Tara Lily has a gift for articulating the hardest truths. Turning what often goes unsaid into melody – unpicking mysticism, secrets and the inner psyche through a cosmic blend of jazz, DnB, soul, RnB and electronica. That eclectic sound is rooted in an eclectic upbringing: a childhood soundtracked by the reverberation of Scottish punk and Bengali folk music, growing up in South London with musician parents in a home that echoed with everything from rock ’n’ roll to 1940s swing. Those influences converged on her debut album, Speak In The Dark, a record that felt immersive, intimate and otherworldly, and was followed by Quiet Nights, an EP produced alongside King Krule and mastered by Dom Valentino: a four-track descent into Lily’s hypnotic soundscape, created in the twilight hours and made to be listened to as night falls.

Ella Joyce: How did your relationship with music first come to be?
Tara Lily: My mum’s a Scottish punk singer, and my dad was a Bengali folk musician. I grew up in South London with my musician parents at a time in South London where there were a lot of interesting things happening in the music scene. I [then] studied jazz at a conservatoire, and I worked with a lot of people in my community and in my scene. I got into electronic music and played jazz to create my own sound.

EJ: How did South London shape that sound?
TL: South London has a big melting pot of sounds. When I grew up there, it was quite a rough area, and not a lot of people wanted to live there. There was a new wave of musicians growing up there and then there were also a lot of artists that had started to come to the area, so you had a [diverse] mix of people, which was really nice and that created a lot of unique sounds and experiences.

EJ: I imagine seeing that shift over recent years must have been really interesting. What kind of artists did you listen to in those formative years?
TL: I listened to a lot of jazz artists. I used to mainly listen to jazz and swing music when I was quite young, and learn a lot of standards. I also used to listen to a lot of my parents’ music, so punk, folk, rock. All of those influenced my sound at quite an early age. Then I wanted to get a deeper understanding of jazz, so I went to study it.

EJ: I think it’s always interesting how the records we listen to growing up hold a sense of nostalgia, and then how they go on to recur in our lives. Recently, I’ve been listening to Jamie xx’s In Colour, and it instantly takes me back to being fifteen or sixteen when it was first released ten years ago. Are there any records or songs which hold that sentiment for you?
TL: PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, is definitely a record that I come back to a lot. My mum first showed me that record more than ten years ago. Or, Bat for Lashes, they are records I listened to ten or fifteen years ago, and listening to them now definitely takes me back to that time of being super young and super interested in that sound.

“If you just release a record and you don’t perform it, does that record really exist?”

EJ: Your latest release, Quiet Nights, is a really considered body of work. Could you tell me a little bit about the story behind those tracks?
TL: Those tracks are a collection of demos, and some of them have come out, some of them are never going to come out. Some of them are lost in time, but I guess those are the ones that fit together for that project. They’re a collection of tracks from a very deadly quiet and beautiful period of time in my life. A lot had stopped outside, and it was a very dark and wintry kind of vibe. I was listening to a lot of Bossa Nova, and how they would use a lot of close mic recording, and everything would be quite quiet and whispery. That was part of the influence for the musicality and the vocal delivery of those songs, then the production had a bit more of a gritty vibe, but also soundscape-y, [with] some traditional jazz chords in there. It was a nice mix to create something not so polished, but still quite beautiful.

EJ: There’s a real sense of space in the album, with sounds building from different areas – the static, the reverb. How do you see your voice interacting with the instrumentals?
TL: I see my voice as part of the soundscape. It weaves in and out of the production like a dream.

EJ: What is your routine like during the writing and recording process?
TL: Up and down, I have ADHD, so routines are difficult for me. Sometimes I write lots of songs and then other times I take long breaks where I’ll just play my synths.

EJ: Night seems to be a key inspiration for you in both lyrics and sounds.
TL: Night is where you find stars. Things that go unseen, things that hide in the dark. Feelings, dreams, fears, secrets.

EJ: Releasing a record is a very personal thing. Does touring and an audience reaction instantly come to mind? Or do you prefer to sit with the record for a bit before getting on stage?
TL: Touring is just an integral part of releasing a record. If you just release a record and you don’t perform it, does that record really exist? It just exists on the internet. I’m very old school like that. I want to go out and play gigs and connect with my fans, and that’s tough. You’ve got to sell tickets, and sometimes that doesn’t work. To get on the road is very tricky, especially with a band; it can be a lot. A lot of the tour that I went on was just back-to- back dates. So, it’s fly to one place, load everything out of the airport, take it to the venue, unpack it, soundcheck it, perform it, load it back, go to sleep, fly to the next place. Every day would be exhausting, but I love to perform the songs I make. Art needs an audience, and we can’t just rely on the internet to be our audience.

EJ: You’ve toured across India, Nepal, Hong Kong and Thailand, places which are less common for UK artists. Could you tell us a bit about that decision and what it was like performing in those countries? 
TL: I played at one of the oldest jazz clubs in Kathmandu called Jazz Upstairs, it was a brick building with a massive fireplace in the middle, and people were smoking inside. There were flowers all around my piano and 100 traditional Mora woven stools. There were pictures of Sting and his guitar on the wall from when he visited there in the 80s. I felt it was important to connect with my heritage and my fans in these places, as well as it being exciting touring outside of the usual cities.

“I see my voice as part of the soundscape. It weaves in and out of the production like a dream.”

EJ: You’ve played a lot of festivals this past year, too. How does that differ? Are there any standout shows from the year that you really loved? 
TL: At Glastonbury, I played a synth and sitar experimental set of Speak In The Dark. I had two synths, then I had my sitarist, and we were on one of the tree stages, which is like a surround sound – it’s very beautiful. I like those kinds of gigs, because a lot of people who come to those stages are quite deep listeners. For Glastonbury, I curated a set that would work for that sound, for that stage, for that setup, for the listeners in that area. I felt like that was a really beautiful moment. But then I also have gigs that are quite upbeat, and people really want to feel connected and want to dance. 

EJ: I was watching some of your music videos, and we see the Hindu goddess Kali Ma in the video for Double Time. Can you tell us the role that figure plays in your sound? 
TL: Kali Ma is a goddess of creation and destruction, and somebody that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from as a female archetype within South Asian culture. It’s someone I’ve tapped into a lot, whether it be through Kundalini yoga, through improvisation, or through my political activism. It’s a female archetype that I am heavily inspired by. 

EJ: Speaking of yoga and activism, are there any other things outside of music that feed you creatively? 
TL: Almost everything for me is music. That’s what I’ve always done, that’s the family that I was born into. That’s the friendships and the relationships that I have in my life. But outside of that, I do enjoy being in nature and grounding myself, doing yoga, swimming, cooking and having nice food. When I’m on tour, I feel quite a lot of high energy, and then I feel low energy, and so I like to have a lot of activities that are grounding for me outside of my music. 

EJ: Your music videos have an ambient quality and feel really reflective of the universe your music creates, where do those concepts stem from? Does the idea come while writing, or is it something that comes secondary? 
TL: It always is the music first. I create a sound, song, a vibe, and then once we have that track, or once that song is definitively something, then I’ll take that into a visual world, however that comes through. 

EJ: Finally, I wanted to talk to you about your sophomore record. What can we expect – how has your sound evolved? 
TL: The next record is definitely going a bit darker. The sound is going a bit more left, and the themes are more touching on monsters, in a surrealist kind of way. It’s drawing on those dark people and monsters that we have in the world right now.