Riz Maslen who performs under the moniker Neotropic, is an electronic musician and composer based in the UK. She began releasing records in the mid nineties, and has been highly prolific over the last 2 decades having put out many albums and eps on various labels including Ninja Tune and 4Hero. She was an early collaborator of the seminal electronic duo, Future Sound of London, and her voice is featured in one of their biggest hits, Papua New Guinea. Her expressive style is all over the place and based heavily in trip hop and experimental electronic often with an emphasis on her vocal accompaniments. She’s toured extensively all over the USA, Europe and Australia and her live shows often include a visual component of her own creation.
As I was working on this podcast I got a chance to immerse myself in her discography beyond the few albums I already owned, and I was blown away at the sophistication and inventiveness of her musical stylings. In the interview, we touch on how she developed her own style through experimentation and a DIY ethos, her early days at Ninja Tune and her touring experiences in the heyday of electronic music in the nineties. We also got into discussion around the challenges of working outside of your comfort zone, the connotations of being pigeonholed as a female vocalist in electronic music, and discovered some correlations between both of our experiences of making electronic music. Thanks for listening! (You can listen on Apple iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and Mixcloud. Please subscribe and review if you enjoy!)
Neotropic Interviewed by SciFiSol
& Neotropic Songs Showcase from 1999-2020
The podcast’s playlist features Neotropic songs from several of her albums, dating from 1999 until the present. They are listed below in order of appearance.
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Nyolat (appears on The Absolute Elsewhere)
Beautiful Pool (appears on 15 Levels of Magnification)
Opium Den (appears on Ultimate Sushi)
Love & Hate (appears on Equestrienne)
The Melancholy Whale (appears on The Whalebone Box)
Your War (appears on The Absolute Elsewhere)
Fung Koo (appears on Ultimate Sushi)
