TAAHLIAH TAAHLIAH

TAAHLIAH is an artist who needs no introduction to many of our readers, but to present this interview without one would be a disservice to her sheer stardom. The Glasgow-based multidisciplinary artist (if you will) has gone from strength to strength since SNACK last sat down with her in 2021. Her list of accolades since then include a viral debut Boiler Room set that gave (and continues to give) people heart palpitations through screens all over the world, her magical debut EP Angelica winning Best Independent EP at the AIM Independent Music Awards, touring with LSDXOXO and UNIIQU3, and co-hosting the raucous yet wholesome podcast The Dolls Discuss with Lourdes.

Speaking ahead of her live performance The Ultimate Angels this month at SWG3, SNACK chats to TAAHLIAH about the death of originality and the pursuit of uniqueness, the politics of DJing, and reading pure garbage.

The Ultimate Angels has been in the works for a while, and now it’s finally happening! What can people expect from the live TAAHLIAH audio-visual experience?

I guess it’s an amalgamation of what I’ve been working on over the past few years. And through last year, and perhaps a year before, the focus was a lot more on my DJ sets and that readily available way of performing. I think with this show and the shows that will come after, there’s more of a focus on the performance and the artistry performance itself. Rather than playing music to make people have a good time, this is playing music for people to experience something different.

It was always gonna be the case that I wanted to establish myself as a DJ as well as an artist, because I came into being a music artist through DJing. And it was never really something that I wanted to negate or ignore, but DJ sets are really limiting in their capacity.

The way that you play and the experience of it is very different [to performing live] as well.

I’ve heard that you’re playing some new tracks in your set. Is there anything you can spill about them?

There’s nothing much to spill apart from they’re new and not many people have heard them! It will be nice to play them out in a sphere where people will want them even more, because I don’t think they’re gonna come out for a little while. So I think it’s nice for people to be able to experience the music before it’s readily available.

There’s a mixture of different sounds on the new tracks: there’s some slower stuff, faster stuff, some more trap-inspired music, and more ethereal stuff as well.

If people want to know more they’re going to have to get tickets! BABYNYMPH and Miss Cabbage will be supporting you: could you tell us a wee bit about them and their sound?

It’s so difficult to describe other people’s artistry! Miss Cabbage’s sets are always so fast and so ignited and intense, but in the best possible way. And watching her go from wanting to be a DJ to literally being a DJ has been such a nice artistic journey to observe. I’ve always been so supportive of her, and we’re such amazing friends outside of music. I knew that I wanted her to be there with me, and I was so happy that she’s able to do it.

I met BABYNYMPH when I was living in Berlin. I had no idea that she made music at that point and she probably had no idea that I did either. But then, through the internet and a mutual love of sugary poppy sounds, I discovered her music and she discovered mine. I’ve been a fan of her work since ‘clown shit’ so I’m very excited for her to be there with me.

On The Dolls Discuss you and Lourdes were talking about how people struggle to listen to full albums anymore, so coming to your set and experiencing your music in a visceral context is a much more immersive way of engaging with your artistry.

When Lou and I were discussing that, it was something that I’m very conscious of as an artist, because as much as I don’t want to subscribe to the 2020 elements of music marketing, advertising, or album campaigns, I do also need to make space and create a way for people to experience the music that is accepted in the 2020s. You know what I mean? Which is so different to how people were consuming music in the 2010s, the 90s and the 80s. So it’s hard trying to stay true to yourself artistically, but then also applying it to make sure that you’re not falling through the cracks.

You’ve been open about having emailed festivals suggesting ways that they can make their spaces safer. It’s clearly important to you that your gigs are a holistic experience.

It’s been difficult trying to navigate being an artist and playing shows at festivals and clubs whilst maintaining a very, very marginalised identity, because there are things that I take into consideration that other people in my position just would not, and that’s a very difficult thing. Why is it the people who are affected by the shit who have to speak out and start talking about things? And then, that labour is not even justified unless the person that they’re talking to is willing to listen, if they’re not willing, then you’re just shouting at a wall. That’s probably been one of the most frustrating things from last year.

I think it’s hard for institutions not to take it personally. I understand that in this day and age and in this industry mistakes will be made; it’s just about not making the same mistakes.

I wanted to ask you about producing because there are still so few female producers, let alone queer femme producers. What advice would you give to somebody wanting to learn but who’s daunted by the boy’s club-ness of it all?

I understand that it’s shifting, but not at a rate where we’re being made to feel comfortable or considered for our artistry. It’s difficult because what’s worked for me would be different from what works for someone else. But I think in terms of your practice, just practice! Don’t feel guilty for not making music, because I know I’m a victim of that. But just keep working, just keep making, and find something that is not necessarily original, but unique about yourself.

In 2023 originality is dead, it’s been dead for years, so don’t get overwhelmed by having to offer something ‘different’ or ‘avant-garde’, because we then become victims of picking ourselves and what we do apart which just becomes a whole mess. Don’t think of doing something ‘original’, just provide something that is unique. Ultimately, as an artist, you’re the only person who can make the work you’re making. In essence it is unique, so keep going.

We’re all just a mismatch of loads of different stuff, and I guess that’s exactly what DJing is too.

Exactly! DJing is the ultimate form of appropriation [laughs], which is so funny, because as a culture we are so against appropriation now, but DJing is very much it. Again, which is why I’m trying to move away from doing just strictly DJ sets, because whilst I do play my own music in my sets, I’m also aware that half of it is not my own music, so I don’t want people to become confused.

There’s so much that goes into the politics of DJing itself that I can talk for hours on. But it is true, it is the ultimate form of musical appropriation, and I think that people forget that.

I guess it depends what you do with it, too, because in a lot of your sets some tracks become totally unrecognisable and take on a new form.

Completely, which is nice. That’s obviously what DJing is also: taking something that may be old and turning it into something new. But I think over the past couple of months since the Boiler Room, I have been very conscious of the fact that obviously that clip of me was everywhere, but that’s not my song [Joyryde, ‘Damn (Don Dirty Remix)’]. People shouldn’t forget the artist who created that song, because if it wasn’t for them, that clip wouldn’t exist – because I would not be playing their music, you know?

What are you reading at the moment?

Oh my god, that is so embarrassing [laughs]. So yesterday I went to Waterstones and bought the Prince Harry book because I’m a nosey bitch. I’m not a royalist, I’m just a nosey bitch! I just finished Ghosts by Dolly Alderton which was really good. The one that I’m gonna read next is Susan Sontag. And then I’ll probably read some like actual garbage after that, because I always need to filter the really intellectual stuff with cheesy stuff.

I read Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason last month and it was so good. She won like a bunch of prizes for it and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction last year. It’s a really good book denoting the effects of mental health.

So what’s coming up for you in 2023 – a Nicki Minaj collab, perhaps?

Potentially, but I doubt she knows who I am so I don’t know how that would work [laughs]. But 2023 is … I’m just going to be writing lots of music. I don’t know whether I’m gonna be releasing a lot of music this year, because I want to focus on the album writing process. I really want to get into curation, and hopefully curate some really fun experiences for people.

I don’t want to just sit being a DJ or a music artist, I want to do multiple different things, a multidisciplinary artist, if you will. I also want to do a lot more visual stuff this year and to look at imagery and the use of imagery in my work and consider how I can adopt that and make it better.

Go see TAAHLIAH play live at The Ultimate Angels, 18th February, SWG3

Read the full interview online at snackmag.co.uk

Lewis and Suzi Cook have been expanding minds and filling dance floors with their psychedelic disco utopianism since 2014, firstly as Happy Meals, then changing to the name Free Love in 2018. As they prepare for the launch of their new album, Inside, and a Celtic Connections gig celebrating ten years of Lost Map records, they took some time to chat about music, magic, and the joy of connection.

Your music has always had that kind of spiritual, mystical side to it. I think that seems a lot more to the fore on Inside: there’s a real sense of searching.

Lewis: Definitely. There’s a lot of elements and themes of the records that are very much looking inwards; we wrote it during lockdown and when we were literally inside. But there’s definitely a tip of the cap to this idea and we’ve been talking about it a lot recently as well, about what we want to do as musicians: what we actually want to connect with?

Suzi: Why do we make music?

Lewis: Yeah. And I think that a lot of that is ineffable. Something that’s about the experience of music and art, and I think the only way to really talk about some of those things is through magic and things that we don’t talk about in our general dayto-day, because it’s outside of the cosmogony of our existence. But I feel myself when I make music, you get that opportunity to touch on that. I think that’s probably leaked over into the themes of the record, and the lyrics as well.

There’s a couple of lyrics that stood out to me: ‘in doing we become’ echoes over the end of the album. That’s a very Alan Watts-y kind of concept.

Suzi: That track [‘I Become’] in particular, it’s almost like a spiral because it spiralled back to the first music that we ever kind of made together. So it was that idea of ‘I become’ in the present tense, but you’re always becoming.

Lewis: The first lyrics in that song are the same as the first lyrics of our first ever piece of music we made together, which is also our first track on our first record, ‘Crystal Salutation’ when we were called Happy Meals.

Suzi: It was quite emotional, looking back as well as trying to look forward and at where you are right now.

Your last album was recorded on Eigg, with Johnny [Lynch, of Pictish Trail]?

Suzi: It was part of a series that Johnny ran with Lost Map called Visitations. It was a really beautiful experience. It’s that thing of no phone reception, no internet. You’re just kind of existing where you are. So we wrote a concept record about aliens because we were convinced that they were there, because it was so dark. It was like the blackest black you could see outside at night.

I think that experience has really made us realise that you need to get out of your space to find what it is that you need to find, to make music or to be creative. I think it’s a good thing to be able to coorie in and really go inwards and just be yourself, but a big part of the reason that we make music is to connect with people, whether that’s through live shows or collaboration.

A quick look over your discography and you see almost every name in Scottish music tucked away in there as a collaboration or in the studio to the name. Is that an important part of how you work?

Lewis: A lot of what we do is also based on those interactions. Again, coming back to the idea of something which is real; that sort of ineffable joy, that fucking immediacy that you just want to be inside. And I’m not just talking about our music.

I mean when you hear music you love and you just feel this otherness and there’s no real words; you just experience it or you don’t. And if you do, then you get to connect with that and that’s amazing. And then you get absolutely addicted to it and you want more and more and more. Whether that’s hearing other people’s music, seeing their artwork, hanging out with other people, all the things that you can do with other people. And when you get excited about what other people are doing, it’s like, maybe we could do something together.

Whenever we’ve played live in the past, we’ve always had energy vessels, people who join us on stage. That’s been such a cool thing to do, because you get people that you know but also people we’ve never met before. It’s really nice to have that conversation through music with somebody in that moment and really channel that energy through them. It comes back to that question of why are we making music? This is why.

Suzi: It’s that connection.

Lewis: Yeah, community is a funny word because it almost implies there’s a beginning and an end to it, like a closed group. And the way that I’m most excited about things are these opportunities to invite somebody in who’s never done anything like this before. And that to me is as important as playing shows. Because again, you’re having that special connection.

Suzi: Maybe the spark gets bigger.