It’s not uncommon for an artist to have their own sonic signature - something in the mix that gives us an immediate idea of who we’re listen to - but it’s rarer for that artist to be able to define it in just a single word.
FKA Twigs, though, has a very definite idea of what she’s looking for, and how to describe it.
The revelation came during a Spotify ‘Countdown To’ interview with fellow artist Imogen Heap in the run-up to the release of Eusexua, Twigs’ third album, last week.
During their chat, Heap tried to pinpoint what it is about Twigs’ music that she likes. “It has a certain sound… everything has this kind of like soft, frayed, edge,” she explained. “Like , slightly… I can’t describe…”
Sensing that Heap was struggling, Twigs jumped in: “I call it the pussy,” she said. “The what?” replied Heap. “The pussy,” Twigs repeated, before offering a more detailed explanation.
“I always say, especially when working with a lot of male producers, I always say ‘it needs more pussy’. Like, I want more, like ephemeral soft edges. More all-encompassing kind of beautifulness. I think it’s like the feminine touch and the feminine energy within my music that I’m always really fighting for.”
This has certainly been brought to bear on Eusexua, a word that Twigs came up with to describe that moment when - as she told British Vogue last year - “you’re not human anymore, you’re just a feeling.
“Or that moment before an orgasm: pure nothingness but also pure focus, in a state of eusexua,” she continued. “That’s kind of the way I want to live my life right now.”
Talking to Heap, Twigs added: “Eusexua is really this mixture of this slightly psychedelic, childlike, playful exploration of what it is to be human, but then, mixed with that, this raw, dirty, hard, sexual grit as an undertone.”
Eusexua is out now.
