Words and photographs: Eerie Rose | Single artwork: Mandy Warhole & Karin Sarkizova | Ayu wears white dress by eerie and strange

Since I last spoke to Ayu Mesi back at the release of Angel Numbers, lots has changed and lots has remained the same. We still live together, sharing a workspace in our strange, haphazardly designed old house which wraps around a spiral staircase. She’s still balancing a day job cycling around nighttime gigs and mixing sessions - but these days, it’s more often DJing over live performances. After a pretty nasty bike accident, she’s got a couple more facial scars now - but her energy remains unchanged: a highly motivated artist, although I’m sure she might not say that of herself. Despite the brutality of the world we currently live in, the difficulty of living in London right now, gruelling 9-5 work and the reality of ‘making it’ becoming increasingly more obviously a pipe dream for many of us - Ayu Mesi continues to create, to put work out there and revel in those moments where it all feels worth it, the energy playing to a packed venue at 3am, the sound of your track over big speakers. I caught up with her to chat about the new single ‘PISS’ released today on all streaming platforms.

So, firstly - tell me a bit about ‘PISS’…?

It's a funny one, I wrote it on a horrific comedown in the studio with Aerside, it was the night after a party in my house and at that time I felt extremely trapped in life. Gustave really helped me just capture a moment extremely honestly, I think that's why I wanna release this one first.

Riding round every day delivering parcels for shitty companies, crossing a bottle of piss by the roadside got me in a weird spiral about how expendable / useless I felt at the time. I'm a drama queen and my muse is a literal bottle of piss.

I've been sitting on this one for a very long time, I think since 2021 I'm not quite sure exactly on the date, I've got a huge backlog dating back to 2020 but I've been busy / insecure / mentally unwell. I think I've just gotten sick of trying to drum up plans for my weird little songs so I'm just rawdogging releases without much thought, I'm just tired of waiting more than anything.

Tell me a little more about the song’s inspirations - it sits at the intersection of several genres, how did this come about and is this something to expect with all your work as Ayu Mesi?

This one in particular was very UK hiphop inspired, it has a breakbeat inspired section and a weird ambient meltdown in the middle. Honestly it's the way I write, and I'm heavily inspired by DJS pulling curveball moments in their sets.

I remember a time Louise Plus One pulled a DnB Roller out of nowhere in a hardcore set and it knocked my soul out my body haha.

I've been working towards something of that magnitude since.

When it comes to writing, what is your process? I’ve watched you work on remixes in the space of a day, or a couple of very intense hours - with your own music, is it the same?

Now it definitely carries that sort of urgent energy. Back in my more “post punk” (god I hate that term) era I worked on the whole much slower, mainly due to my lack of fluency with production, and I really crafted everything to an insane degree.

Back then it would take up to a week to make a demo. I haven't got time for that anymore, I'm much less precious now. Plus I got the hang of weird genre morphing songs, I've got a much better idea of how to make them flow in a way that feels natural.

This beat was done by Aerside and he's on another level, he may as well be producing on a neuralink, he's SO fast.

In lyrics I'm fast, I hammer out a stream of consciousness and then sample and trim. It's never taken me long to write lyrics as really they're just a vehicle for my production to me.

Do you expect certain reactions from your audience - or do you wait and see? What do you hope the reaction will be to this one?

I hope it gets to the right people but I don't expect much with this one to be honest, it's more to break the tension with myself. If it gets 500 streams I'd be more than happy for my oddball little baby, but I'm trying not to get focused on results. That's a big part of what stopped me before. I think I'm going to stop caring about what happens and just try and be true to myself (past and present).

Since we last did a feature you’ve made a switch to DJing over live performances. How are you finding this change and do you find this is a better way to share your work?

I'm not as comfortable in my own skin anymore so live performances became tedious, especially with Sunny (my long term friend, collaborator / engineer) moving away. Before it was fun with him smashing the audience with noise waves made by mangling my voice live. It really had the same energy to me as playing in Bands.

Playing alone to mostly empty rooms felt quite demoralizing on bad days, at least before I was always having fun with one of my closest friends.

DJING feels much lower pressure and much less like all eyes are on me, It probably helps I'm not too fussed about being an incredible DJ, it's just a way to share my songs and have fun with music again :)

Don't get me wrong, I have unparalleled respect for so many DJs, that's their lane and I'm a guest there.

As much as you have many influences musically, you also have your general interests split across a few quite different hobbies and jobs. By day, cycling teacher, bike mechanic, and courier - by night, DJ, producer, bass player. Do your different interests and different places you focus your energy link or influence each other in any way, or is there more of an intentional separation?

In a way they link, I often think up ideas and freestyle while riding around and seeing so much of London and so much chaos is definitely inspiring. Often as a courier I would pull over and write a set of lyrics on a smoke break.

I think I do bike stuff for similar reasons to music, it feels liberating sometimes, crushing other times, I need stuff with highs and lows to keep me there.

I also just like the feeling of tearing around at a million miles an hour, in traffic, playing live shows. It often gives the same buzz.

I also throw in an odd lyric here and there referencing cycling, I just can't help myself.

What’s coming for the rest of the year?

I have shit loads of songs, a couple videos planned, hopefully a few collab EPs, I just wanna go nuts with as much as I humanly can without much thought or plan.

BITCH IM BACK OUT MY COMA.

‘PISS’ is out now on all streaming platforms. Follow Ayu Mesi on instagram to stay up to date on future shows and releases.

Ayu Mesi - Piss