The Mix 027: Toxe

They say that it takes 10 years to get famous overnight. And while that’s true for many, some artists do genuinely pop off right from the very start. When Toxe emerged in 2015 it was instantly clear that she was an electronic music prodigy, releasing fierce club tracks and getting bookings at Sónar, Club To Club and Berghain while still just a teenager.

Since then the Swedish producer/DJ has been an influential force on experimental club music alongside peers and collaborators like Mechatok, Dinamarca and Kamixlo, moving from Gothenburg to Berlin to focus on making music for labels like PAN and Halcyon Veil, as well as the soundtrack to short film The Story Of Leonora.

It’s now been a decade since Toxe came through as part of Sweden’s wildly creative Staycore crew and although she’s still only in her mid 20s, she’s already lived a lifetime in music. But having just graduated with an architecture degree from an art school in Amsterdam and finished writing and producing her debut album, due for release this month via Swedish multidisciplinary label YEAR0001, Toxe is beginning a new era that she says feels as fresh and exciting as when she first started out.

‘Toxe2’ is a bright and emotive body of work that combines Toxe’s innovative production techniques with a melodic sensibility that has been bubbling in her recent releases, as well as her own vocals and lyrics, which are properly at the fore for the very first time. The album was put together over the last few years, in between studying and trying to acclimatise to a city that never really felt like home. Its melancholy pop sound is the result of Toxe finding solace in solitude and the sound of her mother tongue, emotions fluttering like butterflies before the next chapter of life begins. Her accompanying mix is a varied journey, including a piano reinterpretation of recent single 'Som En Sol', distorted '90s rock, dreamy pop, emotional synths, and more.

How has studying architecture influenced your music?

I studied architecture, but it's at an art school. It's very open, it's like architecture without the engineering part. It felt like an interesting thing to study to become a better artist. It's nice to switch perspective on things and be in a different environment outside of the music bubble. It’s made me even more organised and disciplined and allowed me to think more like a designer. I think you can apply the thoughts of architecture in many different ways. It's more like studying philosophy, because you read about people's ideas about cities or how spaces function, how people move and feel in them.

There’s a sculptural quality – especially to the synths – on the album. Can you tell me how you developed that type of sound?

It's not very intentional, like I have a specific synth. It all kind of came together naturally; some songs are really old, some are really new, and the gear I've used is very mixed. A lot of the melodies I made came out of singing, which is a big new addition to this project. I guess it's a bit different if you compose something or make a melody when it's coming from your voice or from humming something.

The process of making the album was very different because of the vocals, but it just randomly happened. It's not like I intended to make like a Swedish vocal album! In 2020 I made a soundtrack where I was using my voice quite a lot, but more as a kind instrument, and then I was working with Mechatok and we have a lot of unreleased stuff where I was starting to use my voice more too. So it was slowly happening and when I put this album together, it was already a very natural part of how I would make songs. It’s exciting, it’s like unlocking a new part of your own music when you discover songwriting in this way, with lyrics and voice – it adds so much. I always want to be challenged and do something that I haven't done before.

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When did you decide that it was going to be a vocal album?

Once I had enough songs I was like, this could actually be a project. It started as singing nonsense words in English and then trying to translate it. Then at some point, I just started using Swedish, picking sounds that just fit into a lot of Swedish words that I liked. Of course it’s more intimate when it's your own language but it was nice because I had this distance to Swedishness and the Swedish language; I haven't really spoken it in a long time and I don't really have any Swedish friends, and I also grew up more in English than Swedish in a way, like my vocabulary is a lot better in English, because I moved when I was so young. So it's a very teen-y [teenaged] feeling for me to sing in Swedish, all the lyrics are quite simple and repetitive and very direct, I like it.

It's interesting that you mentioned the teen-y feeling, because the record has quite a sentimental sound, is quite bright and poppy, but there's a melancholy too.

I think there's a theme of love songs. Or loneliness and isolation, which is coming from the last three years of my life, of course. I was interested in trying out doing the whole vocal thing, writing lyrics, and that just is what came out

For me the album sounds like a crisp sunny day, and maybe you're walking along a canal or somewhere outdoors, and you think you might be falling in love, or you might have just been in love. There’s this playfulness to it.

Some songs are literally just like, “I'm in love”, very simple, like joy. And then there's also songs that are more sad and melancholic, of course. I really like doing something that's simple, and that’s also why I did it in Swedish, because my vocabulary is way more limited and scaled down. Not that it's easier to make something simple, but it felt easier for me to just start playing with repetitive sentences and testing it out that way.

Can you explain a bit more about that process?

I really enjoy the process of taking something really complex or deep or painful and just making it very catchy, and simplifying it to more of a universal feeling that everyone could just relate to. I like that process. It's interesting how to scale down something that's very personal, making it into a product that people can consume.

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I love what you said about playing around with the words themselves too.

I guess the lyrics are very short and repetitive because it's more like an instrument for me. I produce everything myself so [my voice] becomes an extra instrument. It's not like I write down a lyric and then make a song for it. It's very much made simultaneously, where you chop something up and put it into the grid, that’s just my method of working. I also just love when things are repeated and after a while you just forget what was even being said.

And the isolation you speak of is in terms of studying and producing?

Yeah I didn't really try to make a social life in Amsterdam because I just didn't really feel at home there. So I didn't really have any friends around and I just didn't go out much beside working or studying, so I’ve just been home and with myself a lot. I guess that kind of creates something that comes out in the record. I guess it makes sense that I've been singing more, being comforted at home in my own solitude. I really don't mind being alone, like, I love being alone. But it's been the most extreme phase of going without seeing a friend for such a long stretch of time.

Are you still interested in The Club?

Yeah, or sure. I feel like I've been DJing for a very long time and I'm very hyped on exploring a live performance, so I'm very focused on that. But I always enjoy DJing, It's been part of my life for so long, of course I love club music.

Can you tell us about your mix?

It's an end of summer mix, made in Gothenburg.

'Toxe2' is out via YEAR0001 on August 30, pre-order it here

Seb Wheeler is a digital strategist and music writer. Check out his monthly new music newsletter, Waste Mail, here

Tracklist:
Toxe - Som En Sol (piano version)
Silke F - Hello Satan
Toxe - GBG
Kill Hannah - Don’t Die Wondering
DJ Megan23 - Using You For Pleasure
Toxe - True
Jasper Spicero - 5.8.2010
Guitar - Love Is Slow
FreQuency - Remember On Your Memories
Toxe - Pillow Fight
Avner - Bed För Mig
Kota Hoshino - Dawn To Home
Sky Ferreira - One
Sunless 97’ - Body Weather
The Embassy - Some Indulgence
Ssaliva - Untitled (smile)
Tsukasa Saitoh - Sys (Feat. Kota Hoshino)
DJ Megan23 - 2008
Pictureplane - Dark Rift
Toxe - Som En Sol
Emiranda - untitled