TSHA

TSHA’s eagerly anticipated debut album, ‘Capricorn Sun’, hits the sonic sweet spot every time. A dizzying blend of leftfield electronic production and pop-savvy hooks, it will see her vertiginous ascent continue unabated. Gemma Samways finds the London-based producer in reflective mood as stardom takes hold…

Just back from an intense US tour and staring down the barrel of a 12-hour commute to ION Festival in Albania, Teisha Matthews was crying in the bath when her fiancé finally decided to intervene.

“He was like: ‘I’m gonna call your manager up and tell them you can’t do it,’” the Ninja Tune producer better known as TSHA recalls, speaking over the phone a week later while en route to DJ at The Warehouse Project alongside Disclosure. In the end, she cancelled her show at ION, as well as at Beckenham Place Park two days after, where she was scheduled to perform at a Black Coffee-curated all-dayer. “I was at breaking point, physically and mentally,” she explains matter-of-factly. “Jet-lagged and depressed and struggling with insomnia.”

By her own admission, summer 2022 has been a steep learning curve for TSHA. Honouring touring commitments from before the pandemic, plus the slew of new shows booked off the back of her exponentially growing fame, the London-based producer has spent the last three months zigzagging across the Atlantic, her circadian rhythms in utter disarray. As well as shows at Defected Croatia and DC10 in Ibiza, she’s DJed Lollapalooza in Chicago, Osheaga in Montreal and This Ain’t No Picnic in Pasadena. Her most recent US stint included a four-date support slot with Flume, playing 10,000-seater venues including Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

“The only way to know what your limit is, is to try it,’ she laughs, refreshed from her enforced break. “You know, how many hours you can actually go without sleep. How many flights you can do before your body is absolutely fucked – that sort of thing.

“I mean, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an artist or a manager – in the music industry there is no work/life balance. No one switches off. But some people are absolutely fine with non-stop travelling and late nights. Maybe that’s because some of those people are prone to doing drugs, but I'm not someone that does that. And I'm not even a heavy drinker so it’s not like I can go around propping myself up. Plus I suffer from anxiety anyway, so these conditions just make that a lot worse.”

The way TSHA tells it, this “mini-breakdown” has served as a line in the sand. Going forward, she’s done with unrealistic touring schedules, “even if [promoters are] offering loads of money.” It’s an admirable outlook, even if you get the sense her resolve will be tested quite regularly once her excellent debut album drops.52_DISCO_POGO

Created over the course of the last three years – with selected songs plucked from previous EPs ‘Flowers’ and ‘OnlyL’ – ‘Capricorn Sun’ is a deeply empathetic house collection with an unapologetic pop sensibility, and balances boundless ambition with huge crossover appeal. Ahead of its release, seven of its 12 tracks have already been singles, with the acid-laced euphoria of ‘Dancing in the Shadows’ recently named ‘Tune of the Week’ and playlisted on daytime Radio 1. And yet, for all her commercial clout, TSHA has made no concessions artistically. The results are impressively wide-ranging, incorporating everything from Brit Funk-inspired breakbeats (‘Power’) and sitar-flecked downtempo (‘Time’) to Malian griot music (the Oumou Sangaré-sampling ‘Water’).

Unifying the songs is TSHA’s refreshingly open-hearted outlook, implicit both in her emotive melodies and in her collaborators’ soulful lyrical contributions. That symbiotic relationship is particularly evident on ‘Sister’, an uplifting house track featuring sweeping, Eastern-inspired strings, and built around the refrain: ‘Feels like I’ve just woken up/ And I was always waiting for us.’ It was inspired by meeting her half-sister for the first time, having only become aware of her existence mid-pandemic when their estranged father got in touch.

‘Anxious Mind’ is similarly revealing, seeing singer Clementine Douglas unpicking a panic attack. So is the melancholic, Moderat-esque ‘Giving Up’, which features TSHA’s fiancé Mafro, and was reportedly inspired by a rocky patch in their relationship. Balancing out the shade is a lot of love and light, perhaps best demonstrated in the intimate interlude that opens the album. ‘You’ve gotta have the mandem help you up,’ her close friend Sophie giggles conspiratorially, in a voice note sent during lockdown. ‘That’s what I’m doing to you, hon.’

Looking at TSHA’s achievements, you might think she’s the last producer in need of a pep talk. Since making her debut with the ‘Dawn’ EP back in 2017, her productions have been endorsed by pretty much every major electronic music publication going. As a DJ she’s shared bills with everyone from Four Tet and Bonobo to Maceo Plex, and she currently runs a bi-monthly show on Apple Music called Jackfruit Radio. At the start of this year she curated her own acid house-heavy ‘fabric Presents’ compilation. And that’s before we even get to her remix work for J Balvin, Foals and Lianne La Havas, or her recent collaboration with Diplo and Kareen Lomax on ‘Let You Go’ – currently sitting at 15 million streams.

Not that TSHA ever really stops to take stock either. “I just keep forging forward,” she shrugs. “It's like I'm on a pre-laid path and I'm just following it. And you try not to feel the highs because the higher you go, the lower you fall.”

You could say that TSHA has been in survival mode for most of her life. Born in Fareham, just outside of Portsmouth, she was raised by her mum, after her father left just before her birth. Much of her childhood was marred by racist abuse, which she blames on the small-town mentality of her peers, as well as in wider society.

“Lots of horrible things happened, lots of bullying,” she explains. “I was one of a few brown kids in school and my mum was terrorised for having mixed race kids. The whole family were outsiders. That was one of the main reasons I first fell in love with the idea of London, because the one time I went I saw so many different races and people from different cultures. I was like, that's where I need to be.”

With brothers six and 14 years her senior, TSHA got an early musical education via the oldest, Colton, who DJed garage, house and jungle at local parties and used to practise mixing in the middle of the living room. Later struggling with addiction, he sold off his decks when TSHA was in her early teens, though he kept hold of his records, ultimately gifting them to his sister years later. Meanwhile, at the encouragement of her middle brother, she began experimenting with music production using a cracked copy of Reason, and by her late teens she was DJing local hip hop nights in Fareham.54_DISCO_POGO

It was hip hop that led TSHA to London, to study Dance: Urban Practice at the University of East London. Introduced to house dance via one of the elective modules, she fell in love with the history of house music while researching an essay.

“I realised there wasn't any literature on house dance, but they had written loads about house music and its history in Chicago and New York. So, I read through a lot of stuff about house and rave culture and that really sparked my interest. I fell in love with the idea of these spaces where Queer people and people of colour could be free to be themselves. Clubs were the places people came to let loose and not feel under attack.” to create a community that’s accessible, open-minded, and radical.’

“That's why I love the house music scene and all genres of dance music and club culture,” she enthuses. “They’re basically safe spaces for people to be themselves. And that's why with Jackfruit I’m aiming to be as welcoming and as liberating as possible. Because I definitely didn’t grow up in that kind of space, and I wish I had.”

By extension, TSHA’s very visible success will help pave the way for more female POC producers and DJs. Indeed, she’s already helping the next wave of dance talent by helping mentor as part of Pete Tong’s online DJ Academy. “The more women the better,” she nods. “Because I've definitely

experienced more incidences of prejudice around me being a woman than me being a person of colour.”

For the most part that prejudice has reared its ugly head via misogynistic comments left during live-streamed shows, but there have been in-person incidences at particular parties too. “I had thought the dance world was superinclusive, but in those very male-dominated spaces you just don’t feel welcome as a woman. So the more safe spaces that are created, the more women you’ll have at parties as well as on line-ups.”

TSHA got her own start in production after dropping out of university. Honing her DJ skills with Melody Kane of BBC 1Xtra, she started putting together and sharing an eclectic array of mixes, while making money on the side as an events DJ. And though she’d already begun making house music, her shift towards production happened in earnest after seeing Bonobo play Brixton Academy in 2017. Little did she know that two years later, her song ‘Sacred’ would be selected for Bonobo’s ‘fabric Presents’ compilation, or that by 2021 she would count him as a label mate, having switched from sister label Counter Records for the release of the ‘OnlyL’ EP.

“Signing with Ninja Tune is still the thing I’m most proud of,” she reflects. “It’s beyond what I ever wished for or dreamed of. All I really wanted was to be respected by my peers – that was my main goal. But to get to Ninja Tune – and to get there quicker than I could have expected – that is my personal biggest achievement.

When it comes to drive, TSHA is a self-proclaimed perfectionist. It’s the reason ‘Capricorn Sun’ is such a neat title for her debut, even if deep down she doesn’t really believe in astrology. According to astrologers, the sun in Capricorn equates to “an intense drive for achievement that never lets up – a personal standard of excellence, even if the rest of the world settles for mediocrity.”

So what is TSHA aiming towards? “My ultimate goals are probably not what people think,” she smiles. “Obviously I want to write another album and create a great live show for fans, but really it’s all about prioritising my mental health and happiness. Because making music is where I find my joy.”

With that TSHA signs off to get prepped for the first of three sets at this season’s Warehouse Project. “Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!” she trills, adding with a laugh, it is Saturday, isn’t it?”