INTERVIEW: spill tab on new single 'Crème Brûlée!': "When there’s layers and dynamics that are audible in music it makes it more interesting and makes it feel a bit more like a journey."

Bangkok-born and Los Angeles-based French-Korean singer-songwriter spill tab (real name Claire Chicha) first launched her project in 2018.

Her career has powered up ever since, with her music racking up streams in the tens of millions. It is a unique blend of electronic pop with a discordant, left of field experimental warping to it which brings in sounds of rock, techno and everything in between. It is the type of music that you can never pick where it is going to go, in the best possible way.

After the release of her second EP Bonnie late last year, spill tab has released two new singles in 2022 alongside a collaboration with Mac Wetha and at the beginning of this month released the single 'Crème Brûlée!' It is another left of centre song that hits you full in the face with its power and energy. Starting off as an electronic pop song, it quickly explodes into a frenetic explosion of sound with guitar and distorted vocals, before calming down to gentle piano towards the end. It is a breathtaking, glorious journey of a song that picks you up and never lets go until the last second.

’Crème Brûlée!’ is the result of [producer] Solomonophonic and I wanting to make the zaziest song we could,” spill tab says. “We spent many days tweaking and creating different dynamics, wanting to make it fluid but jarring at the same time. I'm super excited that it's finally out.”

An exceptional talent who is truly a unique, one of a kind artist, spill tab is like nothing you have heard before but she will soon have you wondering how your playlists have survived so long without her. We recently caught up with her to chat more about ’Crème Brûlée!’ and her music career to date.

Hi spill tab so lovely to chat today. Congratulations on the release of ‘Crème Brûlée!’ it is amazing, a gorgeous, chaotic, cacophonous mind blitz of a song. I was not expecting that when I read the title, which I think is absolutely fucking brilliant because of it.
Thank you. Yeah, I’m a huge dessert fanatic, so it worked out that the name of the song is that.

It’s so good. Talk to me about this track because there’s so much going on and it all just works.
Well, thank you. I made it with my friend, Jared slash Solomonophonic and his production style was described to me as like a person with a paintball gun, just going hard. He’s an incredibly talented musician, and such a strong producer and the sonics can be like quite aggressive and in your face. I just had a really good time moulding it with him and creating something that was brutal, yet relatively easy on the ear and something that I would want to listen to if I heard it come up on a playlist. I wanted to create a little bit more of a juxtaposed outro that gives it a bit of the dessert. It’s like, crunchy when you smack it, but then on the inside, it’s really, really soft. Soft and sweet. It gives you that sort of vibe as well where the beginning is pretty aggressive, pretty sharp, pretty angular, but then it does get really soft and funky and smooth and sweet towards the end.

Sonically, it feels like a follow up to ‘Splinter’ but just like with ‘Splinter’, you’ve got this climactic build that just suddenly stops before you get to it and then in comes ‘Crème Brûlée!’ Was that intentional?
Honestly, not really. I mean, I wish it could have been. I definitely work like a song by song basis. I really enjoy just diving into one thing and fleshing it out. I think I just am drawn to a lot of distortion lately so that’s probably where it’s kind of glued together. It’s that distorted like clipping snare, really aggressive drums with distorted guitars, is something that I just really love in general. That’s where things tend to weave together.

Your parents are both musicians. Your mum was a pianist and your dad is a jazz musician. Obviously, it’s very different to the music you’re creating, but at the same time, the world of jazz can be very experimental. Can you hear that in your music, the music you were exposed to as a child?
I’m sure that everything that my parents listened to in the car drives in LA has sunk into me in some ways. I’m a jazz fan today, it was my dad’s calling, and my mum is a huge classical head. Even in classical music, there are different movements and different sections, but it’s technically one piece, so I guess you could say it’s like a song, it just has these different parts in it. I appreciate when there’s layers and dynamics that are audible in music. I think it makes it more interesting and makes it feel a bit more like a journey. So, I try to and keep that in my stuff as well.

You had this incredible upbringing and then you went and studied business music business. I’m imagining it really assists in the way you navigate your career as an artist, but when did you realise that you wanted to also be on the stage?
You know, the business and the performative stuff has been pretty hand in hand most of my life. Growing up I would love to put on little dance shows for my family and I was in show choir in high school. Song writing was a thing I loved to do. It’s always been a part of my life literally as far back as I can remember. I also am definitely a bit of a type A control freak and in that manner I feel I just need to know what’s going on outside of just making the music. A lot of being an artist is business driven and making not only smart choices for your business, but also good choices for the people that are helping you build the thing that you’re building. It really takes a village and to treat the people around you good and make sure that you’re taking care of them is also part of the business aspect. So, that’s really important to me. Being on top of everything from A to Z is a hallmark of my personality, but also important to me being an artist as well.

'Crème Brûlée!' and the music we’ve been getting this year is leaps and bounds from the sort of delicate purr of ‘Cotton Candy’ in 2020, which I think is great and I always love this shift. Do you naturally have to push yourself as an artist, or are you just constantly following your own interests, your creativity bugs?
It’s a bit of both. Being surrounded by really sick talented musicians and artists naturally pushes me to push myself in trying new things. Living in Los Angeles, it’s a major music city and so, it just makes you highly aware of how many artists there are that are really talented in the world. So I find myself very grateful to be in any position where people even enjoy or listen to my stuff. But I think for me too, it’s made myself very aware that I can’t just be sleeping on my shit, you know. I always have to be pushing myself and I always want to bring perfection in any kind of way to the things that I’m doing. Whether it is the music, or whether it’s the live shows, within reasonable budget. I always just push myself to want to make everything as good as possible.

Do you think that’s part of in the industry, particularly in LA? There’s so much more opportunity and so many people creating together, but at the same time, it’s so much more of a race?
Yeah. I feel these are conversations that are already being had, but with social media and just the sheer content that people take in every day, especially when you’re in a music circuit, it’s really easy to feel a little bit lost or feel a little bit sourced out of the mix, you know? I don’t really know what the answer is. I’m also grateful that I’m not 17 and doing this, I don’t really know how people that age are doing what they’re doing. It’s so impressive, and I’m so floored when people are that young and they have a healthy relationship with what they do, because it can be really tough to see that literally hundreds of thousands of other people making music at varying levels. I’ve settled into the understanding that it’s going to be a different journey for every single person and I don’t always know what the right answer is, but the wrong answer would be to just cater to what I think is popular. You’re never going to make the thing that resonates with you if you’re always trying to make something for other people. I’ve sort of found my happy place and doing what feels good to me. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t… that’s okay too.

Absolutely. It’s daunting as an adult, but it must be even more so when you’re younger and particularly when you’re still learning who you are, and you have a lot of people directing you. How have you navigated the industry? Has it been okay for you?
There’s so many horror stories that are out there with everything pertaining to being an artist. I feel like I’ve been blessed with a good team. I’ve also been blessed with good friends that keep me feeling loved and nurtured in the whole process. I think it helps that I went to school for four years for music business, and in those four years, living in New York, you meet a lot of people and you enter that circuit from a different angle. I feel like I have somewhat of a landing, I have a friend group and network that is on the creative side, but also on the business side, which fosters an understanding of that as well. It’s really easy to point a finger and be ‘I’m not doing well because they’re not doing their job’. It’s really important to have those both sides as well because then you appreciate when people are helping you do your thing.

You are currently on tour, how is that going? How are you enjoying yourself?
It’s going super well. We’ve been touring pretty much since March. I’ve been home for, at most, two to three weeks between legs, but, it’s been fun. It’s been my first year doing festivals, which is sick. Just playing for that many people on a huge stage is really different than doing an intimate venue show. There’s been a lot of ups and downs obviously. Touring is tough. But once again, it comes down to the people that are around. It’s made it a breeze because they’re not only good friends of mine, but they’re also very good at their job, so it works out.

'Crème Brûlée!' is out now via Sony Music. You can buy or stream here.

To keep up with all things spill tab you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.