Photo: Press

The Paris-born vocalist and producer Zilla has released her second single as a solo artist. The song is called ‘The Sleepwalker’, and it refers to an eerie experience that Zilla had one Christmas in Copenhagen.

“Around 3am, I fell off my bed”, she recalls, “my body was probably in between fast asleep and sleepwalking so I fell very heavily on the floor, which woke up my family. They came rushing to see what was wrong, and found me on the floor, blindfolded and screaming at anyone who would try to take my blindfold off.

"On closer inspection they realised that my finger was cut and badly bleeding. After a few minutes, I woke up and looked at my finger and noticed a very precise, rectangular cut from my nail - which was now missing - to the side of my finger. There were no sharp objects and there was no blood on my bed so we never found out how this happened till this day”

Over pop melodies and a tenebrous beat, ‘The Sleepwalker’ samples real recordings of Zilla sleeptalking, as the songwriter explores this unknown person living in her subconscious. She sings about a mysterious figure who “goes from soft to violent”, from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, “living in another world you never get”. This plays out in the music video, where in an otherworldly dream sequence Zilla traces the Ivory Coast’s Ebrié lagoon.

Zilla trained as a classical pianist at a Parisian conservatoire for 10 years before moving to London when she was 18.

'The Sleepwalker' follows the release of her debut single ‘Get Your Way’, which gained recognition after it was used in an advertising campaign by Elle UK.

Renowned producer Matthew Herbert has signed Zilla to his label Accidental Records for her first run of singles. Before hooking up with Herbert, Zilla had contributed guest vocals on tracks and remixes for UK labels Hypercolour and Warp Records and written for artists including Tinie Tempah and Wretch32.