Anysia Kym and Jadasea get audacious on joint album Pressure Sensitive

About midway through “b.f.f.r,” the lead single to Anysia Kym and Jadasea’s recently-released joint album Pressure Sensitive, Jadasea raps about being plagued by a simple, yet troubling, predicament: “Got love,” he notes, as if taking inventory, “and I seen some hate.” For all its contradictory existential baggage, the line is admittedly easy to miss. It arrives at a point in the track where structured calmness begins to whirl into percussive, unpinnable frenzy — Anysia’s breakbeats bursting into laser-like octaves, and Jadasea’s half-spoken delivery manifesting into something more active, more snarling. What makes it infectious, as is also the case for love-hate interplays, is the notion that, perhaps, what’s contradictory on paper may be complimentary in real life. In life, love can’t be effective without hate; on “b.f.f.r,” the calm of Jada’s vocals can’t be effective without the chaos of Anysia’s instrumentation. But the distinguishing factor between paper and reality is experience — and experience, especially in music, requires a certain level of audacity. It’s easy to curate a musical experience that makes sense. The ones that stick are the ones that don’t. The only means of creating something people haven’t heard before is doing something you haven’t done before.

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A couple of weeks before Pressure Sensitive’s release, one thing Anysia hadn’t done before was play a live DJ set. Rooted in Brooklyn’s sprawling do-it-yourself musical scene, she got her start in a band called Blair, playing drums on songs that featured overdriven guitars sent searing through cheap amplifiers. After leaving the group in 2021, she went on to release Soliloquy, an impressive genre-blending debut LP that featured intricate melodies and trance-inducing breakbeats — the next step in a percussive history that began behind drum sets and now finds itself behind earworm raps. That Friday in Williamsburg, though, perched on a couch in the back area of an upscale Williamsburg storefront, she seemed just as intent on musical experimentation as personal. A common attitude among producers posits that once you’ve made it to a certain level, which some may say she has, you’ve transcended mere DJing gigs. Though for a while, a similar mentality caused her to reject every DJing offer that came across her plate, she was freshly willing to take a chance. “Every time I do something, I learn something new,” she said. “I just have to keep doing things. I have to leave room for mistakes and happy accidents. I didn’t have a plan after Soliloquy, but then I met Jada, and we made a song. Then we made more songs. Then we were like, ‘What if we just made a project?’” The improvisational sentiment extends to Jadasea’s trajectory: hailing from London, despite the fact that he’s most known as a skillful MC, he’s shy to admit that he played acoustic guitar on Aqrvst is the Band’s Name, a one-off EP put out earlier this year by the rapper Pretty V and the musician Archy Marshall. “I don’t even remember which track it is, but (Pretty V)’s telling me I went in on it,” he said in a recent Zoom call. “I actually couldn’t believe it until I saw a photo of me, him and Archy with guitars in the studio.” 

[Photo by D’andre Williams]

The only way you can forget something as unorthodox as being a rapper on one album, and a lead guitarist in the next, is if you’re constantly trying unorthodox things. Pressure Sensitive is buoyed by a similar brand of sensible spontaneity: it’s disparate in its whims, but cohesive enough to spark constant revisitation. What resonates for me as a listener is that it feels less like a product of rigid planning, and more like the result of (1) seeing what one can already do, then (2) doing more. Many of its songs register like brazen sonic experiments, convincing in their gall, but just candid enough for their innovation to feel within reach. On “Darling,” perhaps the most straightforwardly hip-hop-oriented track on the record, a tough-to-follow array of disjointed grand piano chords gives way to a fast-talking Jadasea, who seems to be perched somewhere between rapping and spoken word. Atmospherically, the song sounds cinematically overcast, like the sort of thing that might play as a larger-than-life film protagonist hangs his head amidst a torrential downpour. But much like the album at-large, it has a way of bridging a gap between the two contradictory concepts it evokes — in this case, cinema and dreariness — before subverting the tension altogether. The first time I heard the track, I was midway through the tiring task of emptying my room in preparation to move out. New unaddressed boxes seemed to emerge in corners where there were none; by the time tiredness crept in, I was left with a tarnished room, and little-to-no progress to show for it. Playing from my Alexa speaker, which lay hidden behind cobwebbed ephemera somewhere in a corner, the song struck a chord because, in a way, it was just like me: meandering its way through tricky terrain, somewhere between brazen clarity and stream-of-consciousness thought. What makes Pressure Sensitive effective is that it doesn’t pretend to have the answers — only the resolve, and the audacity, to inch a bit closer to them with every new attempt.

Asked what, if anything, the pair may have wanted listeners to get out of the album, Jadasea was initially quick to answer, but then paused to think over whatever he originally planned to say.  “On my end of it, I think it’s the same as any rap shit I put out—just stuff to think about,” he said, after a few seconds. “It is existential and esoteric and hard to pin down exactly what I want people to come away with—but I feel like they know. Hopefully, they’re going to be getting that feeling.” I asked for clarification on what “that feeling” was, and both artists doubled down on the ambiguity, not giving a definition but jumping to ask, instead, whether I had felt it. In the few seconds I had to answer in our Zoom call, it was difficult, of course, to distill the album’s many intersecting lines into a succinct yes or no. But what Pressure Sensitive does, much like the duo’s move to ask rather than answer, is push beyond simple means of engagement, and challenge listeners to feel something new: not something you can say yes or no to, but something you have to think about, revisit, rethink. The answer, like the album, is likely to be unorthodox. And unorthodox thought, in similar fashion to unorthodox music, can only be the product of experiencing something you haven’t experienced before.

Can we do an existential check-in? Where are you guys existentially?

JADASEA: I’m getting ready for tour, so I’m getting ready to fully give my spirit to the road. Someone once told me that your soul travels at the speed of a camel—like if you get on a plane and come to America, your soul is low-key trying to catch up. That’s why you get jet-lagged and shit. 

ANYSIA KYM: I feel really grateful. I’m excited for the album to drop. So far, just Jada, myself and a few friends have heard it, and it’s such a special time before it’s the world’s. But I’m also just learning to be grateful for the now. Sometimes I get so caught up trying to plan what the months ahead are going to look like. I’ve realized that you can only plan so far in advance—maybe like two weeks. I’m excited for what’s going to happen because I have no fucking idea.

Besides the DJ gig, what are some of the other things you’ve done to occupy yourself before the album drops?

KYM: Making music. I’ve been playing guitar more for the last year and change, so coming up with new arrangements. Making my house a playground.

Wait, do you guys both play instruments? I know you do, but Jada what about you?

JADASEA: I actually can play guitar as well.

KYM: This is a super fun fact about Jada. 

JADASEA: I used to play a lot when I was a kid. I haven’t played it like that since I was, like, 16. I got this weird ass fluorescent yellow-green guitar when I was 10 years old. But I prefer playing acoustic, to be honest. I like the picky kind of shit. I think I’ve got guitar playing on this tape that Pretty V put out. I don’t even remember which track it is, but he’s telling me I went in on it. I actually couldn’t believe it until I saw a photo of me, him and Archy with guitars in the studio.

You guys came to this project with really distinct musical backgrounds. Would you say recording it was more about finding a middle-ground, or experimenting with the extremes?

JADASEA: We met last summer, and she sent me a beat. It’s on the tape—it’s the most “that way” track that we’ve got on there. Then I went to New York, and we made the bulk of the album in like 5 or 6 sessions, over a month. We were just going. It was really just Anysia making a beat, and I’m just writing to it.

KYM: It started super hip-hop. The one song we started with is the most hip-hop song. But then I remember Jada was like, ‘I wanna just do whatever. Let’s try some shit. I want it to feel UK, but I also want it to feel like you—just do whatever.��� Knowing that I could experiment and that Jada was patient, with every song it just got more comfortable. We got the hip-hop out of the way, and then we were like ‘okay, let’s have fun for real.’

JADASEA: I mean, I had listened to Soliloquy I think even before I met Anysia. The beat she had sent me was crazy. With that tempo of music, I can go into a more grime-y or garage-y flow, and I enjoy doing that, but I don’t always have the opportunity to do it. But what we ended up doing afterwards—I don’t think it’s something people have heard before. At least I haven’t heard it before.

You guys may have invented a new genre here—what would you call it?

KYM: Pressure Sensitive! The title is oxymoronic, but those two words also make sense together. I don’t like to put myself in a genre, though. Hip-hop is definitely there—hip-hop is what birthed me, hip-hop is what influenced Jada. It’s always there. But using that context to make something new… I don’t think I could make the music that I’m making without its influence.

Which one is the hip-hop track you guys first made? Where is it on the album?

KYM: It’s called “Darling.” It’s number 9. I’m gonna get really deep and a little corny right now, but 9 is my Life Path number and my lucky number. It’s why the album is coming out on the 9th. And the first track we ever made being number 9 was not intentional. It just happened to fall that way. And I just discovered that. That’s fire to me.

JADASEA: How do you calculate that? I’m guessing mine is 4, off top.

[Photo by D’andre Williams]

What’s track 4 on the album?

KYM: Track 4 on the album is “Bad Mind.” And I don’t want to have a favorite, but the way Jada floated on that song is so insane to me. He’ll sit there and he’ll be writing some shit, and it’s not like you can see in his face what he’s about to say. He’s obviously tapped into a spiritual zone. It’s just a very emotive song, to me.

We were talking a bit about comfort zones earlier. To what extent would you guys say that this project made you get out of yours?

JADASEA: It’s all in one for me—it’s grime and garage out here, so those flows are even more natural to me than some of the other ones. I don’t think I had to come out of my comfort zone at all.

KYM: It was like working with someone who’s not going to tell you ‘Oh, I’m only used to this,’ or ‘can I get more like this.’ I think the biggest and most fun challenge was that Jada was always down to make more. We started with one song, and then we had three songs, and then we had five songs. We never knew what the next one was going to sound like. The last song that we made—I tend to play things safe, and Jada’s someone who often pushes me to not play things safe. He was just like, ‘Let’s just try to make one more song.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, should we?’ And then it was the most fire song. So any challenges I experienced were good for me, personally.

What do you want people to get out of this?

JADASEA: On my end of it, I think it’s the same as any rap shit I put out—just stuff to think about. It is existential and esoteric and hard to pin down exactly what I want people to come away with—but I feel like they know. As long as I keep getting that from it. I feel like me and Anysia have both done our shit. Hopefully, they’re going to be getting that feeling.

“That feeling?”

[In unison]: That feeling.