The brains behind Black Cab Sessions launched their own record label in July, and minimalist pop songstress WALL was the first person they snapped up – and with good reason.

WALL’s ambient, dreamy pop with a heart is pretty much guaranteed to win you over. Hot off the back of her beautiful video for single Magazine, Wonderland photographs Lyla Foy, the girl behind the melodies.

Why the name ‘WALL’?

It wasn’t thought about at all. I had this song, No Secrets, I wanted to put it on online and wanted a little picture to go with it, you know how you have to have a little picture on Soundcloud. I was doodling on a piece of paper, and writing names that looked pretty and cool. And then I wrote “WALL” in this writing and then wrote “No Secrets” and I thought, “That looks nice”. When I started the project I didn’t think it was going be a band: it was one song. And then people liked the song, I was like, “maybe I should write some more like this”, so in the last six months I’ve written lots of songs to back up that one song.

Who influences and inspires you?

I really like Patt

i Smith and I really respect people like St Vincent who are heavily involved in the production and write using their own technology on their laptop, start with the production of the song and build things from there. And chicks who play guitar and play all their own things. ‘Cos I played all the instruments on the recordings, I produced it all myself. For me, the songwriting comes from the production of the songs rather than just sitting there – I never write sitting with a guitar. It doesn’t come from that. It comes from a beat or a tempo or just a bassline, that’s kind of how I’ve started writing a song, a different approach to perhaps how people would normally write songs.

What’s next?

I’m finishing off my album at the moment. We’ve released a single and we’re going to do another single early next year. We’re announcing a tour next week which is probably going be quite long, quite a lot of dates, we’re going to be supporting some people up and down the country which should be really fun for getting out there, getting on the road. So that’s the next hurdle, and then back into the studio a couple of weeks, finishing off album-wise.

WALL’s single, Magazine, is out now. facebook.com/wall

Images: Poppie Clinch
Text: Julia Lichnova