"The most powerful thing in our galaxy - the sun - can change everything about how the world looks to us, so how awesome is it that the same thing can happen when someone special enters or leaves your life? I wanted to write a song about that parallel, and of course need it to be accompanied by the third most powerful thing - BASS!" - Starya
LA-based producer and vocalist Starya, formerly known as Tuff Ghost, acutely imbues aesthetics of the natural world into her futuristic, electronic pop soundscapes. As the primary beat-maker, singer, and mixer behind all of her own work, she directly translates her singular creative vision into immaculate production and songwriting.
As Tuff Ghost, the artist boasted multiple collaborations with genre-bending house producer Durante and remixes for the versatile DJ/producer Mija (and a support slot on her nationwide tour). Recently, under the new alias, she’s opened for electronic music titans such as Skrillex, Justice, Jamie xx, Boys Noize, Kill The Noise, Zedd, and 2manydjs, where she’s flexed her guitar-wielding, DJ/live performance hybrid.
Starya’s life journey has existed in a distinct duality. Having grown up off the grid in the far-off woods (with no electricity or plumbing) before transitioning to bright lights of San Francisco and Los Angeles, she’s learned how to blend her different upbringings into her work. As a result, she’s crafted a kaleidoscopic style that resembles a cosmic binding of the natural and digital realms.
Tracks like “The Garden” and “Meadowlark” (the latter of which was released by Zeds Dead Altered States label and placed on Spotify’s New Music Friday Dance) contain earthy, whimsical textures layered with warehouse, blog-house inspired club beats and dreamy vocals - a combination that has helped define the artist’s signature sound.
Today, Starya releases “Gradient” an intergalactic, bass-fueled track that continues the artist’s genre-blending creative approach. Made while on her Twitch stream, the track is permeated by deep bass lines, airy pop vocals, and a four-on-the-floor beat, resulting in an ethereal cut with a hypnotizing gravitational force.
“Gradient” kicks off with a pulsating bass line backed by stuttering percussion and floating vocals. The track then builds with the first verse, which supplements Starya’s singing with thumping kick drums and echoey snaps. “I wanna lay down like a sunset/slowly turning into a gradient/and as I pull the light across the ground/you’re wondering if I’ll ever come back around,” she sings, evoking the song’s psychedelic, interdimensional themes.
The track then drops into its propulsive central section, which combines a stabbing, electro style synth bass with scintillating hi-hats. Starya fills out the rest of the mix with electric guitar and increasingly warped instrumentation, elements that help complete the song’s sonic image of metaphysical transformation.
Bridging the world of form and interstellar life through music has been a quiet, long-running mission on Earth for most of time, and Starya knows she’s part of a much larger fabric of creators carrying out this operation. The singer-songwriter-producer-DJ-multi-instrumentalist spends most of her time in the cloud and out of the human-drama-fray, streaming on Twitch from her off-planet studio and occasionally coming down to bless us with an IRL festival or club performance to keep our joy levels steady and help harmonize the species
Starya’s tracks and mixes have a transcendental quality, an essence that can’t quite be qualified except to say it got her opening for Skrillex, Justice, 2manydjs, Kill The Noise, Tokimonsta, ZEDD, Arty, Diplo, Mija, Boyz Noize, and Dillon Francis to name few. Her former artist name Tuff GHost allowed her to stealth-move between the worlds of hip-hop, techno, electro, house and dubstep as what some might call a DJ’s DJ, but as Starya she emerges in true form, singing over her DJ sets to haunting, enrapturing, original pop-house songs with an ethereal other-worldy edge that’s distinctively hers.
Last summer, Starya joined the Altered States family with her single release “Meadowlark.” Now she’s revving up towards “Gradient,” an ethereal new track that should attract fans of Grimes, Justice, Cobrah, Ninajarachi, Uffie, The Knife, and more.