Raisa K: New shapes

“I just find it interesting how men and women are quite different creatures,” Raisa Khan chuckles as she points out the barely perceptible Zodiac symbols on the artwork of her debut EP Feeder – recently released by the fledgling Technicolour label. The cover features a whirling hallucination of colour that turns out to be an aerial close-up of ink dropped into a pint glass.

You wouldn’t know this unless Raisa pointed it out, and that’s by design. In music, as in art, Raisa favours the deeply personal, and the enigmatic treading of a fine line between impulsive electro-pop and something far less clear. Positioned bang in the middle of an East London creative eddy populated by the likes of The Invisible, DELS and Kwes, she’s just one of a network of artists drawing from a boundless hoard of styles, genres and techniques.

Where something like DELS’ socially conscious rap or Kwes’ introspective and warm pop offer an emotional handle one can easily take hold of, Raisa’s is more a psychological inkblot of intent. Whether it’s the crazed loop of “Repetition” or the urgent swing-and-tumble of “Even Better Even Worse”, Feeder leaves itself open to interpretation, ultimately saying more about the listener than the artist.

Consider an interlude from Raisa’s yet-to-be released mixtape, which features a malfunctioning automated voice repeating the words, “rectangle, circle, square,” before jarringly skipping into oblivion: “It’s a sample of this ‘teaching children shapes’ video on YouTube, which I’m probably not allowed to rip,” Khan laughs.

We’re now talking over tea and cigarettes in the living room of her flat in Hackney, which she shares with three others. She explains that said sound bite is an affectionate reference to her time with experimental pop trio Micachu and the Shapes – she was the ‘circle’ of the equation, wearing the corresponding t-shirt as she assumed the role of keyboardist, co-vocalist and percussionist. It’s a friendship and a working relationship that Khan credits as a key source of her creative growth over the past half decade. The group began at London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama. “We had a lot of lessons together. Me and Marc [Pell, drummer] both did electronic music. There were at first four, and then three, people in our year, so we spent a lot of time together,” she remembers. Mica “Micachu” Levi was in an overlapping composition course. The rest, as they say, is history.

So is Raisa’s solo debut an example of her striking out confidently on her own? Not exactly. You can hear the blunted strings of Mica’s custom-built Chopper instrument across the circular waddle of “Bowl With A Hole.” There’s a sample of Marc’s kick and snare that’s “pretty much on everything.” Fragments of an old acoustic recording session with friends and collaborators The Laurel Collective colours woozy closer “Seasick Sailors.” Even Khan’s occasional attempts at transferring her compositions to a live setting feature The Laurel’s guitarist Olly Puglisi and Pell on drums. “I’ve ventured ‘real far!’,” she says with a self-deprecating chortle.

But in Raisa’s case, there’s no harm in familiarity. In fact, the focus on her immediate social network is probably her greatest strength. It’s an increasingly rare approach to music, where relationships, ideas and techniques are given room to grow and develop. “Writing actual songs for this record was a bit of a decision. It was like, ‘Right, I’m going to try and write a song now.’ Singing, as well, is quite tough but I’m getting less and less embarrassed about it. At first it was like, ‘Okay, no one’s in the house, get the microphone out and try and write a melody.’ But now it’s like, ‘I can hear someone next door. Maybe they can hear me but that’s okay’.”

These days Raisa is gaining further trust in her instincts. Whether naming “Bowl With a Hole” after a colander (“I thought the sounds reminded me of a metallic bowl”) or morphing “Spring” from an attempt at writing “115 BPM house music” into a loose Eastern-sounding draft. Feeder is the sound of these disparate threads finally coming together.

However amorphous Raisa’s music may be, it’s not all innocuous. “Are you talking about ‘Feeder’?” asks Khan, responding to the suggestion that the dark and surreal imagery of lyrics like “She’ll even sew the holes in your eyes up / If you can’t stand the sight of her” comes across as rather bleak. “You know, ‘wifey’ sews holes in your socks up,” she offers matter-of-factly. “I don’t really know about that song. I don’t really know what happened.”