It is a typical winter day in London: chilly and gray with the damp doing its greatest to seep into your bones. Nonetheless, Takiaya Reed is beaming. Because the driving power behind anti-colonial doom/drone behemoth Divide And Dissolve, she’s been delivering chest-crumpling heaviness and flights of unbridled pleasure for one of the best a part of a decade.
Past being a formidable riff-wielder, although, she’s additionally a classically skilled saxophonist – one who’s presently placing the ending touches to her first symphony for the BBC Live performance Orchestra. “My total life I’ve needed to jot down a symphony, and now… I’ve,” she smiles.
We catch up whereas she takes a break from composition, feeling considerably responsible for breaking her focus. “It’s one thing I felt known as to do,” she explains. “I’m so excited to do it once more – now I simply need to write symphony quantity two, as a result of I’m studying a lot and there are issues that I might like to do in a different way subsequent time. I hope there’s a subsequent time.”
Takiaya is crackling with pleasure, and her enthusiasm is completely infectious. She was contacted, seemingly out of the blue, to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified Reside, an formidable occasion that sees three outlier artists commissioned to compose or reinterpret music for efficiency at London’s Queen Elizabeth Corridor.
“They’re so amenable to serving to you obtain what you need to obtain,” she says. “They didn’t have a choir and I requested for a choir. As a result of my music is so low and heavy, I requested for a tuba… and I bought a tuba.”
The headcount tops out at round 60 world-class musicians, what with the orchestra, choir, tuba, conductor and Takiaya herself on soprano sax.
“I’ve bought all of this to work with and it’s superior,” she says delightedly. “Once I’m composing for Divide And Dissolve I hear all these devices in any case, I’m simply condensing it down for 2 folks. Right here, I used to be given the chance to be extra expansive.”
Whereas many could be daunted by the prospect of a clean sheet of paper and a 60-strong orchestra to wrangle, Takiaya is clearly in her component. To deliver her imaginative and prescient to life, she’s been working with arranger Fiona Brice (additionally a solo artist and session musician, who has labored with the likes of Placebo and Beyoncé) to pare again her four-movement composition from its preliminary, maximalist incarnation to one thing leaner, the place the vitality is extra powerfully targeted. The method has been fast, with Takiaya spending a lot of her downtime on tour writing and ruminating, gathering her concepts in an effort to meet the undertaking’s stringent deadlines.
“I’m unsure if it’s my desire to jot down underneath strain, however everybody concerned wants time,” she explains. “I write rapidly, although, and when you’re working with an excellent arranger like Fiona, the method strikes sooner than if I used to be writing all of the elements down on my own. And one thing completely different would’ve occurred if I’d had loads of time, so I’m completely happy that it moved rapidly as a result of I wanted it to. I had one thing to get out, and it’s there now.”
Takiaya isn’t exaggerating when she says she writes rapidly. In addition to penning the symphony for the BBC, she has two new albums within the bag.
“I used to be staying in Berlin for a few months,” she says. “I’ve a good friend there who’s an unimaginable musician, and he or she invited me to remain at her studio to jot down and file. I wrote a model new Divide And Dissolve album. Then, we bought within the studio in January final 12 months and I began writing new music. I simply felt compelled to jot down a model new album on the spot.”
This second album was named Insatiable, fittingly sufficient, and it is going to be Divide And Dissolve’s first launch for his or her new label, Bella Union. Though it was written and recorded months earlier than the symphony was on the desk, there are particular threads that join them.
“I really feel like they’re indistinguishable in a means,” says Takiaya. “There are specific moments from Insatiable which might be being transposed, or quite, being infused into the symphony. However they’re being expressed in a different way as a result of there are such a lot of voices.”
In some ways this duality sums Divide And Dissolve up properly. The band effortlessly mix heaviness, magnificence, rage and hope in a fashion that fits sticky-floored rock golf equipment filled with metalheads in Black Sabbath shirts in addition to arts areas or live performance halls.
“I do recognize that it transcends style,” laughs Takiaya. “I really feel prefer it’s one thing that occurs personally, as effectively. Folks have a look at me and so they get one thing that’s completely different to what they anticipated. And it’s represented within the folks I’m mates with. I’ll have events at my home, and individuals are like, ‘Takiaya’s having a celebration… we’re about to fulfill folks we’ve by no means met earlier than!’”
Divide And Dissolve’s Insatiable is out April 18 through Bella Union.
