My name is Nadya Bernadina Albertsson and I was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1995. I have 2 loving parents, a younger sister and like most Jewish women I consider my grandmother to be the epitome of love and warmth. Sadly she is no longer with us, but I do give a lot of my musical credit to her.
I grew up around music, constantly. It was something I took with me everywhere and still do, I think of it as my happy place I guess. My family and I would always listen to something in the background, either the radio or music was on. It just was. And it still is, the first thing I do when I do anything is put some music on.
Choir was something that I was introduced to from the age of 3. Granted, at that age I was just running around in a big room with other kids doing silly games and dances while we sang Swedish kids songs. But I think my mom realised I might enjoy signing a bit more than just in school when forced to. I wouldn’t stop. And so I went to choir school in Sweden and loved it. Then to university to study music in Aberdeen where I met Scott Bathgate.
We actually only started working together after graduation during Covid. I was in Berlin and he was in Glasgow. We were sending tracks and loops back and forth, and we just didn’t stop. We made our first track together ‘Heavy Soul,’ and we just enjoyed working together so much. We had the same frame of reference, we listened to a lot of the same music and we were very in sync with what we wanted to create. It was such a natural start to our musical partnership. I flew over to Glasgow a lot to work with Scott, and the amount of hours we have spent in his apartment recording the music…. I don’t even know how much!
Half Silk Half Blade is my debut album and first big solo project. The central theme in this album is the constant inner conflict of what a sense of self means to me. How do I express myself, how do I know what it is that I really want? Is there such a thing as trusting your heart? And your gut? Can I trust myself?
You can clearly see this reflected on the text, which at the root of it, are all thoughts and feelings I have written in my diary. The text is to me very unsure of itself in nature. It is just such an ode to me being very confused and not knowing what I want in my 20s. This might sound cliché and silly, but I do feel more sure now. And like I could very well know the answers to all these questions I have asked myself in the past. In fact, I can already see myself changing the lyrics to the intro track ‘IDKWTS’ aka “I don’t know what to say.” The words I sing mean a very different thing to me now then they did then. And I like that.
Although the text might be very ambivalent and questioning in nature. The way we made the music wasn’t really. Scott is such a beautiful writer, composer and producer and he always made the music flow and feel natural. Most of the songs have a very “loose” structure. Aka, they don’t really. Many of the tracks are kind of a flowing story in a sense, they don’t have a clear chorus or verse and they don’t always come back around. This can be a bit tricky to make sound cohesive, and to make sure it is not just 4 different ideas that might not fit together. A great day sample is ‘The Fall,’ it starts off so electronic and a bit distorted. And to then bring the horns in to crest this very big break and sort of lighten the vibe up a bit. And then to bring in only the vocals for a break but to carry out the melody and the text that was backing in the first part. The vocals seem to keep the red thread over the soft horns and then the big finish. My favourite part in the end of the song is not the horns, or the vocals. But funnily enough it’s the electric guitar. I remember Scott wanted to use it somehow but not really sure what to do with it, and he was playing around with different solos, and lines to play. But with everything in place, it just needed something to add an extra layer. It sounds so haunting and almost like the song is bleeding or crying, and to me it’s such a perfect addition to the “wall of sound” that we so love.
The music is very rooted and focused around harmonies and working with many different layers and tracks of my vocals. Myself and Scott often spoke about this “wall of sound” and how we would like to achieve just a very “big” track and music. I grew up singing in choirs from a very early age, and the pure force and energy that a group of vocals, and stacked harmonies can do to a track is my favourite. Being only one person it was always my goal to be able to hit as much of the range and harmonies as possible, and working with Scott was always so much fun. We could lay down harmonies for hours if we were feeling like it.
In the 2nd single, ‘New Relations’ I believe we were working with at least 15-20 vocal tracks in total. During the writing and producing of the track we always called it “the Beast” purely based on the fact that it was the biggest song in terms of tracks and vocals.
On the flip side, the title track on the album Half Silk Half Blade is just keys, main vocal line and a couple of harmonies. This is a love recording of the track, we recorded ourselves at Scott’s apartment in his hallway to make sure no traffic was being picked up during recording. And I am fairly sure this is take 3 or 4 so my voice was very tired at this point. Hence the breaking of the voice in minute 3.10. We decided to keep it, to add to the natural effect and then to add just some small talk extra harmonies where it would actually serve a purpose not just for the sake of it.
It is quite funny to me now that we used this as the title track of the album, considering it is very much not like the rest of the music. It is very representative of our work together, but it’s also just a very small part of how the rest of the album sounds and feels.
- Hear Nadya at Glasgow record cafe Some Great Reward on Friday.
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