I love working with Johnny Leslie, who has engineered so many of my projects with me. I’m lucky: I get to fall in love every single month. It’s like having that third date, realizing you like them and being excited. Whenever I create with someone, there is a shared energy that is like falling in love. Who love to laugh with me and pursue a friendly relationship as well as a creative one. Even though you’ve worked with some major co-producers, such as Nicolas Jaar, Boots, Arca, Mike Dean and most recently El Guincho, it’s obviously your show. As a producer, you have always led your own charge. I get a hunch and I go from there… follow the feeling. Not really - I don’t reverse-engineer my career. Is there a vision as to what the immediate future will hold post-“Caprisongs”? Don’t get me wrong: Young Records is incredible, and we’ve had a beautiful journey, but in my heart, it was time for me to move on in certain aspects: Push myself, dream bigger, have more people experience my art. Maybe I wanted to experience that on a bigger level. The ambition that I have - to be a girl from a small town in England, to get to New York when I was 20, it all took ambition. But I wanted to dream big, to make music around people that look like me, think like me and understand my cultural background more. I’ve had a beautiful career, and haven’t wanted for much. It has taken me this long to think about what I would truly like. I was happy just to have a seat at the table. When I first got signed I was just grateful to be signed - I wanted to please, to fit in. When I went into my career in my youth… look, I’m from a small town in England, Gloucester. The pandemic, for me, was a time to really think about what I wanted as an artist. for “this next exciting phase of art.” What were you looking for in a label? Along with “Caprisongs” came news that you’ve partnered with Atlantic Records in the U.S. I certainly had with my friends and family, and I wanted to share that with the world. Everybody needed support during this time. It would be naïve to believe that it made them feel better… but I did want to provide truth, honesty, light and joy to people, to remind them what we had, and are grateful for. I think it was the first time as an artist that I felt the desire to create something for other people. Because we all lost something on some scale - be it our freedom, our routine, love, a sense of security. In the pandemic, though, there was a shared adversity, a shared sadness and loss. My other projects really touched on personal, very specific things that I’ve gone through in my life. Even though “Caprisongs” was made during a challenging time, it’s brighter, more optimistic and less angular than your previous music. With that, “Caprisongs” is her liveliest, most spirited recording. To call it mainstream, as the music has been described going into “Caprisongs’s” release, skirts the fact that it is glowingly theatrical and touched by idiosyncratic new musical expressions such as squeak-rap, hyperpop and Afrobeat. Which brings us to “Caprisongs.” While not sunny in an obvious way, FKA Twigs and her co-conspirators – old friends such as Arca, and newer associates like Mike Dean, El Guincho and the Weekend – have created a mixtape filled with bold, blunter melody and open-faced, truth-telling lyrics touched by the smiling spirit of the zodiac. With all of this harsh reality, what may have come off as distanced to some was perhaps a defense mechanism for the sake of self-survival. Incidents with a private life made public (accusations of sexual assault and emotional distress against actor Shia LaBeouf) made it appear that the supercharged sentiment of her music carried over into, or came from, real life. Darkly avant-garde, aggressive and atmospheric, the scorched earth-soul of 2014’s “LP1” and 2019’s “Magdalene” positioned her as a cross between Billie Holiday and Siouxsie and the Banshees produced by Lee Scratch Perry. The bottom line on Twigs has long been that her most ambitious music was deeply emotional and uncompromising. That’s not only because the genre-jumbling, multi-octave performer has invited brand-name featured guests such as Jorja Smith and the Weeknd to the party that is “Caprisongs.” Rather, it’s because the Gloucester, U.K.-born artist - real name Tahliah Barnett - is having any kind of party at all. With her just-released “Caprisongs” mixtape and a fresh affiliation with a new label, Atlantic, British singer-songwriter-producer FKA Twigs ups the ante on her eerily experimental sound and intimately nuanced lyrics and goes big.
0 kommentar(er)
