Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Malade.
Introducing Malade, the gloss-pop project of Montreal-based singer, songwriter and producer Camille Brown. R&B groove meets crafty pop in this playful, maximalist endeavor.
“Give Up,” produced by longtime friend and engineer Damien Muller, is Malade‘s latest single and most earnest girlpop effort. A hot pink earful, the track exudes post-breakup acrimony which Malade‘s vocals express almost as a mockery. Countermelodies shimmer atop a gloating bass and textured drums. “I’m on the other side of a time where I had to let go of some relationships that weren’t serving me,” she reminisces. “The hyper feminine pop persona that emerged from that pain was almost like a guardian angel, or a shield to me. The next few releases from this project really reflect that sugar coated, lacquered coping.”
“Give Up” on relationships not serving you by streaming + sharing the new track:
I believe the works below are best paired with a cup of strong ginger tea. I love to boil some fresh ginger in big batches to keep in the fridge for when I need a healing beverage. I boil mine for about an hour to extract as much from the plant as possible, but you probably don’t need to.
“Private Dinner Party” by Steph Wall:
Steph Wall is my dear friend who sadly lives in Vancouver, across the country from me. She recently dropped an absolute gem of an album entitled My Angels. Today I chose a song from it called “Private Dinner Party” for your listening pleasure. The track is warm and flooded with light, groovy and nostalgic, whilst maintaining a welcome melancholy that pervades Wall’s work.
To pair with Wall’s song, I picked out a Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) painting entitled Kopf, German for “head,” which she produced in 1963. Lassnig was part of the early informalist and Tachist movements in postwar Austria. She was also the first woman to win the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988. Her work mainly centers around self-portraiture, specifically of certain body parts illustrated according to how she felt them as she painted them – this practice was coined “Körpergefühlmalerei,” or “body consciousness.” “Kopf” reminds me of Wall’s lyrics:
“I’m supposed to be doing something, somewhere else”
and
“Doing things to say I did them
Avoiding people who make me mad”
Steph Wall
The work expresses this loneliness, the frustration that arises from lack of connection, as well as a playfulness, almost derived from weariness. The hot and cold of the composition is also reminiscent of the song’s twang.
Tea + Me 