On debut album ‘FUNKSOULSEX’, turns modern dating, female philosophy and fairy tales into ten tracks of warm, jazzy, funk, immediately bringing listeners to their feet.
“I feel elated – you work for so long on an album, not only the music, but who are you going to release with, the strategy and planning; so much goes into it. There’s so much time and energy and then it’s out in the world, it is out of your control.” Liv East chats with ease, welcoming CLASH into her mind with warmth. “You can do X, Y and Z and all things with music but it will simply find people as it’s meant to.”
East launched herself into the land of funk and soul in 2019; what felt like a huge moment soon fell flat as 2020 kicked into gear. She proved she wasn’t going anywhere, pushing through with a vengeance. “I feel like my first year really was 2023,” she says – the year ‘So Badly’ dropped. Three years later, she has arrived with her debut album, ‘FUNKSOULSEX’: 10 tracks of sexy, soulful, funky beats layered with spiritual depth.
The title immediately ignites curiosity. “I protected the name, I didn’t even tell Jimmy Day or Joe Neman, or say the name to anyone for years because I knew that it was unique,” says East of her co-producers. The title isn’t the only unusual thing here; so is the inspiration behind the record: “female philosophy”. Each song takes listeners through a sociological commentary on being a woman and modern dating, cushioned with nuggets of astrology, mythology and fairy tales.
“It’s based on my journey and the journey of so many women I know in their 20s, living in this Western 21st-century secular society: what is our relationship to intimacy, to sex, to relationships. It feels like so much is shifting, so much tension between men and women, and what are we all searching for?” East laughs: “Music is my therapy, I question everything!” Listeners get an in-depth look at “life through my lens and the lens of my friends and women that I know – collectively so many of us are single but we want love, and connection but not at the cost of ourselves”.
The record is highly inspired by and music steeped in symbolism: “Symbolism is so beautiful.” East takes it to another level, for instance with the hand-illustrated tarot cards slotted into the records of the first 100 sales. Each card contains a symbol, lyrics and a message from the tracks on the album. “I know my aunt bought one and she pulled out ‘now’s not the time to be telling lies’ – I was like, take it as a message!”
credits the quality of her projects to the support that surrounds her. “It’s all very personal: who are the people – the collaborators, the producers, the visuals, the director or photographers – I see people like family and I don’t work for people that I don’t vibe with. I never understand why people do, I’m very happy with this family that I’m building and all these different pockets and just having good relationships with people is very important to me.”
East remembers every moment of the album coming to life. In 2022, the seed was first sown on a songwriting trip to Brighton with Jimmy Day and Joe Neman. A self-proclaimed queen of manifesting, she thought, “I’m going to make an album with these two… or I want to anyway!” and headed home in the light of a solar eclipse. “I wrote the name ‘FUNKSOULSEX’ in my journal and that was that.” She calls Jimmy and Joe integral to her creative process: “They’re a bit older, their studio’s amazing, they’re such great people – their taste! I didn’t want to scare them but I was thinking ‘I am going to make an album with you’ and I think it was two years later we got back in the studio properly and it was just flowing, then Joe was like, oh, this feels like it could be an album!”
The skeleton of ‘FUNKSOULSEX’ comes from ‘Sundays Is for Lovers’, a new way to fight the Sunday Scaries. East and her bestie sit with a cuppa, playing philosophers and asking, “What’s life’s purpose? What is love?” Sometimes they play the negative, modern realist; other times, the positive lover girl. On ‘Lighthouse’, East explores the thought that “love is real, but my concept of love or what I think love is must be an illusion because if I’m not in love, it’s not here”. She writes: ‘Maybe love is only an illusion / Seeking clarity beneath all the confusion’.
That question led her to womanhood, and to Renaissance sculptures of women who paved the way for her life to exist, made before the days of unrealistic body standards. “We create life with our bodies but we’re so at war with them,” East says, and looking up at those sculptures with respect is a different experience than looking in the mirror sometimes.
‘Sugar Rush’ is a celebratory banger, a love letter to every woman who walks this earth. “If ever they feel unworthy, insecure or just a little off, this can be their anthem to blast in order to feel whole again!” East gets candid: “We’re the magicians, the vessels with the spirit, I intentionally wanted to write a song that reminded women of their divinity. You are a goddess and you bring life into the world!”
There’s something deeply spiritual about ‘FUNKSOULSEX’. Mythology, fairy tales, and astrology lead listeners through it. “I wanted to make something that was sacred, but not under the umbrella of religion.” East has always had a soft spot for her birth chart, and her Scorpio rising sign is a reason for her curiosity: the opening track, ‘How Many Nights?’, is a literal question. Perhaps this is why she examined where romantic love truly begins: fairytales.
‘Soft Spot’, which includes the line ‘Can someone wake me from the slumber deep in this movie, reality, I start to wander’, takes on the classic Disney myth. “We’ve all been informed by Disney that the man – the prince will come and save you and just so many formative narratives and you grow up and you’re like, what? That’s definitely not what’s going on let alone like what I really believe or connect to or want for myself.”
East recently headlined her largest show to date at the Jazz Cafe in Camden. Compared with her previous Rough Trade Records gig, the capacity shot from 50 to 500. Both venues are iconic in the London music scene: the smaller record store showcased the rawness of her bluesy vocals alongside her acoustic guitarist, while the larger space allowed a full-blown band to join her, giving the album’s jazziness the freedom and playfulness it deserves. If you have no idea who East is, you’ll listen to her music and feel warmer, welcomed and seen. “In whatever way, just something closer. I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t want to say intimate, but just closeness of some kind, you know?”
The album wraps up with ‘I Know Things About You (You Don’t Even Know)’, leaving listeners with two final words: “Say Goodbye”. Simply a happy accident, “a goodbye to the chapter”. From making this album, she has “learned many things! Just growth and revelations”. She adds: “I feel lucky to say this, but a lot of my music does just come from within me. I haven’t looked at an artist and been like, oh, I’m like her. I want to be like her. I’ve found my own sound that’s unique to me.”
If you want to sit back and jam, that’s fully welcome, but if you want to dig a little, ‘FUNKSOULSEX’ is a body of soul and R&B layered with spirituality and questions, allowing you to grasp an individual, relatable meaning.