have shifted her perspective. “Time impacts everything. Every day, you learn something new and it changes how you see the past,” she continues.

“I’ve had a tendency to over-catastrophise, to remember things as worse than they were. But in the same breath, I sometimes remember things as being better than they were. Also, I’m 21 and a lot of what I’ve been through happened when I was really young. Being able to look back now with a slightly more mature outlook is interesting, though I’m still growing.”

So what really compels Banks to write? “I guess it’s the emotions I’m feeling, whether it’s the humongous love I have for writing songs and the euphoria it brings me, or just the need to write one,” she says. “I love film and TV, and I read, but I just listen to absurd amounts of music. My headphones hate me,” she laughs again.

Banks hopes listeners find their own truths in her songs and lyrics. “Being a songwriter means I’m a storyteller and I just hope people can relate,” she says. As for where her songs begin – “It depends on the day,” she muses. “Sometimes I go into a session and there’s something happening right then that I need to write about. Sometimes I come in with lyric ideas I’ve stored on my phone.”

Her upcoming EP marks a new chapter in her artistic evolution. “Untie My Tongue marked the beginning and also the start of me working with Josh Bruce-Williams, my co-writer and producer on many of the tracks,” she says. “This second EP is our next chapter. We’ve learned more about each other and how we work. It’s a development in everything – my sound, our process – but it’s still in the same world. I’m not switching lanes, I’m just growing within the space I’ve already occupied.”

With new projects, a headline show and international tour dates ahead, the coming months are packed. “I’ll keep writing songs while I’m in LA, but I also start filming the third My Fault: London movie very soon,” she tells me as our conversation winds down. “I hope things can keep going the way they are – I feel very grateful and blessed to be doing what I love”

This is an artist that is so grounded and humble. As we discover from Absolutely Magazine from earlier in the year, Asha Banks still lives in St Albans. Where she grew up, she maintains this connection with family and many of the friends that she has had for years. I do wonder what else is coming from Banks this year.

“You’ve carved out a unique space between acting and music – how has your creative process evolved since your debut EP, Untie My Tongue, to your latest How Real Was It?

To be honest a lot of the music was written not that far apart from each other. So the writing felt like such a continuation, but just with a more reflective outlook on a lot of the same situations! It was more so just everything else being the second time around. You know, the second time finishing a project and understanding that more, the second time thinking about the creative and visual parts of an EP and executing that. I felt more in the know the second time around which was nice!

Signing with Island Records in 2025 must have been a milestone – how did that feel?

Very crazy! I feel like signing a record deal is one of those things that growing up always felt like a far far away surreal concept. One that I’ve always known of but truly never the details. So going into signing with Island was very exciting. A lot of learning and big conversations, but very inspiring. I’d just come off stage at Hyde Park BST supporting Noah Kahan when I signed my deal so that definitely added to the dream of it all!

Are there other artists you’d love to collaborate with in 2026 or beyond?

Yes, 100%! My three that I always say are Bon Iver, Novo Amor and The 1975. These are dream ones of course. I love so many artists and the idea of collaborating only excites me so I’d love to do more.

You’ve been gearing up for live performances around your music – how have audiences reacted to the new material on tour?

So well! It’s so surreal going from writing music in a room with one other person to playing them live to a room of people – and them singing back! It’s so wild to me and definitely something I’m still getting used to. But it’s starting to influence my writing too. There’s an awareness now when in the studio about what it will be like live and how different songs will connect in different ways.

What are some creative goals you’ve set for yourself in 2026 – musically or otherwise?

Definitely to collaborate with another of my favourite artists. And to just write better music than I have before. To keep on saying the scary things and go with my gut!

Finally, are you still living in St Albans?

I am! I feel so lucky to live in St Albans – it’s always so comforting to come back here after being away and just breathe out”.

I am going to finish with Pop Dust and their brief conversation with Asha Banks. They spoke with her when she was in Los Angeles. She talked about her recent E.P. and her acting career. I do think that Banks will be a headline-worthy artist very soon. How she will command the biggest stages at the most prominent and respected music festivals:

“What was your experience like putting together this EP?

It was so much fun! I feel like I love telling a story and finding the cohesion throughout the tracks and figuring out how they all link. And even sonically, it was such a dream. I think putting out one song is one thing, but a full EP just scratched every itch that I had.

You recorded a a duet version of “Dive” with Holly Humberstone. Did you do you know her beforehand

Well I’ve been a massive fan of Holly for years. I think she’s amazing and is somebody that I’ve always looked up to. And her song “Dive” was in the credits of a film I did called My Fault London. I put “Dive” on my story whilst we were making the film. The editor saw it, and was like that would be an amazing song for the credits. So sort of that crazy thing happened, and then I ended up in a songwriting session with her. She’s so amazing and just as lovely as I hoped she’d be. She ended up asking if I wanted to do this collab version of “Dive” with her which was so special, both because I love her, and because it was in the film that I was in.

Did your acting and singing interest happen simultaneously as a kid, or were you into one or the other first?

It was definitely always simultaneous for me. I think when I was a kid, I just loved both acting and music, and they’ve always coexisted for me. So yeah, I’m just trying to keep on doing that, and have my cake and eat it.

I really love your production. It’s very like organic, kind of reminds me like Nick Drake or something. Why did you pick that direction versus a big splashy pop sound?

It’s so much down to taste and down to what I love listening to. And I think that for me, emotion is the thing that always just wins me over. I don’t know what it is about an acoustic guitar that sort of sounds a bit jangly and out of tune, or a double bass instead of a regular bass. And my producer, Josh Bruce Williams, whom I worked with on this EP, feels the same way as me.

What do you miss about theater that you can’t get in TV, movies, and music videos?

Oh I mean I love theater so much. There’s just such an adrenaline into doing something live that I guess you don’t get when you’re filming something. And I also love being able to do a full show one night and then come back and do it the next night and kind of be able to improve or change something. I guess when you’re filming something, it’s all very much immediate. But I kind of get to do that with live shows as a musical artist.

Do you enjoy touring?

mean I just did four shows in North America, and that was my first taste of tour. I think that was something that I absolutely loved— each day feeling a different energy and being able to play a slightly different show than the one the night before”.

Anyone who has not yet allowed and discovered Asha Banks, I would urge them to correct that. I am looking forward to what comes next, as she has put out some amazing E.P.s and singles. The more she tours, the more confident and distinct her music becomes. She is definitely producing music that is pure and true to her. Not an artist trying to copy someone else. It is clear that Asha Banks will…

GO very far.

___________

Follow Asha Banks

FEATURE: Best Foot Forward: DJ Shadow's Endtroducing..… at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Best Foot Forward

  

DJ Shadow's Endtroducing..… at Thirty

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THERE is…

IN THIS PHOTO: DJ Shadow (Joshua Davis) in 1995 PHOTO CREDIT: B+ via WaxPoetic

quite a lot to discuss when it comes to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing..... One of the finest debut albums in music history, it turns thirty on 16th September. A Hip-Hop masterpiece, its use of samples is extraordinary. Hughley critically acclaimed – I shall bring in some reviews -, DJ Shadow produced the album over two years, using an Akai MPC60 MKII sampler and little other equipment. That layering and editing of samples to create these new and unique pieces. Maybe not as easy today due to copyright and possible legal issues and expense, Endtroducing..... is an album I don’t think we would see again. Too many barriers for artists to hurdle. I am going to go inside this classic ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. I guess the album could be coined Trip-Hop, though DJ Shadow has refuted this and hates being put into categories and labelled. It isa almost hard to categorise an album as wide-ranging as Endtroducing..... This feature from last year goes inside a masterpiece:

“To listen to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing is to hear sampling approached as a spiritual practice, an aural document of one man’s lifelong reverence for hip-hop and his communion with the history of recorded music. After years of bending over record crates and inhaling dust from decades-old vinyl in the basement of the Sacramento record store, Joshua Davis pulled hundreds of samples together to create a record that reimagined and expanded the possibilities of the art form. Producers had sampled for years, and perhaps the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique rivals the number of sources on Endtroducing, but nothing before Endtroducing had its sonic scope. The fact that Shadow was able to keep every musical fragment in his brain almost makes him seem more like a conduit than a composer.

In the expansive, ethereal, and meditative world that is Endtroducing, The Meters coexist with Tangerine Dream (“Changeling”), Pink Floyd plays on the same bill with Jimmy Smith (“The Number Song”). Hip-hop, electronic, ambient, jazz, rock, classical, and more coalesce. Endtroducing was a hip-hop record that irrevocably blurred the lines between genres, exposing the reality that genre never really existed. It was a construct that DJ Shadow helped deconstruct one sample at a time.

Endtroducing legitimized sampling as an art form unlike few albums before it. If ever anyone says sampling takes no skill, that’s it’s lazy theft, you can point to Endtroducing. The seamlessness and shape-shifting of Shadow’s sonic collages aren’t impossible to recreate, but they would take years of study and innate musical skill to get right.

“By ’95, when I was really working on Endtroducing heavily, I was very much trying to make a statement about, ‘Why are we all abandoning this artform? What everybody else is doing is great, but I feel like there’s a lot of work left to be done in this discipline.’ And I wanted to create a record that pushed that conversation forward,” Shadow told Westword.

The album gave rise to the notion that hip-hop producers could create a full instrumental album, that they were more than composers for rappers. Without Endtroducing, the world might not have been ready to accept J Dilla’s Donuts, another brilliant work of sampling bricolage. Somewhere between Shadow’s Endtroducing and Dilla’s Donuts, you have the roots of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, the hip-hop and electronic music community that spawned Grammy-winning producers like Flying Lotus. There are decades of music that might not have happened if not for Endtroducing.

How was the album received upon its release?

In the UK and Europe, Endtroducing was a critical and commercial success. The album spent ten weeks on the UK album charts and was certified gold within two years. Apart from a negative review in The Wire, foreign press was extremely positive. Tom Wilkes, who reviewed Endtroducing for British music magazine Melody Maker, couldn’t have been more adulatory. “I hear a lot of good records, but very few impossible ones…” Wilkes wrote. “You need this record. You are incomplete without it.” NME called Shadow the “Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page of the sampler.”

However, after a whirlwind of press and successful gigs abroad, DJ Shadow returned to Davis still virtually unknown. Fans recognized him on UK streets, but sales and critical acclaim were slow to arrive stateside. “The album wasn’t getting radio play anywhere, as far as I could tell. Even my own college radio station didn’t seem to know who I was, or have any interest in playing my stuff. So, I thought that was it,” Shadow told Eliot Wilder for his 33 ⅓ book on Endtroducing. “At that time, Davis was the world to me. [laughs] Even though I had been a lot of places, it’s the only thing that seemed real. And then, all of a sudden, the weekly Sacramento arts and entertainment paper did a cover story on Endtroducing, and I didn’t even know about it. That’s when it hit home.”

DJ Shadow seems to discuss Endtroducing in every interview. This isn’t his fault. Even if the focus of the interview is Shadow’s latest album, the interviewer eventually circles back to his debut. In 2016, 20 years after Mo’ Wax released Endtroducing, Shadow reflected on the album’s legacy in an interview with Rolling Stone Australia.

After expressing his gratitude for the album’s continued resonance, Shadow said he hopes Endtroducing was “bought by 100,000 artists.” In other words, he wants musicians to return to Endtroducing for inspiration, to use the album to push their art forward. He also realizes the rarity of creating a piece of music of this magnitude.

“Being a student of music and reading about other artists and their aspirations, I know how difficult it is to connect in a meaningful way and have a record that endures for 20 years the way this one has, so I know how lucky I am. I know how grateful I am every day that I managed to achieve that at least once in my lifetime”.

Back in 2022, Joshua Davis (DJ Shadow) and Mo’Wax label founder James Lavelle discussed the making of Endtroducing..... with The Guardian. This ideas of instrumental Trip/Hip-Hop soundscapes. That fear people would not buy it. Perhaps unusual in 1996, now we can see the influence of Endtroducing..... I have loved this album ever since its release. This is what DJ Shadow says about his debut album:

“By 1991, sampling had entered a golden era with De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, NWA’s Straight Outta Compton and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. I was a senior in high school, frustrated that I couldn’t afford turntables, let alone a sampler. I was doing poor man’s sampling by cueing records directly into my four-track cassette recorder, trying to fool the industry that I was more equipped.

I pooled all my money, went down to the Guitar Center in San Francisco and bought the Akai MPC60. When anybody buys an instrument, they always say that they go home and stay awake for two and a half days, just playing. That’s exactly what I did. You could only sample 2.5 seconds of stereo and store 13 seconds, so I would do the beat, melody, percussion, and go to the studio of Dan the Automator, a producer who had an early form of multi-tracking using VHS tapes. For the seven-inch mix of Stem, I wanted to sample Heat, the 1995 movie, so I said: “Make sure you’ve got a VCR. I’m gonna go rent the movie.”

I wanted people to understand that sampling has a long lineage, so the credits are right there in the liner notes. James Lavelle from Mo’Wax said: “Give us a list of the big eight.” So I identified the samples most likely to cause issues, such as Metallica, Björk and the piano on Midnight in a Perfect World that comes from 1969 song The Human Abstract by David Axelrod. A few weeks later I said, “Do you want some more?” and he said, “We still have our hands full, thanks.”

Just push your sound, I said, don’t worry about choruses and verses

I spent the summer of 1996 in the UK promoting the album. As a 23-year-old, there seemed such an optimistic aura. The album didn’t take off in the US until a year later. I’d hop on the phone to do an interview and would be met with a confused silence: people assumed I was British.

I know some fans think I don’t like talking about Endtroducing, as if it’s some sort of albatross, but that’s not true. There’s also been a narrative that James and I don’t get along. There has been some truth to that, but I’d do anything for James, and I’m sure he feels the same”.

In December, DJ Shadow joins with The BBC Symphony Orchestra to celebrate thirty years of Endtroducing..... This album, which was two turntables and a sampler, is going to performed in full and reimagined for an orchestra. I will end with The Line of Best Fit and their review of Endtroducing.....They were reviewing the special deluxe reissue that featured demos, alternate takes and live versions (alongside the original album):

“Obviously, major labels aren’t reissuing classic LPs solely to preserve their legacy and introduce the music to new generation of fans. All this repackaging – double packed with a photograph and an extra track (and a tacky badge?) – simply serves as a way of cashing in on someone else’s genius. While a lot of the records that tend get this treatment do feel like unnecessary label cash-ins (no one really needs a reminder that Oasis’ Be Here Now still exists, for example), some really do just deserve the occasional glamourous gesture of appreciation and re-recognition. Works as groundbreaking as Endtroducing... are just too important to fade into obscurity.

The only problem with a reissuing an LP as extravagant and excessive as Endtrospective Edition is that, at an overall combined time of 2 hours and 42 minutes, it can sure get isolating for the casual listener. The full package here – including the live tracks, demos and remixes – is exclusively designed for purists, which seems paradoxical. Wouldn’t any diehard already own a copy, meaning that they really wouldn’t need to invest in another?

Having said that, if you’ve got the time (and the money), then the Endtrospective Edition is most definitely worth a listen at very least. It’s an interesting insight into the creation and subsequent influence of one of the best albums of the last two decades. Of course, the expanded edition does feel over-the-top - as expanded editions usually do - but, hey, what better way is there to celebrate a 20th birthday than by having it a little too large?

Ultimately, the substantial collection of ephemeral presented here only really highlights one thing: just how good the original album is. It’s an album similar to J Dilla’s Donuts in the sense that it’s a classic hip-hop record that doesn’t have any rappers on it. Dilla’s early production work for Slum Village seems to be unfairly underrated because listeners are too invested in the raps rather than focusing on the beats, and this is what puts the likes of Donuts and Endtroducing... into a league of their own - their sample-led beats are so intelligent and insanely listenable that they themselves become the main attraction. There's absolutely no need for a mid-level rapper to spit obscenities on top of them.

Endtroducing... is a part of a unique breed of albums that don’t need any additional work, and this is why the demos and remixes – while enjoyable as a whole – are largely redundant. This leaves Endtrospective Edition feeling more like a corporate con and an unessential expansion of an already essential album rather than the celebration of a landmark moment. Still, if nothing else, this expanded edition perfectly encapsulates how, even after 20 years, Endtroducing... still speaks for itself”.

It will be great to mark thirty years of Endtroducing..... on 16th September. An album that refined Hip-Hop and remains one of the most important albums ever released, it still sounds utterly awe-inspiring. You listen to it and are sucked into this world. DJ Shadow created something truly epic on his debut. He has released seven studio albums (his moist recent is 2023’s Action Adventure), but nothing compared to his debut. A hard act to follow, his second studio album, 2002’s The Private Press, is pretty remarkable. You can buy Endtroducing..... on vinyl here. Go and own a copy of…

THIS masterpiece.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Girls Don't Sync

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

  

Girls Don't Sync

__________

HERE is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Carey

an incredible force of passion, togetherness, power and love. I have featured this heavenly quartet before in terms of including some of their music in a playlist. It does not look as though I have published a full feature. That is remiss of me! I am going to rectify that by bringing together a selection of interviews with Girls Don’t Sync. One from late last year, together with some from this year. Prior to getting to them, I would urge everyone to follow them, as they have released incredible singles like Keep Dancing, and their latest track, U Wanna Party? Their 2025 E.P., Code Orange, is immense. Let’s get to some brief biography prior to moving along:

“Matty Chiabi, Sophia Violet, Hannah Lynch and G33 came together to form Girls Don’t Sync in summer 2021, and exploded onto the scene soon after with one of the most-watched Mixmag Lab’s of the year.

Their fresh take on UKG, house and bass has made them a must-see act at the likes of Glastonbury, Boomtown, Parklife, Lost & Found and many more this year, winning fans around the world for their boundless energy and the unforgettable atmosphere they create with each performance.

In an era of feminine resurgence, Girls Don’t Sync are inspiring a new generation of dance music fans and becoming leaders of their scene”.

There is something so worthy and incredibly inspiring about what Girls Don’t Sync stand for and what they are doing. They are compelling and empowering so many women. I think that they will be breaking down barriers and walls years from now.

Let’s come to some interviews with Girls Don’t Sync. I am going to finish with a live review from last year, as they are at their best when playing to crowds. Creating this incredible energy and unifying and uplifting people. They played Pride on the Park in Brighton on 2nd August, and I wonder if they have many other dates approaching. “With their impeccable knowledge of multiple genres and a knack for skilful edits, the Liverpool collective create an unrivalled atmosphere of unity and celebration, while championing inclusivity and political action”. This is what Rolling Stone UK noted in their header. I have loved researching and discovering more about the queens that are Girls Don’t Sync:

“Unapologetic in their drive for inclusivity, Girls Don’t Sync are redefining the gender balance of lineups and dance floors across the UK and beyond. In their time together, these four friends have evolved from a DJ collective into full-scale artists. With their radical reshaping of ye olde sausage fest, they could well be the Slits of the rave scene, urging the unseen, unheard, misgendered, violated and abused to claim their space. They’re sparking a movement, platforming new talent and mentoring the next generation of women and gender minority DJs to step up to the plate.

Girls Don’t Sync are Matty Chiabi, Sophia Violet, Hannah Lynch and Gaia – aka G33. In their sets, they tear through house, UK funky, dancehall, drum ’n’ bass, techno, UK garage, Afrobeat, Bollywood, Middle Eastern sounds and more. With animated responses to whoever’s on the decks, they challenge each other, trading a full-on dialogue of beats and pieces. It’s an evident testament to the statement that embodies their name – which Chiabi came up with in the shower. It’s a double entendre: an affront to the stereotype that women who DJ rely on the sync button because they can’t beat match. “What we’re saying is that we are skilled DJs,” she says. “But it’s also ironic because as friends, women and as a group, girls do sync: emotionally, creatively, professionally. So we might not ‘sync’ on a technical level, but we do in every other sense, and that’s what’s allowed us to go strong for nearly five years.”

Earlier this year, Girls Don’t Sync released their debut track, ‘Our House’, which featured on their recent Code Orange EP (a second EP with key collaborators is also currently in the works). Lynch tells me that it epitomises exactly this attitude. “It sends a strong message that in our house we’re all the same,” she says.

The track was inspired by a session with Basement Jaxx. “We went into the studio, and they literally threw us into the booth, and were like, ‘Make some whacky sounds. Can you sing? Even if you can’t, just try, go for it, pull in all your identities,’” recalls Chiabi. “It was the maddest experience ever – obviously because we were in the studio with Basement Jaxx, but also because they shoved us into the booth for something that could potentially end up on their album. It was such a unique and special experience that we carried that energy into the session when we made ‘Our House’.”

Girls Don’t Sync have come a long way since 2021, when they first came together as a collective platforming female acts at Liverpool’s iconic District, after venue owner Eric Gooden urged them to start throwing their own nights. GDS embody that naughty north–sexy south connection: Brixton girls Chiabi and G33 spent their teens raving together before landing at District during their uni years. This is where they met Lynch and Violet, who were both DJing at the venue. Lynch’s dad, DJ 2Kind, was part of the rap group Lyrical Compact, while Violet also grew up inspired by her DJ mum and music venue owner dad.

District is one of few Black-owned indie venues and is one of the only ones to survive since Covid. Many of the venues they once all played at have now shut down.

“There’s no funding and the government fails to recognise them as important landmarks that cultivate culture, livelihoods, careers, confidence and oppor-tunities. It’s sad to see, so it’s important for us to advocate for their existence,” says G33.

“This is why we are political – but also by nature because of who we are, as it directly relates to our identities and the cultures we come from. You see this in the crowds we pull,” says Chiabi. “I would say that our message to young people is to stay informed, educated and empathetic, because that’s how change happens – even in the current climate where people are being silenced through punishment for speaking out.”

G33 agrees. “We come from places like Brixton, where music was the product of resistance. Using your artistry to talk about injustice is something we’ve definitely done. Our audience is also very young and mixed, and it’s important to remind them that music has always been political. So we’re encouraging them to galvanise in groups; take the conversation beyond social media. There is strength in numbers, and right now a global uprising is bringing many people together through the power of music”.

Let’s move thing to this year. DJ Mag published their conversation with Girls Don’t Sync in January. Really blowing up after the pandemic, they built their own label and productions off the back of their experience as D.J.s and promoters. Girls Don’t Sync spoke “to Christine Ochefu about their momentous rise, and how they’ve never lost sight of their original goal of uplifting women in the booth and on the dancefloor”. I am a huge fan of theirs and would love to interview them one day:

“Part of GDS’ appeal is making dancefloors fun again. There’s often a sense that to be taken seriously, dance music must be sombre, intense and brooding to be of good taste, resulting in stony-faced selectors and equally immovable crowds. But the Girls Don’t Sync live experience is stirring in the exact way the nightlife space should be; they are DJs who dance, interact and soak up the club joy as much as their audiences do. “Our live shows and how we perform are a massive part of GDS, especially because of where we started putting on our own events. We wanted to create these spaces and places that we would enjoy,” Sophia says.

Each stop is amassed with their favourite DJs — up-and-coming women, people you might not see on other line-ups — all carefully balanced to ensure the flow of the night. They point to their headline show in London, where fans stayed till the early hours to see the likes of Manara, or their recent highlight stop in Amsterdam, where 70% of the crowd were women — one of the most diverse nights the promoter had ever seen. “We set out to build more across Europe and we’ve done so much incredible stuff,” Matty says. “Behind the scenes we’re working on the music and we’ve released the ‘Code Orange’ EP, but in terms of our live presence we’ve had a really strong year.”

‘Code Orange’, their first release, harks back to ’90s house and Eurodance. ‘Our House’ is maybe the unofficial title track; a rallying cry utilising Hannah’s scouse lilt and upbeat vocals — “In our house we’re all the same,” she says, a representation of their real-time politics. Then there’s tracks like ‘Come Get Dis’, combining Matty’s vocals with gritty basslines and euphoric lifts, placing it in the vein of classics by Culture Beat and Snap!. Arriving via their solo label FOURMATION, it’s a natural extension from a group whose sound was born out of remixes, edits and bootleg culture, often riffing off older UK tracks like Beats International’s ‘Dub Be Good To Me’.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lauren Luxenberg

There’s often debate about whether DJs need to get into producing to solidify their artistry in the wider music space, or reach the next level of their careers. It wasn’t the plan from the beginning, GDS say, but over time the girls have embraced the opportunity to create their own unique, identifiable sound. “The [tracks] feel very DIY and central to Girls Don’t Sync, because it’s literally our voices,” Hannah says. “All our tracks will have a different flavour, but being able to build a catalogue of music and define what our sound is — having people say, ‘That’s so GDS’ — and having our sound as artists recognised the same way our sets are as DJs is the goal,” Gaia adds.

Their background in promoting also affects how they think about building a party: inclusivity is central, as is using their platform to reflect their own tastes while uplifting new talent. They’re intentional about creating a safe space — “Women are always at the front,” they say — and they see themselves as a visual act as much as a musical one. “A lot of the beauty of GDS I don’t think we actually get to physically see. I think it’s experienced between these pockets of people that come to our sets,” Matty says. “You might have the girlies in the front, the boys giving us the nod of approval when it drops. You might have the gays voguing in a circle. That is what I want our dancefloors to look like: having that diversity and inviting a range of people who love to dance, love to be free, love the music, and love what we stand for.”

The background of Girls Don’t Sync speaks to three different geographical locations — Liverpool, Salisbury, Brixton — but also a million more musical lineages wrapped up within that. Hannah grew up in Toxteth, South Liverpool, to a family of Bajan and Malaysian heritage. In her early teen years, much of her music listenership was nurtured by her Dad; she grew up attending teen raves in her area with her father in tow (she couldn’t get in without an adult at the tiny age she was, she says), parties that would play the heavy bass, garage, funky house and local scouse house offshoot. Her Dad had been a hip-hop head, armed with an overwhelming collection of R&B and hip-hop records, and a studio in the home to record music. It was through him she built her skills in DJing, later teaching young people in the area to do the same

GDS are a major reference point in a groundswell of women now taking on the traditional narratives of the dance music industry: headlining their own parties, cross-booking each other for events as well as other under-represented up-and-coming talent, crucially shifting nightlife further away from old-guard, male-only line-ups. And even though things may have improved, there’s still the question of how the industry keeps up the momentum, and whether it is doing so at all. For the group, it’s not just an issue of line-ups, but equally of the quality of the scene for women attendees, and how we continue to encourage inclusive, progressive spaces on dancefloors.

“There has been a little bit of regression recently, especially in certain scenes in terms of who’s on the line-up,” Sophia says. “Crowds reflect the DJs that are on the line-up as well. If you go into a crowd and you can see maybe four girls in a crowd of 200 boys, it’s no fun to be around. What makes going out fun is being around all different people from all walks of life, that’s what enables that sense of freedom and being able to let your hair down.”

In 2025, male-heavy line-ups now seem a bit gauche; with the rise of similarly notable female DJs, many venues and promoters are diversifying line-ups by default, even if simply out of fear of being publicly called out for lack of gender parity. But some efforts, they say, may be inadvertently driving things backwards for new talent. “What has happened is that people are lazy,” Matty says. “They see one name doing well, maybe a woman or a Black woman, and put them on the line-up every single time because they tick that box. That’s not how it should be”.

Wonderland. caught up with Girls Don’t Sync at a vital time. “Heading up Relentless’ Local’ initiative, aimed at spotlighting grassroots communities, the quartet talks inception, connection, and reclaiming the dance floor”. Published in May, Girls Don’t Sync were preparing to head into the studio to record more music. You can discover more about Relentless Local here:

“What are some of the struggles that you continue to face?

Sophia: We’re well-versed in dealing with situations, and we have a really good team around us. But online, it never stops. There are always those comments, and they still are going to affect you. Even though you’ve seen so many good comments, even if the crowd is jumping up and down loving it, the sexist comments online never get easier to deal with. They’re always going to stay in your head when that’s there. But again, because we have each other, we can talk these things out and feel the support of each other.

Gaia: A lot of female DJs face that, and they have to go through those emotions alone. The first time we were all launched online was when we did the Mixmag stream, and that definitely welcomed a whole variety of comments – it’s not even just about our DJing, but also personal stuff about what we look like, who we are, what we represent. I feel like that could have really shaken us, but instead, we incorporated it into our brand. Even our name is something that’s used as a stigma against female DJs, but we were able to create an armour through it. It doesn’t necessarily get easier, but I’ve seen so many more female collectives, the likes of Not Bad For A Girl, Sexy Lady Massive, just really taking back that control and that autonomy and using these vessels of hatred as part of their defiance, in their performances and in their ethos. And I think that’s really empowering.

As people flying the flag for nightlife and being really important in the framework of it, how do we get the next, younger generation out to clubs and nights out? How do we build it back up to where it once was

Sophia: By getting them to go to something that they really love once. It’s about the gentle encouragement to just try things out. There’s a big wellness culture that, by all means, is great, but is also killing real human connection and human experience. If we can encourage people to have one great experience, a night where they have that human connection and feel a sense of community through music, then they’ll be encouraged to do it again and again.

Gaia: We’re living in an age where a lot of things exist in a digital space, so encouraging people to actually go out and interact with people, not through the prism of their phone, is also really important. It’s also to do with access in terms of funding and tickets. We’ve had quite a few people message us at times, and they’ve been like, ‘Love you guys, I’d love to come, but I’m a university student, and I can’t quite afford it this month.’ Especially when we’re on bigger lineups, things are getting a lot more expensive. We always try to make a habit of allowing our community to come to our shows that we have control over. We would never want finances to be a barrier for them to come to our shows. So we’ve put a lot of people on that have just sent us really genuine messages who are clearly fans. The fact that the tickets [for the Liverpool headline show] are five quid and it’s in the venue we first did our first event in, as promoters, is a full circle moment. But it’s obviously difficult at times to keep ticket prices low. Where we can, we should encourage it, and encourage people to also invest in this stuff. When me and Matty were really young, and we had no money, we got ourselves to all these festivals because we worked jobs or we’d saved up. There’s a big shift in the younger generation; seeing what is trending at the moment, and maybe going to get a matcha or going to a pilates class is a little bit more attractive to them than going to a warehouse rave. But music, club culture, nightlife – this is something that’s cross-generational. There’ll always be communities and subcultures that flourish from that.

Matty: Clubbing these days feels like a luxury, almost, because it’s so expensive. But when I was younger – when me and Gaia were in our proper rave days – we were outside, Friday, Saturday, every single weekend of the month. It was way more affordable back then, but also the DJs that we wanted to see were a lot more accessible as well. This is why we’re so proud to be doing what we’re doing and doing this Relentless collab at District as well, because the bigger you get as a DJ, the more exclusive it becomes. You’re seeing your favourite DJ at a massive warehouse or a huge venue or when they’re on tour, rather than seeing them at a small local club. It just doesn’t happen as often, which is why doing this at District is such a treat because people haven’t seen us back in a local club for so long”.

Concluding the interviews section with more discussion around their Relentless Local work, CLASH spoke with Girls Don’t Sync, who discussed a scheme designed to support and discover regional talent. I do feel that there are so many sides and aspects to Girls Don’t Sync. In terms of the amazing work they are doing, combined with their D.J.s sets and their incredible and distinct tracks. They are a force that everyone should salute:

“With the ‘Local’ initiative, what conversations are you hoping to start around regional music communities in the UK?

Matty: What we really want to emphasize is that your success isn’t based on your proximity to London. There are so many things that come with being successful; work ethic, friendship, tapping into communities and cultures, and I don’t think that is based on where you grow up or the fact that you live in a large city like London. It’s based on so many things that aren’t to do with geography. Even if you have the confidence and the drive to do certain things, you still need the access and support, which is why it’s so important that we are giving four collectives a share of £20,000, because you do need tangible things in order to make things happen. We really want to stress that people in regional spaces deserve the recognition and the chance. One of the sets that really put us on the map and allowed us to connect with crowds globally, was filmed in a small venue in Liverpool. That moment really highlighted how regional cities need the access and the spotlight, which we want to emphasize through this scheme.

Hannah: We want to tell people that you don’t have to leave your hometown to be successful and have a career. Through collaboration and working with brands like Relentless, there are opportunities out there that can help you.

Through this partnership with Relentless, you’re giving collectives actual funding, equipment and promotion. Why is tangible support more important than just visibility?

Sophia: I think it’s so nice and encouraging to have a brand like Relentless be getting behind a scheme like this, putting their money where their mouth is.

Hannah: Collectives around the UK definitely have so many amazing ideas and they want to do so much, because we remember our aspirations from when we first started out, but it’s not that easy and it’s just not always feasible. However, having opportunity and the funds gives artists what they need to get to the next level.

Gaia: Anyone can gain visibility online. Visibility is quite an individualistic thing, but having the funding and resources actually gives artists the opportunity to bring people together. It acts as a catalyst, and a stepping stone to further nurture their journey. We obviously understand firsthand how much effort and finances are needed when you’re putting on an event. You don’t get taught this stuff, there’s no online rule book, you learn as you go. You want to make sure that you’re paying people correctly and creating a safe environment. So, it feels like we’re able to pass that baton of knowledge and experience, because we’ve had our fair share of mistakes and difficulties.

Matty: It also gives these collectives the actual experience of running an event; how to interact with whoever’s on the lineup, making sure that crowd safety is under control, the people behind the bar, making sure that DJs are safe, and all the other intricacies that people don’t realize goes into putting on an event”.

I am going to end with a live review from The Courier Online. Playing the third show of their Fourmation Tour, they were reviewed at NX. I wonder what the rest of the year holds for Girls Don’t Sync, as they have this incredible momentum. Maybe an album coming or there is a big international tour. Who knows when it comes to this extraordinary four-piece! A stunning collective that we should all be very proud of:

“Djs Diffrent, Lewis Taylor and Vnee opened for the act. They were all incredible DJs in their own right and were given a chance to shine. This not only helped build anticipation but also allowed for the audience to enjoy a range of genres and styles first. This exemplified the ethos that the girls pride themselves on – bringing community together and embracing their differences. This is truly what sets Girls Don’t Sync apart. It is such a varied and engaging kind of show and this was shown in every aspect of their set; even in the way that we, as the audience, are meant to interact with them.

At the beginning of their set, they urged the crowds to put the phones down, really feel the music and be present with them. While naturally reluctant, giving this a try made the performance so much better. In such a digital age it felt unnatural to put away the phones. However, with this slight change alone you saw the girls reaching out to people and people responding back – it was immersive and infectious.

The girls have said before in their own podcast, that despite understanding why people have their phones out, it is easier to do their part when they can physically see the feedback that they’re receiving from the crowds. Referring to the phones as a “block between us and the audience”, and how no phones encourages the audience to be “present”.

In addition to this, the NX venue allowed for fans to be physically on stage with the girls too. Watching them curate and craft the music was amazing to see. On this mini stage the girls would also again reach out to fans, dancing with them and enjoying their own music too. It was incredible to witness and be a part of.

The collective consists of members Gaia Ahuja, Matty Chiabi, Hannah Lynch and Sophia Violet. All members have different backgrounds which creates their unique sound, as they take turns performing music or collaborating.

It was incredible to see the process behind what I was hearing – especially as they jumped and blended seamlessly form genre to genre. For example, dancehall one second, transitioning smoothly into house the next.

Overall, Girls Don’t Sync were amazing. The music was expertly selected and blended together, it was beautiful to watch their distinct styles work in harmony but also in juxtaposition as they established their own feel. GDS can truly be deemed as trailblazers in their field - talented women infiltrating such a heavily male dominated space and doing it with ease and flare”.

I will finish off now. I am, as I said, a big fans of Girls Don’t Sync. How they are definitely helping to affect progress, change and fuel discussion when it comes to gender equality through Dance music. In terms of D.J.s being booked at festivals, there is still a skew towards men - though there are steps forward happening. Women are dominating through most areas of music. I feel the most engaging, extraordinary and talented D.J.s in the world are women. Few are as awe-inspiring and gifted…

AS Girls Don’t’ Sync.

___________

Follow Girls Don’t Sync

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Chloe Qisha

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 

Chloe Qisha

__________

LAST year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Emily White Garay

I spotlighted Chloe Qisha. She is a Malaysian-born artist based in London. Qisha was included in the BBC's Sound of… 2026 shortlist. Having released two E.P.s, including 2025’s Modern Romance, her mixtape, Fantasize, is out on 30th October. I want to revisit this amazing artist and drop in a few recent interviews. Prior to heading to Japan for a couple of dates soon, she plays Boardmasters  2026 on 9th August. I do want to start out with this Jae-Ha Kim interview that was shared in the Chicago Tribune. Speaking with Chloe Qisha about, among other things, her upcoming tour, we do learn new things about a remarkable artist:

“Born in Malaysia, Chloe Qisha moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 16, thinking that she would pursue a career as a therapist or psychologist. But instead, the London-based artist became one of Gen Z’s most exciting alternative pop stars, with songs that are fresh while conveying a retro vibe that pays homage to ’80s pop. Her latest single “YDH” is her answer to a stressful 2025. “I wanted a song that captured the feeling of letting your hair down and having the best time,” Qisha said. “’YDH’ is a good summation of that. I wanted to capture the raw, instinctual feeling of having a crush [when] there’s no rhyme or reason to it. That first initial pang of a crush can be all-consuming, and I like capturing that kind of raw emotion in a song.”

Q: What is your future bucket-list venue?

A: I’ve always said my ultimate dream would be a headline show at Red Rocks in Colorado. There’s something about that amphitheatre that’s really legendary. At night, especially with how it’s lit, it looks beautiful. I also like venues where there’s staggered seating or standing because you can see everything clearly. It’s somewhere I’d love to see a show, but also somewhere I’d love to play.

Q: What are your five favorite cities?

A: London, Tokyo, Singapore, Penang [Malaysia] and New York.

Q: What do you do to maintain your health while on the road?

A: I do a daily vocal warm-up that lasts about 30 minutes and is tailored to me and the songs I sing. I usually do it once in the morning and once before soundcheck if I’m performing that day. I also stay away from dairy, try to eat well and stick to food that is safe so I don’t get sick. And I drink chamomile tea before bed because it helps me sleep.

Q: When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?

A: My journal and my headphones. Traveling without my headphones is torture to me. [Laughs]

Q: What is your guilty pleasure when you’re on the road?

A: Honestly it’s just having some time to myself. I can be quite introspective, and I do my best music listening when I’m able to sit with good headphones and listen to something on repeat without distractions. Usually it’s when I’m traveling from one place to another or looking out of a window. I like being able to listen to music and daydream. It’s not the most social habit, but I try to do it at least a couple of times on a trip”.

Travelling to Asia, Europe and the U.S., Chloe Qisha has a busy diary. She will take her music to crowds far and wide. She is someone who I have been invested in for a while and she is one of our most important artists. Let’s move to NME and their conversation with Chloe Qisha earlier in the year at the 2026 Ivor Novellos:

“The former NME Cover star spoke to us while at the 2026 Ivor Novellos, where she was nominated for the Rising Star Award alongside Kwn, Divorce and BBC Sound of 2026 winner Skye Newman. The award ultimately went to Jacob Alon, who also took home the Best Song Musically and Lyrically trophy for ‘Don’t Fall Asleep’.

Teasing more material, the singer said that she is currently planning on “slowly rolling out” a “new chapter”, and is well underway with adding the finishing touches to some new music that she will “100 per cent teasing and trialing” at her upcoming live shows.

“I think the music is going to be a little bit different,” she added, staying tight-lipped about when fans can expect it to drop. “But it’s music that I’ve been rinsing personally nonstop for the last six months, so I’m really excited for it to just be out in the world.”

Speaking about her nomination at the Ivors – which celebrates the craft, cultural impact and enduring importance of songs and screen compositions – Qisha opened up about what makes someone into a great songwriter, sharing that it ultimately boils down to capturing a sense of personality and maturity.

“I think being incredibly authentic to yourself… but also allowing time for that. Sometimes it doesn’t happen immediately, and you have to grow in yourself,” she explained.

“I think you need to have a better understanding of yourself before you start putting yourself out in the world. But as long as you keep putting good music out that feels authentic and important to you, then it will find the right people.”

Qisha faces a packed summer of touring, with live shows including Isle Of Wight Festival, Bristol Pride, Wilderness, Boardmasters, Reading & Leeds and supporting Self Esteem at the opening of London’s new British Airways ARC. Visit here for tickets and more information”.

I am going to end with a Cosmopolitan interview that was published in June. They observe how this “emerging Pop artist” has their hearts. I think she has won the hearts of so many fans around the world. Such a phenomenal songwriter who I can imagine releasing music for many years:

“Do you think that there’s still a stigma around pop music?

I don’t think so as much now. Especially with The Powerpuff Girls [Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX] last year. They really made it into its own echelon of cool. But you will still get your annoying boy who loves ‘insert your British indie band in the 90s here’ kind of vibe. I always say you have to be a different breed of human to be a hater, because, a) who’s got the time? And b) the industry is saturated with so many artists and so many different kinds of music that fit every shade of genre, that if it’s not for you just move on.

Do you think women have to battle bigger, and often more critical, expectations when it comes to delivering a live show than their male counterparts?

They 1,000 per cent do. The bar for pop girlies is unusually high. Especially with the virality of TikTok and how big someone can become overnight these days, there’s no grace for growth. People expect Addison Rae to come out of the gate singing like Beyoncé, but then also dancing like Tate McRae and then also giving 20 years’ worth of experience all packed into one. But then, I feel like a pop boy can go on stage with the same T-shirt and denim jeans they’ve been wearing all tour and just rock out with a guitar and we’re like, ‘Yes, King, give me more.’ It’s the same with Chappell [Roan], she can’t step a hair out of line. If a man set boundaries with the paparazzi, we’d be like, ‘Yes.’ But then she does it and suddenly, she’s a diva.

Finally, you’ve released two EPs – is there an album coming?

I would love to call it that, but I just don’t know. I’m trying to be more open to the different ways of doing music. I think there’s merit in just putting stuff out and seeing where it lands. Ultimately, as long as the music feels authentic to me and I’m proud of it, I’m happy for songs to just keep coming out. Eventually, I hope that I will look up one day and be like, ‘Ah, this is the collection of songs and this is what I’m going to call it’”.

There is a lot of rightful excitement around Chloe Qisha. She is a superstar and her upcoming project, Fantasize. I am not sure if she is classing it as an album or mixtape. I am not sure of the distinction between the two. Whatever it is, this is the first full-bodied release from an artist who has a huge international following. A major reason I wanted to…

SPOTLIGHT her again.

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Follow Chloe Qisha

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Gretel

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Karolina Wielocha

 

Gretel

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I have covered this artist before…

PHOTO CREDIT: Karolina Wielocha

under her former name of Gretel Hänlyn. As Gretel, I do think that this is a new carnation. Her debut album, Squish, came out in April. I will end with a review of it. It takes me to the subject of the Mercury Prize, who announced their shortlist recently. Very little in the way of newer artists and debut albums. I would have thought an artist like Gretel would have been in the running, as Squish has the quality and calibre to sit with the dozen albums that were selected. In any case, I am eager to spend some virtual time with an amazing artist. Hailing from west London, I have been a fan for years now. I will get to a few interviews with her. A new one from CLASH is especially interesting. Let’s start with DORK and their fascinating chat with Gretel. They write how, with Squish, she “ditched perfectionism and made a record in five days that embraces spontaneity and the freedom of not knowing everything”:

“It's a record which people have been asking her about for the last five years since the release of 'Slugeye' in 2021. Ironic, then, that the album should take all of five days to make.

"It would have been fab if it came out two years ago," she smiles, "it would have been good to get some stuff off my chest, and I could have just been churning out music, but that's not where I was at. The music didn't write itself that way. It just happened the way it happened, and I love it for that."

"On my second EP ['Head of the Love Club'], there was a lot of imitation of bands that I looked up to, but with this record, I was doing all this stuff live for the first time, so I was just so focused on it not sounding bad. In that way, it became kind of reference-less, or maybe more self-referential."

Drifting away from what she knows best ultimately set Gretel free, focusing on the messaging behind the songs rather than the most polished sonics.

Tracks like 'The Perfect Body', an exploration of Gretel's past experience with eating disorders, or visceral reflection on impending doom 'Fire Blooming Trees' are set alight by Gretel's knife-edge delivery of lyrics that can split you in two, with the more natural, organic instrumentation simply highlighting that this is an album reflecting what it is to be human in the modern world.

The title itself takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to situations that could otherwise pull you under. Shared by the opening track, one which reverberates with a high BPM expectant energy that sets up a record just on the verge of ripping itself apart, 'Squish' is a soft-edged word that represents something much deeper.

"It's about putting things into a box that don't deserve to be – like, I'm a human being, how can you sum me up? How can you shove me into one album? There's too much to be said and too much that I want to do, so this is as much as I could get into one album; that's why every song is the maximum version of what it is."

There's sometimes an assumption that songwriting is a means of catharsis, of dealing with whatever trauma or pain you've grown through. When we ask Gretel if that was the case for this album, the answer is: "No."

"I wrote from a confused place. I just write whatever comes to mind, which means I've got no idea what I'm writing about until I finally listen back to what I've written two months later."

She adds, "Actually, what did help me understand myself was picking the track listing and seeing all these different aspects of what it is to be a young woman, seeing that I had successfully represented it as far as I could. I looked at it like, 'Yeah, that's pretty much who I am right now', for better or for worse."

Across the process, 'Squish' was never taken too seriously. Of course, Gretel wanted it to be the best it could be, but she was equally aware that this was the first step on what appeared to be a long and exciting career. In that way, any small mistakes or decisions that made their way onto the record that she would now change are nothing to worry about; "It can't be perfect, can it? Otherwise, it would be boring!"

One of the other bonuses of having the first album written and ready to be set free is that it's allowed Gretel to focus on the next thing, whatever and whenever that may be. She lets slip that writing has occurred, so it would be rude of us not to ask at least a little something about it.

"It's going to be still the same thing, this album one kind of rawness," she hints, "but I can see myself reintroducing electronic elements; I was very stingy on synths in this album because I wanted to keep it as gritty and unpolished as possible.

"I'm just really interested to see what people's reactions are to this one, which ones connect the most. There's nothing more lovely than having someone who looks like you did at 13 connecting to a song you've written in the same way that I would have connected to a Wolf Alice song or a Nick Cave song”.

I do love this DIY interview. It was published in April. In their interview, “Gretel’s Maddy Haenlein talks self-knowledge, artistic integrity, and the importance of always honouring your inner teenager”. If you have not heard Squish and are unfamiliar with Gretel, then do check her out:

“With the lion’s share of material recorded in a five-day stretch at RAK Studios, ‘Squish’ is a thrilling document of its spontaneous gestation. From the grungy guitar textures and vocal acrobatics of ‘Unbloom’, to ‘Laurali’’s swirling shoegaze balladry and ‘Pick Your Heart Up’’s playful mix of swaggering bass and girl gang shouts, there’s an unstudied charm throughout that feels thrillingly genuine. Early reference points - including The Cure and ‘Mellow Gold’-era Beck - were swiftly abandoned, with Maddy committing to pursuing the emotional truth of each individual track instead. The result is a full-band indie-rock record underpinned by a strong singer-songwriter sensibility.

And within this framework, there’s impressive variety. Like a blissed-out hybrid of Florence + The Machine and The Last Dinner Party, ‘Darkness Be My Friend’ serves as a stunning two-hander, its lilting verses giving way to dizzying choruses powered by shimmering guitar arpeggios. The title track pairs punky guitars with soaring vocals, while anthemic single ‘Fire Blooming Trees’ was co-written with Hugo White of The Maccabees, and channels much of that band’s vim for a heart-racing chorus. For Maddy, the album marks a full-circle moment, taking her back to her early days channelling Nirvana and Nick Cave: “It’s funny, I think the stuff that I’m releasing now is actually more similar to what I was doing at the very beginning of my career. Sonically, I’ve come home.”

Squish’’s most powerful moment comes in the shimmering dream-pop of album closer ‘The Perfect Body’. A song as devastating as it is courageous, it draws on Maddy’s experiences of disordered eating; its chorus finds her ruing that “I’ve wrecked my body tryna be happy,” while later, she confesses: “I want a perfect body / And I want a religion / And I want brains / And I want to have children / That is, if I still can.”

As deeply painful as these confessions are, Maddy views the song as a hopeful gesture. “I’m choosing not to let body dysmorphia get the better of me anymore. It’s me saying: ‘I want to be happy and exhilarated, and I want to see myself like you do’. But yeah, I still listen to that song and I weep at the girl who wrote it.”

Ultimately, she believes that embarking on this journey of personal growth has resulted in a record she can truly stand behind. “You can never be happy with a body of work that’s a reflection of yourself, until you’re happy with yourself,” she explains thoughtfully. “It was all about being honest with what I was writing and trying to excite the person I was when I was 13.”

Now it’s complete, we wonder what she thinks 13 year old Maddy would make of ‘Squish’. “Oh god, I really hope that she’d like it,” she replies quickly, a pained look in her eyes. “Sometimes [I think] ‘is it loud enough for her? Is it popping off enough for her?’ Mostly, I just hope that she would listen to it and feel something, because that’s the reason I started writing music in the first place”.

Speaking with Gretel backstage at the Deer Shed Festival, CLASH caught her in thoughtful mode. I do think that Squish is an album that should win awards. It definitely announces her as a very distinct songwriter. I am not sure what other tour dates are coming up, but I would love to see her play if she has some London dates coming up. You check back here when new ones are added:

“The album is impressively wide-ranging, exploring issues including grappling with femininity, people pleasing, the male gaze and finding a place in the world. It is also a strikingly honest record, with few filters put between the artist and listener. Perhaps that’s why chatting with Gretel under a tree in a quiet festival corner feels so right. The songwriter exudes relaxed, unpretentious likeability and even grabs a blanket from her bag to spread for us on the guano-spotted bench. As we speak, it becomes clear than genuine human connections mean the world to Gretel.

“It’s so lovely hearing when people have connected to the work… That’s why it’s so nice to be able to come and play shows and actually reach those new people in real life, in a real way,” she says.

The very idea of success means something different to Gretel now than when she was younger, she explains.

“Now, success to me is making just about enough money from the music to always do it. I believe this album has been successful because it’s taught me so much about what I do and don’t want to feel when creating a body of work.

For Gretel, who was herself “discovered” by the industry before she turned 20, it is the modern idea and image of “the young prodigy” that makes her uncomfortable.

“There’s such an obsession with someone getting it right first time, and knowing who they are when they’re 17… and getting the perfect debut album when they’re 18… This whole idea of momentum and stuff like that,” she says. “Of course that stuff is really impressive, but what’s really lovely is a real human being figuring it out.”

Gretel muses on how artists she knows have reacted to challenges — such as having previous industry supporters suddenly lose faith in them.

“They can either decide they don’t want to do it and sink away and do something else, or they can go ‘Brilliant, we’ve had our shot and tried to do that, now I’m deciding to keep going because I’m always going to make music whether or not commercial success is on the cards for me.’ Again, really liberating!”.

Far Out Magazine provided their verdict on Gretel’s debut album. They say how it balances references and originality. I am interested to see where she heads next. There will be touring demand and international dates. If you have not heard they album yet then do go and listen now:

“The Skinny: In particular, the demand for referencelessness feels like something thrown at women by men. It’s a new tool used in a weird attempt to catch women in rock out, suggesting if they take clear influence from another act or time, they’re clearly a copy-cat, a phony or incapable of their own originality.

On Squish, Gretel wearing her references doesn’t impact her greatness at all. In fact, it makes it all the better. Within seconds of the opening title track alone, Gretel croons “something in the way…” and your mind fills in the blank of George Harrison’s ultimate love song. That’s a tune of grand gestures and devotion, but as Gretel twists it, ending the phrase instead with “you’re holding me now”, she instead launches into a song about modern connection and desperation for affection, even if it’s fleeting. The rest of the song is a battle between two desires; “All I want is to drown in love” she wails while also agreeing to the chaotic confines of modern dating, singing “But call me up / In the dead of night / And I’ll be all over it / No courting, I’ll be all over it.”

Throughout the record, it’s as if Gretel sees the artists that shaped her and pays thrilling homage. There are PJ Harvey tones across the board, from her guitar tones to her turns of phrase and vocal acrobatics on ‘Witch Hunt’. ‘Laurali’ is devastating in the way Stevie Nicks’ saddest songs are, merging mythical images with simple gut punches like “I’ll lick your wounds while you’re sending back the things I bought for you“. Wolf Alice also comes up as a likeness again and again as Gretel undeniably sits in the new cast of women in rock influences, spurred on by the power of Ellie Rowsell’s powerful and characterful voice. 

With shades from shoegaze to classic indie to all-out rock rages like the standout track ‘Unbloom’, Gretel is clearly taking sips from all the different pools that first got her drunk on the idea of picking up a guitar and singing into the mic. Yet no amount of that takes away from her clear talent as a composer, but especially as a lyricist.

Squish is a step up in every way from her prior releases, but most notably in her writing. On ‘Maybelline’ alone, Gretel’s contemplation of beauty standards, generational insecurity passed down from age to age while it morphs and disguises, is so nuanced yet so catchy. All the references that colour the record might have pointed her in the right direction, started her off and informed some choices, but only sheer talent picks up a pen and makes something that good.

The Verdict: Building slowly over a scattering EP, Gretel’s debut album launches with a promise fulfilled and potential not only met, but doubled down on. Spanning a broad sonic landscape while her pen keeps her unique and focussed, it’s an album that never dulls but only deepens with each listen and gets more euphoric once you can sing along”.

This is an artist that I have admired for a long time. Her singles and E.P.s have been amazing but, with Squish, I feel she has hit this peak. I do think she will grow stronger and stronger. I feel that this London artist is going to be in the industry for decades more. A phenomenal talent…

LIKE no other.

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Follow Gretel

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: ADÉLA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

  

ADÉLA

__________

THIS is a modern Pop icon…

PHOTO CREDIT: Bryce Anderson

who I don’t think gets as much credit as she should. In terms of her talent and consistency, there are few artists as good as ADÉLA. I spotlighted her last year, but a lot has happened since then, so I wanted to revisit ADÉLA. This incredible Slovak singer-songwriter releases her debut album, Prima, on 4th September. I want to include some recent interviews with an artist who I have followed and admired for a long time now. There are four interviews from this year that I want to highlight. ADÉLA wants to create a perfect Pop album. With Prima, there is every chance that she might, given her track record (pun intended). Before coming to the first interview, you can see where she is on tour. ADÉLA plays Reading & Leeds Festival on 28th and 29th August. She plays HERE at Outernet in London 25th August. Go and pre-order Prima, as it is going to be one of the biggest albums of this year. Harper’s Bazaar note how ADÉLA “has studied Beyoncé, Rihanna, Miley, and more”. Now, she is ready to release her debut L.P. I am not going to quote this interview, though I would urge people to read it. I am starting out with this interview, as it is a bit more of a general. In terms of asking about her lifestyle, fashion and things beyond. However, there are some questions and answers I wanted to highlight:

“What's your song of the summer?
"My song of the summer right now is 'What's Wrong With Me' by Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith. That song is fucking awesome. That whole album is awesome."

What musical artist inspires you the most?
"I would say Beyoncé for sure. I'm a big Beyhive. I just think she's so smart and she's so hardworking and talented obviously, but the work ethic is unmatched and she's a legend. If you don't respect her and study her, then I don't know what you're doing. It's kind of crazy to me."

How would you describe the genre of music you make?

"I make pop music. I always say that and then people like, 'What kind of pop?' And I'm like, 'Well, I only have seven songs out.' So those are electronic pop. With this new album, I kind of was trying to make music that I loved listening to when I was around 12 years old. I was born in 2003, so music from 2014 and 2015. I hope this album kind of sounds like."

Can you describe your perfect day?

"Wake up at 9:00 AM is perfect. It's perfect amount of sleeping in. And then get breakfast with someone's company that I enjoy and then get coffee, go to the studio, make a song that I'm really excited about—hopefully it's an easy process and the idea just comes and we're all really excited. And then maybe go dance in a studio alone in my heels and then maybe have dinner with some friends and then go to sleep next to someone that I love."

What do you want to be remembered for?
"I want to be remembered for being outspoken and for inspiring people. I want to be remembered for my art".

I did want to get a bit more specific and bring in this i-D article for this spring 2026 edition. A great conversation with an internationally-respected artist who I feel is going to get so much love when her debut album comes out. Whilst we talk about the queens of modern Pop and certain names come up, ADÉLA does not get mentioned in the same breath as she should. That will soon change:

“Her name is Adéla: a sherbet-haired, lethally determined 22-year-old who makes the kind of songs most pop girls would kill for. Over the past year, she’s gone from being a big dreamer from a city most people couldn’t place on a map, to becoming a peer of many global artists she stanned as a kid, co-signed by SZA and Grimes. Even she knows how weird her trajectory has been, so meeting her on home turf feels like watching a creature of the future walk back into her past. Everything here in Bratislava has stayed still since she left it behind. 

“I’ve always kind of felt weird here,” Adéla says, her dagger-nailed fingers wrapped around an almond milk latte. Her mum, a well-composed woman, sits opposite us in a downtown brunch spot, scrolling on her phone. The pop star has two phones stacked on top of one another: One serves its traditional purpose; the other is an iPhone 7, just for taking photos. (Y2K is out, Millennial is in, we agree.) Adéla almost never comes home—partly because the journey is long and tricky, partly because there’s not much for her here. She likes hanging out with her friends from school who are finishing their master’s degrees and opening Pilates studios. Other than that, she stresses, “I am objectively out of place. I think a good chunk of my life has been spent in dance studios and singing lessons. But I wasn’t really out in these streets.”

Performing has been in her since she was a kid. When she was just 3 years old, she started ballet lessons, training in Bratislava and Moscow until she moved to London to pursue dance full-time at age 15. It was there she met a young gay dancer named Luca Deller, who believed in her wholeheartedly when she said she wanted to try out the pop thing. “From the very first moment I met her, I knew she was bound to be a star,” Deller tells me. “It was just a matter of time. She wanted it so badly, she’d train six days a week at ballet school and still find time for singing lessons. By that point, she’d told me she wasn’t interested in being a ballet dancer.” So Adéla heeded her friend’s advice, threw in the towel, moved home, and decided to really become a musician.

Her journey to the limelight really took off on The Debut: Dream Academy, the 2023 YouTube reality series that saw hopefuls compete to be part of the global girl group Katseye. (2024’s Pop Star Academy, a Netflix show that chronicled all the girls’ backstories—including Adéla’s—would further popularise the stars of The Debut.) She submitted an audition tape from her bedroom in Bratislava and was accepted, making it down to the final 20 contestants out of hundreds of thousands of applicants. When Adéla left Slovakia for the show, guys she went to high school with teased her. “They were like, ‘What are you gonna do? OnlyFans?’ They thought they were eating—because so what if I did?” she says. She was just 18 years old when, after the first round, she was eliminated by a fan vote. “We see Adéla as a solo artist,” one of the show’s executives said at the time.

Women who want something openly are susceptible to being taken advantage of,” Adéla says of the EP’s thematic origins. “But [nowadays] I feel like I have the chance to be like, ‘Okay, well, fuck you. I’m actually gonna do it myself.’” Did she inherit that attitude? I signal to her mother, still sat scrolling. Adéla grins, then nods: “She’s the baddest bitch! I respect a blunt bitch, because we don’t have time for bullshit. We’re both Eastern European.”

She will soon support Demi Lovato’s arena tour, while envisioning her next chapter, sonically and aesthetically. “I want it to feel really feminine and vulnerable—but also hard,” Adéla says. Maybe she will shave her head, or change her hair colour from pink to green, or turquoise, or blonde. We laugh at the fact that this is something she’ll inevitably have to have a label meeting about: the autonomy of a proud, “fuck you” pop star always tested by the opinions of others. If they know what’s good for them, they should fall into line. “I don’t ever look back and regret anything,” Adéla says. It’s served her well so far. “I trust my gut all the time”.

Last month, CLASH made ADÉLA the third face of their CLASH 134. You can learn more here. I am going to end with NYLON from the start of the year. To sort of see how far she has come in a short time since then. The confidence in her ability is impressive. She has the talent to back it up. Someone who wants to go down in history:

“Though Adéla set her sights on pop stardom early, she wasn’t sure how to get there. She tried ballet, which seemed to her like the only viable path to an entertainment career in Slovakia. But at 16, fed up with the discipline’s creative militarism, Adéla walked away and, at her parents’ urging, gave college a try. (She studied marketing, like “every artistically inclined person that needs to have a job,” she says with an eyeroll.) Then, in 2021, she read Olivia Rodrigo’s Elle cover story, which featured Rodrigo’s long-time vocal coach, Jennifer Dustman, as a secondary source. On a whim, Adéla tracked down Dustman’s contact information to begin working with her remotely. It was Dustman who sent her the open audition call for the talent competition series The Debut: Dream Academy.

Among the 120,000 young women who applied, Adéla was one of the 20 girls selected from around the world to train for nearly two years, K-pop style, and compete for a spot in the girl group that later became KATSEYE. Adéla was an early eliminee, but there are no hard feelings; she’s still close with the group, especially’s Lara Raj and Megan Skiendiel, and she is level-headed about the perks that come with being a solo artist.

“When I do hear about what they’re doing with everything that comes with it, there’s six individuals that are in the group, you don’t always get your way, and you don’t always get your vision, and there are obviously more compromises,” she says. “Where I just get to be completely me, and it’s going to take me longer to find success that way. So it’s almost like you win some, you lose some.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Horseman

The saying goes that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success, and lately, that’s felt truer than ever — just look at another big three in pop: Charli, Chappell, Sabrina. Adéla, however, might not have to wait. Her debut EP, The Provocateur — the cover of which features Adéla urinating against a wall — is a hyperpop fever dream, with transcendent tracks like “SexOnTheBeat” and “Superscar” showcasing a knack for scrappy yet dazzling pop spectacle. She followed its release with The Provocatour in London, New York, and Los Angeles, garnering rave reviews for her outstanding vocal performance delivered while en pointe. Demi’s not the only star who noticed her gifts, either: Grimes co-wrote and co-produced Adéla’s 2025 single “MachineGirl” (and later appeared in the song’s music video); Christina Aguilera made a cameo in the “SexOnTheBeat” video; and Charli XCX stylist Chris Horan contacted Adéla directly about helping translate her vision.

“This is one thing that I’m going to say: The support from the industry right away was so unexpected,” she says. “The coolest creatives do look on the Internet and do reach out to random people like, ‘I want to work with you.’ I didn’t know that.”

“I do want to be really big one day. I want to reach a lot of people, and I think it’s such a beautiful and precious thing,” she says. “I just hope to have a really big impact, which only a couple people get to do.” Right, I nod — only the most unique bitches out there”.

I am going to end here. I am really looking forward to Prima. It is one of the most important Pop debut albums of the decade, and I feel it will get a lot of rave reviews. Beyond that, headline sets and awards await ADÉLA. She is a supernova who everyone needs to hear and follow, as she will be a global sensation very soon. A magnetic and magnificent artist who will be slaying…

FOR decades to come.

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Follow ADÉLA

FEATURE: Spotlight: BETH

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

BETH

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THIS is a wonderful…

D.J. and artist who has released some gems this year. Keep It Movin’ and Hooked on You are diamonds from this Scottish D.J. and artist. There are not many interviews out there with her, but I do want to source them. BETH is a titan and queen who I think is up there with the best D.J.s around. An exceptional producer, I am starting out by sourcing some of this interview from The Night Bazaar. Them, alongside Beatportal – who I will come to soon – have been invaluable when it comes to interesting interviews with D.J.s. I would love to read or see an interview where BETH took us trough her record collection and we get an insight into her tastes and story. This interview was published in May. They write how “Ahead of her huge TRNSMT Festival appearance alongside Illyus Barrientos, BETH opens up about club culture, authenticity and building a career with longevity in mind”:

“What feels most different about BETH in 2026 compared to the early days?

I think the biggest difference is clarity. In earlier days I was very much in the phase of experimenting and trying to find where I fit, both as a DJ & producer. I feel more settled in my sound, my selections even the way I approach a set or track. I would also say my shift In confidence, before I was proving to myself that I could do it now I’m more focused on longevity and building something meaningful rather than reacting to opportunities as they come.

Your rise over the last year has felt incredibly organic. Has the pace of everything surprised you at all?

I would say yes and no because I have been grafting for years now so I feel like the rise over the past year has been earned so I almost feel like “about time” but I have always been quite patient with it all, so even though things have picked up , I still try to approach everything with the same mindset I had at the start.

Peggy Gou dropping your track during her Coachella set was a huge moment. Did that feel like a turning point for you personally?

Yeah it was a pretty big moment for sure. I had a lot of record labels contact me after they seen that, as a DJ picking one of my tunes to play at one of the most well known festivals in the world will always be a pinch me moment. Its made me realise my music is good enough.

How important is emotional connection in your music versus pure club energy?

The two go hand in hand I guess. The club energy is what draws people in but its the emotional connection that makes a track stay with them. I try to sit somewhere in the middle where there’s a strong groove and energy but also something underneath that people can connect with.

Dance music moves incredibly fast now through social media and algorithms. How do you stay grounded and avoid chasing trends?

Its definitely something you have to be conscious of because its so easy to get pulled into what’s working in the moment. Trends move fast and if you are constantly reacting to them you can lose your identify pretty quickly. For me staying grounded comes from having a clear sense of what I actually like and what I want my sound to be. I spend a lot of time just making music without thinking about how its going to perform, no socials, no pressure just focusing on what feels right.

There’s increasing pressure on DJs to also be content creators. How do you balance visibility with authenticity?

Yeah it’s definitely a real thing now, you’re not just a DJ/producer anymore your expected to exist online in a constant way. But I think the balance comes from being clear on what actually feels natural to you. I try not to force it, if something feels to staged or disconnected from who I am it usually comes across that way anyway, so I’d rather share moments that are genuine rather than trying to keep up with every trend”.

It is a shame that there have not been more interviews with BETH. I am fascinated to know more about her. Keep on Movin’ is such a phenomenal and entrancing track. I can imagine that her D.J.s set are a thing of wonder. Learning more about this phenomenal woman would be an advantage. I do want to finish off with Beatportal, as they spent time with BETH. We get to learn about her route to now. How she is considered ‘rising’, though she has been working hard for years so this exposure and suycecss seems earned. Hopefully, it will lead to more chats with someone who I find really fascinating. This interview was published ahead of her appearance at TRNSMT Festival in June. What we learn from this interview is how authenticity is key to everything that she does:

“I have been grafting for years now,” she says. “So, I feel like the rise over the past year has been earned. I almost feel like ‘about time’.”

That patience and persistence have helped shape a much clearer sense of identity, both musically and personally. Looking back at her earlier years trying to establish herself as both a DJ and producer, BETH admits things feel very different now.

“I think the biggest difference is clarity,” she explains. “In earlier days I was very much in the phase of experimenting and trying to find where I fit, both as a DJ and producer. I feel more settled in my sound, my selections, even the way I approach a set or track.”

For BETH, though, finding her sound hasn’t meant standing still creatively. “I think I have found the core of my sound,” she says. “There’s a certain energy that runs through everything I’m doing and I think you can hear that in my productions. But at the same time music is always evolving and I’m always exposed to new influences, new sounds and just growing as an artist.”

That balance between consistency and evolution is something she also thinks about in the studio. While dancefloor energy remains central to her process, she’s become more aware of how records can connect emotionally too. 

“The club energy is what draws people in,” she explains, “but it’s the emotional connection that makes a track stay with them. I try to sit somewhere in the middle where there’s a strong groove and energy but also something underneath that people can connect with.”

Away from the studio, BETH’s reputation as a DJ continues to grow rapidly, with appearances everywhere from intimate club spaces to major festival stages. Yet despite playing to increasingly large crowds, she admits her heart still belongs to smaller venues. “In real honesty, I love my intimate settings,” she says. “Give me a 300-cap, low-ceiling sweatbox and I will be there in my element.”

At the same time, she recognises the scale and emotion that festivals can bring. “Bigger festival settings have a place in my heart because getting to play to thousands of people is a massive moment.”

Still, authenticity remains non-negotiable. “If something feels too staged or disconnected from who I am, it usually comes across that way anyway,” she says. “I’d rather share moments that are genuine rather than trying to keep up with every trend”.

I have not yet included one fo the most notable sections of the interview: “More importantly, she says, her confidence has shifted too. “Before I was proving to myself that I could do it,” she says. “Now I’m more focused on longevity and building something meaningful rather than reacting to opportunities as they come”. Authenticity is at the top her list. Wanting to remain and enjoying this very long career. You can see it happening. Hopefully, there will be some new interviews. Have DJ Mag got BETH on their radar?! I would love to see a huge profile of her there. In the meantime, go and support and show love for her. Follow her on social media for news of more festivals and any opportunities to see her live. I wanted to show my affection for…

THIS dazzling D.J., artist and producer.

___________

Follow BETH

FEATURE: Spotlight: Lilly Palmer

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Lilly Palmer

__________

I do think that…

there are so many incredible D.J.s that some people do not know about. I have highlighted a few, but I feel women are the most talented and passionate D.J.s in the world. Lilly Palmer up there with her fellow queens. I am going to jump to some 2026 interviews with this staggering talent. I am starting out with Beatportal. They say how “From Zurich's underground clubs to a solar eclipse in the mountains of Spain, Lilly Palmer reflects on belonging, transformation, Bigger Than Techno and the power of music to unite strangers”:

“Techno was the first place Lilly Palmer felt she truly belonged. The German DJ and producer has become one of the defining figures of contemporary peak-time techno, commanding festival main stages across the globe with sets that balance relentless energy, melodic emotion and trance-infused euphoria.

Yet despite the meteoric rise, Lilly insists that the essence of what drives her has remained unchanged since the early days playing intimate clubs in Zurich. "Honestly, the core of what drives me has never changed," she says. "It's always been about emotion and connection."

Long before the sold-out arenas and festival crowds stretching to the horizon, she was searching for the same thing she seeks today. "When I was playing small clubs in Zurich to maybe a hundred people, I was trying to take them somewhere, to create a moment where everyone in the room felt the same thing at the same time. That's still what I'm doing on a festival mainstage."

While the scale may have changed dramatically, the mission has not. "The scale changes, the production changes, but that hunger to genuinely move people? That's never wavered."

That desire is rooted in her own personal experience. "I grew up feeling like an outsider, and techno was the first space where I truly felt like I belonged, where nobody cared about who you were outside of those walls. I carry that feeling into every single set."

It is a theme that emerges repeatedly throughout the conversation: connection, belonging and transformation. But for Lilly, techno occupies a uniquely powerful emotional space. "Music has always meant freedom," she explains. "The freedom to express, process and transform emotions."

"What techno does that nothing else quite manages is that it gives you all of it at once: the joy, the catharsis, the relief from anger or pain, the melancholy, the pure physical release."

Those moments on the dancefloor, she believes, transcend music itself. "When I say 'bigger than techno,' I'm speaking about this indescribable feeling that takes over completely in those moments. Those moments when strangers become family, when the pain becomes colour, when time seems to stand still and the beat carries you upward into something almost spiritual." Then she pauses before adding: "Techno has saved me, genuinely and I see it save people in the crowd every single night."

That emotional depth is evident in her performances. Her sets are known for combining aggression and tenderness, often shifting between pounding techno rhythms and soaring melodic moments that catch audiences off guard. "It's both, always both," she says when asked whether her sets are carefully planned or instinctive reactions to the crowd. "I go into every set with a kind of emotional arc in mind. I know the journey I want to take people on, from the first beat to the last"

Also in this interview, Lilly Palmer talks about Astral Plane. Taking place in Spain between 10th and 12th August, you can visit their website here. I have never been to a festival like this, but there is the temptation to maybe do it one day. To see such talent on display in a gorgeous location is hard to resist:

“The more Lilly speaks about Astral Plane, the more it begins to sound like a physical manifestation of the ideas explored throughout Bigger Than Techno. Connection. Transformation. Transcendence.

Asked whether the festival's emphasis on cosmic energy and collective experience resonates with her understanding of techno, her answer arrives without hesitation. "Completely and deeply. Techno at its best is exactly that. It's a modern sanctuary where genuine thriving happens through music and community."

In a world that often feels increasingly fragmented, she sees dancefloors as rare spaces where genuine human connection still flourishes. "I believe we reclaim our capacity for connection in an increasingly isolated world every time a dance floor comes together with true shared intention."

Then she paints the scene awaiting festivalgoers in Spain. "An eclipse set in a mountain range at 1500 metres, day turning to night, 10,000 people unified by the same cosmic moment and the same music..." She pauses, as if imagining the moment herself. "That's not metaphor. That's the literal version of what I try to create every time I play. I cannot wait”.

Two more interviews I want to cover off. Back in January, DJ Mag spent time with one of the world’s truly great D.J.s. I am going to throw it over to them and start with their header: “The Amsterdam-based techno DJ was voted into last year’s Top 100 DJs poll at No. 57, one of the highest new entries, but in truth she’s been honing her craft for well over a decade. Like her DJ sets, her debut album ‘Bigger Than Techno’ moves through a selection of harder styles. It’s also the name of her events brand, a nod to her belief that techno can and should be a tool for connection and social progress. In her cover interview, Niamh O’Connor speaks to Palmer about her journey so far, facing her fears, and finding strength through techno”. It is quite an extensive interview, but we pick it up in 2019:

“In 2019, Lilly released on labels like Senso Sounds and Natura Viva Black, and played in London, Madrid, Zürich, Hamburg, Dubrovnik, and Mumbai, some of which were headline bookings. She had up to 15 shows per month lined up for the last three months of the year. “I tasted blood in those months,” she recalls. “I finally understood what it was like to be fully booked and on tour, and I really liked it.”

Then the pandemic happened. “For us, the world stopped. Many artists are partnered with someone who has a regular day job, but we were both artists — and together we lost everything,” she says. “It went from ‘We have these amazing careers’, to suddenly, zero income, and zero to do as well.”

“This is what techno makes me do, because I was this shy person with no confidence when I was younger, and techno gives me so much balls and so much strength.”

Too anxious to make music, Lilly and Egbert didn’t spend time in the studio and instead checked the news every day. A few weeks later, the couple decided, “OK, we can cry about it, or we can do something.” Lilly observed how, before the pandemic, videos and reels on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube had helped her to build an audience and fanbase. So the couple learnt how to set up a live stream, and Lilly recorded a mix from a beachside rooftop on the coast of Amsterdam. They uploaded the set and various clips on social media, and Lilly’s reach increased tenfold.

Egbert and Lilly occasionally produced music in their studio, but mostly, the couple remained busy setting up streams and took the concept further when they travelled to countries where a Covid-19 test wasn’t compulsory on arrival. This allowed them to record from idyllic locations in the Caribbean, Paris, and Iceland, all the while developing Lilly’s profile while clubs remained closed.

Their roving live-stream series ended when Egbert broke his ankle after a paragliding accident. It was December 2021, “the deepest point in the pandemic”, and feeling uninspired again, the couple downloaded the Age Of Empires video game and played it for one month straight. “We got really good at it,” laughs Lilly. “And then life got better after that.”

In 2022, Drumcode released Lilly’s EP ‘We Control’. Lilly and Egbert had produced it during the pandemic, using her own vocals on the title track. “At some point, we were like, ‘OK, we need a hit’ but without the pressure,” she says. “It was more like we were motivated; we felt, ‘OK, now we want to make a really great track’.” She sent the rolling techno EP to Adam Beyer, who recommended they hold off releasing it until clubs reopened.

On 8th April 2022, Drumcode dropped the EP and two days later, it went to No.1 on Beatport’s Techno (Peak Time / Driving) chart. Her booking requests multiplied. “It was my moment back then,” she says. “Finally, I could experience this real DJ life. I just really prepared for it. I was like a racehorse who couldn’t wait to do it.”

Since then, Lilly hasn’t looked back, and her debut album ‘Bigger Than Techno’ marks another pivotal moment. The 16-track collection pays tribute to the music and moments that encouraged her to step up and face her fears, from being an outsider oddball teen to playing F2F with Armin van Buuren at Ushuaïa Ibiza.

PHOTO CREDIT: Felix Rachor

“This is what techno makes me do, because I was this shy person with no confidence when I was younger, and techno gives me so much balls and so much strength,” she says. “So when I stand there on the stage in front of 50,000 people, and say, ‘Fuck it, have fun, live it and love it; this is bigger than techno’. I love this concept... it’s just perfect to describe the feeling of what music gives to me.”

Lilly’s album features collabs with Gregor Tresher, Maddix, Armin van Buuren, Danny Avila, Jose Bonetto, Space 92 and Vini Vici, plus a track with Egbert too. “In total, this album shows the full spectrum of the music which I love, and the people whom I love,” she says. “It’s very positive, and I can’t wait to release it.” Lilly and Egbert do not release tracks together too often, but they decided to collaborate on one for the album. ‘Rotterdam’ is the “super hard” track that honours the “roughness and realness” of the Rotterdam people, and Egbert’s hometown. It marks their first joint production since their rework of ‘We Will Survive’ by Warp Brothers, which Lilly released on Spannung Records in 2020, the same year she launched the label.

Speaking of which, Lilly says she has lined up releases by Nusha, Cristian Glitch and Jose Bonetto on Spannung Records, and she’d like to start curating label showcases again, but that won’t come until later down the line. As we carry on chatting on the call, we get to the subject of what keeps her grounded. Spending time with her horse and mucking out the stables tends to help. “Those animals, they just feel everything,” she says. “They know when you’re sad, when you’re stressed, and every other emotional sensation. So you can’t fake anything. You have to be authentic. You go there, and you just feel better.”

Before we end the call, Lilly has two pieces of advice for emerging artists. The first nugget is related to saying no. “I think this is something that every artist has to learn,” she says. “Your team should not only be out pleasing others and saying yes to everything, because I noticed a lot of agencies have this problem where they have so many DJs that they don’t want to risk relationships with promoters when saying no; that actually doesn’t help you as an artist. The key is to source a tight team, a ‘shark’ who is not afraid to lose and to face confrontations.” But at the same time, knowing you can always “go back to the safety of a situation where you can say, ‘Hey, I really don’t want to do this so I’d rather say no’. Then you actually raise the demand.”

The second part of Lilly’s advice is about toeing the line between confidence and self-criticism, something she admits she’s still learning. To strike that balance, you need a core support system, sans yes-men. For Lilly, that means receiving guidance from the people close to her: first and foremost, Karl and Egbert, teams like Armada Music and Kontor Records, and influential personalities like Armin.

“So keep your team small, with people you can trust and are in there for the experience and the desire to build something,” she says. “I don’t need to be the world’s top DJ — I need that team feeling. When we can honestly say, ‘We built this together and now we enjoy the results’, it becomes real. That’s the best job in the world”.

I am going to wrap up with The Night Bazaar and their conversation with Lilly Palmer. This year has been a busy one for her. She released the E.P., You’re the One, last month. Her album, Bigger Than Techno, came out in March. Such a prolific artist and D.J., her focus, dedication and passion has seen her blow up recently. Without doubt one of the most accomplished D.J.s in the world:

“Your rise over the last few years has been massive, when you look back at the small club gigs in Zurich, what do you think has stayed constant about you as an artist?

Honestly, the core of what drives me has never changed, it’s always been about emotion and connection. When I was playing small clubs in Zurich to maybe a hundred people, I was trying to take them somewhere, to create a moment where everyone in the room felt the same thing at the same time. That’s still what I’m doing on a festival mainstage. The scale changes, the production changes, but that hunger to genuinely move people? That’s never wavered. I grew up feeling like an outsider, and techno was the first space where I truly felt like I belonged, where nobody cared about who you were outside of those walls. I carry that feeling into every single set.

Your sets balance aggression, melody, trance and emotion. Do you consciously think about storytelling when building a set or is it very much spur of the moment decisions reacting to the crowd in front of you?

It’s both, always both. I go into every set with a kind of emotional arc in mind, I know the journey I want to take people on, from the first beat to the last. But the crowd tells you everything in real time. Their energy, their body language, you feel it back as clearly as they feel what you’re putting out. My sets grew from a more melodic deep house foundation in Zurich, and that DNA never fully left. Even at 150 BPM, I’m always looking for that melodic moment that cuts through the intensity and makes someone close their eyes. The aggression and the tenderness have to live together. That tension is actually where the magic is.

The title of your album Bigger Than Techno feels like a statement. What does that phrase mean to you personally?

People sometimes read it as an ego statement, like I think I’m bigger than techno. It’s actually the complete opposite. Bigger Than Techno is about techno itself being bigger than anything. Bigger than a genre label, bigger than a scene, bigger than any boundary you could put around it. Techno creates transformative experiences, it builds communities, it inspires people on a level that goes far beyond the dancefloor into the very fabric of human experience. For me the album is a heartfelt declaration of that. It’s me saying: look at everything this music can hold trance, psytrance, hard dance, raw emotion, spiritual depth. This is sacred space. This is where authentic self-expression flourishes without colour or constraint.

As a female artist in a still male-dominated scene, have things improved since you started or do you still feel you have to prove yourself more than others?

Things have genuinely improved and I want to acknowledge that, there are more women headlining, more conversations happening, more space being made. But the doubts that get thrown at female producers didn’t disappear overnight. I’ve had people question whether I actually make my own music. My response was never to get angry, it was to show my work, to post my process, to let the music speak for itself. That’s the same integrity I’d expect of any artist. What I will say is that coming from the outside, being adopted, feeling like an outsider at school, finding my tribe eventually with the death metal kids, gave me a resilience that I now consider one of my greatest assets. I’ve never needed everyone’s approval. I need to be true to what I create”.

I will end here. Already a major name, I haven’t written about Lilly Palmer, so I wanted to correct that. I absolutely love her sound and admire hugely her skill as a D.J. and her incredible artistry. Her new E.P. is stunning and, as we can see, she is the middle of a run of dates at the moment. She plays Creamfields here on 28th August. If you get a chance to see her then you really should. Lilly Palmer is…

A modern-day icon.

___________

Follow Lilly Palmer

FEATURE: Spotlight: sillygirlcamrmen

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight


sillygirlcamrmen

__________

THERE is so such to admire…

when it comes to sillygirlcarmen. The world she has created as this D.J. and artist. Born in Detroit, she is one of the most important D.J.s in that city. Though she plays far beyond and has played to united and eager crowds around the world. I did want to spotlight some interviews with her. I wanted to explore her as a brilliant D.J. The End of Summer is her E.P. from last year. Itty Bitty Squad an incredible single. I do wonder if she will bring out an E.P. or album later this year or next. I want to start out with an introduction of this hypnotic and world-class talent:

“Carmen Johnson is an active DJ, singer, promoter and actress born in Detroit who performs under the name sillygirlcarmen. She’s played in many exclusive settings around the world. From Detroit to LA, NYC to Miami, Montreal to Paris. Playing at venues such as, Flash DC, Silo NYC, Djoon Paris, TV Lounge Detroit and Public Works San Francisco. And festivals such as Charivari Detroit, Movement, West Coast Weekender, MTL 24, Big Stomp and Miami Music Week.

Carmen is known to craft passionate sets that energize the room and ignite the dance floor. Highly requested, she has played alongside industry favorites such as Louie Vega, Moodymann, MK, Nora En Pure, DJ Minx, Rich Medina, Delano Smith, Will Clarke, Eats Everything, Gene Farris, Green Velvet and Osunlade. She is now focused on her production and original music releases from Nervous Records, Popgang Records, Soul Clap Records and her brand new label Sun & Sound Detroit. House Legends Karizma, Glenn Underground, Emmaculate and DJ Minx among others, have already crafted one of a kind remixes with her original works. Carmen is 100% passionate about music, arts, and all things involving creative expansion.

Sillygirlcarmen is a newgen idealist when shaping her sets. Her approach is unmarred by purists’ notions of what device or technology makes the DJ. Hers is a focused appreciation of the music, and its delivery in the mix, with the goal of making the audience center stage. It is the people on the dance floor and their connection with the track selections that will create the memory of the night. Your brand flourishes delivering these good times, and those present will tell the stories.

In a world where technology appears to make it possible that “anybody can be a DJ now” and at a time when everything musically is available to everyone, you must find your niche and something that sets you apart from your contemporaries. Just like each generation of DJs before, new DJs are brimming with fresh ideas and a unique perspective. As one of the newest members of the Detroit DJ legacy taking her seat at the table, Sillygirlcarmen is a glimpse of where the DJ world could be. She brings a multifarious Artistic approach to her direction as DJ/Producer/Graphic Artist/Actress/Model. Instead of likes and followers, the goal is authenticity and connection.

 

Sillygirlcarmen is uncompromising in her journey with the music and its history. She has youthful insistence and a voracious drive for consistent discovery of old music to present in the context of a contemporary mix while also keeping her finger on the pulse of new music. Each set that she delivers is more about the collective and experiential rather than the individual delivering. Detroit born sillygirlcarmen aka Carmen Johnson is the daughter of Todd Johnson, an early pioneer DJ and promoter of Detroit dance music culture and one of the principles of the annual Charivari Detroit Music Festival.  Her childhood was filled with full access to mixed CDs from the best of Detroit and many Detroit legends (Delano Smith, DWynn, Terrence Parker, Eddie Fowlkes and others are decades long family friends.)

Sillygirlcarmen passionately embraces the culture. A sillygirlcarmen set doesn’t flow with intent; it could be better described as unfolding more in reaction to her feeling in the moment. In these moments, is where her groove becomes more deliberate over time, more urgent, and sometimes intense while progressing. She makes selections to respond to the crowds movement as needed, at times sonically alluring and ambiguous, and other times absolutely in your face. The collision of DJ, music, and craft sparks a mesmerizing energy in her dance floors. She is always focused on the process while never losing sight of keeping the communication clear with those in motion. She delivers the soundtrack for the experience that you came to hear.  Sillygirlcarmen is one of the new DJs of this generation with a message that the legacy of this culture is in good hands to all those who care to listen. Sillygirl “ I’m looking forward to playing more, creating more, being a part of more. I’m so grateful for the chance to share my expression thru music and shared spaces. These are the most ideal moments for enjoying life.”

The future will see the scene shift and current and new Artists will musically lead the way. That process cannot be routine or always traditional, but more thoughtful about the different ways that this music and events can be presented. It will require a more inclusive approach along with leadership, partnership and community. DJ culture is an artistic route of creative music delivery that has strong collective histories and memories; but it’s also the path into new extraordinary articulations of music, dance floor magic and community possibility. Sillygirlcarmen is out there grinding and banging to be part of making the destination possible and audibly pleasing. And there is nothing silly about that”.

Prior to getting to some interviews, as we can see from the Press section of her official website, back in February last year, Mixmag bestowed a huge honour upon her. “As part of Blackout Mixmag, Dantiez Saunderson – son of techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson – selects 10 artists who are continuing the legacy of Detroit's innovative dance music scene into the new generation”:  

“Carmen Johnson, AKA sillygirlcarmen, is a DJ, producer, vocalist, and promoter making waves in Detroit. Her father is Todd Johnson, an early Detroit artist and a principal founder of the Charivari Detroit Music Festival, meaning Carmen was surrounded by legendary figures from the scene at an early age. She’s quickly become a fixture in local and international line-ups, and esteemed venues from LA to Paris, with a sound rooted in the soulful energy of house music with a disco-inspired flair. Carmen isn’t bound by old-skool purist rules – her philosophy is that it’s not about the gear, it’s about the vibe. She herself has said that she wants to prove “the legacy of this culture is in good hands” within the next generation, and importantly, is using her platform to push for inclusivity. In 2019 she helped inspire Charivari’s all-female stage showcasing women DJs, and continues to champion female talent through that initiative. On the community side, Carmen has spearheaded new inclusive movements with her Wonderful project, a platform for diversity and equality in the scene, introducing a novel model for festival programming”.

I have so much love and respect for sillygirlcarmen. I am not sure how much traction she has in the U.K., though I know there are a lot of folk here who would love to see her D.J. and perform as an artist. What an incredible woman. I think there are venues and clubs here that would love to host her for the night.

I am going to end with a fairly recent interview with Beatportal around a collaborative single. More on that later, I want to get to this Undrtone interview with a supreme talent. The Detroit D.J. talking about the city and vinyl culture. Learning about her has been really fascinating. Each D.J. has their own path and route into the profession. Their united passion is really infectious and inspiring:

“With the release of the ‘EASE’ EP, Detroit artist, DJ and vocalist sillygirlcarmen reaches an important milestone. Not just because it marks the first vinyl release on her Sun & Sound Detroit imprint, but because it captures the wider philosophy driving both the label and her own artistic direction right now.

Built around contributions from Glenn Underground, Coflo, Jon Dixon and Kevin Reynolds alongside her own collaboration with Coflo, the project feels less like a standard VA and more like a carefully assembled dialogue between generations, cities and different strands of house music culture. Deep house, jazz, soul and Detroit futurism all intersect naturally across the record, but nothing feels forced or overly conceptual. The warmth comes first.

“That’s exactly why this was the right project for the moment,” she explains. “It felt effortless, warm and fresh all at once. Calling on these artists created a really beautiful representation of house music’s historical soul and craftsmanship while still feeling future facing.”

For sillygirlcarmen, framing the release as a “vinyl conversation” between Detroit and Chicago was deeply personal. Her own sound has always existed somewhere between those two cities and their respective musical identities.

 

“My taste really sits right in the middle of those influences,” she says. “Some people look at Detroit and Chicago’s electronic music histories as a debate, but I see them more as a storyline of inspiration and reflection between each other.”

That sense of lineage runs throughout the project. The artists featured on ‘EASE’ span different generations, styles and perspectives, but the curation feels remarkably cohesive. Part of that comes from the close creative relationship she shares with her father, Todd Johnson, the long-standing Detroit promoter and Charivari co-founder.

“Working closely with my dad naturally brings together old school and new school energy,” she explains. “That joining of generations happens very naturally when we curate for the label because so many of those friendships already existed.”

Growing up within Detroit’s musical ecosystem clearly shaped that instinctive understanding of dance music culture from an early age. The city’s history still hangs heavily over her work, but more importantly, so does its mentality.

“Detroit gave me such a rich foundation for my music palate,” she says. “But beyond that, the energy of the city really instilled hustle and drive in me.”

That awareness of contributing to a larger cultural lineage brings responsibility too. “Having the opportunity to add to the culture and history of Detroit DJs makes me want to innovate, work hard and win,” she says.

Those influences reveal themselves differently depending on the environment she’s performing in. While she’s appeared at major events including Movement Festival, she speaks just as passionately about smaller, more intimate spaces”.

A couple of recent interview to finish off with. For The Night Bazaar, sillygirlcarmen “discusses her Ryan Sadorus collaboration ‘Wait For You’, finding creative freedom through her voice, and building the future of Sun & Sound Detroit”. This is someone who I would urge everyone to go and follow. One of the best D.J.s in the world, but also this accomplished artist and amazing actress too:

“Detroit is often associated with deep musical soul and innovation. Where do you think Wait For You fits within that tradition while still sounding contemporary?

There is definitely soul and warmth within this record, that I think resonates with the roots of Detroit. The innovation comes in when considering the collaboration and the new age approach to a record that feels so care free and fun.

Your career spans DJing, singing and producing. Which role feels most creatively fulfilling to you right now, and has that changed over the last few years?

I bounce back and forth between DJing and singing being the most fulfilling. Songwriting and singing, really allows me to stay grounded in my spirits itch to create and express, while DJing allows me to connect in the world and share my wide taste in music.

Your DJ sets are known for reacting to the energy of the crowd in real time. Does that same instinct influence the way you arrange your productions?

When I’m working on new music ideas, that thread of inspiration is coming from something beyond me.

It surely is spontaneous and spiritual. Whatever I am feeling or trying to inspire in the world comes through. But most often, the process is simply cathartic. I crave the opportunity to sing new melodies and play with new ideas.

Growing up surrounded by Detroit dance music pioneers gave you a unique education. How has that history influenced this release without making you feel tied to the past?

Detroit’s pioneers and history influence my courage to try something new and put it into the world every time. Simply leaning into who I truly am and being unafraid to give it my all comes from all I have observed of Detroit culture.

You talk about becoming part of the next chapter of Detroit’s musical legacy rather than simply preserving it. What does carrying that legacy forward actually mean to you in 2026?

Staying true to my roots, the music that truly moves me, the scene that has supported my growth, the venues and spaces that have allowed me to get stronger at my craft time and time again. These stories, these moments will forever be told in my story.

What excites you most about Sun & Sound Detroit over the next year, as an artist, but also as someone helping create opportunities for others?

The potential! I have so many ideas I would love to bloom under the Sun & Sound Detroit label. I am constantly plotting and planning on fun ways to make the next move. I am very hopeful and eager to see how many artists we will have the pleasure to have releases with in the future. Making a wider net with other creatives is a huge goal”.

I will end up with Beatportal, and a really great interview. Wait for You was released last month, but it is a track still getting a lot of love and interest. I do wonder whether sillygirlcarmen is going to focus on D.J. sets and that side of things for now, or whether there will be more music coming from her. I love D.J.s who are also artists and producers, as they seem to bring something to the table that is not like something you’d get from a traditional musician:

“Music begins with feeling for Detroit-born DJ, singer and producer sillygirlcarmen. It’s an instinct that runs through her approach to DJing, songwriting and production.

This kind of openness to following an idea wherever it leads rather than deciding in advance exactly where a piece of music belongs is key to her workflow. “I always jump into music based on my initial resonance to the feeling,” she says. “Not everything I make will translate to the settings I most often play but I never feel pigeonholed by that. I am an artist first, if a song moves me, I’m running with it.”

That philosophy sits naturally at the heart of Wait For You, her new collaboration with fellow Detroit artist Ryan Sadorus, which is out now on her own Sun & Sound Detroit label. The track is built around a warm rolling groove, playful bass and Carmen’s vocal, balancing the immediacy of the dancefloor with an emotional undercurrent of longing, patience and connection.

The collaboration unfolded differently from Carmen’s usual creative process. Ryan Sadorus, a Detroit-based DJ and producer whose own musical history encompasses the city’s underground alongside influences gathered while living in Tokyo, arrived with a particularly clear idea of where he wanted the track to go. “Ryan came with a strong leading vision in mind,” Carmen explains. “This was a unique collaboration because I often like to sit with the track and flesh out melodies, but he sent me the track and lyrical content all at once. It resonated right away and was a fun process adding my voice and emotion.”

The result carries characteristics deeply associated with Detroit dance music while resisting any need to recreate its past. Its connection to the city lies as much in spirit as in sound. “There is defiantly soul and warmth within this record, that I think resonates with the roots of Detroit,” she says. “The innovation comes in when considering the collaboration and the new age approach to a record that feels so carefree and fun.”

Carmen’s creative identity has expanded beyond the DJ booth. Having played from Detroit to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal and Paris, she has built a reputation around sets that respond instinctively to the people in front of her. At the same time, her work as a singer, songwriter and producer has become an increasingly important means of expression, with releases connected to labels including Nervous Records, Popgang Records and Soul Clap Records alongside her own Sun & Sound Detroit.

Asked which part of her creative life feels most fulfilling, she finds herself moving between two worlds. “I bounce back and forth between DJing and singing being the most fulfilling,” she says. “Songwriting and singing, really allows me to stay grounded in my spirits itch to create and express, while DJing allows me to connect in the world and share my wide taste in music.”

In an era when technology is rapidly changing how electronic music can be made, Carmen also sees something fundamentally human at the centre of her work. “I think the main thing that will always be the common thread in my work, is the fact that I’m using my voice,” she says. “That is a part of me, literally, that cannot be replicated.”

It is an idea that connects many of the threads running through Carmen’s story: a deep awareness of where she comes from without being confined by it; a relationship with the dancefloor built around communication rather than ego; and an appetite for collaboration, experimentation and continual creative expansion.

With Wait For You, those threads meet in a record rooted in Detroit but looking outward, a collaboration built around groove, voice and feeling. And for Carmen, there is no suggestion that the process of defining her sound needs to arrive at a final destination. “I feel limitless in my interest to create,” she says. “I think my sound will be forever expanding”.

Wrapping up here, I am excited about sillygirlcarmen’s future. She is such a wonderful talent who I feel is going to keep growing and see her profile rise. She already has a huge following across social media and this enormous respect. Such a highly-regarded D.J., her social media links are below, so you can go and follow her. An investment and decision…

YOU won’t regret!

___________

Follow sillygirlcamrmen

FEATURE: Spotlight: Isabel van Gelder

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Isabel van Gelder

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SHE has…

a million followers on Instagram, yet there are many who do not know about Isabel Van Gelder. This amazing Dutch artist is new to me, but I wanted to spotlight her, as she plays some dates in the U.K. in September. She plays in Birmingham and London. I think these dates are sold out, such is the demand to see her. I am going to come to some interviews with this spellbinding talent. Prior to getting there, here is a little bit of background:

“Isabel van Gelder is a 23-year-old singer-songwriter/pop artist from Amsterdam. Her angelic sound and presence shine through in her impressive songs: emotionally layered storytelling ballads, balanced with carefree, upbeat tracks. In both extremes, Isabel effortlessly weaves dreamy melodies with deeply personal lyrics, and audiences listen closely.

Since the release of her singles Die For You and My Silly Boy, it has become impossible to ignore Isabel. Her videos on Instagram and TikTok have amassed millions of views, while her debut EP ‘Minor Details’ has reached millions of streams on Spotify. When she announced her first European tour, it sold out within weeks. Now, she is announcing a brand-new and expanded European tour, featuring larger venues and many more cities”.

In January, she released her debut E.P., Minor Details. A play on words, it is a clever, captivating, singular and stunning work from someone who I do feel is such a fascinating person. Reading interviews with Isabel van Gelder, you hear such a passionate and intelligent voice. She is also a model as well as a musician. I think the modelling career is in the past, but transitioning between these two worlds. Modelling about looks and aesthetics; music more about depth and different elements.

In 2025, Forbes spoke with Isabel van Gelder around the release of the lyric video for Die for You. There has not been as much buzz about her in the U.K. press as you’d imagine, so I sort of missed out on her. Sold-out gigs around the country shows that there is this loyal fanbase here:

“Baltin: Do you find now that being a singer, people really want to know you personally versus modeling, where it's based more on looks?

van Gelder: Yeah, exactly. It's something that was really scary in the beginning because I was so used to getting praised or compliments about the way I looked. And when I started, I always, for some reason, had this belief of not necessarily that I was good enough to do this, but this is the first thing that I ever, when I was very young, felt so connected to and was so special to me that I always had this belief of like, “I'm just doing this, and hopefully people will care.” But I did in the beginning kind of think like, “What if people just want to look at my body and my face, and they don't really give a s**t about what I have to say?” But it turns out they do, which is so great.

Baltin: When you think of the songs that when you were a kid spoke to you about broken hearts are there any that really stand out? What were your favorites?

van Gelder: The first one I can recall loving when I was really young, I think I was like seven or eight, and I couldn't speak English so I didn't understand the lyrics, but I this was like my first vivid memory of how much music emotionally can do to you because I just remember as a little girl in the home of my parents. There was this little CD, and it had summer hits on it and one of the songs was “Hurt,” by Christina Aguilera. She makes great songs, but it's not like I listen to her that much now. But I just remember not even being able to understand what she was saying, but feeling such a pull from it, that I was like running around the room because I felt so much energy. This song gave me so much energy, and that's why I love music so much. I feel like it's the only thing that has ever really felt kind of magical in a way and so much bigger than me and just so special. I've never really experienced that with anything else.

Baltin: What other music did you listen to as a kid?

van Gelder: I grew up listening to a lot of Radiohead and a lot of Daft Punk. Radiohead, I don't know if they're necessarily heartbreak songs, but they're definitely sad songs that I loved. I always loved them. My mom was a big fan. Oh, and then George Michael has a couple of songs. “One More Try,” I love that song.

Baltin: What are the long-term plans?

van Gelder: I definitely have more songs coming out. I'm finishing my first EP right now. “Run” and “Die For You” are going to be the first two of that EP. And I have to say, I really don't know what will happen in the next couple of months. I do know that we're planning on doing a little international tour in Europe. But it's all very much a little bit unclear still because "Die For You" came as this surprise. My managers and I really believed that the song would do good, but we didn't expect it to take off this much because for me, this is a lot more than I've ever had streaming-wise or attention-wise. But we're definitely planning on doing a little Europe tour and then maybe afterwards, the States. It would be my dream to tour in the States or tour Europe or tour in general because I've only recently started performing live and I think it's one of the best things ever.

Baltin: Who would be the dream artist to tour with?

van Gelder: Probably Raye. I love Raye. She makes obviously way more soulful, jazzy music than I do, but she seems like the coolest person ever. She's so talented and gifted. She's such a great songwriter, such a great performer. That would be my answer, but I would jump at any opportunity to open up for any act or tour with anyone”.

Stardust spoke with the multi-talented and adored Dutch artist around the release of I Don’t Want to Fall in Love Again. Isabel van Gelder is already such an accomplished composer and artist. She is so level-headed and mature, so you know she will conduct her career with such grace and wisdom:

“I Don’t Want To Fall In Love Again” feels like it comes from a very specific emotional place. What was happening in your life or in your head when this song first started to take shape?

Isabel Van Gelder: I was in London in a session with Jake Gosling the day the song was created. The day started off a little rocky. I was having a hard time coming up with something to write about that I felt was good enough. In the last couple of hours, we still didn't have an idea, so I got in front of the mic and started freestyling some melodies. It ended up working; we got all the melodies in the first take. I stepped out of the booth and went straight into writing lyrics, and it was one of those songs that just fell out. I barely had to think about it. Altogether, the song was done within an hour.

What's strange is that at the time, I was still in a relationship. Although I hadn't admitted it to myself yet, we were in a very bad place. Looking back, I think the song was foreshadowing how I was really feeling on some unconscious level. I tend to emotionally check out when things get too difficult or painful, and I think I was somewhere in the middle of that process without realizing it. Maybe I was preparing myself for what was to come.

Your music tends to feel vocal-driven, and your voice carries so much of the emotion here. When you’re recording a song this vulnerable, do you think more about technical control or emotional truth?

Isabel Van Gelder: Emotional truth, for sure! I'm not a very technical singer. I don't have a lot of formal training, and when I personally listen to music, I always listen to the story and emotion first. Blanks, my friend and producer who I work with most, also worked on “I Don’t Want To Fall In Love Again,” actually told me that whenever he feels the vocals could be better, he just tells me to focus on the story. That always ends up producing the best takes. I think that says it all, really.

“I Don’t Want To Fall In Love Again” is also your first release with Columbia Records. How did it feel to begin this next chapter with a song that feels so personal?

Isabel Van Gelder: I'm incredibly excited about this new chapter; it genuinely feels like a dream come true to be working with a label that has been home to so many incredible artists over the decades. And I'm really happy that this is the song we're starting with. It feels personal and honest, which I think gives a good first impression of who I am as an artist. I can't wait to go even deeper with the songs that are coming next!

“Die for you” connected with listeners in such a major way, reaching millions of streams and bringing your music to a wider audience. Was there a specific moment when you realized how far the song had traveled?

Isabel Van Gelder: I think the first real moment it hit me was at my first headline show in London where the entire crowd knew every word. It's a feeling I genuinely can't describe. There's something almost surreal about standing in a room full of people singing back something you wrote in your bedroom at 17. It's incredible, really.

As you move into this new chapter, what do you want listeners to understand about who you are as an artist right now?

Isabel Van Gelder: I hope they know how genuinely grateful I am for all the support so far. I have a very close relationship with the people that follow me, and I hope I can keep creating things that they love and that mean something to them. I’ll always try to be as honest as I can in my music, and I can't wait to see where this journey takes us!”.

The more I read, the more I realised this is a true music sensation. Someone who I feel can go on to be as big as an artist like Taylor Swift. In terms of her future, I can see these massive tours and collaborations with huge artists. Hit Parader spoke with Isabel van Gelder this year. Someone who they predict will adorn their cover within a couple of years:

“Mark my words, Dutch singer/songwriter Isabel Van Gelder will be on the cover of Hit Parader within the next two years. True, I am the editor, and the insanely likable Van Gelder has become a friend through our frequent interviews, so I might seem biased. But when you have two different major industry figures/label presidents tell you how badly they wanted to sign her after she joins the storied history of Columbia Records alongside Rosalia, Harry Styles, and more, you know the hype is legitimate.

Like almost every artist, Van Gelder says songs coming to her like a thunderbolt is all too familiar to her. “In my experience personally, I do feel like the songs that I think are my best songs happen very quickly. And I think when you’re truly inspired, or you’re in this kind of flow state, sometimes you don’t really even know what’s happening, and it just happens. This song was definitely one of those moments,” she says. “I walked out of the studio, and I wasn’t even sure. I had to listen back to what we actually just made? And then I was like, ‘Hey, this is actually good.’”

For Van Gelder, signing with Columbia, which has also been home to legends such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand, Miles Davis, and more, is the beginning of a new chapter she can’t wait to experience.

“It’s really exciting. All of this happening is obviously a dream come true. And if you had told me a year ago, I would not have ever thought that I’d be where I am right now, even though it’s still the start of everything. I’m very excited, and at the same time, I’m very eager, and I feel even more driven to work 10 times as hard, because I feel like having a deal right now only creates more opportunity in a way,” she says. “I just want to work as hard as I can and do everything I can to make this happen, of course. And I want to be back in the States as soon as I can.”

While Van Gelder might be setting up for a future run at the title “queen of heartbreak” musically, she is, again, far from that in her everyday life, as she proves with her tastes like YUNGBLUD and Bo Burnham.  “I feel like somebody that I’ve been following for a long time, and I think he does the sickest shows, is Yungblud. I’d love to see and crowd surf to one of his shows. I feel like it’s crazy and so much energy and just would be really fun,” she says. “I love Bo Burnham. I just think he’s so smart. Also, I just think he’s really funny. And then he’s a fantastic singer, like a musician really. And I loved his special that he made during COVID with all the songs. I just thought it was genius. Like the music is genius. I love him. And I think it’s really funny. He’s just my type of guy.”

You likely will not see crowd surfing at one of her shows, but between the tears, the songs might induce her to promise a lot of fun. “We’re definitely playing some upbeat songs, and I talk a lot. I tell a lot of stories. It feels pretty spontaneous. I think you really do get a feeling of who I am as a person. And I think that’s what I really want people to take away from coming to shows that they feel like they know me a little bit better,” she says.

Ahead of dates in the U.K. shortly, I wanted to shout out the absolutely wonderful Isabel van Gelder. I am already such a fan of hers and cannot wait to see where she heads. Such is her talent and incredible personality, you cannot help but to fall for her! I think we will be talking about her…

DECADES from now.

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Follow Isabel van Gelder

FEATURE: I've Changed Me Face, I've Changed My Name: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s Don’t Give Up at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

I've Changed Me Face, I've Changed My Name

  

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s Don’t Give Up at Forty

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EVEN though it…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from The Whole Story shoot in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

is a Peter Gabriel song, Kate Bush is a key component. A duet between the two, Don’t Give Up featured on Gabriel’s 1986 album, So. The album’s third single was released on 27th October, 1986, so I am looking ahead to its fortieth anniversary. A top ten hit, this is arguably one of the most effecting duets ever. Peter Gabriel initially wanted Dolly Parton to sing with him but, after she turned it down, Kate Bush was approached. I think she did a better job than Parton would have done. In terms of her performance and the emotions we get from her voice. I will get to some writing about the song. However, I want to start out with this background from Peter Gabriel’s official website:

“Written by Peter Gabriel, the song was produced by Daniel Lanois and Peter and engineered by Kevin Killen and Lanois and features the guest vocals of Kate Bush. Bush had previously provided vocals for the tracks Games Without Frontiers and No Self Control on Peter’s third solo album.

The song was inspired by a Dorothea Lange photograph, but was also informed by the high levels of unemployment under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher of the 1980s, as Peter told the NME at the time of the release of So:

“The catalyst for ‘Don’t Give Up’ was a photograph I saw by Dorothea Lange, inscribed ‘In This Proud Land’, which showed the dust-bowl conditions during the Great Depression in America. Without a climate of self-esteem it’s impossible to function”.

This is a song that has saved people’s lives. The messages of hope and holing on. Not to give up. So many people across the world have said how it has saved them. Given them new perspective. Whilst perhaps not powerful enough to rouse me from slumbers of depression, it at least does give me some focus. I listen to the song and get something from it each time. I am writing this on 26th July and sharing it closer to its anniversary on 27th October, as I have so many Kate Bush features so this joins the back of the queue.

In terms of when the single arrived, you could argue Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel were at the peak of their powers. Bush released Hounds of Love in 1985. Her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, would come out in November 1986 and be a massive-selling success. So was a huge commercial breakthrough for Peter Gabriel. Tow artists who first met in 1979 and shared a studio previously combining for a song that resonates to this day. It is still helping people and saving lives. Earlier this year, PROG took us inside a song that might not have happened were it not for a tragedy that occurred during Kate Bush’s The Tour of Life:

“When Kate Bush embarked on her groundbreaking The Tour Of Life in spring 1979, it turned the notion of a live concert on its head. Fully choreographed by Anthony Van Laast, the sold-out 28-date tour was a visualisation of her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart.

Much was made of the road trip costing up to £250,000 and employing 40 people. It took place at the cusp of touring being taken seriously. Such was the furore that BBC TV magazine show Nationwide reported on the opening night at Liverpool Empire.

But the experience was to be overshadowed by the tragic death of Bill Duffield, her 21-year-old lighting director. On April 2, after a warm-up gig at Poole Arts Centre, Duffield was undertaking the reoutine “idiot check,” where the final crew member in the venue inspects makes sure nothing has been left behind. He fell 17 feet through an unlit open stage panel onto a concrete floor, and died a week later from his injuries.

A memorial concert for was arranged for May 12 at Hammersmith Odeon. It was an emotional tour de force, with Bush joined by two artists who’d previously worked with Duffield – Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley. They joined Bush on Them Heavy People and The Man With The Child In His Eyes. Then Bush duetted with Gabriel on his yet-to-be released I Don’t Remember, and they all delivered The Beatles’ Let It Be to close.

If Duffield had not died, Bush and Gabriel would not have met that night. They hit it off immediately – his painstakingly free approach to his work was to inform her in a way few artists ever had. Within months she’d be singing on Gabriel’s third album, and through the sessions she first encountered the Fairlight CMI synthesiser.

Years later she accompanied him on one of his most powerful statements. An evocative ballad, Don’t Give Up was partially inspired by the startlingly evocative Dorothea Lange pictures of Americans during the Great Depression. Gabriel had initially envisioned Dolly Parton singing with him. But instead he turned to Bush, who was then enjoying huge commercial success in the wake of Hounds Of Love.

Over the gentle swell of Richard Tee’s gospel-influenced piano part, the song was a masterpiece of understatement that was in step with the straitened times lurking beneath the shiny veneer of the mid 80s, speaking directly to a disaffected population.

In 1981, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s employment secretary, Norman Tebbit, infamously used an analogy about his father being out of work in the 30s. Instead of rioting – as many were doing at the time – Tebbit Senior got on his bike and looked for work, said the politician. The quote was popularly interpreted as telling the unemployed to “get on their bikes” to find jobs.

Gabriel’s tale of a dispirited man at the end of his tether looking for work touched a raw nerve with millions of listeners in the UK and, latterly, the world. With Gabriel’s despair in the verses and Bush’s words of hope in the chorus, the 1986 single became arguably Gabriel’s most-loved composition. The fact that it had its roots in a union which grew from such tragedy only adds to its poignancy”.

There is not much written about Don’t Give Up. However, I think people have their own interpretations of the song and what it means to them. Even if Don’t Give Up was not especially personal to Peter Gabiriel, the way he delivers the song makes it feel deep within him. Kate Bush offering this comforting and soothing voice. But her voice has so much power to it. This article looks inside a song that still connects with people almost forty years after its release:

“Don’t Give Up,” a duet with Kate Bush, is an intimate look inside a marriage dealing with the husband’s layoff and unemployment as part of Thatcherism’s war on trade unions and its calculated transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to City of London bankers (see also, Elvis Costello’s Tramp the Dirt Down’s lyrics: [w]hen England was the whore of the world, Margaret was her madam; when they finally put you in the ground I will stand on your grave and tamp the dirt down).

Gabriel’s lyrics are searing:

No fight left or so it seems.
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.
I've changed my face, I've changed my name.
But no one wants you when you lose.

Kate Bush’s sublime voice desperately seeks to reach him through the pain, to remind him of the love that filled his life and will fill it again if he can find a way up from the depths of his misery.

Don't give up, you still have us.
Don't give up, we don't need much of anything.
Don't give up, 'cause somewhere there's a place where we belong.

Sadly, our hero’s humiliation is complete. He had previously summoned all of his strength for a new start in a new place only to fail once more.

Moved on to another town,
Tried hard to settle down.
For every job, so many men.
So many men no-one needs.

Like life, the song refuses us the happiness we crave.

Got to walk out of here, I can't take any more.
Gonna stand on that bridge, keep my eyes down below.
Whatever may come and whatever may go,
That river's flowing, that river's flowing.

As the waters swallow our hero, Kate Bush frantically issues her final, desperate pleas to a sinking, depleted soul:

Don't give up 'cause you have friends.
Don't give up, you're not the only one.
Don't give up, no reason to be ashamed.
Don't give up, you still have us.
Don't give up now, we're proud of who you are.
Don't give up, you know it's never been easy.
Don't give up 'cause I believe there's a place.
There's a place where we belong.

The songs ends with a chorus singing “don’t give up,” fading, with our protagonist, into the murky depths”.

I am going to end things here. On 27th October, we mark forty years of Don’t Give Up. Not only one of Peter Gabriel’s best songs, it also features one of Kate Bush’s most affecting vocal performances. It is a song that means a lot to me, and I know it has helped so many people through the years. Elton John and the late Matthew Perry have spoken about the personal meaning of the track to them. For anyone who needs to find messages of support and resilience in a song to help them, they should listen to Don’t Give Up. This phenomenal song remains…

SUCH a powerful music moment.

FEATURE: Reaching Out: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Seven

FEATURE:

 

 

Reaching Out

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Seven

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AHEAD of its…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

thirty-seventh anniversary on 16th October, I wanted to write a feature about The Sensual World. Kate Bush’s sixth studio album reached number two in the U.K. I am going to pull in some reviews and features around this amazing album. Though I am leading out with an interview from 1989. I might have dropped this interview in for an earlier feature, though it warrants repeating to mark thirty-seven years of The Sensual World. I do want to start out with sections of a couple of different interviews where Kate Bush discussed making The Sensual World:

“I think this album for me, unlike the last album, say, Hounds of Love, where I saw that as two sides – one side being conceptual – this album is very much like short stories for me. Ten short stories that are just saying something different in each one and it was a bit like trying to paint the pictures accordingly. Each song has a different personality and so they each a need little bit of something here, a little bit of that there – just like people, you know, some people you can’t walk up to because you know they’re a bit edgy first thing in the morning. So you have to come up sideways to them, you know, and it’s kind of like how the songs are too. They have their own little personalities, and if it doesn’t want you to do it, it won’t let you.

The VH-1 interview, January 1990

I just felt that I was exploring my feminine energy more -musically. In the past I had wanted to emanate the kind of power that I’ve heard in male music. And I just felt maybe somewhere there is this female energy that’s powerful. It’s a subtle difference – male or female energy in art – but I think thereisa difference: little things, like using the Trio. And possibly some of the attitudes to my lyric writing on this album. I would say it was more accepting of being a female somehow.

John Diliberto, ‘Kate Bush’s Theatre Of The Senses’. Musician, February 1990”.

For Q in November 1989, Phil Sutcliffe spoke with Kate Bush. There are quite a few print interviews from this year. I feel this conversation is quite extensive, and insightful. It must have been exhaustive for Kate Bush promoting The Sensual World. She did not really get much time to rest that year, as she was doing promotion right near to the end of the year:

“She still can't take it in stride. She's equally put out by both the in-depth probe and the careless stereotype of her as the "sex symbol" or the "wacky hippy" whose every third word was "Wow!" or "Amazing!".

The life Kate Bush has created is governed by the cycles of her albums. Despite her early versing in cosmic philosophies, no-one's ever accused her of being "laid-back", and she once enunciated something adjacent to a motto: "In music you have to break your back before you even start to speak the emotion."

She went through all the usual turmoil on her way to completing The Sensual World. "It's really frightening to me the way each album has taken longer than the one before," she says. "The writing gets harder every time. The Sensual World took about two-and-a-half years to make in all, but with a lot of gaps. I was going quickly at first, thinking, Nah, piece of piss! Then it all seemed like rubbish and I had to stop for a while. There's tremendous self-doubt involved. You think, Oh, God, I'll never get it finished."

The problem was that she had started too soon after Hounds Of Love, she decided. "I'll come off promotion of one album, start on the next and if I'm not careful it's nothing but a continuation and I don't want that," she says. "It's important for me to create some kind of wall, shut it off."

In part, she does this by going back to dancing. While totally embroiled in the studio and consoling herself with chocolate, she gets out of shape -- cause of the intermittent chubbier cheeks and hint of extra chin which have launched a thousand press rumours of her "blowing up" to 18 or even 20 stone. She gives her fierce workouts at the barre and mirrors credit for refurbishing her mind as well as her body after The Dreaming.

This time round, apart from dancing and running, the panacea was the garden at the house she and Del moved into three years ago in Eltham, Southeast London (brother Jay and family live next door; her parents' home still only half an hour away). "I sometimes I think I might as well just be a brain and a big pair of ears on legs, stuck in front of a mixing desk," she says. "But when I took that break from The Sensual World I really got into gardening. I mean, it's literally a very down-to-earth thing, isn't it? Real air. Away from the artificial light. Very therapeutic."

Another renewable source of inspiration has been exotic instrumentation, usually provided by a visit to Dublin and various members of the staunchly traditional folk troupe, The Chieftains, or by turning to brother Paddy (who specialised in making medieval instruments at the London College of Furniture and will knock out the odd koto or strumento de porco as and when). But for The Sensual World she's leavened the Celtic skirl with a bit of Balkan. She first heard the Trio Bulgarka in '86 and was suitably astonished. A year later it dawned on her that their full-throated harmonies might suit her songs. Connections were made through Joe Boyd of Hannibal Records, their UK label, and Kate flew out to Sofia for an entrancing experience of world music.

"They couldn't speak a word of English and I couldn't speak a word of Bulgarian," she says. "Everything went through translators and it didn't matter at all. Lovely working with women, and especially them, they're very affectionate. We tended to communicate through cuddles rather than words. In fact, we could get on perfectly well without the translators. At one point we were talking away in the studio when the translator walked in and we all shut up because she'd suddenly made us self-conscious about what we were doing." The Trio can be heard on three tracks, including the strikingly unlikely setting of Deeper Understanding, a very modern-world song about an alienated woman and her relationship with her computer.

"This is definitely my most personal, honest album," she says. "And I think it's my most *feminine* album, in that I feel maybe I'm not trying to prove something in terms of a woman in a man's world -- God, here we go!" She seems to be wary of provoking a heavy debate about feminism. "On The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, particularly from a production standpoint, I wanted to get a lot more weight and power, which I felt was a very male attitude. In some cases it worked very well, but.. . perhaps this time I felt braver as a woman, not trying to do the things that men do in music."

The Fog is a brave song. It co-stars Kate's dad on spoken vocals intoning with fatherly/doctorly reassurance, "Just put your feet down child/'Cos you're all grown-up now".

"I started with the idea of a relationship in deep water and thought I could parallel that with learning to swim, the moment of letting go," she says. "When my dad was teaching me to swim he'd hold both my hands, then say, Now, let go. So I would, then he'd take two paces back and say, Right, swim to me, and I'd be, Oo-er, blub, blub, blerb. But I though it was such a beautiful image of the father and child, all wrapped up in the idea of really loving someone, but letting them go, because that's a part of real love, don't you think, the letting go?"

So it's personal about Kate and her father then. It sounds as though it might be personal about her and Del too.

"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She laughs, really amused by her professionally evasive reply. "Have you ever watched Woody Allen being interviewed? Obviously his films are very personal and when the interviewer asks him the 'Has this happened to you then?' question, he's all.. ." She cowers back into her chair, crosses and uncrosses her legs, thrashes about like a speared fish. "Then he'll say, Uh, well, no, I'm just acting out a role. It's ironic, but it's much easier to speak about very personal things to lots of people through a song, a poem or a film than it is to confront the world with them through someone asking questions. Maybe you worry because it's going to be indirectly reported."

Kate Bush leads a quiet, fairly limited life so her options on subject matter my be relatively restricted. Although she has ventured into political issues with Breathing (nuclear war) and The Dreaming (Aborigine rights), she generally declares her own ignorance and refrains from writing songs that would only prove it. But she will often borrow a story and make it her own -- from books (Wuthering Heights, obviously, and Cloudbusting, from Peter Reich's memoir of his father called A Book Of Dreams), TV (Pull Out The Pin was inspired by a documentary about the Viet Cong), or films (the idea for Get Out Of My House came from The Shining).

However, it was a story told by an older friend that sowed the seeds for Heads We're Dancing, a near-disco piece about a night out with Hitler. "Years ago this friend of mine went to a dinner and spent the whole evening chatting to this fascinating guy, incredibly charming, witty, well-read, but never found out his name," she says. "The next day he asked someone else who'd been there who it was. 'Oh, didn't you know? That's Oppenheimer, the man who invented the atomic bomb.' My friend was horrified because he thought he should have given the guy hell, attacked him, he didn't know what.

"But the point was one moment this person is charming, then when you find out who he is, he's completely different. So I thought, Who's the worst person you could possibly meet in those circumstances? Hitler! And the story developed. A woman at a dance before the war and this guy comes up to her tossing a coin with this cocky chat-up line, Heads we're dancing. She doesn't recognise him until she sees his face in the paper later on and then she's devastated. She thinks that if she'd known she might have been able to *get* him and change the course of history. But he was a person who fooled a tremendous number of people and I don't think they can be blamed. It worries me a bit that this song could be received wrongly, though.

It could well be that the musically extended family and extended home of Kate Bush even embrace her feelings for her songs themselves. She has an intimacy with them, a distinctive candour about sensuality and sexuality to which her present album title track is something of a natural conclusion.

It passed more or less unnoticed in her early days that she was casually breaking taboos in every other song. Tricky items on her agenda included incest (brother and sister in The Kick Inside, woman and young boy in The Infant Kiss), homosexuality (Wow, Kashka From Baghdad) and period pains (Strange Phenomena, Kites [sic]). Her sympathetic, non-judgmental approach was probably one of the less obvious reasons why she appealed so strongly to both sexes, but she would occasionally remark that she was grateful the tabloids didn't read lyric sheets. Otherwise she could have been up to her neck in bishops and Mrs. Whitehouse demanding that the nation's children be protected from this filth.

In fact, the moment anyone other than a fan thinks they've spotted a hint of sex in her songs she becomes very hesitant. Once, when she was working on Breathing, an EMI executive walked in to be greeted by the hypnotic "out-in, out-in, out-in" chant. Taking a firm hold on the wrong end of the stick, he asked her how she could even dream of releasing this pornography. The possibility of such gross misunderstandings shakes her faith in the "purity" -- a favourite word -- of what she's doing. But not enough to make her back off.

"Don't you think Art is a tremendous sensual-sexual expression? I feel that energy often.. . the driving force is probably not the right way to put it," she says, still trying to skirt the fnaarr-fnaarr potential of the topic.

Whether or not her speculation about the nature of Art is on the money, she made her own experience of the creative process quite clear with the cover of Never For Ever. A cornucopia of fantastic and real, beautiful and vile creatures -- the products of her imagination -- is shown swirling our from beneath her skirt. At the time, thinking about this and the steamy, masturbatory atmosphere of many of the songs she wrote in her teens such as The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Saxophone Song, she said: "It's not such an open thing for women to be physically attracted to the male body and fantasise about it. I can't understand that because to me the male body is absolutely beautiful.. . Physical masturbation, it's a feeling so bottled up you have to relieve it, as if you were crying." 

The Sensual World is a song that translates the old ache to a different level -- with the invaluable help of James Joyce. "I had a rhythm idea with a synth line I took home to work on one night," she says. "While I was playing it this repeated *Yes* came to me and made me think of Molly Bloom's speech right at the end of Ulysses -- which I *have* actually read all through! I went downstairs and read it again, this unending sentence punctuated with 'yeses', fantastic stuff, and it was uncanny, it fitted the rhythm of my song." (The last lines of Molly Bloom's great stream of consciousness read: "then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.")

Although to Kate "it felt like it was meant to happen", when she applied through "official channels" (presumably the Joyce estate) for permission to use it, she was refused. But she wasn't to be deflected. "I tried to write it like Joyce," she says, smiling in self-mockery. "The rhythm at least I wanted to keep. Obviously I couldn't do his style. It became a song about Molly Bloom, the character, stepping out of the page -- black and white, two-dimensional, you see -- and into the real world, the sensual world. Touching things." She declaims exaggeratedly. "The grass underfoot! The mountain air! I know it sounds corny, but it's about the whole sensual experience, this wonderfully human thing. . ."

And lines like "his spark took life in my hand"?

"Yes, it is rather saucy. But not nearly as sexy as James Joyce." She looks concerned again. "I'd be really worried -- there's nothing I can do about it now because it's all part of the process -- but I would be worried if people felt this ambiguity between sensual and sexual.

"I definitely *became* a person when I left school and suddenly took control of my life," she says. "I felt like that was the first time I'd really been there. Do you.. .? It was the beginning of my life really.

"Now I think I get a tremendous amount of security from my work, through being able to write songs. Though perhaps I'm very insecure except when I'm working. There again I work so much.. . I'll have to think about this. I'll be thinking about it all day now. What I'm looking out for is to let go of being so damned obesessive about work that I just get sucked into it. It's important for me now for there to be some kind of, er, *lightness* about it.

"You know, it's only an album. That is what I keep saying to myself”.

There was a lot of warm critical praise in 1989 for The Sensual World. I will drop in some contemporary reviews. However, this is what Kristine Mckenna wrote for Musician (U.S.A): “A song cycle as rich and deep as this takes years to mature. Her original use of rhyme and metre, the wide frame of reference she draws on as a composer, and her inventive and fearless approach to singing fall into perfect sync on nearly every song”. In 2019, Pitchfork reviewed The Sensual World. They note how the album sees Kate Bush at her most grounded and in control:

“Even its most surreal songs are rooted in self-examination. “Heads We’re Dancing” seems like a dark joke—a young girl is charmed on to the dancefloor by a man she later learns is Adolf Hitler—but poses a troubling question: What does it say about you, if you couldn’t see through the devil’s disguise? Its discordant, skronky rhythms make it feel like a formal ball taking place in a fever dream, and Bush’s voice grows increasingly panicky as she realizes how badly she’s been duped. As far-fetched as its premise was, its inspiration lay close to home: A family friend had told Bush how shaken they’d been after they’d taken a shine to a dashing stranger at a dinner party, only to find out they’d been chatting to Robert Oppenheimer.

It’s more fanciful than most of The Sensual World’s little secrets. To hear someone recall formative childhood truths (the lush grandeur of “Reaching Out”) and lingering romantic pipedreams (the longing of “Never Be Mine”) is like being given a reel of their memory tapes and discovering what makes them tick. On “The Fog,” she’s paralyzed by fear until she remembers the childhood swimming lessons her father gave her, his voice cutting through the misty harps like an old ghost. Relationships on the album can be sticky and thorny. “Between a Man and a Woman” is half-dangerous and half-sultry, its snaking rhythms mirroring the round-in-circles squabbling of a couple. When a third party tries to interfere, they’re told to back off. This time, unlike on “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” there’s no point wishing for a helping hand from God.

But if there are no miracles, there are at least songs that sound like them. For “Rocket’s Tail,” Bush enlisted the help of Trio Bulgarka, who she fell in love with after hearing them on a tape Paddy gave her. The three Bulgarian women didn’t speak English and had no idea what they were singing about, but it didn’t matter. They sound more like mystics during its a capella first half, and when it eventually blows up into a glammy stomper with Dave Gilmour’s electric guitar caterwauling like a Catherine wheel, their vocals still come out on top: cackling like gleeful witches, whooping like they’re watching sparks explode in the night sky. Its weird, wonderful magic offered a simple message: Life is short, so enjoy moments of pleasure before they fizzle out.

Perhaps that’s why there are glimmers of hope even in the album’s most desperate circumstances. “Deeper Understanding” is a bleak sci-fi tale about a lonely person who turns to their computer for comfort, and in doing so isolates themselves even more. But while there’s an icy chill to the verses, Trio Bulgarka imbue the computer’s voice with golden warmth. Bush wanted it to sound like the “visitation of angels,” and hearing the chorus is like being wrapped in a celestial hug. She pulls off a similar trick on “This Woman’s Work,” which she wrote for John Hughes’ film She’s Having a Baby, although her vivid, devastating interpretation of its script has taken on a far greater life of its own. It captures a moment of crisis: a man about to be walloped with the sledgehammer of parental responsibilities, frozen by terror as he waits for his pregnant wife outside the delivery room, his brain a messy spiral of regrets and guilty thoughts. Yet Bush softens the song’s building panic attack with soft musical touches so it rushes and swirls like a dream, even as reality becomes a waking nightmare. “It’s the point where has to grow up,” said Bush. “He’d been such a wally.”

She didn’t need to prove her own steeliness to anyone, especially the male journalists who patronized her and harped on her childishness as a way of cutting her down to size. Instead, The Sensual World is the sound of someone deciding for themselves what growing up and grown-up pop should be, without being beholden to anyone else’s tedious definitions. It gave her a new template for the next two decades, inspiring both the smooth, stylish art-rock of 1993’s The Red Shoes and the picturesque beauty of 2005’s Aerial. Like Molly Bloom, Bush had set herself free into a world that wasn’t mundane, but alive with new, fertile possibility”.

I’ll end up with The Quietus. They wrote a detailed review to mark thirty years of The Sensual World in 2019. I like how they note it is this perfect autumnal record. Soundtrack to cooler and darker days. Leaves on the ground and a cool in the air:

“Everything about The Sensual World exudes autumnal beauty – from the elegant arrangements to its dusky, monochromatic cover portrait of a wide-eyed Kate Bush; from the album title’s rusty-leaf text to the bells that fade in like a tender alarm call on a crisp morning. Her voice, an instrument that bloomed on The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, is exquisite throughout, alternately keening and soft, throaty and forceful.

Kate turned 30 during the making of the album and conceded that her personal circumstances influenced the mature themes of the album. "I think it’s a very important time from 28 to 32-ish, where there’s some kind of turning point," she told NME in 1989. "Someone said in your teens you get the physical puberty and between 28 and 32 mental puberty. Let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30, it does make you feel differently, I feel very positive having gone through the last couple of years."

As such, it is an album of opposites, of dual nature – it speaks of loss and hope, of childhood and adulthood. It reflects the passing of time, and the contemplation of mortality, but also the freedom of exploration and the generous acceptance that comes with age. For an album with such themes, autumn is the perfect setting.

Gone is the light joy of summer, and the freshness of spring, but in its stead something more mature, more realised – perhaps still bristling with internal conflict, but with a newly-attained level of perspective. It is an album that suggests both the ending of childhood and the beginning of adulthood ("let’s face it, you’ve got to start growing up when you’re 30") and the bizarre hinterland between the two – the tension between cutting cords ("just put your feet down child, cos you’re all grown up now") and yearning for parental security ("reaching out for mama"), not to mention the prospect of parenthood of your own ("now starts the craft of the father").

‘The Sensual World’ itself sets out the album’s autumnal stall immediately – soft, pealing bells give way to an arrangement that incorporates pipes, warm synth washes, and an insistent drum pattern; its accompanying video, following the singer through a forest of crimson leaves, is as seamless a supplement as could be. She told International Musician in 1989 how she had "had this idea for about two years to use the words from Molly Bloom’s speech at the end of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses, which I think is the most superb piece of writing ever, to a piece of music. So Del [Palmer] had done a Fairlight pattern, and I’d done a DX riff over the top of it, and I was listening to it at home, and the words fitted absolutely perfectly. I thought, ‘God this is just ridiculous, just how well it’s come together.’"

The Sensual World is like an orchard, each song a ripened fruit. It has an insular atmosphere in keeping with her home studio set-up, and the music perfectly matches the mood evoked in the lyrics. It is the sound of Kate Bush more comfortable in her own skin, facing the complications of life. It looks forward while somehow looking back. It may be an album that personifies Molly Bloom and references Hitler, but it is also a deeply personal, sensual utopia. "This is definitely my most personal, honest album," she told Q. "And I think it’s my most feminine album, in that I feel maybe I’m not trying to prove something in terms of a woman in a man’s world… On The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love, particularly from a production standpoint, I wanted to get a lot more weight and power, which I felt was a very male attitude. In some cases it worked very well, but… perhaps this time I felt braver as a woman, not trying to do the things that men do in music."

Kate Bush albums are, of course, for all seasons, but there’s a reason why The Sensual World sounds just that little bit better in autumn. It is an album turning thirty years old as the leaves turn brown, the same age as its creator during the time of its recording. Time continues to pass, and the seasons continue to turn. I was talking about The Sensual World with my friend Alice recently; she remembers buying the cassette from Woolworth’s as soon as it came out and listening to it on her Walkman for weeks on end. We talked about how ‘The Fog’ (and even just talking about ‘The Fog’) continues to give us goosebumps, how ‘Never Be Mine’ has soundtracked relationships, ‘This Woman’s Work’ the birth of children. Many albums provide the backdrop to personal milestones, and for me, as a child of autumn, I have always thought of The Sensual World as something of my own birthstone album. I look forward, as every year, to plugging in the headphones and taking it on a long walk”.

On 16th October, we mark thirty-seven years of The Sensual World. Anybody who has not heard this Kate Bush masterpiece in full really needs to. Never really give the accolades Hounds of Love (1985) has enjoyed, I do fee we need to show more love to The Sensual World, as it is a truly extraordinary album from this masterful songwriter and producer. Thirty-seven years after its release and it still sounds so immersive. An album I will…

NEVER tire of hearing.

FEATURE: After Grand Confessions… What Next for Queen Madonna?

FEATURE:

 

 

After Grand Confessions…

PHOTO CREDIT: Nadia Lee Cohen for Interview Magazine

 

What Next for Queen Madonna?

__________

THIS year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti

has been a busy one for Madonna. There has been a mix of the old and new. In terms of the old, we marked forty years of True Blue in June. That is one of her best albums, though one a lot of people might not have heard. Perhaps not ranked as high as Ray of Light or Like a Prayer. Confessions II came out earlier this month and got widespread acclaimed. A follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, Madonna proving still to the be the Queen of Pop. As we celebrate her sixty-eighth birthday on 16th August, what next for the best-selling female artist of all time? There have been rumours that she has booked Wembley Stadium for dates, nothing has been confirmed up to the time of me writing this feature (26th July). What is apparent is that Madonna is as vital and important as she has ever been. With everything she does, there is ageism and misogyny. The latter she has been dealing with since her career started in the 1980s. The latter she has faced for decades. She always hits back and does not put up with any of it. A magnetic performer, I have never seen her live, even though her music was deep in thew tapestry of my childhood music upbringing. With one of the greatest back catalogues in music history, I do want to start with a review of Confessions II. Arguably her best album since Confessions on a Dance Floor, this incredible album is going to sit alongside the best albums of this year too. The Guardian wrote a four-star review for, as they see it, Madonna’s most vital album in two decades:

‘Ask yourself this – what are you doing it for? / Is it for you? Is it for them?” ponders Madonna during Bring Your Love, a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter from Confessions II. It’s a question you could ask of her decision to release a follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor 21 years on.

The official line is, of course, that it’s for her. Confessions II was inspired by Madonna’s 2023 Celebration tour, a rampage through her back catalogue – with staging that recreated the videos for old hits including Don’t Tell Me and Human Nature – that apparently set the singer thinking about her past. Certainly, Confessions II is rich with references to Madonna’s history, and not only the album from which it borrows its title and its initial structure, a sequence of house-influenced tracks that segue into each other like a DJ mix. There’s also the trip-hop-inspired Madonna of Bedtime Stories (the album concludes with a suite of slower, more introspective material); the club-hopping, fame-hungry Madonna of her 1982 debut single Everybody, who keeps cropping up in the lyrics; and the maternal, spiritually inclined Madonna of Ray of Light. The Test, a duet with her daughter Lourdes, is an older, wiser sequel to that album’s lullaby-like Little Star, alluded to in its opening lines.

Equally, a more sceptical voice might suggest that Confessions II is for them – namely the fans who’ve bailed on Madonna over the last two decades. By common consent, Confessions on a Dance Floor was her last untrammelled triumph. Every subsequent album she’s released has sold half what its predecessor did: her last, 2019’s Madame X, shifted half a million copies compared to Confessions on a Dance Floor’s 10m. Here, Confessions II’s title seems to implicitly suggest, is the Madonna you used to love; a craven attempt to win back deserters.

There’s doubtless a grain of truth in that – but Confessions II doesn’t feel particularly craven. Its sound eschews cutting-edge developments in dance music in favour of more tried-and-tested stuff. There’s the odd hint of UK garage – a noticeable skip to the rhythms of both Fragile and Good for the Soul – a whisper of EDM in Everything’s heavy bassline, and of Euro pop-dance in Read My Lips’ cocktail of pacy beat, Spanish guitar and sampled batucada drums. But for the most part, its primary influences are defiantly old school: I Feel So Free is derived from Lil Louis’ old Chicago classic French Kiss; Bring Your Love borrows from Inner City’s Good Life; an acid line erupts midway through Love Without Words; there’s lovely, understated piano on One Step Away that recalls Mr Fingers’ deep house. Similarly, the downtempo tracks carry a distinctly 90s Mo’ Wax mood: breakbeats, misty atmospherics, crackling vinyl, muted orchestrations, a Gainsbourg-y bit of spoken word from Belgian rapper Stromae and an interpolation from Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No 1 on Betrayal (more artfully done than the chunk of Tchaikovsky unceremoniously dumped in the middle of 2019’s Dark Ballet).

This is music that Madonna – and indeed producer Stuart Price – is well versed in: she seems far more at home than she did incorporating trap on Rebel Heart or duetting with Maluma during Madame X’s game attempts to glom on to the Latin American pop vogue. A sense of confidence is audible in the album’s willingness to let Madonna-free instrumental passages run long in the style of a 12in remix and, more strikingly, in the lyrics. Clearly she feels comfortable enough to be vulnerable: there’s a bit of standard-issue Bitch-I’m-Madonna posturing, but more often the mood is reflective, even brittle and regretful.

The vignettes of her life in early 80s New York are fantastic. Danceteria paints a vivid picture of the titular club, namechecking not only artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring but doorman Haoui Montaug; it quotes Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side, neatly linking different Manhattan demimondes. The vintage drum machine-driven LES Girl remembers a guitar-playing bohemian ex, who – not entirely unexpectedly – got the heave-ho when it became apparent he didn’t share her ambition. The most affecting song might be Fragile, an acoustic guitar-heavy eulogy to her late brother Christopher, with whom Madonna had a turbulent relationship – “we shared a fragile bond … don’t forget about me, don’t forget to be happy” – but The Test runs it close, filled with maternal remorse: “You didn’t ask for all the flashing lights.”

It’s not all good news. Confessions II is nearly 10 minutes longer than the original, and it doesn’t need to be: you could easily lose a couple of the less distinguished house tracks, Love Sensation and School among them. It lacks an undeniable, solid-gold pop banger along the lines of Hung Up, although Danceteria’s bright-hued disco house – one of two tracks co-written and produced by Andrew Watt and Cirkut – comes close. But if it’s not quite as good as Confessions on a Dance Floor, it’s unequivocally Madonna’s best album since Confessions on a Dance Floor, which you suspect will be more than enough for her fans, and might even beckon back some apostates: an accommodation with her past that bodes well for her future”.

This all bodes very well for the future. I am already interested to see where Madonna heads on her next album, which will be her sixteenth. That might be a while away, as she has left gaps between albums. Confessions II arrived six years after Madame X. However, this Queen of Pop will be releasing albums into her seventies. So many artists inspired by her. From Sabrina Carpenter to Charli xcx, you can see they channel elements of Madonna. To me, she is one of the most important artist in history. The career she has forged and all that she achieved. I was sad when the planned biopic with Julia Garner was shut down. An actress who resembles Madonna, especially in the mid-1980s, it would have been wonderful to see that biopic brought to life. I am going to end with an interview with Madonna from his year, as it is quite interesting. This amazing artist still inventing characters, switching sounds and remaining distinctly herself. Someone uncompromising and so assured. My biggest hope is that the biopic gets green-lit again. The budget was supposedly too high, but this is arguably one of the greatest stories in music history. I would be fascinated to see someone, possibly Julia Garner, cast as a young Madonna arriving in New York. Maybe having various actresses playing her. Maybe Mckenna Grace – who, at twenty, may be considered too young for the role, but she is a singer and a tremendous actor who could embody Madonna – could play Madonna in the early-'80s, and Julia Garner in the mid-‘80s. It is tragic that we may not see the biopic, though I hold out hope that it will come about. As Madonna celebrates her sixty-eight birthday on 16th August, there will be Instagram posts and worldwide celebrations. Perhaps she will play Wembley and mount this incredible show. She has teased she may headline Glastonbury next year. I think it is unlikely. As I have said before, Glastonbury has only ever had one woman over the age of forty headline the Pyramid Stage, so would they make an exception for Madonna? Also, her budget would be quite large, and I feel that it may be a costly slot. Though a Madonna headline slot would be amazing! I would love to see her lead an all-female Pyramid stage next year. You never know, she could already be locked in and confirmed for Glastonbury 2027 and is keeping quiet(ish) for now.

We desperately need to see that biopic. A great film that could feature cameos from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, if judged right, it could be one of the best biopics ever. There will be dates ahead, though I am not sure whether we will hear of any major London gigs quite yet. New music possibly in a couple or few years. It does mean there is availability for Madonna. Could she not get funding for a biopic or could Netflix bankroll it?! What is one of the most compelling stories of this genius Pop artist needs to be seen on the screen. Get Julia Garner back and have Madonna work with a screenwriter who would not take over, but could provide a useful sounding board and edit the script. I think another director should shoot the biopic, just a more experienced female director who could bring elements and layers to the story, as Madonna herself was mooted to direct. Whatever happens, we will keep hearing from Madonna, as she is never too far away. Keeping fans up to date across social media. Let’s end with snippets of an interview from Interview Magazine between Mel Ottenberg ana Madonna:

“OTTENBERG: Do you doomscroll?

MADONNA: Occasionally I open Instagram and something pops up that makes me go to the next visual. And then I go, “What am I doing? I have 5,000 things to do. Get off the phone.” I have a lot of discipline when it comes to social media, simply because I grew up without it. I didn’t have Instagram until 2018 or something. I grew up without TV. I’m not a person who gravitates toward distraction. Oh my god, I make lists every night, put Post-its everywhere, and then my day is filled with sometimes boring but also very exciting activities. And I do see, if I go on Instagram for more than 10 minutes, I get depressed, and I don’t want to go there. Why am I giving this nonexistent entity power over my soul, my brain, my vision of myself, my vision of the world? Time is precious, and that’s something I’ve known all my life. Time’s precious. What can I get done? What can I do?

OTTENBERG: Yes.

MADONNA: I keep journals. My manager gets them for me all the time. This one says “The Queen.” I go through probably three a week. I love to write. With my hand. I write all my lyrics. I see you write too…

OTTENBERG: I have to.

MADONNA: In the studio I have to write on paper and read from that paper when I’m singing. I scribble, make mistakes, rewrite, go to the next page. But I value those pages. They’re artifacts. The mind-hand connection is part of your soul in a way texting can never be. There’s no soul in texting.

OTTENBERG: There’s not.

MADONNA: I’m happy I grew up without all that, because it made me go to museums. That’s how I discovered Frida Kahlo. When you have to go out to learn and meet people, you have such a different experience in life.

 

OTTENBERG: Will you show me the album cover?

MADONNA: I only have it digitally.

OTTENBERG: Confessions is really one of my favorite album covers of all time.

MADONNA: Really? We didn’t think that one through too much, me and Steven [Klein], but it worked out really good.

OTTENBERG: And the Arianne [Phillips] styling, I was just like, “Oh my god.”

MADONNA: It was just my leotard and disco hair.

OTTENBERG: And not seeing the face but seeing the body and immediately knowing who it is. That outfit was so fresh, but not like anything that was in or cool in 2005. It went so hard because it was—

MADONNA: Unique.

OTTENBERG: You gave us something we didn’t know we needed.

MADONNA: Yeah. I’m looking for the cover. It references Confessions I, and I wear a lot of the same clothes, the YSL boots and the jackets Gucci made for me in every color. I don’t know if you remember that look.

OTTENBERG: Of course I remember. I’m obsessed with Confessions, forever.

MADONNA: I took it all out of my archives and brought it to the album cover photo shoot with Rafael Pavarotti.

OTTENBERG: Oh, fantastic.

MADONNA: We worked it into everything.

OTTENBERG: I love that. We were talking about A Clockwork Orange yesterday and you were telling me how that was a style reference for the “Hung Up” video.

MADONNA: Oh, yeah.

OTTENBERG: Fucking hot.

MADONNA: A Clockwork Orange also inspired Truth or Dare, when I’m singing the song “Keep It Together” and we have the bowler hats. If you go back and listen to that, I take a whole chunk of dialogue out of that movie and I say it on the microphone”.

I did just want to muse what comes next for Madonna. I am obsessed by that biopic and getting it on track. Whether rumoured dates at Wembley Stadium will materialise. If we are going to see any more singles come from Confessions II, and if there will be expanded edition. Perhaps Madonna getting someone to remix the album or covering songs for a sort of follow-up. If not a biopic, I would love to see a film with Madonna’s music at its heart. Maybe with an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ love story at the centre, set in the 1980s or ‘90s. After the massive love shown for Confessions II, one would think Madonna has a blank cheque she can write. Following a hectic first half of this year, the summer will be quite busy for Madonna. Though I hope that she has opportunity to kick back and relax…

AT the end of this year.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Konyikeh

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Konyikeh

__________

I am putting out…

a lot of Spotlight features at the moment. Though there are so many great artists who deserve recognition. I am looking at the brilliant music of U.K. Soul artist, Konyikeh. I am quite new to her music, so I have been looking at interviews around the release of her new E.P., Cinere. It is a remarkably body of work from an artist blessed with such an amazing voice. This classically-trained Essex artist is a true gem. The first interview I want to cover off is from The Culture Crypt. The emotional honesty that we get right through Cinere is moving and hugely powerful:

“Reared at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Konyikeh's foundation is rooted in classical discipline, but her artistry stretches far beyond it. As an Essex-bred singer, songwriter and violinist, she moves fluidly between worlds—drawing on orchestral training while shaping a sound grounded in soul, R&B and alternative textures.

Ahead of the release of her latest EP, Cinere, we sat down with Konyikeh to discuss its creation. Across seven tracks, the project deftly moves between softness and intensity, blending classical influences with contemporary production to create a sound that feels both grounded and atmospheric.

At its core, Cinere—deriving from the Latin phrase 'ex cinere', meaning 'from the ashes'—is deeply introspective. There is a sense of searching that runs throughout the record, whether that is navigating emotional vulnerability, questioning identity or sitting with feelings that do not always have clear answers. It is this tension between control and release that gives the project its emotional weight.

Having grown up surrounded by live music through choirs and orchestras, Konyikeh's return to the violin plays a subtle but defining role in shaping the EP's sonic identity. While many artists lean heavily into digital production, her process is informed by a strong understanding of instrumentation, allowing her to collaborate with producers in a way that feels both intentional and precise.

What version of yourself are we hearing on this project, and what did you have to let go of to create this EP?

"For this EP, I had to let go of any need for external validation. Growing up, I was used to validation coming from things like grades and achievements, so I carried that mindset for a long time. With this project, I had to shift that and trust my own instincts. If I didn't like something, it wasn't going out, regardless of what anyone else thought."

Does validation come from how you feel or from other people, and does that impact how you make music?

"It comes from me now. I think the way I create can seem quite selfish, but it's important that I trust myself. Even if a lot of people like something, if I don't, it's not happening. I've learnt to advocate for myself in the studio instead of just going along with things, and that's made a big difference in how I work."

Do you see Cinere as telling a continuous emotional story, or are the tracks more like individual moments of reflection?

"When I was writing, each track was its own individual moment, reflecting how I felt at that time. But when I started putting the tracklist together, I think subconsciously I shaped it into a continuous story. There's almost an A-side and B-side with the first half feeling more dramatic and production-heavy, while the second half is softer and more stripped back. The interlude sits in the middle as a reset for the listener."

What does this project represent for you at this stage in your life and career?

"This project feels like the most accurate representation of me as an artist right now. I'm proud of my previous work, but Cinere feels like the beginning of the sonic world I've always wanted to build. I hope it connects with people who appreciate the details in both the production and the lyrics”.

In June, Roiling Stone UK spoke with Konyikeh. This stunning voice and music that will stop you in your tracks, here is an artist that is going to enjoy a very long and bountiful career. I cannot see any forthcoming gigs, but I suspect that Koniykeh will be on the road soon enough. I for one would love to see her perform. A show that I suspect I will not forget in a hurry:

“There’s light and dark on this EP too. Big ballads, but also some fun moments. Does that reflect the duality of everything you were going through?

100 per cent and I’m glad that you picked up on that. I feel like this has an A&B side. The first three tracks are very full and dramatic and then the last two songs are a lot more stripped back. Even though it’s about a dark subject matter, it’s a bit more hopeful. I put ‘Miserere’ on there so it acts as a palette cleanser for the listener.

Let’s talk about ‘Buyers Remorse’. What does that title reflect?

It’s about the way I feel as a Black woman who plays classical music but listens to a lot of other genres from electronic to rap. I’ve been told I’m interesting as a person, but I feel like people don’t always get seen as a real human and it’s about that idea that if I do let someone in and be completely vulnerable, will they have remorse buying into me? Whether that’s investing in a financial sense through my music, but also investing into me emotionally as well and friendships and relationships. It’s about deconstructing myself as a concept and a proposition and how people see me as a human being.

The EP highlights your incredible voice too. Is there any you’d model your vocals on?

I still do get Nina Simone comparisons, and I used to be very self-conscious of that because Nina Simone is an icon and to me an untouchable force and she’s done everything. I’m very conscious to learn the difference between referencing and copying, because this is just the way I sound and in classical music you teach your muscles all of the stuff you need to sing classically. So that and and singing the way I sing now are two very different things.

But it genuinely is just the sound that comes out of my voice I’m not really referencing anyone.

And what’s your next steps?

There’s a lot more on the way. I have a real passion for live music, so everything is written and recorded with a live sound to it. I’ve got my own headline show on July 8 and I’m super excited about that. I’d just come off tour with Jalen Ngonda when I made this EP and it solidified the fact that I just love to perform live”.

I am going to wrap things up with NME and their conversation. On her third E.P., Konyikeh is breaking rules. As NME say in their header, the first couple of E.P.s were her learning the rules. I am going to drop in the second half of the interview, as I think the first half maybe repeats things we have already read. Go and check out thew whole chat, though:

“The shift extended far beyond the music itself. Konyikeh became deeply involved in every stage of the creative process, from production decisions and mixes to visual concepts, edits and creative direction. “If you speak to FAMM candidly, it was very much my way or the highway,” she laughs. Instead of being rooted in ego, her confidence came from finally trusting her instincts. She’d fiddle with instruments in the studio until a twang was tuned just right for her ears, and would build upon it until she had songs she loved.

That’s how ‘Mercenary’, a track inspired by gqom, amapiano and Arabic scales, came to be. While others around her initially struggled to understand what she was making, Konyikeh never wavered. “‘Mercenary’ made me feel something,” she offers. “After feeling so numb for a lot of 2024 and 2025, I realised it’s such a luxury to be able to feel emotion.” Throughout our conversation, she returns to that word again and again: feeling. It’s what guides her songwriting, production choices and listening habits. Whether she’s talking about Mariah The Scientist, Slayyyter or Mozart, the criteria remain remarkably consistent: “Sounding good and feeling good are the same thing.”

After resisting “the violin girl” tag for years, her classical training now sits proudly at the centre of her music, informing everything from arrangements to production choices. It’s the same confidence that led her to advocate for mixes, visuals and creative decisions throughout the making of ‘Cinere’, and the same confidence she credits with finally giving her faith in herself.

“I realised what my core beliefs are and how I want to do things. That’s why, in 2025, I was like, ‘No, I’m going to run a tight ship, and I’m going to do it my way,’” she says. “I developed a stronger sense of self. I developed a lot of autonomy. I realised I have no one to report to about myself.” It might have taken years for her to arrive at that understanding, but ‘Cinere’ shines for it, allowing the things she once tried to keep separate to exist together”.

In their review of Cinere, The Musical Road wrote this: “Vocally, Konyikeh delivers with intensity and nuance. Her voice is the emotional anchor of the EP—capable of tenderness, power, and quiet introspection within the same phrase. There’s a sense that every note is intentional, every lyric drawn from lived experience rather than abstraction. This sincerity makes the songs feel immediate and immersive. The songwriting itself is equally compelling, exploring identity, self-awareness, and growth without resorting to clichés. Instead, the EP unfolds like a series of emotional snapshots, each revealing a different facet of the artist’s journey. “Cinere” ultimately succeeds because of its authenticity. It’s not just a collection of songs—it’s a document of change, crafted with skill and emotional clarity. The result is an EP that doesn’t just invite listeners in—it stays with them, lingering long after the final note fades”. High compliments to one of our finest young artists. Who knows what comes next but, when it comes to the mesmeric Konyikeh, it is guaranteed to…

BE golden.

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