It is Christmas Day 2014. The time to reflect I guess! I think some of the most interesting debates to be had are the place of females in today's music industry. And, why aren't there more artists like Tala?
Her EP from earlier this year "The Duchess" was probably my favourite EP this year. And I admit part of me was so excited because it felt like it is such a rarity to see a female producer/artist emerge in her musical sphere. Then after being unable to access the internet for a few weeks I was ecstatic to see that on 1 December Tala had released her second EP of the year, "Alchemy". I was also interested to note on her Facebook page she seems to be spending some time in Los Angeles, working with Mike Elizondo. If you are not familiar with Tala's work, "Alchemy" is a beautiful accompaniment to "The Duchess". She does sing, but her vocals are more an accompaniment to her amazing production work. There is so much that goes on in her tracks. A brilliant example of this is my favourite track on the EP, "Black Scorpion". Her voice pokes through now and again in vocal snippets, but the beat is absolutely amazing! It dips in and out of sounding like a full-on assault, which I can hear when the brass sounding instruments come in at what I would call the chorus section, to what I would call a striaght-ahead banging beat, with a great sounding bassline as is featured at the beginning of the tune. Another thing that is brilliant about the tune is that all the sections feel very different to each other, held together by the beat, but there are very few tunes that you will hear that feel like a trip to her middle-eastern origins, back to Britain, via a trip to US hip-hop that this sounds like.
All the 4 tracks are bangers, but "Everybody's Free" is another example of her uniqueness. She takes what I presume is her voice and manipulates it in such a way that what in normal hands would sound like a standard R&B vocal to a completely different place. Behind this is a beat, which has influences in a trap-style beat, but has so much more complexity than that.
So, what will Tala be in 2015? If you haven't seen her, then it is clear from her pictures she could easily rely on her looks to attain a level of success. It would be very easy to simplify her influences and sell a lot of records. But it doesn't feel like that will happen. Put together the 8 tracks from her 2 EP's this year and you are left with in my opinion the most interesting musical work this year
