“I cry a lot of the time when I’m writing these things,” Kloyd says, her voice racked with emotion. The Yorkshire-raised, London-based producer caught our ear with her recent project ‘New Love’, a dose of spectral electronics with lush low-end and a penchant for trip-hop world-building. It’s music that comes from an intimate space, a means of channelling often difficult emotions in the process. “There is a huge cathartic element to writing and producing,” she continues. “You know, that’s why I do it, really. It’s a form of therapy.”

Shy and quietly measured in conversation, Kloyd is remarkably assured on record. Studying in Leeds, she balanced immersion in the city’s incredible club communities with a degree in music production, experiences that helped forge her identity as a producer. Enthusing about underground dubstep nights at the city’s West Indian Centre, she recalls the events being “so inclusive and community-driven and inspiring… it was a great time to study there.”

Her first clubbing love, dubstep taught her the intricacies of electronic music. “The production was so clever,” Kloyd recalls. “If you look back at it all, it’s very spare, and those spaces are filled with textures and reverbs and delays, but you’ve always go that driving point of bass and drums.”

You can feel a continuation of that less-is-more archetype in Kloyd’s recent project. ‘New Love’ is a gorgeous listen – at times you can pick out lush house pads, and Massive Attack adjacent immersion in sound, but there’s also a purely personal aspect. From the title down it’s about learning to let go of bad memories, and accept something good back into your life.

“I’m always looking inwards, I think, when I’m writing music,” says the producer. “Those things can’t be forced, they marry up in terms of being direct reflections of what’s going on in my life.”

“It was a turning point for me,” she says of the release. “As a person, I’ve always been drawn to the melancholic. But when I was making ‘New Love’ I could see all these beams of light coming through, and I just had to go with it.”

“I decided to lean in to those feelings, and then writing to that journey,” she adds. “It was so cathartic. Every chapter that was coming out reflected a two-year period, one that solidified what I wanted to say on the record.”

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There’s a real unity to ‘New Love’ – from the sonic language chosen, down to the way the record’s tracklisting hangs together. It’s purposeful – with Kloyd, every detail is accounted for. “I’ve always advocated for bodies of work,” she notes. “I love albums, I love long form projects. I like narratives and stories and the journeys they can take you on.”

At times, she was so fully locked in to the creative experience that it became a form of diary. Take ‘Kate’s Theme’, a beatific moment of digital absolution. “I sat down and I was feeling the weight of relationships, and all these big feelings I had – the mindset of never feeling good enough as a person or as a musician. I sat down, hit record, and it was all improvisation – and I was just in floods of tears afterwards. Once it’s down, you feel a huge weight has been lifted from you.”

Music is the single most important thing in Kloyd’s life. “It’s something I nurture,” she says. “My little thing that I can pour into and create. I love that aspect of it – I’m not answering to loads of people all the time, it’s a solitary thing, spending time on your own and making these hings. There’s a loveliness to that.”

While aspects of her music-making are solitary, Kloyd also has a passion for collaboration. It’s something that comes out in her live performances – recently hitting the road with ace London songwriter Art School Girlfriend, you can also catch her at Green Man Festival in Wales this weekend. “Bringing in collaborators is wonderful because it elevates the music into these other spaces that I wouldn’t be able to get to on my own.”

Packing her bags for the trip to Wales – “it’s a real pinch-me moment!” – Kloyd wants the performance to honour the intimacy of her craft. “It’s not a project I’ve ever wanted to throw down people’s throats. I’ve heard people describe it as a headphone listen, and that’s really nice. It’s intimate, it’s close, and it’s not loud.”

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‘New Love’ is out now.

Words: Robin Murray

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