For Claire Chicha, aka spill tab, her artistry focuses heavily on how it feels in the space between words. The French-Korean bilingual songwriter and producer’s fascination with sound design took root early. As a child she sat in on ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) sessions from the mixing room of her parents’ post-production studio in LA, inherently laying the foundation for her future as spill tab, a project that has now taken her on tour with Sabrina Carpenter and Wallows.
Her debut album, ‘ANGIE’, in her own words, is a project she’s chipped away at for hundreds, likely thousands of hours; a sweep of the favourite pieces of music she’s created over the past three years. Chicha reflects on the album’s ‘mountain dew interlude’, written in her co-writer’s bedroom studio, early creations she sees as important building blocks, a world way away from the 2020 song ‘Cotton Candy’ which was recorded on the floor of her room, with little else but a microphone balanced upon three stacks of books.
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“I feel like my first three EPs were me practicing at the batting cages and figuring out what works and what doesn’t,” she tells CLASH, reflecting on 2020’s ‘Oatmilk’, 2021 project ‘Bonnie’ and ‘KLEPTO’, a 2023 sound bath combining a heady mix of punchy synthesizers, sultry vocals and crunchy guitars. “The genesis of the album was making ‘PINK LEMONADE’ and the title track ‘ANGIE’. I feel like those two songs were either weird enough or in the case of ‘ANGIE’, I loved it enough to want to create a body of work to contextualise why those songs could exist together.” The “grandma and grandpa” of the forthcoming album marked a new chapter and signing to buzzy French label Because Music.
Of ‘PINK LEMONADE’ specifically, Chicha recalls how a 45-minute ‘musical chair’ style jam session would be condensed down into a useable eight second snippet. “You can still hear the seed of the idea when you just listen to that one initial track in the beginning, but we stacked so much on top of it, adding more 808s, more drums, more guitar.” With these heady songs coexisting within such engulfing themes of love and loss, and it being a debut too, it’s understandable why a fine toothpick was needed.
With ‘ANGIE’, expectations were lifted. Working with a group of local collaborators including long-time producer David Marinelli, as well as Solomonophonic, Wyatt Corona, Austin Bernard, and John DeBold, Chicha found herself experimenting with vintage synthesizers, digital renditions of analog sounds and lyrics which fed into one another. “Once you record that stuff, it invites you to walk around with it.”
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Follow-up single ‘De Guerre’, a grungy and self-indulgent number, saw Chicha writing in French, using it as a conduit to embody a certain personality. “Living in France taught me so much about being confident and assertive,” she says, recalling her time in Paris with her aunt, immersing herself in its culture and classic sounds. “It can be brutal, and it can be come across as mean, but I really appreciate what it brought to my life,” she explains, noting the difference in social cues between French and English speakers.
Having seen the assembly-line nature of the music industry up close, Chicha regards songwriters who write for pitch as some of the hardest working people in LA. “One of the greatest gifts of 2021 was me starting to do a lot of sessions. You get to sit in rooms with people who are so good at production and take home with you whatever you want to emulate.”
At the time of the interview, wildfires ravaged Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando valley. Comparing the city to a reality tv show, Chicha confesses she’s only briefly written for pitch, opting for a more proactive route. “You can only make music for yourself because if you’re trying to do something for someone else, there’s no guarantee it’ll do well,” she says. One thing’s palpably clear, spill tab is writing for catharsis. “At the very least, if you’re making music for yourself, whether or not it becomes the biggest thing ever, you can at least say that you fulfilled something for your own mental health or soul.”
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Words: Emma Way
Photography: Jade Sadler
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