Aziya by Jake Evans
UK-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Aziya shares her new single “party’s over.” Co-produced by Aziya and Grammy award winning producer John Hill, the infectious upbeat track is a strong statement of intent from the young Londoner and teases a larger project set to arrive later this year. The duo create an infectious song that conjures images of late night frenzy. Aziya creates a bittersweet portrait of the mental turmoil of a missed connection. A vulnerability that is perfectly contrasted with the driving, new-wave inspired backbone of the production. The track ends on a slower and more somber note as she realizes the connection is lost.
Aziya explains the thought process behind the track: “It’s about seeing someone in the crowd and all of your fantasies and intentions and lust is on that person from the moment you see them, an instant attraction but the inability and lack of being able to approach them. So you play at the ‘confident you’ walking up to them in your head. And by the time the party’s over you go home and realize you didn’t get that persons number and you didn’t ask them so they’ll forever just be a ghost, a memory in head and a thought of what could have been.”
This release follows on from Aziya’s second EP LONELY CASTLES, which arrived late last year. The four track project which included singles “atomic,” “chain” and the self-produced “wundagirl.” It possessed a wistful quality present in the greatest rock artists, LONELY CASTLES was Aziya’s triumphant answer to internal and external pressures.
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Since emerging with the alternative indie smarts of searing debut single Slip! in 2021, London artist Aziya has elevated herself from a promising newcomer into a rising star with a strong grip on exactly who and what she wants to present to the world. Having showcased an enviable mastery of the guitar since her earliest days posting riff-heavy, one-woman-band covers of everyone from PJ Harvey to Jimi Hendrix on TikTok (and gaining millions of likes, alongside praise from Grimes, H.E.R and more along the way), she’s spent the past three years adding more and more strings to her bow.
Across two EPs — 2021’s We Speak of Tides and last year’s LONELY CASTLES — Aziya has determinedly fleshed out her vision, leveling up her skills as a producer and bringing the “new wave-influenced, dark, post-punk world” that she loves to life in increasingly clear fashion. And now comes “party’s over,” the first single from a forthcoming project that marks her most fully-realized work yet. “I saw on ‘LONELY CASTLES’ that people were really responding for the first time,” she says. “Before, people really loved the covers I was making, which was great. But now people aren’t going ‘What’s that Tame Impala song?’, they’re asking, ‘What’s that Aziya song?’”
Growing up in the sort of open-minded household that would play System of a Down, Santigold and The Stone Roses with equal enthusiasm, Aziya picked up a guitar aged 10 and started to pen her own material shortly after. After graduating school, Aziya found herself in sessions where her tastes and ideas were being ignored. “I remember leaving one particular session thinking, ‘I’m gonna get my guitar playing and producing to a point where I’m able to express myself as a musician the exact way I want to’,” she explains.
Since then, that ethos of working hard to make yourself undiminishable has been at the heart of her outlook. She describes We Speak of Tides as “me saying, ‘Hey guys, you might not think I’m going to make guitar music but that’s exactly what I’m going to do, and here are five different genres within guitar music that I’m going to dip my toe in to prepare you for what’s gonna come next’.” LONELY CASTLES, meanwhile, was a hands-on exercise from start to finish, “from the production to the creative to even distributing it I was involved in it. I didn’t have a life for a while, and I’m OK with that!” she laughs.
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