I put it out there, and some people caught on, and some didn’t. Right, because there was no outside perception. At that point, I was literally making music for myself. I didn’t care if it was publicised or if a lot of people heard it. And it was such a dope atmosphere, because it was all live instrumentation, you know? We made an alternative sounding pop mixtape thing. I wasn’t writing fully by myself at this point, he would create the sound, and I was the narrative. I was in a garage studio set up in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and this producer, who was also a writer, had a lot of live instruments. How long did it take for people to get on board? But it was definitely hard to get people to believe in me and make music. I grew up in church singing, so I’ve always had a background and foundation for it. I was on the track just gang banging, a little bit like “south side, left side”, you know? But it was really different to me. He wanted me to do this gangster style rap hook. But you look so cool to me” and I was like, “I make music” and he was like, “really? Oh, cool” and he invited me to his studio. He met me at a magazine event and he walked up to me like, “I don’t know what you do. It’s funny, because I first started off doing a rap song with a guy named Taz Arnold, when I was fifteen. Phlo: I love the gloom, I’m really not liking the sun a lot. Noisey: It’s really, really hot out here. Which made for a vintage type almost blind date, as opposed to today’s personals, where you can pre-judge someone via a myriad of relevant social networks before deciding whether they’re on the right side of mentally stable to be worth both an appetiser and main meal at Frankie and Benny’s. The Poster Girl EP is out now on Night Beach Records.To make matters slightly more intimidating for my neurotic brain, I was to be meeting with Phlo Finister, an artist whom I didn't know too much about - beyond the realm of a few track premieres and a fashion spread in VICE - and had no time to prepare in advance for. For their remix – premiered here – production duo D-E-W-L, soften it up slightly, replacing the splintered beats with layered synths and fractured, almost ghostly backing vocals. EP highlight Killer On The Road is built around a glowering beat, which crawls along with Finister's airy vocal. Produced by Benny Cassette and Andrew Dawson, it's full of big crunchy beats, double-time drum claps and lyrics that aim to recontextualise the tropes of R&B. While the mixtape garnered some blog buzz, the real proof of her avant garde R&B proclamations comes in the shape of new EP, Poster Girl. Released in late 2011, her free Crown Gold mixtape aimed to deliver "classic R&B, but.more avant garde", and included mash-ups of songs from the likes of the Doors, Dr Dre, Nancy Sinatra and Mobb Deep. From this obsession, and the early performances she'd started doing around LA, was born the new moniker, Phlo Finister. This move into the world of fashion lead to her obsession with the 1960s Youthquake movement, an idea that the fashion and music worlds of that time were dominated by teenagers. Unfortunately her parents' desire to nurture a trouble-free child didn't really work out as she quit school shortly after the family moved to LA, before getting a job in the murky world of the music industry as a stylist for Def Jam Records in her late teens. Born in California to strict parents, the young Elijah Finister was banned from listening to any R&B or hip-hop.
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