“Less Chin-Stroking And More Having A Good Time!” TATYANA Interviewed

A whirlpool of sounds, styles and influences, South London-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter TATYANA is forging ahead in a new direction. Raised within the rigid confines of classical music, the London artist approaches electronica with meticulous precision but also freedom, fashioning a soundtrack to the tumultuous sentiments of modern-day romance.

TATYANA’s origin story is full of twists and turns: she spent her formative years between Moscow, Singapore and Holland, before embarking on a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music, which placed her within the bustling scenes of New York and Boston. Upon her return to the UK, the riser rediscovered the thrill and fluid expression of club music. The result is sophomore album, ‘It’s Over’, a broader exploration of electro-pop that meshes together groovy, pulsing heartbeats over glimmers of harp and synths, which TATYANA bends and contorts into unexpected shapes and spaces. A self-produced body of work, ‘It’s Over’ features contributions from Mikko Gordon and the likes of acclaimed musician Dave Okumu on standout single, ‘Control’. Elsewhere, ‘Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible’ and ‘Down Bad’ carry an endearing command, creating a sense of movement with their rough-around-the-edges production.

CLASH sat down with TATYANA to talk her nomadic upbringing, the electronic pioneers that informed the album experience, and it’s electrifying voyage through the murky depths of millennial dating…

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What was your introduction to music, and how did that moment evolve into making your own material?

My introduction to music…well, I played classical piano from a young age because my mum’s Russian and it’s very common to start your musical journey very young. So I played classical piano, and then I picked up the harp. That was all a long time ago. I feel like I’m definitely not a classical musician. I took a different path, I went to music school and then started making beats on Ableton and producing music. 

What is your relationship like with those instruments now? 

It’s a semi-complicated relationship. For the longest time online, my internet moniker was ‘blue harp girl’,  it felt like it was so integral to my musical identity and how I existed online. I have some very long-term fans who discovered me through the original blue harp girl project, where I was making beats and playing the harp. I wanted to move away from that, I didn’t want to just be identified as a harpist. My interests expanded, I wanted to do dance music and write pop songs, but it still feels like a really important part of the textures that I love. 

There’s more to explore, but I had to learn how to do other things first, you know? The goal is to eventually find a place for those two things to sit in a more equal measure.

What kind of artists or genres were you listening to during your formative years? How have they influenced your sound today?

This album has very clear references for me. I found this record by house music pioneer Maurice Fulton, he made it with this girl Kathy Diamond. My friend and I had been going through all of Maurice Fulton’s credits because we’d seen him DJ and he was so amazing. We found this record and I cried! It set me off on this journey of trying to reach out to Maurice Fulton, and he’s kind of a hard guy to get a hold of but also just make something that was in that style. Musically, I listen to so much different music, but at the minute I’m mostly interested in club sounds and dance music. Robyn has always been a big influence.

Moving between Russia, Singapore, Holland and the USA as you grew up, would you say that travelling has expanded your ear for different sounds from different places?

In most places you’re bombarded with contemporary pop music, but I think being a global citizen and moving around a lot changed me as a person. I don’t know if it affected my music, but I feel like I’m working in a liminal space, in between cultures. I’m not completely British, but I’m definitely not considered Russian by Russians. Maybe that reflects in my music, in that it’s not quite pop enough for Radio 1. It’s in between genres, which can be difficult sometimes but it’s where I’ve ended up.

What first drew you towards dance music? What had the genre unlocked with regards to your sense of self-expression?

I really like partying, I like going out, especially when I moved back to London. I was in the States before that. In college, which was a jazz music school, the only thing we did was smoke weed and listen to Coltrane. It was a very different thing. I discovered the club in London and the music is such an important part of that. To me, going out and partying is about the music; I go to have a kind of transcendental experience with electronic music and it hits me in a way that makes me feel something. Especially right now, in the kind of world that we live in, feeling things is good. The culture that we live in, we’re accelerating into this era of machine intelligence, so it can be hard to have human moments. Somehow dance music feels human to me. 

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Take us back to the summer of 2023. What emotions, thoughts and ideas were influencing the creation of ‘It’s Over’?

It was a really brutal summer. I locked myself in my studio at Strongroom and I went a little bit crazy, it was a very isolated experience. It took a long time to recover from making it. This record, it’s kind of dark. The title is a reference to an internet meme, which is what people say when it feels like everything’s gone wrong, and there’s no hope. I feel like I recreated that in my life which was kind of gnarly, for me, at least. I was writing these songs and working on them alone in this very dark space with no windows. At the same time, it was a very freeing experience and a challenge to myself, I wanted to see if I could do something on my own – produce and write this record.

Now I can enjoy this music. It took it took a while for me to get there but I listened to it the other day and it brought me back to the feelings, but in a nice way, you know? 

What made you want to reference meme culture?

I’ve always been online. I love being an observer and looking into people’s worlds without necessarily participating in it. I think during the pandemic, I was online a lot. I was looking at how people were talking about dating in this modern, alienated world. A lot of the language they were using was internet meme language, which I found interesting. I wanted to see if I could distil some of those feelings of alienation and frustration in these communities of men and women and write something about that. It felt connected to how I was feeling as well.

How did you find tackling the dreaded sophomore album? What does this milestone represent to you, what period does it bookmark in your journey?

When I compare it to my first record which I made with Joe Mount from Metronomy, I was younger and a little naive. I went through a breakup which set me on this path of reevaluating how romance operates in my life and also commiserating with these strangers online, seeing their responses to it. It feels more…I was gonna say mature but actually, I think it’s equally immature in the sense that I went the complete opposite way. It’s the flip side. Ideally, you’d want to be in the centre, but music is about emotions and sometimes our emotions are extreme.

You have a clear vision of how you want your tracks to sound, which translates across your production. What has that journey been like, developing a sonic world in which your music can reside? Have you always known what you wanted this record to sound like?

No, I didn’t, but there are certain things that appeal to me. I don’t like clinical, clean sounds, I like things that sound a little raw and rough. In that sense, I love producers like Theo Parrish and LCD Soundsystem because it’s the opposite of clean music. It has artefacts and something to it that sounds textural to me. That’s always been something that I’ve been drawn to. I was obsessed with the Maurice Fulton record, and ended up finding a Red Bull Music Academy interview that he did a long time ago.

As he’s talking about his process, he pulls up all these Korg plugins, and I’m like if they’re good enough for him, they’re good enough for me. Almost every sound on the record is one of three Korg plugins. I also have this drum machine which I really love. I wanted to use specific tools that were going to be across the whole thing. 

You’ve got your headline show coming up at The Waiting Room. How would you like to see the album come to life on stage?

I’m so pumped for my new live set because I’ve reworked it with some friends.  I’ve got the ARP Odyssey on stage with me, we’re making some visuals, and we’ve reworked a lot of the songs to really slap in a club. They’re mixed to get people dancing. That’s always the goal. I just want people to vibe. Less chin stroking and more having a good time!

What are your next steps? Are there any new sounds, genres or scenes that you’d like to explore further? 

I think there’s gonna be some club mixes of some songs off the record. I’ve started writing again, which is nice. At the minute I’m exploring acid-house, more techno, and the BPM is going up a little bit. Beyond that, I want to explore some more chilled vibes as well, something ambient with a harp. That’s the end goal.

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‘It’s Over’ is out now.

Words: Ana Lamond