Let Em' Talk: Freyja Elsy guides us through her debut E.P 'Modern Artifice'

Artwork by Maria Tilt

 Classically trained electronic producer Freyja Elsy from Cardiff has been plowing her own furrow for several years. After releasing several independent singles in that time, she took the plunge in 2023 to start bringing her tracks to life in a live setting. Her debut E.P Modern Artifice was released in late November and shows an artist full of ideas and creative spark that builds on her earlier work with added depth and experimentation.  Freyja took the time to talk us through Modern Artifice track-by-track.

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Modern Artifice is my debut EP, self-produced mainly over the past year. It’s a collection of songs describing the bittersweet experience of stepping into a world not made for you. It battles with anger, generational trauma and resentment for centuries of oppression by a patriarchal, capitalist society. Yet the soul of the project is empowerment and determination, and these themes weave their way through the tracks. The decade of your twenties is a tricky, confusing time as it is, with countless barriers to peace, happiness and success - but it is also one for growth and attempting to figure out your place amongst it.

1) Sad Girls

'Sad Girls' is a track expressing the frustration and exhaustion around keeping up with impossible beauty standards for women and the commodification of being youthful. However it’s also a call of empowerment, shrugging off the pressure and embracing the inevitability of aging, with the true strength and beauty that it brings.
“Drag my hands, across the lines on my face, in my own time”; “imagine the mountains I’ll move when I find my own peace of mind”.

2) Over It

Undoubtedly the ‘bop’ of the EP, ‘Over It’ gradually builds up from a trip-hop-esque unassuming beginning and steadily melts into a thick textural bass heavy atmosphere. This song describes the experience of diving headfirst into a capitalist world, one which was built only for a small few, and acts as a never-moving barrier to everyone else. It’s about the confusion of wanting to succeed and benefit from all options available to you in your career, but not wanting to contribute to a monotonous lack of work/life balance.

📷 Ed Townend

3) Limerence

‘Limerence’ is the word given to describe the intense (sometimes toxic) infatuation you develop for a person at the very beginning of a relationship. Essentially that’s what this track is about, but it goes further into the depths of genuine fear and hesitation on opening up to a new person romantically, amidst past traumas and difficult life experiences that have shaped you into who you currently are.
“Lights guide my way to you, hands shaking as I cross the room, embers in your eyes, reflecting the ache of my heart - let flames break through, ‘cause I want to know you”
It’s seen as a spiritual sequel to my first single ‘Lungs’ which is about leaving a particularly toxic relationship and making the same mistakes over and over when entering into relationships.

4) Salem

This is the most haunting and delicately powerful of the tracks on this EP. It’s full of female rage and generational trauma and expresses a quiet, deep anger that most women can resonate with. ‘Salem’ also describes the bitterness and resentment towards men who self-identify as feminists yet continue to knowingly benefit from the patriarchy. It’s an ode to the women who, throughout history and faced with disenfranchisement and brutal oppression have had to grasp at any means necessary - no matter how cold-blooded - to regain a sense of power and control.

You can follow and find out more about Freyja Elsy at Instagram, Facebook and X

Sure you can stream the track on Modern Artifice on all good streaming services, but to support the artist directly you can buy it from her Bandcamp

FreyjaElsy.co.uk