When singer and producer Asha Nandy thinks back to her childhood, she remembers the bustle of London and the hush of the Co Cork countryside. She regards herself as the product of two very different worlds: the endless red-brick sprawl of Bermondsey, south of the Thames, and the wide open fields of the townland of Killeen, near Blarney.
“I very much consider that I grew up between both. Living in London, my mum was working with so much Irish culture. I was surrounded by Irish people,” says Nandy, who records cutting-edge electro-pop as Yunè Pinku. “I spent a lot of time in Cork. I was a little hybrid. There are ideas about community that exist in Ireland more than in somewhere like London. I’ll put out a song, and everyone in my family has heard it in two days.”
She may have been born in London, but Nandy is proud to speak in a Cork accent – if you didn’t know, you might easily conclude she had grown up closer to Shandon than Southwark. Her Irish origins also inform her brilliantly innovative dance music. Last year, she covered Sinéad O’Connor’s Drink Before The War, a spectral torch song from O’Connor’s debut album, The Lion and the Cobra. Meanwhile, on her new upcoming new EP, Scarlet Lamb, she draws on influences such as My Bloody Valentine and The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan.
“There’s probably a lot of subconscious things that I listen to coming through. A few people have picked out different artists on different songs. Some people have said Radiohead references. Others have said Dolores O’Riordan. It’s things I listen to accidentally coming through.”
‘Yunè’ is Japanese for ‘cloudy’, while ‘Pinku’ was inspired by Pingu, an animated series about a family of penguins and a favourite from her childhood. Whatever name she uses, critical acclaim has come thick and fast. Fashion magazine Wonderland heralded her as a “rising polymath”, while music publication Clash has praised “the incredible world-building quality to her music”. Nandy has also been compared to cult artists such as Clairo and Nia Archives, while she has remixed Charli XCX, the pop star behind this year’s ‘Brat summer’ memes. She is going places in a hurry.
Her father is from Malaysia while her mother has been deeply embedded in the London-Irish community since leaving Cork (she has served as chair of the St Patrick’s Festival in Trafalgar Square). Nandy gets back to Cork whenever she can. Growing up, she was always over for school holidays and loved the contrast between the calm of the countryside and the hubbub of London.
“We always ended up spending time with family anyway. Any time we would be there would be around someone’s birthday or Christmas or whatever. So I think we didn’t actually gallivant too much. We would go with the family and do a bunch of things and stuff. I probably gallivant more so these days.”
Her mother was a raver in her day and, during her time in Thailand, would attend Moon Raves: all-night beach parties held under a full moon. It is from her that Pinku has inherited her love of electronic music she feels. “In the 1990s, there were these moonlight raves – she would tell stories about those that sounded pretty cool. Much more than me, actually – she’s much more accustomed to all of that.”
That wasn’t the only inspiration. As a child, she soaked up traditional music and rock and pop. “It was a big mix at home. We had a lot of pop music. And then traditional Irish music. And then trance and electronic stuff – Madonna, U2, all these things coming through. A mix of things on the radio. It’s nice. It’s all before you’re fully conscious of what you’re listening to.”
Nandy has written songs since she was a teenager, but it was during the pandemic she became more serious about music – when it became her therapy. With her intimate, introspective voice and hyper-intense sound, she is sometimes categorised as a “bedroom artist” – a genre of music made by and for people who’d prefer to stay at home rather than go out and interact with the world (see also Girl in Red and the aforementioned Clairo). She isn’t cripplingly shy – but nor is she the life and soul of the party.
“What it implies is for the most part correct. I do most of my writing at home on a laptop and take it to at studio later on. But I think it can sometimes imply a bit of ‘newbyiness’ or something [i.e. implying she is merely learning the ropes].”
She admits the suggestion of introversion is pretty accurate, especially the roots of the project. “It was very much a bedroom project. And now it’s a hybrid: half-bedroom, half-studio. I wouldn’t want to set people off in the wrong foot – ‘yeah, you can get all these sounds from your bedroom’. There is a point where you do kind of need that proper industrial studio for it to sound as good as it can. But I don’t take any offence at it really – it’s pretty accurate.”
With a rising profile have come new demands. She’s adjusting to living out a suitcase while touring – and to having her picture taken and participating in photo-shoots. It’s a learning curve.
“It’s definitely not natural to me. It’s still something I have to warm up to. Definitely being centre of attention is something I don’t enjoy. It’s one of things where you expose yourself to it – doing it so many times. You eventually sort of get into a rhythm with it. I’ve definitely no qualms about going out in front of loads of people. But when it comes to things like photoshoots and all this stuff, I still find it awkward.”
Things are only getting busier. This winter, she tours the United States with Canadian electro-pop musician Caribou. She hasn’t yet played Cork – but hopes to come home for a performance sooner rather than later. “I’m keen to. I brought up that conversation recently – even if it was a small thing. I’d love to get over to do a show. Fingers crossed for the not too distant future.”
- The Scarlet Lamb EP, by Yunè Pinku, is out now
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth It’s an Irish novel that’s set in Cork in the 1990s. It’s a sort of coming-of-age tale that captures small-town Ireland and the experience of growing up.
I watched The Love Witch [a 2016 retro comedy-horror that paid tribute to old Hammer Horror films and supernatural sitcoms such as Bewitched]. It’s an absurdist, very visually charged movie that looks like it was made in the 1970s.
I watch a lot of sitcoms. I quite like a bit of trash TV. How I Met Your Mother and New Girl are quite light. You can just watch them whenever you want.
