During the opening, titular song of Tirzah’s new album Shade of color, a hazy, heavily filtered voice calls somewhere in the ether. “I can’t find, I can’t find the light,” she sings, as strange whistles pierce the amniotic darkness. Tirzah is perhaps known for her loose approach to the genre, having oscillated (among others) between DIY pop, noise and trip-hop over the past eight years. But for fans of his best-known tracks – the spring dance-pop from his album “I’m Not Dancing”, the dancefloor thrills of “No Romance”, the woozy romance of “Holding On” – his latest effort is particularly invigorating.

The word “colourgrade” – a term used by filmmakers and photographers to bring images to the realm of the hyperreal – reminds listeners that to unlock the pleasures of Tirzah’s new record, you have to surrender to its sharper tendencies. and stranger. The English singer’s habit has always been to accentuate the everyday soundscape, in the same way you might add blinding color to a dark photograph. At Color degree, however, his confessional lyrics, as deeply imbued with sentiment as ever, are set on a landscape of coarse sonic textures that defy easy explanation.

Tirzah can’t really explain the weird and alluring chemistry of the record, either. “The lyrics to ‘colourgrade’ were actually kind of a made-up word,” she says. “I had no idea what that really meant in a technical sense; I think I was drawn to it because it seemed like it captured the spectrum of textures on the record. ” Or Devotion had a warmer and more immediate palette, Shade of color arrives as a raindrop-speckled web of half-whispered secrets and repetitive haiku-like stanzas, patchworks to slippery rhythms, occasional bursts of euphoric and whistling synths, and, perhaps most notably, the swish and the ambient clattering from the domestic environment of his London Apartment. It’s as sprawling as it is complex, but for Tirzah it’s the purest expression to date of his inner world.

However, despite all the privacy of his new album, Tirzah is not quite a solo act. “Mica and I have always worked together, I never felt like I had to be the name on the box,” she says. The Mica in question is Mica Levi: the Oscar-nominated composer behind Jonathan Glazer’s scores Under the skin, that of Pablo Larraín Jackie, and that of Steve McQueen Rock lovers. Levi’s career with their own band, Micachu and the Shapes (now called Good Sad Happy Bad), saw them become a cult favorite on the indie and DIY-pop circuit in 2000s London. “It was good to use Tirzah at the time, because we had no foresight that [our collaboration] would become something bigger, ”Tirzah continues. “Then I realized on the way somewhere, Oh, I face it! I think it helps that my name also sounds a bit abstract, however. “

Tirzah and Levi first met as young teenage roommates while studying at the Purcell School for Young Musicians, the UK’s oldest specialist music school, where they became best friends and collaborators. . Levi had been there since the age of nine, while Tirzah joined him at age 13 with his prodigious talent as a classical harpist. It wasn’t long before the couple’s jam sessions turned to something more experimental, and as Levi’s musical career took off and Tirzah worked successfully as a graphic designer, they still found time to do some work. music together whenever the opportunity arose. An unannounced appearance at a 2012 Boiler Room DJ set by Levi that included “I’m Not Dancing” caught the attention of Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, who quickly signed Tirzah for his indie dance imprint. of taste, Greco-Roman.