Tapping into a pop-informed brand of hard dance, the Glasgow-based artist’s music is an outlet for self-discovery.
“That was such a formative experience. It made me aware of other ways of performing aside from just standing behind four CDJs and a mixer playing songs for people to bang their heads to.”
The Glasgow-based artist TAAHLIAH was reflecting on a headline show at London’s Southbank Centre last February, where she collaborated with the London Contemporary Orchestra. “It was very much an experiment,” she added. “I only met the orchestra for the first time on the day of the event, but it was an amazing experience.”
For TAAHLIAH, who’s been playing out and releasing music for just over three years, performing with a live orchestra at such a revered cultural institution is testament to how far she’s come in a short time. Her ability to meld the ecstatic intensity of hard dance with a tenderness and vulnerability more commonly associated with a pop singer-songwriter has won her plaudits far beyond the electronic music world. Whether it’s being featured in The New York Times, making it onto the latest Dazed 100 list or amassing one million views on her Boiler Room, her reputation is rising rapidly.
On a crisp Saturday morning last November, TAAHLIAH and I met up at Pophams, the kind of hyped East London bakery that slings out £6 loaves of sourdough and macchiatos in egg cups. TAAHLIAH, who was in town to play a joint headline show (alongside Logic 1000 and Shampain) at The Cause later that night, said she was undergoing a self-induced bout of sobriety.
“It’s quite jarring, I was drinking and partying for so long that I wasn’t aware of the impact that it was having on my brain,” she said in-between sips of a vanilla matcha latte. “And since I’ve stopped, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole of how to keep my body and mind working at their most optimal level.”
This was the first of several times during our conversation where TAAHLIAH insisted that her artistry always takes priority over fame or finances. In spite of this indifference to stardom, it feels like she’s on the cusp of something bigger. “I’m willing to handle and interact with any level of notoriety if it means getting better at my work,” she said. “I want whatever comes with being known as a great artist, but I’m never going to compromise my work.”
TAAHLIAH’s story begins in Kilmarnock, a small town on the West Coast of Scotland with deprivation levels far surpassing the national average. She struggled to fit in there, characterising her childhood years as semi-reclusive, but during those periods of isolation she poured herself into painting and other artistic endeavours. “It was certainly a developing process,” she said with a wry smile. “Looking back, it really built up my character and helped me withstand a lot. I do feel sad for my younger self now that I’m no longer lonely, but through that isolation I found art and a way of creating. It was character-building, but in all honesty I don’t think I had a great time.”
Despite this adversity, Kilmarnock was also responsible for TAAHLIAH’s first exposure to electronic music—happy hardcore, hardstyle and the PCDJ culture ubiquitous in working-class Scottish communities in the ’00s. This was the original hard dance, music you’d hear blaring from a souped-up Ford Capri or the tinny speaker of a Nokia 3310. It’s no coincidence that these styles of music would go on to directly influence the likes of Danny L Harle, PC Music and the subsequent hyperpop scene (a genre descriptor that TAAHLIAH makes a point of distancing herself from).
“Interacting with that kind of music was always interesting because it’d be something I’d enjoy publicly,” she said. “But then I’d be in my room listening to people like Lana Del Rey, Purity Ring and FKA twigs.”
In many ways, this pop-hard dance pendulum swing has defined TAAHLIAH’s musical output to date, most obviously on her debut EP, Angelica, in 2021. Exploring themes of identity and class, the autobiographical project flits between shimmering pop textures and pummelling beats aimed firmly at the dance floor. Opener “Brave” is an introspective autotune ballad documenting her experience as a Black, trans person. “Been a long time / But I’m trying to be brave,” she sings on the chorus, while swirling, ethereal synths threaten to overwhelm in their euphoria. In contrast, “Transdimensional,” a collaboration with fellow Glasgow-based artist KAVARI, pairs pumping kick drums with ravey synths. “I don’t feel very pretty / A lot of boys like me though,” a voice repeats throughout.
By the time Angelica came out, TAAHLIAH had moved to Glasgow to study painting and printmaking at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art—a life-changing experience. “It definitely took a bit of getting used to,” she said. “My upbringing was so wildly different to the Glasgow School of Art subculture that I became a part of. I was really weird in Kilmarnock, then I moved to Glasgow and was suddenly really normal. It took a bit of time to find myself again in a more authentic way.”
TAAHLIAH referenced this idea on another track from Angelica, “Bourgeoisie.” Exploring the assumption of privilege attached to being a student at somewhere as culturally prestigious as Glasgow School of Art, the line “I’m not your bourgeoisie / Yeah, that’s for sure” floats over a backdrop of pulsating, scattergun beats.
“I was suddenly surrounded by a class bracket that I’d never previously interacted with,” she said. “I’m aware that no one can help who their family is or how much money they make, and I was never resentful of it, but I did feel the stress of having to work a job alongside my studies when most other people on my course didn’t. That said, it was a fabulous experience and something I simply had to do. Going to uni is a very mind-expanding experience at the best of times, but going to Glasgow School of Art, where everyone’s fucking freaks, was a whole different level.”
Going out in Glasgow at that time exposed TAAHLIAH to a fertile, thriving electronic music scene that left an indelible mark on her creative being. The late SOPHIE, whose pop-informed brand of maximalism is TAAHLIAH’s most obvious cultural touchstone, was in her prime. Other major players in the city’s club orbit, such as Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and S-Type, were pursuing a similarly high-energy sound and disregard for convention. While it’s easy to draw a line from these artists to TAAHLIAH, she’s hesitant to call them key influences.
“As much as I was interested in specific artists and styles of music, I was more impacted by the experience of going out in Glasgow and the collective interest it brought,” she said. “I was musically and culturally illiterate when I got to Glasgow. Music was never the subject I was enamoured by at school, it was more visual art. I was aware of what was happening in pop culture but I wasn’t really aware of what was happening in the local scene. I would just go out, party, take drugs and go home. It wasn’t until I started DJing that I became a little bit more aware of the individual players within the scene. But ultimately it was the physicality of going out and the social aspect of it that impacted me more than seeing any specific artists.”
Having lived in Glasgow since 2017 (barring a six-month stint in Berlin), TAAHLIAH has already inspired a new generation of emerging talent. “When I first started DJing, she was one of the first people to really see something in me,” said local DJ Shawna Milligan, AKA Miss Cabbage. “She was also one of the first people to give me a gig, and then I went on to support her on her Ultimate Angels show last year. Her success has definitely encouraged a lot of other trans people to get involved.”
Milligan also praised the impact of The Dolls Discuss, an honest, no-holds-barred podcast documenting the trans experience. “It gives a lot of exposure to certain aspects of our daily lives that aren’t talked about or represented in the media,” she said of the podcast, which TAAHLIAH hosts with her close friend Lourdes.
“The RA one we did a few months ago was so good, but I think we just said so many obscene things that it wasn’t allowed to be published anywhere,” TAAHLIAH said with a chuckle.
Last September, I saw TAAHLIAH play back-to-back with JASSS at Draaimolen Festival. What on paper felt like two DJs whose styles aren’t an obvious fit, ended up being a tour de force of jacking techno, classic trance and raucous pop edits.
“That was the highlight of my summer,” she said. “We’d met about half an hour before we went on, and I was like, ‘So how are we going to do this?’ We agreed to just roll with it and not overthink things–which ended up working out so well. That was the last in a long run of summer shows and I’d almost started to fall out of love with DJing, but that experience really gave me a new lease on life.”
The elegance, poise and intrinsic knack for reading the dance floor conveyed at Draaimolen was evidence of a DJ who’s grown exponentially in recent years. It therefore came as a surprise to hear that TAAHLIAH plans to put it on the back burner. “As I release more records, I intend on taking a step back from DJing,” she said. “I feel very limited by it, which is something I don’t when it comes to art and music. It’s a fantastic avenue, and it’s a skill that I have, but I don’t consider myself a DJ. I consider myself an artist.”
Later that evening, we relaxed in a Whitechapel penthouse with a small group of TAAHLIAH’s friends, listening to Ice Spice on a Bluetooth speaker and sipping on pre-mixed cans of gin and tonic. Eventually we jumped in a taxi along the A1261 to The Cause, a three-story warehouse space in a quasi-industrial corner of East London. Taking over from Shampain, TAAHLIAH immediately upped the tempo, reaching for pitched-up edits of “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit” and Princess Superstar’s “Perfect (Exceeder).” Soon we were heading towards the 170 BPM zone.
This is a scene where the idea of playing solely tasteful music seems positively archaic. Thunderdome-adjacent hardstyle and a turbocharged remix of David Guetta & Sia’s “Titanium” were thrown into the mix with wilful abandon, but what’s lost in functionality was replaced with visceral energy. The densely packed dance floor of Gen-Z ravers, donning Y2K and cyberpunk-reminiscent attire, writhed to the punishing beats. Often unashamedly veering into sensory overload territory, the two-hour sonic onslaught was a candid, emotionally charged form of self-expression. It also featured a handful of cuts from orthogenesis, a 30-track project featuring blistering edits of everyone from Kelela,and Beyoncé to Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez, that TAAHLIAH uploaded to Bandcamp over the summer.
“I just had all this music sitting on my laptop that I needed to get out,” she said. “I don’t really enjoy recycling music. Once I play tracks out a few times I’ll get bored of them and probably won’t play them again.”
This ephemerality doesn’t extend to TAAHLIAH’s forthcoming debut album. Three years in the making, she describes it as a major shift in direction. “None of it is hard dance, for a start,” she laughed. “It’s an amalgamation of electronic and acoustic music, so it takes a bit more effort and time compared to Angelica or the trilogy of songs I released in 2022, which were all created in an enclosed space. It feels more mature and developed than my previous stuff, also more introspective and more emotional.”
With a lauded EP already under her belt, TAAHLIAH’s first album could lead to another significant surge in popularity. However, she rejects the idea of moving in a poppier direction, instead reiterating an unwavering commitment to her craft.
“I don’t really feel like moving towards pop–with the singing and dancing onstage and everything else that comes with it–is authentic to me,” she said. “If more people find out who I am and enjoy my music then I’m happy with that, but honestly, if I could be known for being an amazing musician while also being able to walk down the street with no one knowing who I am, then great. I’ll always prioritise authenticity over notoriety.”
