Following guest vocals on tracks and remixes for standout UK labels such as Hypercolour and Warp Records as well as producers Luciano and Matthew Herbert, the hotly tipped vocalist and producer Zilla is taking centre stage for her debut solo release.
The Sleepwalker is Zilla’s second single release, a distinctive song characterized by a nonchalant flow, earworm melodies and a bouncy lingering beat.
The song refers to an intense sleepwalking experience that Zilla had one Christmas in Copenhagen. A playful groove harbours a deeper subject about losing control and embracing the unpredictable and mysterious other person that we are but who we don’t know. This plays out in the evocative video which features striking imagery of Zilla and footage shot in the Ebrié lagoon in the Ivory Coast, revealed in a dream sequence.
The Sleepwalker was produced by renowned producer Matthew Herbert who has signed Zilla to his Accidental label for her first run of singles. Matthew says “I like the fact that Zilla can sit at a piano and bash out some Rachmaninov and Debussy, but chose instead to make an ahead-of-its-time record out of the ephemera of ordinary life. It bristles with the friction of real life as opposed to the comfort of the recording studio”
And indeed it does, The Sleepwalker is an intricate construction of samples from objects symbolic to that event; books, light bulbs, rubber bands and recordings of Zilla’s own sleep-talking.