Artist Spotlight: a l l i e

Shot by @gllnmpp

“Ultimately, the joy is in filling it back up” : Toronto R&B artist a l l i e returns with new chapter ‘Tabula Rasa’ the masterful, kaleidoscopic culmination of a healing journey through ancestral roots, solitude, and creative community. The result of a search for new direction following her 2017 project ‘Nightshade’ , ‘Tabula Rasa’ sees a l l i e in a new chapter of fully realizing her creative vision. Immersive soundscapes, evocative vocal production, magnetic experimental beats, and innovative collaborations showcase the artist’s creative range while radiating a connected core. I connected with a l l i e to talk through the creative process of conceiving the songs on a solo trip, capturing the energy in the studio, and nailing collaborations in a lockdown. 

I understand that travelling had a big influence on the conception of the record. How did that happen for you?

Travelling was a huge part of this record. The spark of the inspiration came from a trip that I took to Jamaica in 2019. I was feeling really uninspired. I knew that I was going to make a full length album but I had no idea where that was going to come from or how to pull that off. I had been to Jamaica before (my father is Jamaican) but I had never been able to explore the country the way that I wanted to. On that trip I really got to be immersed in the culture. I had all my gear with me in a little suitcase and I was travelling around through different parishes setting up my gear in hotel rooms and recording demos. That was definitely the initial inspiration. Shortly after I went on to Europe and did the same thing, hopping around and recording demos on my own. When I came back from those two trips I felt really ready to make the project. 

That’s really interesting that you recorded in such a variety of settings but then brought it back home. You’ve got a lot of Toronto collaborators on your album - how did that come together?

The process was honestly really fluid. A lot of the producers I worked with on this project I’ve worked with before and so there was already that level of understanding where we already know how each other like to work. We don’t even necessarily have to use words, we’re a little psychically connected now. There’s that intuition where we just know where we’re gonna go with the track. Those are just such special relationships: there’s a sense of trust and understanding after working together for that many years. It was super easy to bring my inspiration into the studio and just say “this is where I’m at, this is my vision, can you help me build it?” A lot of those sessions started with the seed of something that I had already written, but in some we made something completely from scratch. It was more the energy that I acquired through those travels that I brought into those sessions than anything else.

What do you think it was about travelling that ignited that energy? Was there something that clicked while you were travelling that planted the seed for those songs?

Solitude is always really big for me in terms of being able to just step away from everything and everyone and be with myself. It lets me see where I’m at and what I really want to reveal to myself in that moment. It’s a very intimate process with self. To be able to have those experiences in other countries alone is sometimes very vulnerable, especially as a woman. To go through that, bring that sense of strength back to the sessions made me feel the power that comes with being able to be alone. Having to only rely on myself to generate those initial ideas felt like a really powerful energy to bring back to the sessions. I knew what the vision was at that point.

So you took that time to get centred in yourself and then came back in to the community?

For sure. Toronto is abundantly, overwhelmingly talented, everyone on the record brought something to it. We wrote a lot of songs – some that didn’t end up on the album – but I loved the process of going through it with all those people, no moment is wasted for me. Thankfully we were able to be in the studio together in 2019. We finished the album remotely over 2020, but at least we had already planted those seeds. It’s really important to me to be able to feel that energy in person – a big part of the reason why I work with so many artists from Toronto is so we can have that real life experience together. 

You’ve been in Toronto since day 1 and there’s been big changes over the last ten years – or “the Drake era” we could say – how has that been for you? What’s your take on Toronto’s creative community as an insider, and on how it’s changed in the global perspective? 

Toronto is really flourishing right now, and I think that on a global scale we’re such a big part of the conversation at this point. When I’m travelling people are always so hype that I’m from Toronto and everyone is really curious about it. I think that’s a beautiful thing and it’s going to continue to grow, and hopefully the infrastructure behind the scenes catches up with what is really happening on an artistic level in the city. I think that’s when we’re going to see really amazing things happen here. 

Do you feel supported as an artist in Toronto, from the city and from the country as a whole, or do you feel like you have to reach outside of that? 

I definitely feel like I have to reach out, but I feel super supported at the same time. That’s the reason why I’m always seeking travel, I feel it’s so important to get out of the bubble and it’s very much a bubble here. But at the same time, a lot of what I’ve been able to do is through support from Canada. A lot of places don’t have that so I don’t take that for granted. I think it’s a balance.

You’re right, I think the infrastructure and to a certain extent the style needs to catch up. I feel like a lot of what’s happening in Toronto and what you & your community are creating is so cutting edge and so global, but there’s so much of the country that’s behind.

Definitely. I think we’re getting there, especially as a Black artist, Toronto is very diverse but not all of Canada is diverse. We feel really supported in certain areas of Canada but there are elements and audiences that’s not where we’re at necessarily. That’s why for me Europe and Asia are places where I see support and audiences that are really open to the type of music that we’re making, to more experimental sounds and artistry that’s going in all different directions.

One thing that really stood out to me about the album is how it had a very cohesive vision but each collaborator had brought a different character out. I was envisioning it like each collaborator had a key to a different door in your house. How did each of those relationships influence the music?

The collaborations were super interesting because those all happened in 2020 when I wasn’t able to get in the studio with anybody. Daniela Andrade and I have never even actually met in person. It was really incredible to see how each of them took what I had already done – I sent them all the tracks with my parts done with space open for them  – and everyone came back with the completely perfect thing! Even though we weren’t in the room together, they intuitively knew exactly what to do, which was really special and doesn’t always happen with collaboration. That was a huge blessing and something I was so thrilled about. I was personally working with different characters throughout the album and you can hear them come out through the way that I was pitching my vocals. I’ve never used that many effects on my vocals before, and that was a really cool way for me to play and explore with representing these different facets of myself, which was really fun to explore and let those characters come to life. 

I love that. ‘Clean Sight’, your collaboration with Casey MQ, really stood for that, the way you played with the vocal production and combined technologically altered vocals with your natural vocals in sort of a call and response, it’s such a cool way to extend your artistry. You have such an amazing voice – you have such a unique timbre and your vibrato is instantly recognizable, but you also have a distinct way of producing your vocals that complements that so well. I feel like it’s really taken hold in this record and feels so immersive. What were you communicating through the approach that you and Casey MQ took to this track?  

Casey uses a lot of vocal manipulation on his stuff. That’s something that I love about his music. We were going back and forth about that and talking about what elements we wanted to pull out for the track. We actually started that track with that last verse and worked backward. The first thing that we started with was this vocal sample. A lot of the track started that way. I was messing around, freestyling, and would chop up my vocals, treat them like a sample and throw some effects on. That was the starting point to build the production around. It was really playful. That was one session that we got to do in person and it was the week before the pandemic got announced. It was my last in-person session actually! We had so much fun with the vocals. That song is about a spiritual journey that oscillates between light and dark. We really wanted to showcase that journey through light and dark, high and low, through these different levels of duality. Manipulating the vocals was a means of expressing that. 

That is such a cool approach, the track definitely feels like two characters or experiences. So what does ‘clean sight’ mean?

I would describe clean sight as clarity of vision. When you’re on that spiritual journey or in the process of spiritual awakening, it’s the point that you arrive at where all of a sudden everything becomes clear and you know what’s up. I loved the way that it came across in the song because it has this abrasive energy that neither Casey or I give off at all, but it’s there and it’s a part of us. It felt like it was unearthing these parts of us that people don’t get to see very much. To me, that represented how spiritual awakening is often portrayed as ‘love & light’ and crystals and all of that, which can be true. But at the same time, in my experience spiritual awakening can have really harsh moments! It’s really uncomfortable and we don’t really want to look at that part. It’s a lot to try and portray in a two and a half minute track but we tried our best. 

Coming back to the immersive sound in your production - you opened the record with a track called “Sound Bath” and I know you’ve been working with singing bowls. How did the spirituality of creating those soundscapes come into the production as well as your songwriting inspiration? 

My spiritual practice is not separate from my music at all. Music is a very spiritual practice for me. I think deepening those practices over the last couple of years has allowed me to explore and open myself to the path that my soul has been wanting to take with music. I think when we’re talking about spiritual practice we’re really talking about liberation, so as I felt more liberated on my path I felt a lot freer to experiment, to really take control of my sound and to do things that I might have been afraid to do in the past. That’s why this project is so special to me: for me it’s the first time that something just sounds 100% me. Even with all my collaborators and all these amazing musicians who put their hands on it, I can really say that this is 100% me this time. I didn’t compromise, I followed every lead and every intuitive hit that I had through the process. That’s why I think it sounds the way it does and it feels like people are gravitating towards it in a different way this time. 

You can absolutely hear that in the record. There’s something about the way the vocals, production and writing come together. I went back to listen to your last record [Nightshade] try and figure it out. The way you produce your voice is technically quite similar but it just clicks in this record. So mission accomplished!

Thank you! [laughs]

Let’s talk about the album artwork! It’s so beautiful and magical so just freestyle - tell me all about it. 

Well, my husband made the album cover. 

That’s hot!

Yeah! He’s the only one in the world that could’ve done it. We’ve worked a lot together creatively but I think for this one it was really special. We wanted to do something that was the opposite of what we did for my last album cover. I brought the creative direction to him but I was pretty loose with it. I just said “I want you to make me into a giant gold status in the middle of a barren landscape.”  I gave him a bunch of symbols that I wanted him to include, we did a photoshoot and he just ran with it. As always, he made it so much better than I could’ve imagined. That’s how the cover came to be. Nobody was closer to me throughout the process obviously - he saw every single facet from beginning to end. He heard so many of my studio sessions in the house and saw the tracks through from start to finish. He had a very specific window into the process and the way that he displayed that visually was just incredible. 

That’s beautiful, that’s a really rare thing to have and such a cool compliment to the record to have the album art be so creatively tied to the process. 

Definitely, and I felt like when we dropped the album art it was a moment. People were like “oh - this is serious!” [laughs] So it had the desired effect. 

I love it - it’s a whole thesis! A lot of what you’ve shared about this process is about how the healing process has been a cornerstone of the work. You’ve mentioned a lot about ancestry and your roots. What clicked there? How did it influence your writing?

For me it started with that trip to Jamaica. I was picking up on a lot of energy from the land. I got to see the spot where my father grew up. I really felt the presence of my grandmother, who passed many years ago. She was such an incredible, strong woman and such a big inspiration for this project. When I came home from that trip I was really blown away by how intensely I had felt her energy. It was like I was getting these ancestral downloads by being on the land and going to see these places where she had been. I felt even more connected to her in that moment than I did when we were physically together in other parts of my life, which was a really fascinated experience. When I came home I set up an ancestral altar in honour of her. Spending time at that altar – decorating it, sitting at it, in good moments and in harder moments – became such a source of comfort to me over the course of the project. It gave me a lot of strength to draw upon her energy. It gave me what I needed to not compromise on anything and really understand what my mission was. Everything that she had sacrificed for us to be here in Toronto and for me to be here and to have the luxury to do what I do, because being an artist is an extreme luxury in this world. It brought a lot of gratitude and strength into my life that I don’t think I was tapped into before I took that trip. I really credit her energy as a collaborator on this project. 

You’re right that being an artist is a luxury, but it’s also a gift for you and a gift from you! I’m sure your grandmother would’ve felt the same way so that’s really beautiful that she’s been such a stronghold during the process. Thank you for sharing that!

I had a quick glance at what tabula rasa means to try and get my head around it. I know you’ve taken it to symbolize a clean slate and centring yourself and your desires with this record. Something that stuck out to me when I read about the concept is the idea that we’re entirely shaped by our environment so I wanted to flip that and ask you: now that you’re starting from a clean slate and leaving things behind - is there anything that you do want to take with you into your next chapter? 

There’s definitely things I want to take with me. I think a blank slate is a beautiful concept but at this point in my life I’m also an amalgamation of so many different things that I would never take back or want any other way. I think that tabula rasa is more of a moment to tap into: when I’m in my spiritual practice or when I’m meditating I’m really wiping that slate clean every time. Wiping the thoughts clean so that I can be a channel for what wants to come through, but that doesn’t mean that I’m staying empty forever. I think that there’s sometimes this spiritual notion of rejecting everything in this physical realm and I don’t feel that way at all. I love being in the physical realm and I love the material elements of this human experience. I think it’s more of a state of mind to tap into. We can spend time in that empty room or start from a blank slate, but ultimately the joy is in filling it back up. That’s how I feel about that concept and it’s the same way that I think about music: we need that silence underneath to be the foundation in order to create all of those sounds. It’s the same concept to me - creating that space for what wants to come through.