“Carefree, not careless” is how Tirzah describes her creative partnerships with Mica Levi and artist and DJ Coby Sey. Lately, the south-east London trio has been working on the Essex-born singer’s much-awaited follow up to Devotion – an album obsessed over as a prototype for imperfectly perfect modern pop. While Tirzah and Mica, known affectionately to each other as ‘Taz’ and ‘Meeks’, met as kids at Purcell School for Young Musicians, Coby’s role has blossomed since Devotion, for which he contributed a few tracks. On Tirzah’s new LP Colourgrade, the trio has collaborated to build a world of heady, lovestruck vignettes that are both soft and rough in texture. It’s music that feels equally at home through the soundsystem of a sweaty basement club night as it does through headphones in an intimate moment of reflection.
In real life, Tirzah is to sum up Coby’s essence in the new and improved grouping, she lands on him bringing “the knowledge”. “[He’s] one resourceful library, Coby is,” she says, nodding to her collaborator’s far-reaching knowledge of a wide range of musical genres. And from the way their latest work morphs to embody a wealth of different sounds, palettes and emotions, it’s no surprise that his encyclopaedic musical brain would come in handy.
