Analogue Appreciation: Shura

In ​‘World’s Worst Girl­friend’, a track from Shura’s upcom­ing album I Got Too Sad For My Friends, the singer-song­writer reflects on being a home­body over a sum­mery synth-pop groove. ​“You’re always try­na get me out of this house / Keep tellin’ me it’s alright / But there’s a voice inside my head and it’s loud / Don’t wan­na lis­ten to it all night”.

Set in an open plan kitchen and liv­ing room, the music video sees her make repeat­ed trips to the fridge, star­ing blankly into it – a relat­able moment for many. “‘World’s Worst Girl­friend’ is me at my peak dra­mat­ic gay,” she explains about the song. ​“An anthem about feel­ing like a spec­tac­u­lar­ly bad girl­friend because instead of going on nice dates I most­ly want­ed to stay inside and hide away from the world with our cats and play video games.”

It’s a com­mon thought process for the more intro­vert­ed-mind­ed, as well as a win­dow into Shura’s effort­less abil­i­ty to blend humour and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty into catchy ear­worms, which appears across her discog­ra­phy. But it’s also a nod towards her love for phys­i­cal cul­ture and objects. From ana­logue music equip­ment to old video game tid­bits, they make for an impor­tant part of her home and dai­ly life. To cel­e­brate the release of her new album, which lands tomor­row, May 30, she picks out nine of her most trea­sured pieces.

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In the pan­dem­ic, one of the many hob­bies I got into was mod­i­fy­ing old Game Boy Colours. I’d buy beat up old ones, replace the cas­es, LCD screens and cus­tomise them with dif­fer­ent but­tons and colours. I had to teach myself to sol­der which was fun and occa­sion­al­ly painful. This one I cus­tomised to look like an old Game Boy. The copy of Tetris has my Dad’s save file, which was at one point a world record score, although we nev­er had it cer­ti­fied because we didn’t have a video record­ing of him play­ing it.

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I bought this in 2015 when I first start­ed play­ing shows. I remem­ber think­ing that it looked too shiny and new, and I was so anx­ious for it to get beat up. My gui­tarist Luke assured me that it would take no time at all – and as you can see – he was absolute­ly right. I love that you can see where the met­al but­ton of my den­im jack­et scratched off the paint­work. It’s also a beau­ti­ful gui­tar to play and has trav­elled the world with me, so it’s very precious.

I love old TVs. This is a JVC Videosphere that my part­ner gave to me as birth­day present when I lived in New York City. So it’s trav­elled all the way back to Lon­don (in hand lug­gage!) now that we live here. I love that kin­da looks like a space hel­met (I also love space). I man­aged to hook it up with a dig­i­tal to ana­logue con­vert­er so I can play TV shows on it. The lat­est thing I’ve been dis­play­ing on there is Arcane, because it’s fantastic.

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When I was at uni­ver­si­ty, I got super into Mag­i­cal Real­ism. I was read­ing a lot of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Gar­cía Mar­quez and got obsessed with the idea of going to South Amer­i­ca. So, when I fin­ished uni­ver­si­ty, I went to trav­el there for 6 months, alone, and took a few books. This one I read while I was vol­un­teer­ing at an ani­mal sanc­tu­ary in the rain­for­est (where I had to walk a puma for 8 hours a day – because it could nev­er be released into the wild). As you can see it suf­fered a lit­tle in the humid­i­ty. As did I!

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An ex of mine picked this up at an art fair and some­how when we broke up, I man­aged to keep cus­tody of it. Maybe because I’d had it tat­tooed on me. Ha. We used it in the art­work for my first album (where we had to recre­ate my bed­room in a stu­dio in east Lon­don) and I remem­ber hav­ing to con­tact the estate of graph­ic design­er Robert Brown­john to ask permission. 

2‑XL is an edu­ca­tion­al toy robot. You can buy dif­fer­ent cas­settes, and they have quizzes. I believe it was invent­ed by a sci­en­tist who actu­al­ly voiced the robot. I had one as a kid and one of the first things I did when I signed my first record deal was to go on eBay to find one. I have a lot of fun mem­o­ries of furi­ous­ly answer­ing quiz ques­tions with my twin.

I used to play as a teenag­er, but my dad used to get cross at me spend­ing all my pock­et mon­ey on card­board. Last year I realised that I was a grown-up who could spend pock­et mon­ey how­ev­er they liked so I got back into col­lect­ing and play­ing. It’s such a fun and sil­ly game and it’s a nice excuse to get togeth­er with friends for an hour – or six.

I have a lot of ana­logue equip­ment in my home stu­dio. Ana­logue synths, gui­tar ped­als, a space echo. But my favourite is the Tas­cam Por­tas­tu­dio. It’s a real­ly fun way to make things sound fucked up and inter­est­ing. I love lay­ing down things to cas­sette and then record­ing them back in whilst mess­ing around with the speed set­tings. You can get some real­ly wild sounds. 

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This Octo­pus Alien was drawn by a graf­fi­ti artist UFO907. When I first start­ed dat­ing my cur­rent girl­friend, we would see this tag all over Brook­lyn and Green­point. So, I heav­i­ly asso­ciate it to the very ear­ly stages of my falling in love with New York, and of course, her. She got me a lit­tle piece of merch from him and inside was one of these Pri­or­i­ty Mail stick­ers with the Alien Octo­pus. So, I had to get it framed, and it lives with me in my home studio.

I Got Too Sad For My Friends by Shu­ra is out tomorrow.

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