Kyla La Grange takeover • An introduction to Ashes

I wrote songs as I was growing up, especially as a teenager, but I never really thought about making an album until I was quite a lot older because I never imagined that anyone would want to listen to it. Then six years ago, when I was nineteen, I wrote a song called ‘Vampire Smile’ and it just felt different. I had been going through a very unhappy time, had become very reclusive and lost a lot of confidence, and even though I had always written confessional songs that one song in particular made me realise just how important writing was to me when I was sad. From then on, whenever I was feeling bad, I would always need to write, like a sort of instinctive drive, and I realised how much I wanted to just be able to do this always.

So I started to think about how I would like to record these songs, how they should sound. It’s always quite a tricky thing, to take a song you write alone with one instrument and grow it into something else. For a long time I didn’t know how I wanted them to sound. I found it quite scary, playing around with different sounds, because before you know it you can completely change the original sentiment of the song, which is the last thing I wanted to do. I did know that what was most important to me was that the way the songs were produced should enable them to communicate the intensity of the emotion I felt I at the time of writing. I really wanted people to be able to hear the sadness and anger and hurt, and for there almost to be a sense of melodrama at times – because that it how was when when I wrote all these songs: completely absorbed in those feelings. I’ve never been able to write well unless I am at some kind of extreme emotionally: when I’m happy I can go months without writing a thing.

I met a few producers along the way who were kind enough to record a few of my songs, until I met Marky Bates, who recorded ‘Vampire Smile’ and ‘Lambs’, and Brett Shaw, with whom I recorded most of Ashes. Each time I worked with someone I learned a lot, and gradually became more confident about how I wanted the album to be recorded. I realised I wanted a raw sound: for some mistakes to be left in, for us to record the songs in the room together as a band instead of piecing the parts together one by one, for there to be a mix of male and female vocals, lots of layered reverb-heavy harmonies and guitars in the louder songs, and – most importantly – to retain the intimate, pin-drop moments as a contrast with the big moments.

Ashes was written over a period of about five years, over the course of several relationships, each of which made me see traits in myself that I probably didn’t want to see, and in a sense I suppose the album is a bit of a diary. It still makes me sad to listen to many of these songs, but I see that as a good thing!

– Kyla La Grange