00:00 Introduction: Music and Trauma Podcast

01:35 Early Memories of Music and Emotional Words

03:00 Music Becomes Important: Writing Songs on the Piano

04:55 Influential Artists: Madonna and Gorillaz

06:49 Arriving at Electronic Pop: Studying Music Production

08:17 Creating Unique Sounds: Building Synths and Coding

11:10 Performing in Unique Locations: Egypt and Japan

13:36 The Three Songs That Saved You: 'Elysia' by New Order

20:07 The Three Songs That Saved You: 'Life on Mars' by David Bowie

23:23 Feeling Like an Outsider

24:12 Observational Storytelling in Music

25:10 Using Music as a Tool for Expression and Rebellion

26:35 The Power of Vulnerability in Music

29:25 Navigating Emotional Involvement in the Creative Process

30:23 Music as a Source of Hope and Escapism

32:49 Challenging Societal Expectations and Embracing Individuality

34:42 The Impact of Trauma on People's Relationship with Music

35:42 Finding Solitude and Reflection in the Creative Process

37:37 Using Music to Explore Toxic Relationships

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Welcome to the Music and Trauma podcast where Chris and Teri Potter are asking artists, musicians and guests what are the 'Three Songs that Saved You?' and exploring what matters to them about music and mental health.

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I'm Teri And I'm Chris. So we're super happy to be here because we have a hugely talented artist TUUDI and Chris, you want to tell our lovely audience a bit about TUUDI? I do, yeah. TUUDI is currently finishing a debut solo album, working title 'Villain in Pearls', that's right, isn't it? Yeah. Which includes the current single 'Just Like Before'. Her distinctive brand of electronic alt -pop is original, emotive and futuristic and has a strong lyrical intensity.

It spans a wide range from sparse, abstract and minimalistic passages to huge uplifting choruses. She's also performed live in a variety of fascinating settings from the deserts of Egypt to the wilds of Hurtwood Forest via Japan. Welcome, TUUDI, Welcome, TUUDI. Amazing. So I'm just going to go around and so you'll get the feel for what we do here, which is just making sure that everybody's comfortable, really. So the first thing I'm going to do is come to you, Chris.

and I'm going to ask you for a word or two, emotional words that you might be having an experience of right now. I'm a little apprehensive, but also excited. I'm going to say I'm actually quite nervous. Part of that reason, I'll be honest, is because my tummy's rumbling. Which isn't perfect when you're recording a podcast. But more than that, at the age that you are, and that stage of creativity that you're at, there's something about that's little intimidating for me.

I mean, you're 23, right? Yeah. We've all got memories of having all of that sort of intention and energy. Well, I'm nervous a little, but I'm really, really excited about it. yeah, it's just a mixture. I mean, I haven't done a podcast before, so... that makes three of us. Well, I don't know what to expect, but it's all good, Well, let's just keep on talking like we were talking over breakfast around the table in the kitchen, because I think that's exactly what this is all about, just relaxing into it.

Slow everything down. So you've got a couple of questions to kick off with. let's kick off with a couple of easy-ish ones. When did music first become important to you and what's your earliest memory of it growing up? Well, I think my earliest memory of music is having like a bunch of CDs from my parents and the CD player and just playing it. And that was when I was like three, but going through like loads of albums, of like Madonna to anything.

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like varied range of genres and stuff. But when music became more important, I was 12 and my mum got me this really old, free, untuned piano. And I grew up in the countryside and what I'd do is I'd go to school and then I'd come back home and just improvise on the piano and just make songs. So that's when I started writing and stuff. But it was really important for me, that piano, because I was really, really quiet growing up, like to the point where I didn't speak to anyone at all. Apart from like a couple of friends, but it was like...

I went to school, I wouldn't say anything, I'd come back home and then I'd just write all my songs and that'd be a way to sort of like express things and stuff. That's huge, isn't it? So that just became like your ally, that piano almost. Yeah, it did. Yeah. What else was in that early record collection that you can remember as well as Madonna and what were the other early influences that you'd say? Well, the first CDs that I got were Kylie Minogue and the Gorillaz album actually.

Demon Days. I love that album. It was just mostly pop music. Yeah, like girl groups. It's quite a contrast to the Gorillaz, isn't it? yeah. And I just noticed when you said, love that album, you sort of lit up. was like, that was kind of a bit of a departure, wasn't it? Can you tell us more about that? Yeah, I think that's one of the albums where I could sit and listen and like take out all my emotions through the music. Take out all like my anger or anything that I wanted to just let go of.

That's precious, right? It almost becomes you, an opportunity for you to be you. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. And did those records that you were listening to, did they kind of influence those first songs that you were writing? Were they a big influence on that? Or was that coming from somewhere else, from the beginning? No, I was just writing ballads on the piano. Right. It wasn't anything like pop music or anything like that. It was just any words that I wanted to say. And then I just tried to put it into musical form. It was just about the feeling.

of it rather than trying to make it like anything else. So you're using it as a form of expressing emotion right at that early stage, you think? Yeah, getting the words out. I'm hearing that, yeah. Obviously you're coming to the end of your first solo record. Can you give us a bit of an idea of some of the lyrical themes that you're investigating at that point? So I think it's an exploration of society and mind.

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experience of it. So it differs a lot across the whole album. So it will go from love stories where everything's fatalistic and it's destructive and there's so much conflict to a perspective that's not about love and going out and partying and doing all this stuff. And then it talks about mental health, expression, self -expression, trying to escape, I guess. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I saying earlier, I was definitely picking up on some of those things. There's an opportunity for you to actually just exist without the suffering almost, right? I'm hearing there's so much hope and possibility in the words. Am I projecting that? No. I might be in part. No, no, that's right. I aim for it to be something that people would just see themselves in or see little parts about their experience in life and try to make it subjective to them.

rather than me projecting an idea onto other people. It's not about me trying to force someone else to think something or experience something. The main idea that I want to portray is being able to let someone sit in an atmosphere of a song rather than portraying the story to an extent where it's obviously what it's about. You can read into it. Yeah. That's so powerful. How did you arrive in the genre that you're in at the moment? It essentially is electronic pop.

Is that fair to say? What do we refer to your music as? That's kind of funny. I still don't know how to finish this. I still keep starting this sentence and don't know how to finish it. Why don't you stick with electronic music? Yeah. So how did you arrive doing an album of electronic music? I think I was exploring being in a band for a really long time and singing with a piano and got to the point when I was 19 and I was like, no, I need to do something else. I want something to be really...

big and I really want to make an atmosphere. I want to make a whole world that's slightly weird, slightly futuristic, but really close to how our world is now. So it's still relatable. How can I do that with just being in a band? We were a dream pop band, but we also do like a lot of like covers. I was like, how can I change this and take out what's in my head and put it into music? And so I decided to study music production and sound engineering and move to London.

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That's a lot in one go. but that's how I am. I just suddenly decide to do something and that's it. So I studied that for like three years and the uni I went to was like mostly electronic artists and DJs. So it's like techno, drum and bass, loads of just electronic lot of influences from there as well. Yeah, so I knew what I was making and I was trying to make all the electronic stuff on like my laptop, but I've been taught all these techniques and ideas for electronic music.

I just take that and try and put it into pop music, alternative pop. So that's how I started making a sort of sound for myself. What was your experience of it when you first started getting into it? Did you know immediately that this was for you? Yeah, because it was difficult. I feel like it was really, really difficult and I love a challenge. And like, I'll just push myself further and further no matter how difficult it was. If Elektra said, we're going to do this.

I'd already be trying to work out myself how I'd approach and how I would do it to get the result they wanted before they were trying to teach us whatever route to take. I was like trying to do it but do it differently and I do that on purpose. If they say one technique I'll try and use it in a context which is completely opposite for its purpose and stuff. To find your own path. That's a great answer and totally unexpected. I liked it because it was difficult.

Brilliant explanation for that as well. Yeah, so one of the things that fascinates me about the record is that there are a lot of sounds on it that are very original and seem very personal to you that you've, let me get this right, you've sort of built out of synthesizers that you've made out of coding and stuff. How's that come about? I don't understand any of that. How do you, yeah, you're absolutely right. How have you managed to do that? Because some of those sounds are really unusual and

Yeah, amazing. How's that process come around? Like I don't have loads of access to synths, especially plugins and stuff. So I build my own bespoke synths and sounds and whatever and I use Reactor and I've built a synth from scratch. It was for a project that was more like a digital art installation stuff. So very abstract sounds replicating cars but in a very strange way or the sound of snow falling and stuff.

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And then I tried to adapt it further to make synths which sounded just strange. Yeah, it's given your record a real identity, I think. Yeah, I find that fascinating. I'd like to pretend that I knew what you were just talking about for a moment there. What I really did find interesting was the fact that you said that you're interested in really strange noises. And yeah, there's a stark contrast there in terms of the tone of your voice, which I find really pure when you started

thinking about challenging noises, I'm wondering what that's about because that sounds like a dichotomy in a way, but it's that contrast which is probably the most powerful part. Yeah, no, is. It's all about contrasting. mean, getting people's interest through sounds as well, I guess. But I think it's just a bit of fun for myself. Love it. Yeah. Tell us about some of those live performances in weird places that you seem to specialise in. It started off as just like a project to push myself, I guess.

Well, I did the first one in a little temple in Egypt, which was on the edge of the desert in Luxor. It was just a tiny temple. mean, you can't get access to do insane things or anything. Well, I just carried all my stuff. I was just working off my laptop, so I had no power or anything. I didn't have any stands or anything like that. So I was like, what can I use as a stand? And so I just got these random tiny tables. That's why in the video I'm like trying to reach the piano.

And so we tied them to the top of this tuk -tuk and then drove through the desert. Wow. Which was really, really cool because it was like a great intro to starting the project. We went through the desert and then on the right there's like all these massive mountains and stuff and there's just nothing around. But it's the energy of those places as well. It's like you put a lot of work into it and it's really chaotic. Yeah. So that feeds into the performance a lot, I think.

Can I ask a little bit about the energy of that place? What was your experience of it? It's just amazing to think that it's just this building in the middle of a desert. And what's really interesting about this building as well, it's like a temple within a temple. So it has this room inside and then you can walk around the whole thing because it's inside a different temple. And on the walls you can see like all these inscriptions and art. It's amazing because it's ancient. People who were there that must have been just completely different to how things are now.

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But they're still having the same experience of the environment that you were having. Yeah. Thousands of years later. Yeah, it's really interesting, especially when you go to different sites and stuff and you can see the change in art and stuff through different periods of Egypt and the stories as well, because the stories are lovely about the gods and... Do you think it's fair to say that the amount of travelling that you've done has really influenced the music that you make as well? I can hear that in the music, like sort of cultural influences and stuff. Yeah, I went...

And then I'd experience music in different places. So traditional Sufi music in Egypt to the wide range of music in Japan and stuff. There's an atmosphere about your music which kind of lends itself to that explanation of that space that you've just described in a way. Yeah. So we're going to go with the old music and trauma inquiry questions. We've got that tagline, what are the three songs that saved you? So I wonder if you'd be happy to just give us

song number one? Number one is Elysia by New Order. Let's have a listen to that.

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Unfortunately, right now we haven't been able to clear the license to play this song. When that happens we'll update the episode to include it. In the meantime, please click on the link in the show notes to hear the song in full.

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You and I just had a very brief moment talking about how you came across that and it was 2005 and you're with your mum watching Pretty in Pink. There was never a point at which I would have extracted that piece of music from that film. I loved that film. And you being so young, five years old? Yeah. To have had an understanding, first of all of that music getting your attention in the way that it clearly did and for me was a backing track to a whole load of stuff that was amazing.

but at five years old, what happened for you in terms of that track? So I guess I think Pretty in Pink is one of the films that I watched repeatedly with my mum and my sister. I noticed the song at first, but it didn't have like a sort of emotional impact as it did when I was starting to get older and stuff. Right. I thought it was really, really interesting how music can reflect the emotions and bring this massive part of a film and then make it really...

vulnerable and just suit something, some characters emotions so well. It was like a main turning point for me with music as I was a bit older when it made me feel that way. It was like, wow, like how this song has made me feel so sad and like vulnerable and I wanted to be able to do that basically. It just pulled you in, pulled you right in. Yeah. It was an emotion.

And it's interesting because think yesterday we were chatting and I said I felt like your music was like an immersion. You're jumping into a sea of, and that word again, vulnerability. And the idea that you recognise that, that's so intuitive, there's so much awareness about what this is actually doing to you and the experience you're having of it and the journey you're going on. Yeah, it was a real point of being like, music can be used for something to take people on a journey through the different emotions. Yeah, I just thought that was...

really interesting. Yeah. That's a big realisation isn't it? It's huge. You can't learn that. It's intuitive isn't it? Yeah. Yeah and I think the cinematic thing has come through some of the songs in the album sometimes. So when you hear that now, so as you just listened to it in this moment, this might not be the most natural setting setting in the studio with us, but when you hear that whole track now, how does it make you feel? It still feels the same.

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I guess every time I listen to it, feels sort of the same. And it feels like a strong song for me. think songs are really important for me, just certain ones. Like when I feel down or something, then those specific songs are sort of there for me. And I will listen to them like on repeat. Is it like a safe space? Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So a comfort. Yeah. This song in particular is actually a tribute to Ian Curtis. But you can feel that, I think, from the song.

Yeah. So could I ask how it's helped you, that specific track? How's that shown up for you as a friend in your life? I think there's a big importance placed on songs that make you feel happier and more elevated when songs that are sad and depressing and stuff. I feel like they're equally as important. yeah. Yeah.

I feel like that's what music serves a purpose for, is like when you need your emotions to be recognised. That's why it's important for me. Yeah, I think it's such an important point that you've just made there because we didn't come here just to be happy, we came here for the whole human experience, all the emotions, right? Yeah. Part of my journey has been for somebody who found it really difficult to cry and really experience the sadness and actually let it out, I ended up putting together a playlist called Grief.

which is just the songs that really get me there. And then, you know, I can shut the door, can, lately I'm much more open about, if I want a good cry, everybody knows I'm just gonna have a good cry. Certain songs will take me there. And to be able to just let it out is the thing, right? We keep stuffing it all down and think I'm having a bad day. Well, is that such a bad thing? Can you have a bad day today?

pull the duvet up, stick your headphones on, have a good cry, how would that be? I mean you've obviously talked about how the light, the dark, the journey has influenced your music a lot and you like to take people on that journey and that's very clear in your work. The musicality of that song and the instrumentation, would you say any of that's been an influence as well? Yeah definitely. My song, just like before, there's a synth in the chorus as I was creating the song, the first version of it, that synth was like...

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built the sound myself and stuff, but I knew I wanted to make a sound that had the same impact as the guitar in Elysia. So I made that synth and the first version of it, it was like so loud to a point where it's overwhelming. And I thought like, I've got something here to start working off. was one of the first synths that I'd developed and this is great. I can build up a whole sound. that was like the starting point for the album. And just to be able to like replicate an emotional impact.

also in my own way and not copy it, just put my, song. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. And I feel like that's really important track for you. It feels like it really set you on your path in lots of ways. Yeah, definitely. How are you feeling right now? good. Good. It's a lot of fun. So where I come from, we're not allowed to say good to that question or fine. Well, that's a good or fine. So it has to be an emotion word. you open to that? okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm calm.

I'm pretty calm. Is that an emotion? Yes, I believe it is. Yeah, I feel calm as well because I feel like I'm less nervous. I'm wondering then if we jump to song number two. Yeah. Can you tell us what it is? Life on Mars, David Bowie.

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Sadly we're not able to play you this song right now due to a delay in the licensing process. We intend to update this episode as soon as possible, but for now if you can please pause the recording and just click on the link in the show notes to enjoy the tune in full.

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So I was like 16, I think, it was around the time that he died. And I'd never been like a big Bowie fan before, just a couple of songs. Actually, I think I knew Bowie from Shrek. I'm pretty sure. There are changes in Shrek and that's how I started listening to him or how I knew of him when I was really young. I became obsessed with David Bowie and all I would listen to was his albums from the 70s. I can think of worse people to be obsessed by. Yeah, really. My God. I had like a...

fan page on Instagram, which ended up having thousands of followers and stuff. I did just joke and say I might have been one of those, didn't I? I was only half joking. Yeah, that's quite you just showed me the tattoo on your wrist Yeah, yeah, and I've got black style. This is a huge fixation for you. It's a really important point for you. So I was lucky enough to have like a massive corner in my room that was just for like my music keyboards and stuff. up on the wall, it was like David Bowie this, that.

posters and everything and I had all his vinyl. Yeah, so he was just like a really important person for me when I was a teenager. That's incredible. Something else that's equally incredible was the fact that at 18 years old you had all his vinyl. I mean, who's even doing that when you were 18? Seriously, that's really uncommon. Yeah, well, the thing is I went through my nan's garage and took all the records that were there from my uncle, my auntie, and most of it was actually

electronic music from like the 90s. Yeah, well a lot of it and then there some like Stone Roses and then I had my Nan's Beatles and like Elvis. So I spent a lot of time like not on my phone listening to music. I was just listening to the hundreds of records I got. But I feel like I could just escape into this world of music that wasn't current so I never listened to any modern music for quite a while. It was all like 70s, 90s.

Can I ask what it is specifically about that song? Okay, when I was 17, you know, just being like a teenager and like being a bit like... I've got one of those, yes. You know, like sometimes you're like down in things in life and I was particularly very fatalistic about the world. I was very happy with it. I thought, I'm the girl with the mousy hair. That's what it was to me. Right. That song. And still now, if...

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I feel upset with something, like I'll just stick that song on repeat and just escape. So that narrative kind of led you somewhere. What did it do for you though? It made me feel sort of seen. I was very quiet and stuff still as a teenager. I've always been really quiet. I felt quite different to other people my age as well. I wasn't into music the way that they were and I wasn't necessarily like into the same stuff as people my age were.

So I always felt like a bit of an outsider. Sure. And how does it feel now, listening to that? I mean, does it take you right back? Yeah. It does? Yeah, it does. does, yeah. And does that story of the girl with the messy hair, does it make sense to you now? I feel like now it's more of a, the lyrics are more observational to me. They're less like about me being like this person experiencing things.

It's more like David Bowie observed all this stuff about the world around him. Yeah, so you've extracted yourself from the story it sounds like. So I'm wondering how that song helped you at different stages of your life. Was it a very specific time for you that that song mattered? No, I think it stayed quite relevant. It's always been a starting point for me to create some world or something through my lyrics and characters and...

trying to explore life from different perspectives. Yeah. So as you say, that's influenced you lyrically then perhaps with your work. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So there's a bit of storytelling that goes on now as well. Yeah. As well as just the sort of symphony of emotions that you kind of bring. Yeah. I think I've got a little context for it, which is he was actually commissioned to do a translation of a French song, but he got rejected for it for his translation. But it became my way.

Paul Anka, know, the Frank Sinatra song that was the translation that they went with instead. And Life on Mars was a retaliation to him being rejected. I think that's quite cool. His anger and emotions. Yeah, which is really cool. If you're upset or unhappy, you can be heard. You don't have to let things keep you down. Would you say that's, yeah, expression artistically as much as anything else, right? You can shout about it. You can get your... Yeah, and be angry.

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You can get your point across. Yeah. That's therapy right there. It's a song. really, it really sets the scene that track, doesn't it? It really takes you straight there immediately. Emotionally, you Yeah. Yeah. So what about number three? Do you have a number three? Are you doing this one in the moment? Yeah. you are? Well, I've got a couple of choices. love it. No, no, we can do the live performance of Undo by Bjork at the Royal Albert Hall.

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Unfortunately, right now we haven't been able to clear the license to play this song. When that happens we'll update the episode to include it. In the meantime, please click on the link in the show notes to hear the song in full.

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Scarlett, I just want to say thank you for the musical journey you're taking me on. That was profound. Yeah, the first time I listened to it I was like, I don't even know what to do with myself. Yeah. Yeah. It's difficult to understand where it comes from, isn't it? Yeah. I've just lost my questions and I'm I'm coming out the window. my goodness me, where to begin? The word that's come through for me with you has been vulnerability and the honesty of that.

The way that she so profoundly uses the words, not in a traditional sense where you're just trying to make them fit the song, but she's actually just making a point of saying the word. You're going to hear this because I'm saying it. I don't really care what you think. Love to hear about your relationship with that song. No, I agree fully with that. It is like she's commanding what she's saying. And she does really interesting things like with timing and stuff, which I've always found fascinating in all of her stuff. But it's just like halfway through the performance.

when it goes in, when the percussive element, the electronic part fades away and gradually builds up to take you into this complete other world with the strings and everything else. Yeah, the orchestra elements. To me, every time I watch it, it gradually builds up my emotion towards it to a point where everything about it is just overwhelming. I feel it is like, gives me like goosebumps every single time I've watched it. That's genius to be able to...

Is there anything specifically about that song that mattered to you the most? It's just everything about it. All the instruments used, the choir being not perfect. And it's like they all have a place in it and they all have their own individuality in it. Her records are always interesting, aren't they? With a lot of records you can trace the journey back to where it's come from. And with her records sometimes you just don't really have any idea where that...

line goes back to, know, it just seems to come from, I don't know, out of space or somewhere. Yeah, was fun, records like that, to be the most interesting. And I wonder what it must take to afford yourself that much vulnerability, especially on stage. That was at the Royal Albert Hall, right? Must have been in front of a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, what must that cost the individual to be able to do that? It takes a lot of strength, doesn't it? Yeah.

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I get the sense though that that's very much her and that it would be like that if she was, you know, at the Albert Hall or at the Half Moon would be the same. It be the same, yeah. Yeah, for sure. If you come from doing a big show like that one, it looks odd. What does it take out of you? What do you need to do to take care of yourself and all of that? I think I guess I spend quite a lot of time alone when I make something that's particularly heavy or anything like that. I think it's really important to spend time.

with yourself and be quiet. Growing up, I did like a lot of musical theatre, acting and I think when I first started acting and writing songs, I'd be bringing up all these emotions that I'd experienced and a lot of the time when you're bringing up things that you've experienced, it can mean that you're not letting go of things and all your emotional involvement in situations is just brought back up again and again. So I guess that can be quite heavy. Yeah.

So I think it's been quite a long challenge to try and figure out a way to remove myself emotionally to an extent which is not damaging. Yeah, I think we were talking a little bit earlier and you mentioned the idea that you engage with your writing in such a way as that's almost a meditation for you at times. It's an opportunity, it's so cathartic. Is that true? Yeah. And in therapeutic terms, they'd suggest journaling, but you've got that in writing. Yeah, exactly. So that particular song...

Just coming back to our little tagline of the three songs that saved you, but is there a way in which that song has been helpful to you in difficult times? I think, again, with a lot of the other songs that I mentioned, it's like escapism. I feel like it's different in a way because it feels a lot more hopeful to me, this song. It also feels sort of motherly and like if you're unhappy, just don't do it, just go back. I think people worry a lot about making the wrong decisions or mistakes or overthinking things.

Yeah, it's taken time. If you've gone down this route of doing something and you realise it's a mistake, yeah, you've wasted a little bit of time, but it's not a waste. You can just always go back and start again and do something else. Time is kind of irrelevant. You have an opportunity. And I noticed that about you and getting an experience of you living your life in a really quite spacious way, which I think is really valuable. think in this day and age it's very hard for people. People feel it's hard to find that space and time, but there are always pockets that we can find.

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Yeah, one last question about that is creatively, how has Bjork influenced you overall? So I discovered Bjork at 12 and I loved dancing. So her song, Crystalline, was a big song for me because then I wanted to be a contemporary dance choreographer. That was my dream. I was just making weird abstract dances that were really strange about concepts which were weird. That's what I enjoyed doing. But through doing that, I explored loads of...

different genres of music like techno, everything at a really early age. I created quite a few dances to her later stuff. Well, we'd like to see that on video with some of your songs at any point. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, I've got a few plans with some dancey things. I mean, I don't dance that much anymore, but I think if you train in it, you've kind of got that forever a little bit. With a creative process, writing and making music, how does that actual process make you feel?

What are the feelings that go on while you're in the midst of that process? I think it's always different. I try to approach things each time with something slightly different and I try to write songs in different ways as much as I can. Not stick to a specific way of writing. But a lot of it's about processing things in my life. Talking about people my age and... And it's a lot, isn't it? I mean, your generation and the generations that have followed you.

Can you give us an idea of some of those points that are so challenging? For me, what I believe for myself, I feel I had a big conflict about what I should be doing and shouldn't be doing and how successful I should be at a certain age and like there's this massive pressure to be a certain way. I want to exist outside of that pressure and I think a lot of people do as well. A lot of people try to retaliate against societal expectation. kind of do talk about that a lot. Gabor Marti talks about the myth of normal.

the idea that there is something that we should all be aspiring to and how the systems and institutions of education, for example, are all geared up for churning somebody out that looks like this within these parameters. feel my experience personally, but my experience as a parent also has been it leaves the young person feeling quite inadequate. Yeah. Would that be kind of where you're coming from? That is definitely where I'm coming from.

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I think there's a lot of small groups of people my age that never felt like they fit in, are really creative and exist outside what is normal, supposedly normal. But yeah, going back to what you said about there not being a normal, because there isn't a normal really. No, there isn't. Your experiences are never going to be the same as someone else's. I believe that you shouldn't put too much pressure on yourself, but there is that pressure and it's good to talk about things.

Yeah, 100%. What if there was an opportunity to pause and just take stock of each individual in the setting rather than imagine that everybody's got to show up this way and they've got to tick all these boxes. So yeah, I hear you. You're railing against that in some of your work and I really appreciate that. I've got a big question that follows on from that, which is pertaining to trauma. I'm wondering how with your relationship with music,

How do you feel trauma affects people's relationship with music generally? It's a big question, I know, and it's very open -ended. For me, it can change my emotional state. It feels overpowering sometimes how it can change your emotional state, and in that way it's really useful. Because music, if you're nervous about something, or you're going to an interview or something like that, if you have your playlist of songs that make you feel good.

sets yourself in a headspace which is more positive than sitting around and being nervous. That can really help with just average things and daily life stuff. Yeah, that sense of distraction, but I heard you say altered state as well. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. But I also think you can get to a point with music where by listening too much to like depressing music or something that correlates to what you're feeling right now, you put yourself into a rabbit hole of that.

state of being then I feel like it could potentially add to the feeling of being down or... What might happen if that person who was really in a dark place and had that really intense backdrop of music going on really dropped into that emotion? Yeah. What might happen? Because the very essence of any emotion is just energy moving through us, right? It really is something that's gonna dissipate, that's gonna pass through.

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It's when we hold on to the thoughts about it, we stay stuck. But it's a really important point. What I've come to understand is that those emotions are here to be felt. Yeah. And what are the places that we can point our listeners to to find your music? I'm guessing that's Spotify and the normal streaming platforms. Yeah. Also, I'm on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, everything possible, apart from Twitter. it's TUUDI isn't it? Yeah, W.

No, we didn't get to ask you. We didn't, we? So where did that come from? I think I was just playing around with names. I was doing some acting stuff. What I used to do to build up my characters was I'd literally walk through a graveyard from school and I'd look at all the old gravestones and then I'd pick up the name and then I'd search online sometimes about who these people were and And like I used to build up characters from what I researched. That's how.

I was exploring names, but TUUDI, when I found it, it was just like a weird name that came to me. Often I wake up in the middle of the night and I'll write down words. And sometimes for the album, I created like a whole name for the world of it. TUUDI was just one of those names that I've made up. And then I researched it and it means different things in different languages, but one translation was it means song stress. So like, that's really cool. Wow. Just going to stick with that. But that was with one U, I'm pretty sure.

And then I just added the extra you to be edgy and everything in capitals as well. I love that. That's great. That's great. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, we're to put links to all of that down in the show notes. Which song of yours have you chosen for us to play you out today? And tell us a little bit about that and when it's coming out. It's Just Like Before, which is my first single. The tagline for it is Blood Cuts Cold Into the Lungs of a Beast. And it's a fatalistic story about

conflict and the downfall of a really toxic relationship. So it's a lot of exaggerated, dramatic descriptions, almost animalistic, slightly vampire -esque and it's just very dramatic. It is very dramatic, isn't it? It's beautiful. Again, it really does take you on a journey. Excellent. Thank you so much for being here today. We've got so much out of this myself, honestly. Yeah, yeah. Also, if you do find yourself enjoying any of these episodes,

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Please consider making a small donation to the charities which we're supporting, which are Nordoff & Robbins Music Therapy or Youth Music UK. Links are on the show notes. Yeah, thank you to everybody for listening in. This is TUUDI and Just Like Before.

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Okay, here's the legal stuff. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. We are not licensed therapists and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist or other qualified professional. See you next time.