Influences: Your Friend

The sounds that inspire...

Your Friend is an artist that seems to dwell at junctures, that lives in the space where styles collide.

Finishing 2015 with a flurry of new material and participating in a project at Red Bull Music Academy in Paris, Taryn Miller certainly seemed to achieve this.

Releasing her debut EP last year, a full length is set to follow on January 29th. 'Gumption' fuses technical aspects – drones, loops and found sounds, for instance – with a wider feeling of nostalgia, a longing for something un-named within her past.

It's an intriguing album, as accomplished as it is suggestive. Clash invited Your Friend to piece together some Influences – here's what she came up with.

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Arthur Russell – 'Our Last Night Together'

This record is really important to me. It takes me right into the room with him. I love the way his voice and cello play off of one another. He seemed so curious and willing to surrender himself to where his instincts were wandering. I’m inspired not only by his work but by his entire essence. This is generally the record I play for people as an introduction to his discography.

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Cliff Martinez – 'First Sleep' ('Solaris' taken from Film Fest Gent Compilation)

I listened to a lot more scores and soundtracks this last year. As a means to kind of clear my mental palette when it comes to approaching songwriting but there’s something about listening to instrumental scores. The themes and individual parts that make up the larger work. Without the voice being present, my focus is narrowed to pay attention to the layers and timbres. This compilation is really well assembled and worth a full listen.

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Express Rising – 'Neighborhood'

I heard this record for the first time a few years ago and immediately fell for it. The production, the grooves, and sampling decisions he made all sit so well together. I found out more about Dante’s history later, so it makes sense that he would know and have the resources to make a record like this. It’s been out of print for a long time now.

There was a gentleman that had this LP in his collection that we were buying for the store, and my boss knew that I had been really wanting one. At one point he was flipping through a box and pull just the top of it enough for me to see it and my reaction could have probably been a little more subtle.

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Sam Cooke – 'Cupid'

One of the first jobs that I had, with a payroll anyway, was at this smaller grocery store in town. They played the same playlist/station every single day that I worked there. For a few years. There was a lot of Sam Cooke on it, and no matter how many shifts, those songs have stuck with me, in a positive way. Ha! That voice can give me shivers indefinitely. He had such a commanding delivery. If anything, he inspires me to find that within my own vocal approach.

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Ian William Craig – 'A Forgetting Place'

It’s such a beautiful record, as well as the rest of his discography. I find myself listening to them a lot. They can be really healing. His methods are really inspiring. I actually don’t have a founded understanding of how he accomplishes it, but as far as I know a lot of reels are involved. It’s raw, it’s visceral, and ultimately alters the headspace I’m in, prior to hearing it.

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'Gumption' will be released on January 29th.

Photo Credit: Crystal Lee Farris

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