Precious Hill

Music Spotlight: Tei Shi

Growing up between Bogotá and Vancouver, Tei Shi was heavily influenced by her ever changing environment and cross-cultural identity. Her first EP, Saudade, was released in 2013, and her groundbreaking debut album, ​Crawl Space​, in 2017. She’s back this year with her sophomore album, ​La Linda,​ where she continues to champion global soundscapes influenced by her Latin roots. With a variety of amazing collaborations on La Linda, Tei Shi is destined for greatness. We had the chance to discuss the album, her collaboration process and more. Check it out. 

Tell us about La Linda and what you hope people take away from it.

La Linda came together during a sort of re-start for me —creatively and personally. I felt like I stepped out of a dark and heavy chapter and into a really beautiful, happy and peaceful one. I was trying to figure out how to write from that place instead of from sadness or anger. I was inspired by nature and open space, solitude and the natural beauty in our world that we often get really distanced from. I felt like the album was reconnecting with my more intuitive side and I wanted to create a landscape within the music that felt that way…rich and lush and beautiful and sparkly. For anyone who is closing one period of their life and trying to leave some baggage behind and enter a new, more uplifted space, I think this album will resonate.

What was your collaboration process like with Dev Hynes?

I’ve collaborated with Dev a bunch at this point, and writing with him is just a super organic and fun process. There’s never any pretense or structure to it to be honest. The energy he brings is so effortless and it’s more about hanging out as friends and the music kind of happens. That was a really refreshing thing for me the first time we met and wrote the song “Hope” off of his record. I think our melodic and harmonic sensibilities are really aligned, and it’s like we have a lot of common ground in terms of our references and the music we love. For “Even If It Hurts” off of my album, we started the song with the producer Noah Breakfast when we were all hanging in the studio. We started the beat off of a sample that we chopped up and looped, and Dev and I put down some vocal ideas. Then I spent some time with that on my own and grabbed the pieces I liked and kind of put it into a song form. I brought it back in with Dev and he wrote his parts, I wrote mine. We fleshed out the production more and then I brought that back to Noah and wrapped up the production with him. That song came together in pieces, but it fell into place really naturally. Sometimes collaborations are easy and sometimes they’re not…with Dev I find it’s always easy.

What’s the best advice you ever received?

Don’t spend too much time on a song. I haven’t been able to put it into action yet. Some of the songs off La Linda, I re-recorded the vocals up to four times…I spend way too much time living in each song which makes the process unbearable by the end.

Who and/or what influences your overall aesthetic - from your music to your style to your fashion sense?

It’s really just what I’m feeling inspired by at the time I’m creating the music. Making and releasing music comes in cycles inevitably, cause you have to write/record, then make the plan, then release, then promote it, then start again with the next thing. So it’s whatever I’m diving into during the initial writing/recording period that ends up influencing my style musically and visually. For this album, it was a lot of Latin music from the 60s and 70s, classic Asian films, and directors like Tsai Min Lang and Akira Kurosawa. Fashion-wise it’s whatever I’m into at the given moment…I try not to think too much about it.

In your opinion, what’s the most interesting thing about you that people may not know?

That I’m Colombian, Canadian and Jewish. I grew up with a pretty mixed cultural background and moving around the world a lot, so that just influences me in a really fundamental way and obviously in the music I grew up listening to. I don’t necessarily think it’s that interesting, but it’s the one thing I think people get the most confused about!! ‘Where is she from?! What is she?!‘ I spent my childhood in Colombia, where both of my parents were born and raised. We moved to Canada when I was 8 and then moved back and forth when I was a teenager, so I grew up between the two countries really. My dad’s side is Jewish/Polish and immigrated to Colombia after the Holocaust. Oh, but I was born in Buenos Aires (my parents were living there for a few years when I appeared)!

Favorite movie and why?

There’s no way I could possibly decide on a favorite movie of all time…but one I’ve loved my whole life, that I will never ever get sick of is Fantasia 🌟

Lighting round! Describe each of the following in one word: Who you are, what you value the most, and what you’d be if you were a food item.

I’m an emotional sponge who absorbs everything and tries to channel it into something captivating and original through music.

I value honesty and empathy the most.

If I were a food item I’d be a bowl of warm mush - it would probably include avocado and definitely potatoes. Like a dish a baby would eat.