SHYGIRL
SHYGIRL is an indomitable force. Her latest releases FREAK and Tasty contain the urgent and unabashed sound and lyrics her earlier work is known for, with an extension of badass personas through highly curated videos and new collaborative production.
Self described as “my own character, heroine and muse”, we wanted to know how a forced lockdown fed into the energy and progression of self she has maintained and expanded in her new work.
Your music contains and involves a lot of energy, my friend described it as “ramped industrial ghetto tech booty sound”, and you were on tour just before the world locked down. How was the transition between the full-on energy switch needed for live shows, to a lockdown where your collaborations with highly conceptual and energy focused people like Arca had to be purely based digitally and from home?
It’s definitely different, there’s more time for self-reflection. It intensified the reflection of self my music has always been for me. Hence the exploration into alias and what it meant to me, and the making of my four avatar bbz [BADDIE, BAE, BONK and BOVINE] and the sonics that birthed them.
So in terms of alter-egos, how far do you go into SHYGIRL to get what you want out of your art?
I don’t think there’s much difference in personas for me right now - they all come together to make me who I am, I wanted to challenge the idea we have about alias’ and personas - I think we’re all multifaceted.
I read a self-description of the label you made with co-artists NUXXE as “a no fucks given approach to genre or categorisation”. How did you guys figure out how grow into what you wanted to be?
Lol we deffo didn’t describe ourselves like that, I think that was more of a journo description. We’ve never really coined a phrase on what we are about, the music does that by itself. The focus should always be on what provokes creativity and what you want from your own creative practice, and I think we’ve been able to do that regardless of any circumstances.
I had a lot of fun reading different articles about you, and my absolute favourite thing that stuck out was how wild people's description of the backing beats in your tracks were. Some examples, “synths that screech like a Jurassic Park velociraptor”, “face melting percussion”, “tar boiling industrial beats”. Your lyrics alone are powerful, rude and provocative, is there a further narrative that you are trying to evoke with the addition of that unapologetically large, loud powerful sound?
I think it’s what provokes me. I need an equal to match the velocity of emotion in my lyrics and I find that in the beats, they carry my interest so I’m intrigued enough to marry with them.
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