Collective Sounds: Taylah Elaine

My favorite trip to Tate Modern wasn’t for an exhibition, but rather for a party I attended there recently. It turned out to be one of my most memorable visits. Seeing the space transformed in such a unique way and having that kind of experience there made me truly appreciate the vastness of Tate Modern.

I believe that all forms of art continuously influence one another. Creativity, in any form, maintains a strong connection to other forms of art. If you're a creative in music, you might not be a visual artist, but you're constantly surrounded by artists in various forms due to the collaborative nature of our work, such as album artwork or set design. So the environment in which you perform or create greatly inspires and impacts your creative output.

I can’t say that I’ve been inspired by a specific piece of art before. But I do think the environment I’m in inspires my sound, whether that be festivals, lights, or the set—it literally places you in a world.

It will have to be ‘Scruff of the Neck’. When I was reading up about it, the words ‘mysterious’ and ‘familiar’ were used, and that is exactly how I would describe my sound. I love to use familiar samples and vocals and play them in a way that people may not have heard before, perhaps by layering them with a more underground instrumental. But, yes, familiar and mysterious.

Number 185 by Leonardo Drew. It was really dark, but not aggressive. There was something really heavy about it—I think it was all the materials used, but then also really light at the same time. That has definitely impacted on the playlist.

The fact that it’s materials and objects—it’s DIY and tangible. I think ‘tangible’ is key, actually, because obviously you can’t touch the music, but I want it to be felt in a way. I want you to hear instruments and sounds and really hear them, not just a song playing. I want it to feel quite tangible and almost industrial.

I almost want them to feel placed, whether that’s because it feels nostalgic or reminds them of a certain time or a certain space they were in.

There is one memory that comes to mind. I played at a festival called Beyond the Valley in Australia, and the production design of the stage I was on wasn’t similar to the room, but it did feel very industrial and tangible. There was so much light, they had these cut-outs and artistic characters. It was a completely different to the world that we were all in. When I came off the stage, I had no idea what had just happened or what we had just done. It was wild. It didn’t affect or influence the song choices, but I think the feeling of being in that space and then the feeling of being at Tate Modern did.