ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Tiiva
MUSIC PRODUCER
Upcoming Event: 19 June 2025
Tiiva – you & i (Album Listening Party)
We are really psyched to be hosting Tiiva so they can showcase their debut album for us here in Kendal. The last time they played a set down at No-Hands Rest it was some of the nicest, hardest & interesting music we’ve heard in a long time. So, if you’re looking to hear some exceptional art, performed live by Tiiva, then you know what to do. The event is free, but we will be taking donations on entry for Medical Aid to Palestine.
Words from Tiiva
You and I is a song made from recordings I collected in a cave in the Lake District, mixed with hyper-synthetic sounds that I reworked, along with chopped-up vocals and synthetic bass. I wanted this track to dance a bit more and to create a song that felt joyous, coming into your own identity—which, as a non-binary producer, is something I've been discovering more. I wanted to use sampled vocals where I felt like it was storytelling. My voice is there in the album but only in the intro and some verses; the main drops are led by a kind of curated 'pop band', where I select and modify sampled vocals to create a story, using snapshots of words and phrases.
I wanted an album that felt quite 'hook'-driven, but with the elements of folk and ambient sounds I've enjoyed making in the past. The song hook itself is the main vocal chop I made that holds more feeling. I really like the idea of creating emotion with the chops and silences in between the phrases, and letting the singing be a bridge or lead, where someone listening can enjoy the 'non-words' part just as much.
The different songs are stories told by different voices. There’s no discernible identity, but they're all inspired by friends and collective stories I've heard in the queer community. I wanted to blend the voices to realise a genderless experience—a collection of songs that could read as a collaboration. The album is a musical picture of what I see as colourful euphoria to escape into. I wanted to explore themes around my own non-binary discovery, so I wanted to tell stories and create moods using other voices, reworking them to sound like a non-gendered entity.
The album is about self-identity and about finding joy in wild landscapes. I used a combination of chopped-up vocal samples, heavy basslines, a more dance energy, and fun. I wanted to make something entirely self-produced without centring the album around my voice, but more around production ideas, drawing inspiration from AG Cook and Oklou in particular.
I wanted to create songs for specific moods—songs to dance to, fall in love to, break up to—a cyclical journey of how it feels to be human: in love, anxious, aware, not aware. I wanted to make something that feels hopeful and feels to listen to how making music feels—so a kind of sonic therapy, which making music always has been for me. The album is a kind of tongue-in-cheek nod to sampling and recording, mixing field recordings that I did in a cave in the Lake District with the most aggressive and hyper-pop sounds. Mixing vulnerable-sounding vocals with heavier drum samples, I wanted to tell a story of the complexities of being a human who changes, moves, learns, and discovers.