"I'm in a place of brutal honesty." The electronic pop auteur talks about her new album, the pressures of performing and falling in love with techno.
One of today's most exciting stars is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, better known as FKA twigs. Genre-wise, she's difficult to pin down; some critics call her music ethereal, alien R&B refracted through the lens of dance music. She's now touring her third album, Eusexua which she's described as "that surge of nothingness right before a surge of creativity, or the moment before an orgasm." It's a response to falling in love with techno a couple of years ago, and the songs all hover somewhere around the rave.
In this RA Exchange recorded live at AVA London 2025, twigs talks to Nadine Noor, founder of queer arts platform PXSSY PALACE, about the process of putting the LP together, as well as the sometimes painful pressures involved in performing and adopting a public persona. Today, twigs says she's in a place of brutal honesty, and on the edge of 40, "hitting the perfect arc of behind hot and not an idiot anymore." She also discusses starting her dancing practice from an incredibly young age, taking her first steps on what she anticipates will be a long partnership with modular synthesis and the challenge of making original art in an era dominated by trends. Listen to the episode in full. -Chloe Lula