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 Growing up in a South East London neighbourhood was the perfect background to start a life in music, ANDREYA TRIANA tells CHRIS PICKERING.
“I was surrounded by music and all kinds of culture – Jamaican influences, African influences. For a little two year old who needed no encouragement to jump up on a table and perform for everybody, it was fantastic.”
Andreya has a lovely speaking voice with a very nice English accent (which I am a bit of a sucker for), so I already hang on her every word like an enraptured schoolboy. But then there is her singing voice. It was this voice that brought much attention as the feature vocalist on her collaboration with Flying Lotus’s Tea Party Dancers – released back in 2007 and hailed as an instant classic, receiving airplay on Annie Mac’s famous Radio One show, amongst many others. Now she is preparing to release her debut album Lost Where I Belong, which she recorded with producer Bonobo over the course of 18 months in his East London studio.
“Well, we had many mutual friends,” as Andreya explains how they met, “and he knew me from Tea Party Dancers. He was getting an award for Album of the Year at the Worldwide Music Awards, and his usual vocalist couldn’t make it so he asked me. I was so, so nervous; I think I actually got really drunk, but it went well and he loved it. We struck up a friendship and he was really interested in working together. I didn’t actually think he was being serious, you know. I thought he was just being polite. But I sent him some demos and he said ‘Let’s do it, let’s do it’, so we started recording an EP, which soon became an album.”
The album is a refreshing mix of nu-soul meets mellow London R&B, and at the forefront of it all is that glorious voice. Triana also wrote all the songs herself – she began writing seriously when a forced period of introversion took place as her family moved away from South East London to the Midlands when she was 14. She found new inspiration in old ‘60s and ‘70s soul records, and within a few years began attending open mic nights at her local pub and garnering the attention of more than a few music industry folk – including booking agents. Her big break came when her handwritten application – “I used lots of colouring pencils”, she giggles – to be a part of the Red Bull Academy 2006 in Melbourne was successful. There she met Flying Lotus and other now-famous musician/producers such as Theo Parrish and Mr Scruff, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So while we may not be seeing Andreya performing live on our shores anytime soon (though she enthuses “I would absolutely JUMP at the chance to go to Australia again, and you never know what might happen”), for now we can enjoy the sounds of Lost Where I Belong on our personal stereos and involuntarily sigh as we listen to that beautiful voice.
ANDREYA TRIANA’S debut album LOST WHERE I BELONG is out now through Inertia. Check her out at www.myspace.com/andreyatriana.
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