A gig held at Dareshack on Wednesday 13th November. The event starts at 20:00.
Now on the cusp of launching her fourth LP, Oh My God - that’s so me, Okay Kaya (born Kaya Wilkins) is an artist at the peak of ambivalent lyrical mastery. Known for a trademark style of songwriting that juxtaposes the unglamorousness, instinctiveness and emotional toils of the human experience with saccharine sweet, rapturing vocal melodies, she sets forth on a path that more deeply explores all of the above through a meta-examination of language as a concept.
Through acclaimed albums Both (2018), Watch This Liquid Pour Itself (2020) which won the 2021 Spellemann Award for best Indie/Alternative, Surviving Is The New Living (2020), and The Incompatible Okay Kaya (2021), the Norwegian-American musician and artist has built a dedicated following that spans audiences across physical and digital universes. Portraits of Kaya’s laconic wordsmithery have appeared in the form of lyricbots across social media platforms, whilst the fashion world lauds her ability to transmute worlds not only in sound but through vision too, having fronted campaigns for Bottega Veneta amongst others. Kaya has collaborated with artists including Baba Stilz, Onyx Collective, Anne Imhof, Porches, King Krule, Deem Spencer, L’Rain, Austin Lee, and Adinah Dancyger and more, while her most recent release SAP (2022) was entirely self-written, performed, engineered, and produced.
An enduring ability to connect beauty with blunt day-to-day mundanity that strikes Kaya’s songwriting as a once-in-a-generation skill. On Oh My God - that’s so me, Kaya doubles down on the self-realised nature of 2022’s SAP, with much of the composition and production being led by herself, sometimes in perfect seclusion following the move to a new island home last year. Only accessible by boat, the island created a set of limitations, from collaboration opportunities to access to mainland activities, that became a tool for the creation of the record. Alone-time enabled her to abstract concepts of multi-platform existence and the reality of navigating the make-believe in art.
Though made in introversion, the album doesn’t come from a place of personal islanding - Kaya’s new chosen home is the result of a feeling of deja-vu familiarity, the way the light falls and the natural environment taking much the same shape as a childhood spent exploring Norway’s climate, trees and flowers. A sense of destiny befell her decision to relocate to her new-not-new Norwegian habitat. Often beginning the writing process with a mood, or an intention, Oh My God - that’s so me’s opening track “The Wannabe” begins from a point of peace; “I love my mantra, I love my man, I love most everything,” falling into the artist’s ever-present modern day question of outer-expectations versus the inner-sanctum. An artists’ grapple with being ‘perceived’ and the meme-ified relatability to one's work is an ever present theme through the record, in tracks “The Art of Poetry”, “Help! I’ve Been Put into Context” and “Check Your Face” but Kaya’s lyrical instinct this time is shaped by a meta-examination of fiction as the catalyst for human behaviour and the obsoleteness of language itself in a medium where all sound can be meaningful.
Entry requirements: 18+
Through acclaimed albums Both (2018), Watch This Liquid Pour Itself (2020) which won the 2021 Spellemann Award for best Indie/Alternative, Surviving Is The New Living (2020), and The Incompatible Okay Kaya (2021), the Norwegian-American musician and artist has built a dedicated following that spans audiences across physical and digital universes. Portraits of Kaya’s laconic wordsmithery have appeared in the form of lyricbots across social media platforms, whilst the fashion world lauds her ability to transmute worlds not only in sound but through vision too, having fronted campaigns for Bottega Veneta amongst others. Kaya has collaborated with artists including Baba Stilz, Onyx Collective, Anne Imhof, Porches, King Krule, Deem Spencer, L’Rain, Austin Lee, and Adinah Dancyger and more, while her most recent release SAP (2022) was entirely self-written, performed, engineered, and produced.
An enduring ability to connect beauty with blunt day-to-day mundanity that strikes Kaya’s songwriting as a once-in-a-generation skill. On Oh My God - that’s so me, Kaya doubles down on the self-realised nature of 2022’s SAP, with much of the composition and production being led by herself, sometimes in perfect seclusion following the move to a new island home last year. Only accessible by boat, the island created a set of limitations, from collaboration opportunities to access to mainland activities, that became a tool for the creation of the record. Alone-time enabled her to abstract concepts of multi-platform existence and the reality of navigating the make-believe in art.
Though made in introversion, the album doesn’t come from a place of personal islanding - Kaya’s new chosen home is the result of a feeling of deja-vu familiarity, the way the light falls and the natural environment taking much the same shape as a childhood spent exploring Norway’s climate, trees and flowers. A sense of destiny befell her decision to relocate to her new-not-new Norwegian habitat. Often beginning the writing process with a mood, or an intention, Oh My God - that’s so me’s opening track “The Wannabe” begins from a point of peace; “I love my mantra, I love my man, I love most everything,” falling into the artist’s ever-present modern day question of outer-expectations versus the inner-sanctum. An artists’ grapple with being ‘perceived’ and the meme-ified relatability to one's work is an ever present theme through the record, in tracks “The Art of Poetry”, “Help! I’ve Been Put into Context” and “Check Your Face” but Kaya’s lyrical instinct this time is shaped by a meta-examination of fiction as the catalyst for human behaviour and the obsoleteness of language itself in a medium where all sound can be meaningful.
Entry requirements: 18+