Name: Natasha Barrett
Nationality: British
Occupation: Composer, sound artist, researcher
Current Release: Natasha Barrett's new album Toxic Colour is out via Persistence of Sound.

For a deeper dive, read our earlier Natasha Barrett interview and our conversation with her about directions in electronic music.

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Natasha Barrett and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Soundcloud, Facebook, and bandcamp.



Where do most of your inspirations to create come from? Internal or external impulses, social, political, ecological - developments that you feel you need to respond to as an artist?

I experience internal and external impulses as connected. Ecological and political issues have undoubtedly shaped my opinions and emotions, inevitably finding their way into my music—sometimes explicitly, sometimes in more abstract ways. However, I aim to invite thought rather than dictate meaning.

On my new release, Toxic Colour, each track is a musical journey or a story of a human-made dystopia, and although some use recognisable sound sources, much will appear abstract to the listener.

The title track “Toxic Colour” is inspired by the human impact on natural landscapes, and how beautiful aerial photos paradoxically contrast with the often ravaged landscapes they depict, and that their message is at risk of being lost in our oversaturated world of digital visual media. Instead I wanted to make a new, fresh statement in sound.



Another track, “Glass Eye,” is an electroacoustic dystopia on the theme of how the proliferation of surveillance technology could become an invisible force, quietly eliminating any resistance in the population, which of course in some countries it already is.



“Ghosts of the Children” was motivated by the tragedies of children lost to war or oppression. As with many of my pieces, I avoid being explicit and instead seek to find beauty, even in melancholia.



In the program notes, I simply state that the work was initially inspired by the global disasters of 2023 but that, as I worked on it, I realised I wanted to capture beauty rather than death.

My current project, “Lie Detector,” is a multimedia electronic composition about how powerful structures shape and control our choices in a society where ubiquitous technology records and manipulates our thoughts, opinions, and perceptions.

The goal of “Lie Detector” is to guide the audience into shifting states of consciousness, influencing their emotions without them fully understanding how or why. It’s still a work in progress where I’m experimenting with ways to best translate these ideas into sound.

But now I also feel it's time to follow internal impulses and detach somewhat from the craziness in the world, and I plan to start a new electronic composition simply called The Fantasy of Touch.