Track by Track: PLYA - 'Still In Love EP'
London based trio PLYA have just released their EP ‘Still In Love’, which is an amazing dose of electronic alternative dark-pop. They took a moment to talk to us about the EP - track by track.
Our “Still In Love EP” was recorded in London and LA over the space of a year. In that time we had written with lots of different producers and come out with a huge selection of ideas, sounds and songs, so we had quite a few to choose from when selecting the four special tracks for this EP.
Dynamite
WILL: It all started with the track Dynamite, written in LA over a year ago now. We worked with an amazing producer called Matias Mora on the track and we wrote it in a day! As soon as the track was written we took it into the rehearsal studio and it quickly became part of our live set. We have played Dynamite as the opening song in our live show for the past year so it was only right that it should be the first single we release from the EP.
Fever
JULIA: Fever was recorded in London and is the most recent track to be written. We worked with producer Rob Rox on this track and it all started whilst experimenting with 808 sounds. The minimal instrumentation and intricate drum loop took some time to perfect but the lyrics for the verses and the chorus came out on that first day. The track felt more like a sculpture than a song as over the next few weeks we changed section after section, chipping away until we felt it was perfect. “Fever” is about the comfort of knowing that things can only get better once you’re feeling your worst, and accepting that sometimes it takes a while to reach the turning point in order to self reflect. Ironically, I was ill during that first writing session, so who knows maybe it’s just about actually having fever?!
Ocean
JULIA: We wrote the song “Ocean” on a very somber day in LA. We had just found out that a huge musical influence of ours had taken their own life that morning. We didn’t really set out to write about it to be honest, but the lyrics came out fast onto the paper that day. The song is about finding someone you can rely on to catch you when you fall and being there when you are at your lowest point. Everyone needs that person in their life, a life support to keep you afloat. Everything was written and tracked that day, including vocals.
Still In Love
KRIS: For Still In Love we were back in the studio with Matias Mora. He had moved to a bigger studio space since we recorded “Dynamite” with him and we were putting the finishing touches to Dynamite when Still In Love came about. It was a complete accident, we had finished tracking guitars for Dynamite and just starting jamming after Matias had made his infamous margaritas. The whole song bases itself around a pulsating bassline which, within a couple hours transformed into a song that was 70% written. We left LA with a demo vocal of the chorus which ended up making it onto the final recording. We finished off the lyrics back in London where we had time to reflect on what we wanted to say. The song is about not being able to decide how and when love hits you. It plays with the idea that it must be some kind of trick but ultimately it’s something you can’t control.