To celebrate the selection of this year’s New Voices cohort, we caught up with all the selected artists and composers for a quick chat.

Here, we speak to New Voices 2021 composer illyr. Tylor is a British/Bajan, queer + working class artist creating under the pseudonym illyr. They are a self taught singer, songwriter and record producer, and released their first music EP with coverage from Pitchfork and a live streamed performance through Dazed + NTSRadio (June 2017). They also make films, choreograph + are a performance artist.

Can you tell us about your musical influences?

I like music that makes me feel things, a sad boy piano music, orchestral swells, a techno beat or overheard conversations. I like to sing, I like to dance often together and create theatrical pieces that can be in a live performance or in a film. I love found sound and just trying to replicate things that speak to me, fusing styles and sounds together.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have recently started working collaboratively with interdisciplinary artist Jacob Samuel
merging our practices together to create music and film. I am currently in the Cayman Islands on a Music Residency at Palm Heights. Here I have been working on a lot of new music that I will make into an EP and a short film that I am shooting with a local Caymanian crew. It deals with my 16 week stay in quarantine, and being in an empty hotel for two months on an island populated with lawyers and accountants. An EP I started making last year has been funded by the Arts Council to be turned into a short dance film and I will be finishing this on this when I return from Cayman for a live event and release in February 2022.

What are you looking forward to most about New Voices?