TALIABLE ON THE RISE
Stand Out.
TaliaBle
22
Multidisciplinary Artist
Tottenham
TEAM
Photography/Interview Arhantika Rebello
Styling Leah Quarrie-Martin
Clothing Gina Corrieri
Digital Interview Video Editor Abdul Mohammed
PLAY
(on music) “I’d call it Dysfunctional Rap. It has a foundation of dystopian bass, heavy symphonies, warped undercurrents and tongue twisting narration.”
How did your journey with music begin? What does creating music mean to you?
I was battling with my first heartbreak, which we all know isn’t the funnest thing to do but it offers the most growth once you’ve seen the light. Back then I was very sheltered. I didn’t know how to call for help or tell someone I even felt upset, but one night I wrote this poem and I was like this needs to be made into a song just so I can walk around and hear myself being open. I wanted to prove what I believed about myself wrong. At the time I was interning at Keephush and Karl Brinaj would work the doors and I told him about this journey and he played me a beat he’d started tampering with which ended up being the blueprint of ‘Tender’. Once our paths connected the rest was history, the next day we started making my first song and we just haven’t stopped.
What are your biggest influences and inspirations when it comes to creating music?
The textures of Tottenham’s streets have always inspired me: the hard yet warm people, the crunchy concrete, barbed wire on bricks against the blue skies, the shape-shifting high road, the dynamic of a block of flats... I melt all of these influences into descriptive writing where I’m then inspired by poets such as Caleb Femi, Bby Mutha, Dr Seuss.
As a multifaceted artist, going beyond music, how do you incorporate and involve your artistic side in your creative process?
When making music the visuals are always the end goal for me, so I write bearing in mind it will eventually influence an image or a scene.
You’ve got a very distinct aesthetic style. It’s bold and colourful to say the least. Where does this stem from and is it something you’ve curated over time?
I always aim to make my art memorable by having a key statement piece in every project. Researching into the likes of surrealism and various performance artists it’s definitely boosted the way I approach imagery. It’s difficult to describe where things stem from, but I have an innate yearning to always try something new, risky and uncanny. Making art is also a method of ticking things off my bucket list.
Where do you hope to see yourself end up with your music?
The only path I’m taking is one of an artist, all mediums can exist as one form in my world because I don’t treat them separately and genuinely enjoy it all; so I hope to see my music valued as fine art. I don’t want my music to be gate kept in one industry.
“It’s difficult to describe where things stem from, but I have an innate yearning to always try something new, risky and uncanny. Making art is also a method of ticking things off my bucket list.”
What part do you feel music and art has to play in the world today, especially for young people?
I feel like the music and art aimed at young people in the world today offers fabrication, where we’re existing in online figments and digesting feelings through fantasies more than ever. It’s our bittersweet reality which I’d love to see utilised more to propose deeper questions about the way we live and express ourselves.
What advice do you have for other young up and coming creatives?
I have a few, I’m low-key speaking to my younger self when I say this too: Never shrink yourself, own your space, tell people how you feel, identify and craft progressive minds around you, have boundaries, and again never shrink yourself for no one.
