Music
Listen: upsidedownhead and Parissa Tosif live To Give on a woozy new cut
The always-intriguing producer joins forces with the Vallis Alps vocalist.
Making ripples throughout Sydney's electronica landscape with a series of releases, including the seven-track EP Complex last year, upsidedownhead (aka Ross James) has rounded out 2019 with another collaborative standalone track.
To Give features a guest appearance from Vallis Alps' Parissa Tosif – a welcome pairing with the track's subdued yet urgent production work. It's a dextrous outing, following on from Circulate – upsidedownhead's team-up with PLGRMS earlier in 2019.
Listen to To Give below, and get insight from upsidedownhead and Parissa's creative process after the embed.
On how To Give was written and produced
upsidedownhead: Well, we met up, I had the idea that we'd get together and just have a jam with no preconceptions of what result we’d get. We started off by having a little jam and parts of the track came out quickly. I think I had that little riff in my head to start and the rest followed from that. I feel like every chord I played, you naturally sang something great straightaway. I was like, “That's it!” And you were like, “Is it?” and I was like, “YES!” That's my take on it. So we kind of built it from there
Parissa: Like you said, Ross played five notes and they just hit me so hard, immediately. The melody just came to my mind and the song sort of wrote itself, it came together really quickly. And it's funny with a session like this, like you said, we didn't intend to do anything with it. It was just like, let's see what happens if we jam. And as soon as we started it, I felt so strongly attached to singing it myself and being part of it.
On the collaborative process
Parissa: Both of us are very introspective, reflective people. That was a really nice part of the process, the chats we had throughout. We’d write a bit and then we'd stop and have a conversation about something that was happening to us, or concepts we're thinking about, which is kind of how the concept of the song came up. I was telling Ross about how I've discovered recently I'm a highly sensitive person.
On the difference in approach
upsidedownhead: I guess I was more involved in the tech side of things, which is definitely my thing because I'm a dork and a computer geek. But also, I feel like when it comes to songwriting, I can sit there and come up with melodies and lyrics, happily, but generally speaking, I believe in empowering whoever I'm working with to form that element of the song. And then when I hear it, I'm like, that feels right, that’s my take on it. I think that's my strength, rather than sitting there and actually working out the melody, which I think is your strength.
Parissa: I was gonna say I think Ross you have abilities to listen and nurture an idea really well, which was really nice because you would pick up on parts of the melody and bolster them with instruments, as opposed to making the instruments take the lead. The melody took the lead and you built around it, which was really nice. I think being able to do that is a skill in itself. For me, feeling really naturally able to come up with the melodies we needed for the song was something that I guess I brought. I think we both filled spaces that needed to happen for the song.