Emotional Healing and Blackouts: Ney Liqa Shares The Inspiration Behind Her Multi-Sensory EP
emotional healing and blackouts: Ney Liqa shares the inspiration behind her multi-sensory eP
Tiffi Malmgren (otherwise known as Ney Liqa) talks to Tummy Ache about her visual EP Fade2Black, how she is navigating the music industry as an artist who doesn't crave fame, and how writing music helped her process the trauma of losing her father.
Anna Morrissey
Still from Fade2Black, Simone Beyene
I stumbled upon Ney Liqa on instagram and was immediately intoxicated by her imagery. Her instagram persona alone felt like a playful, sarcastic, yet utterly beautiful display of creative freedom and exploration, and I knew I needed to know more. I entered into her visual EP not knowing what to expect. Made in collaboration with her housemate and best friend Simone Beyene, this immersive EP is an incredible display of the groundbreaking creativity that came out of having to adapt to isolation. Tiffi describes it as a “reflection of the time,” fulfilling our mutual desire during lockdown to be immersed and taken outside of ourselves and our bedrooms.
“ I think when people click into it they don’t know what to expect and i think that makes it even better.”
“What was the inspiration behind the EP?” I ask. She begins by explaining the practical side of writing the album, exchanging demos with a friend during lockdown, “He’d send me some instrumentals, i’d write on it, and i’d send some ideas and he’d rework them. It was just back and forth, back and forth, and then it was kind of finished after 2 months.” She undersells herself a bit, brushing off how much hard work would have actually gone into these months of creating.
Isolation created a unique opportunity for self-reflection, she reveals. “We were just stuck at home. It was so much alone time that made me think about so many things that i hadn’t process yet. The first track is called blackout because I am very prone to blackouts when I get drunk. I got my first one when I was 16 and I ended up in a hospital, it’s always been prominent. In 2016 I used to go out every single day but I don’t remember a lot, and that’s kind of weird because I had this whole life and all of these memories that I don’t remember but other people remember about me. So it’s kind of about that and how people can be angry at you for things you don’t remember and you have to be sorry but you don't remember being sorry because you don’t remember it. It’s only my fault but it’s a real situation, and you only get it if you’ve ever had a blackout and done something stupid. And I ended up doing multiple things that were stupid.”
Tiffi explains that writing songs has often acted as a way for her to process her emotions.
“I’ve never been one of those people who is like ‘I can’t breathe if I don’t do music,”
she admits. But music has been helpful to her when going through painful things; “The first project I ever made completely by myself was after my dad passed away, and that was really really really helpful. If you’re writing lyrics or whatever you can stop when it feels too much and focus on a specific snare sound and sit and do that for a second. It also became this celebration of my feelings which is nice. I was just sitting at home and cried for 6 months and a lot of times you have a hard time remembering things when you’re that sad, so it is good to be like, oh ok, I have this as a memory of some sorts.”
Not signed to a label, Tiffi releases projects as and when she wants to and has previously worked alone. However, Fade2Black was made in collaboration with the very talented Simone Beyene. “How was the creative process working with someone else?” I ask. “We’re best friends and we live together,” Tiffi explains, “she’s the first person that has taken a picture of me that I don't hate. She was the one who suggested to make this whole entire visual project.” Living together, and creating together over lockdown didn’t come without its challenges, “It was really fun” says Tiffi, “She is very very creative and she’s also very quick. We’re quite similar in the way we bounce ideas. The only problem was that I was so deflated from being stuck inside that I was quite moody whenever she would try to like, say let’s do a shoot today! And I was like ughhhhh. I'm a dog, I have to get out and move around and come back and then I'm fine.” I ask about her decision to not sign to a label, “you make and produce everything yourself, do you do this in order to resist commercialisation?” Tiffi explains that she has lots of friends who are signed, and seeing how the industry treats artists has put her off,
“loads of people who don’t even understand your music are trying to put a finger in the pot and say “you should do this and that” and it seems absolutely nauseating.”
The landscape of the music industry seems to be changing, and moving away from the need for labels, “it’s an old concept at this point.” Tiffi says she is perfectly happy “to sit and make my music and release it when I want to release it, and play some shows when I want to play some shows.”
Still from Fade2Black, Simone Beyene
While the music industry is changing, the ability for an artist to succeed is becoming more and more linked to fame and branding. “I don't think i’ve ever been one of those people who’s been like, oh i want to be like Beyonce, or i want to be famous.” Tiffi says in reaction to my question about her relationship to fame, “We all grew up hearing you can be a creative, you can make money off of that, and I don’t necessarily think that’s true, you need to find something else as well. Unless you want to become this ad person, sponsored by brands.” Social media is built upon the idea that everyone can be famous, and everyone is their own brand which provides an element of creative freedom, but it also positions a random audience as a constant indicator of your talent and self worth which can be extremely damaging for young artists. “To see a lot of the musicians on there [Tiktok] struggling, it’s very sad. They have to think of trends, and content and make songs that fit into this 15 second time limit… In the olden days - there were lots of artists then that didn’t do interviews and just made their music, played their gigs and sold their music. They didn’t need brand deals, they didn’t need to sell their stuff,” Tiffi muses. There has always been nostalgia for a time before, when things were ‘easier,’ but the commercialisation of music definitely feels distinctly different from the bohemian scenes of the past. “ Now you can’t just make music and sell that music because nobody buys the music. So you have to be commercialised to make money.” “I think a lot of the aversion to that selling yourself thing is because I'm so influenced by my parents. He [Her father] was the kind of person that, if someone liked a painting or something, he would give it to them for free.”
Fade 2 Black was released in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. Like many people creating during lockdown, Tiffi felt removed from the outside world and didn't know what to expect from the reception of the EP. “ I was like oh whatever, it’s out and I felt content with it being out.” But the reception was good, “my mum said she’s proud of me and stuff.” “It kept trickling in throughout the year, people were really excited about the project Simone made because it was super cool and people hadn’t seen something like this before.” I ask her if anything surprised her about the public reception to something so personal she had created. “Someone wrote to me like ‘thank you so much for doing this project, it felt like i was driving at night time and i haven't felt that way in a really long time.’ kindness from strangers, you don’t get it often and I'm very suspicious of it, especially when it comes from men [laughs]. Theres been a lot of men actually, that’s a weird thing. I was talking to Simone about it, lots of men! My Spotify, I can see how many men vs. women and I think it’s like 55% men, which isn't a lot over but it’s still interesting.”
A self confessed chaotic creative, Tiffi shares that she struggles when it comes to routine. “I will sit down and I'll just start with something, and then listen to something and then something glitches and I'm like oh that’s cool let's start with that. It’s very much unorganised. It is chaos. I wish there was some structure because then it would be easier to know when I will make the next song.” Despite this she seems to be very productive, her Zoom backdrop is cluttered with creative projects. “I have a note there that says ‘stop looking at it as a chore but as a ritual’ that my friend put up.” I can definitely relate to this. I explain to her that for months my work has been feeling like a chore and finally I'm finding joy in it again and it’s so refreshing. “Yeah,” she agrees, “it will be like 20 shit projects, nothing comes out of it, they’re all just labeled random keys on my keyboard. And then one day I will just sit down and write one song, start to finish and it’s done in 20 minutes and I think that’s what makes it worth it.”
What’s next for Ney Liqa? Still in her final year of uni, Tiffi explains that she is aiming to finish her dissertation this month. She is releasing a single in May, with two features which she seems very excited about, “it’s different from the last project, but it’s fun.” She is aiming to have another EP finished for the Autumn, “the last EP was very electronic, and I want it to be back to my shitty guitar.”
As we both sign off our zoom call, I feel inspired by Tiffi’s energy and grateful for her openness. Her decision to remain unsigned and uncommercial makes sense, I was enraptured by her image and music because it was like nothing I had ever seen before.
Still from Fade2Black, Simone Beyene