FEATURE: Spotlight: Elkka — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Elkka

___________

A D.J, producer, artist and label boss…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert

Elkka is someone who is among the most multi-talented and strongest talents around. Her recent E.P., Harmonic Frequencies, is amazing. Euphoric Melodies, released earlier in the year, is another stunning E.P. I am going to come to the present-day in a bit. Before that, I want to spotlight a DJ Mag. This was at the stage when Elkka released the E.P., Every Body Is Welcome:

“ON ELKKA’s new EP, there’s a slow-burning house track based on a sample of Laurie Anderson, the New York performance artist who had a surprise hit with ‘O Superman’. Everyone wants to know exactly what kind of artist I am, Anderson sighs, as ‘Avant Garde’ builds to a climax: “Who cares?” This is the kind of DGAF attitude — sampled, chopped and placed on a Floorplan-esque pedestal — that sums up where Elkka is at right now.

It wasn’t always this way. The Cardiff-born musician spent many gruelling years behind the scenes, trying to crack the industry as a pop songwriter. But four years after abandoning the studio sessions to go it alone, Elkka has built a miniature empire — producing, DJing, throwing parties and running a label under the banner femme culture. “Laurie Anderson does whatever the fuck she wants,” Elkka explains, chatting from her home in South London. “I’ve always been obsessed with strong, charismatic women who fight for what they want and push the boundaries. I cared for so long about what people thought about me — is the music cool? Are people going to judge me for what I’ve done in the past? So that statement — ‘who cares?’ — was so important for me.”

She’s also borrowed the purring voice of soul singer Eartha Kitt, who appears on the dreamy ‘LVURSLF’ to announce, “I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.” These are the women that power ‘Every Body Is Welcome’, an EP that confirms Elkka’s transformation from peppy dance-pop songwriter to self-taught producer of dancefloor dominators. Her love of classic house is on display throughout, from the tracky intensity of ‘Avant Garde’, with its nod to DJ Pierre’s Wild Pitch remixes, to the acid-tinged celebration of the title track— an astrology-themed call-and-response anthem. What is it about queer girls and horoscopes? Elkka howls in recognition. “I’m always desperately trying to write a queer anthem,” she laughs. “The queer origins of house in Chicago and New York resonated with me so much when I sat down to write. I wanted to make something that was euphoric and celebratory of all of those things.”

Now 30, Elkka spent much of her twenties in recording studios, “rebounding from producer to producer, never feeling comfortable and in control”. She remembers being jealous of the producers in charge of the sessions but lacking the confidence to follow her own path. “That uncertainty allows people to take control from you. They sense that they don’t know yourself,” she remembers. In seven years, she never once worked with a female producer. “At some point I realised this wasn’t going to produce a body of work that was substantial and unique.” So in 2015 she quit the pop sessions and set out on her own “fake it ‘til you make it” journey”.

I would encourage a deep dive of Elkka’s work for anyone that is new. Across her E.P.s and singles, there is so much work one can immerse themselves in. I have watched her videos online and read interviews with her. She is such an engrossing and exceptional talent who will only grow bigger and more popular. I have put social media links at the bottom so that one can follow her. Glamcult interviewed Elkka and gave some focus to her own label, femme culture. They also asked her what it was like being a Queer artist:

“Not to promote unhealthy behaviour, but we when we obsess over something or someone, it’s vigorous and it lasts. And if you’ve recently checked our Spotify favourite artists, you’re perhaps already in the know that our ears (and hearts) cannot take enough of one particular artist: Elkka. More than just your typical, fleeting DJ obsession, the London-based artist is actively building the blocks for a better tomorrow. Last Friday, Elkka released her first record, “Everybody is Welcome”, under her own label femme culture. Alongside its absolute dedication to feel-good vibes, the EP embodies a message of community building for LGBT+ individuals within the music industry, but also for everyone in need of space of freedom and acceptance. Glamcult caught up with Elkka right after the release, for a chat on the urgency of idealism, her recent (and giant) b2b2b with Jamie xx, and pop stars.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert

Diving straight into the deep: you describe yourself as a woman and a queer person. How do these identities interact within you and each other?

It’s a conversation I have with myself regularly, because I put that forward quite clearly and it’s a really big part of my identity. I was having this discussion with myself of how I wanted to be identified as a human being and as an artist, and that seems to be the front of everything I say and do. So, I questioned it for a minute. Do I want to be defined by being a woman and/or being a queer person? Actually, yes. [Laughs] I do, because it informs so much about who I am and about the people I surround myself with, about the things I enjoy, the life I want to lead. I always knew I was a woman, but before realizing I was queer, I was very lost as a human being and had quite a different life. So, in discovering that and finding myself and finding who I really was and not being scared of that, that was such a liberating thing, such an important thing and at the front of who I am. I’m quite proud of that. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I love being a woman and I love being queer.

How would you define queer?

It’s very personal, very specific to each person. For me, I think queer is “other”. I think what’s beautiful about being able to label yourself as queer, if you want to label yourself, is that you don’t actually have to define, specifically, what you are in that bracket. I know I’m queer, but my identity changes, day to day, week to week, month to month of what I am within that bracket, so I love that it gives me freedom as well.

How do you think your label, femme culture, is having a positive impact?

We’re a small label; we just try to positively contribute to the landscape of the music industry and the arts world. Impact feels like such a big word, but I hope we’re having an impact. I think what’s at the heart of what we do, alongside championing women, and womxn, non-binary people and the LGBT+ community, is bring a sense of community. I really feel like London and, generally, society for young people can be quite isolating in some respects, whether it’s through social media or something else. We live a very different life than twenty years ago, and it’s a good thing in so many respects, but I also feel like that sense of community has kind of changed. Part of the reason I set up “femme culture” originally is, alongside championing the mentioned groups and enabling them to create their own platform, that I wanted to connect with real people. I think that our parties and events represent the heart of what we do. We want everybody to feel included; we’re fighting for balance for everybody. It’s called “femme culture”, but in some way that doesn’t cover what we really stand for, which is for everybody to have their place and space, and feel welcome. I hope we have a small impact to encourage that way of thinking and being.

Do you remember the moment when you decided, “I’m going to start this label”?

The moment this thought process started was probably when I was going to a Jamie xx concert in Brixton, in London, with my girlfriend. He’s someone who I really admire. I just came from another session with another producer, you know the 100th one, just going there and writing these “OK” tracks, but not feeling really heard or like I was progressing as a solo musician. I was doing well as a writer, but my own artistry was getting lost completely, and I just cried, I completely broke down. I was like, “This isn’t working, I can’t do this, I’m not going anywhere”. I was aware enough to realize that this wasn’t going to work like this, so something had to change. We didn’t go to see Jamie xx. I couldn’t see him and I felt like I couldn’t go listen for two hours to someone I really admire so much, but feel so far away from. So, we didn’t go. Next day, I started producing for myself and that was really the beginning of me as an artist. Then, I spent a year putting the EP together alongside a friend of mine. I then found a distributer, but they need you to put a name of your label. I didn’t even think of the fact that I was setting up a label, but on paper I was. Like with everything I do, it has to have some thought behind it. If something’s going to represent me, even if it’s a label name, I really want it to be meaningful. And I stumbled across femme culture, it seemed to represent me as an artist and I knew that I wanted to do something beyond myself. So, that’s how it came about and it blossomed from there. It became obvious that it should be some kind of collective, a community, and that it should be for people that we’re trying to represent as well. That was kind of a turning point for me.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert

How was coming to age in London for you?

I came to London straight. [Laughs] I didn’t know who I was at all. I guess the first few years of living in London I lived a very different kind of life. What London allowed me to do was to tap into a community of people that were similar to whom I was becoming. I grew up in Cardiff, which is a fair-sized city in Wales, and I studied in Bath, which is also quite small. I had friends that thought very differently from how I did, and the more I discovered who I was, the more I realized how different our paths were going to be. Slowly finding people with whom you connect with, that make sense to you as a human being, was the most incredible thing. Now, I’m very lucky to live in a city where I have lots of great friends, a girlfriend too; it’s a great place to be creative, it’s very cosmopolitan and I need that in my life. I want to be somewhere where everybody is welcome, ha! [Laughs]. Oh, that was so bad. I come from Jewish immigrant grandparents and it really resonates with me being somewhere, where everybody can find a place, especially now more than ever, with what’s going on in the UK and everywhere else in the world. So, I guess London gave me that freedom.

I am going to end with a recent NME interview. Before that, I would steer people towards the new E.P., Harmonic Frequencies. The reviews I have seen of it are very positive and glowing. Even though her music mixes House, Electronic and other genres, it is dreamy and physical. There is something in there for any music fan. This is what Resident Advisor had to say about one of the best E.P.s of this year:

“Dance music's capacity to heal is a real thing. Artists like Elkka are in the business of harnessing and redirecting energy at will, and at their best they can shift the mood of a room with the flick of a wrist (or the turn of a knob). "Harmonic Frequencies," the title track from her upcoming EP, is pure euphoria bottled into a skippy house cut. "With this track, I think you can feel the pent-up energy that exploded out of everyone when we were able to reunite and dance together again," Elkka says in the liner notes. It's a musical oasis, one that appeared to her in a desert of pandemic-induced inactivity”.

I want to finish with that NME interview. One can tell how instinctive music is to Elkka. She creates this whole world with her sounds. You can get lost in what she puts out! Among other things, Elkka was asked about club culture and euphoria:

“For Elkka, making music is so ingrained in her that she thinks it’s somewhere in her DNA. “I remember sitting in a car with my best mates, we were probably 11 or 12, and I was trying to explain the concept of – I know music is what I’m gonna do, but where is this coming from?” In the same way that people talk about a vocation to become a doctor, the Cardiff-born producer always knew she was going to be a musician: “I really can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says. “I think that has kept me going to this point. There were moments where I could’ve easily gone and chose a different path that would have been so much more comfortable and less traumatic, but that deep-down feeling of this is what I’m meant to be doing has kept me moving forward.”

Where previous EPs for Local Action [India Jordan] and the femme culture label she co-runs put vocal samples front and centre, ‘Euphoric Melodies’ uses them more subtly for texture and to evoke feeling. ‘Alexandra’, a track dedicated to Elkka’s girlfriend, builds gradually with meandering synths and UK garage-like vocal chops. The entire record glints with flashes of melody and pointillist rhythms, just like a DJ set that keeps you locked in. Closer ‘Morning Fuzz’ then plays out like a shutters-up end of the night anthem for when the sun peeks in.

When she started work on it, before the pandemic kicked in, Elkka had been interested in the idea of euphoria: “What moments when I’m writing something, or DJing, what does it do for me? Why do I get that feeling?” But all the things that had previously made her feel good, not only music, but touch, intimacy, family and friends, were taken away. She tears up when talking about her mum, whose name is proudly tattooed on her arm, lovingly describing her as a “pioneer” and a “hero”. The EP, then, became about missing the things we previously took for granted.

For years, Elkka forged a different path before making the boundary-pushing electronic music she does today, that stands up next to the likes of Four Tet, Kelly Lee Owens and Floating Points, who have all championed her work. She’d always wanted to be a pop star, idolising Britney when she was little (“free Britney!” she adds), and started out vocaling dance-pop tracks. But over the years the producers she worked with were almost entirely male, and she came to realise that she’d rather be doing their job. Her own production journey was a process of growing self-belief and of rejecting the internalised message that producing and DJing was for boys.

Adequate representation to Elkka is vital, as a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community. The queer origins of house music in Chicago and New York resonated with her and the dancefloor played a huge part in her coming out and accepting her sexuality. “I was actually quite a uptight teenager and young adult, because I wasn’t very comfortable in my own skin, and probably repressing the fact that I was a queer woman,” she says. When she moved to London in her 20s, a housemate took her to her first proper rave with thousands of people. It was a pivotal moment. “I loved it,” she glows.

Discovering club culture coincided with her discovering who she was: “Because with raving, you’re connected in more ways than you realise. You’ve chosen to be there because you like the music, the kind of people there, the space… That gave me the confidence to be who I was, and not repress it any more”.

A tremendous composer, D.J. and artist, go and follow Elkka and invest in her work. She is someone I discovered recently, but I have been really affected by her music. She can produce music and sounds that are so transformative and emotional. She is a sensational talent who will be around and making brilliant music…