A Tirzah song at its most stripped down sounds like three elements held loosely together — her voice, a beat that barely arrives, and silence. The silence is doing something.
Tirzah Mastin is from Essex, England. She's been making music with producer Mica Levi for over a decade, and their collaboration defines her sound completely. Levi writes and produces everything; Tirzah sings over it. The result doesn't sound like either of them would make separately.
Devotion (2018) was the first time most people heard her outside of small circles. Songs like "Devotion" and "Fine Again" used R&B as a starting point and then subtracted everything that made it recognizable. What's left is something skeletal and genuinely affecting.
Colourgrade and After
Colourgrade (2021) pushed further. There are moments on that record where the production almost collapses under its own weight — bass that flickers in and out, beats that stutter and restart, melodies that arrive late. It shouldn't work. It does.
The 2023 EP trip9love...??? is even more abstracted. If Devotion was Tirzah finding her voice, trip9love is her testing whether voice is necessary at all. It's a short, strange record that rewards patience.
What she's building is a body of work that defies easy categorization. It's too abstract to be R&B, too rooted in emotion to be purely experimental. "Do You Know" from Colourgrade is probably the closest she gets to accessible, and it's still deeply strange — the rhythm section feels like it's tracking something other than a standard grid.
She doesn't do many interviews. She rarely performs. That distance from the promotional machinery feels intentional, and it fits the music. Mica Levi's production is similarly non-promotional — no radio-friendly mixes, no attempts to make the work go bigger than it wants to go.
"Fine Again" is the easiest starting point. "Do You Know" is the track that stays with you. "trip9love" the song is where you go once you need more.
There's a stubbornness to what she does that's increasingly rare.
