The Life That I Choose

Syd “Shake Em Off”

“Shake ‘Em Off” reminds me a lot of Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s mid-‘90s material, at least in that it’s got this very similar push-and-pull between lushness and minimalism; warm sensuality and aloof distance; clever artsiness and pop hooks. Syd’s voice is very much at home in a track like this – there’s always a lot of shades of ambiguity in her phrasing, so Hit-Boy’s production makes that an asset rather than a liability. It is interesting that Syd’s singing about being sure of her decisions and confident that she’s about to become a star, but the overall tone of the music is quite ambivalent. I don’t think she’s undermining her self-belief, but I do think adding these shades of uncertainty feels emotionally true.

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Letherette “Villim”

“Villim” sounds like it should be soundtracking a sequence in a movie that’s dark and frightening, but also a bit surreal. A late night journey, an encounter with something alien, lost in a forest. Something like that. The string parts – sampled, I’m guessing, but I have no idea – are overtly cinematic, but the magic in this is the way they’ve chopped up these chiming sounds so it sounds quite lovely, but clipped up just enough to feel slightly unstable.

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