London-based singer-songwriter Niki Colet tackles heartbreak and hope in her enchanting new alt-pop EP, We Only Ever Meet in Strange Dreams, out now on all major streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Youtube, and Bandcamp.
Mixed by Tom Archer (Rex Orange County, Little Simz, Moses Sumney, The Strokes) and mastered by Alex Killpartrick (Olivia Dean, Jordan Rakei), the 4-track EP was written in the wake of a breakup that coincided with tumultuous shifts in the artist’s life. We spoke to Colet about her background as a successful Filipino artist, her creative renaissance, and the process of channeling this emotional transformation into the making of We Only Ever Meet in Strange Dreams.
Tickets for Niki Colet’s London show on September 29th can be purchased through Eventbrite.
Hi Niki, thanks for speaking with us! For our readers who aren’t as familiar with your music yet, can you tell us a little more about yourself and the beginnings of your journey as an artist?
Thank you for having me! I’m a singer-songwriter originally from the Philippines, now based in London. I’ve been writing songs since I was ten, so my journey as an artist goes a long way back! I started recording music in my teens. My first album was a self-produced LP I worked on when I was fifteen and burned into CDs I sold at school. I’ve always paid a lot of attention to songwriting as a craft; I have a fascination with song structure and lyricism. I also write poetry, which feeds into the music I make. I spent a lot of time on platforms for independent artists, like Soundcloud and Bandcamp—that was how I discovered a lot of indie music and started to share my own work myself. I began pursuing music professionally while I was a student at uni, playing around with indie and alternative production with fellow music collaborators in the Philippines. I did a self-titled bedroom folk-pop EP when I was eighteen that I released on a now-defunct Southeast Asian music platform (this was in 2013, before the ubiquity of Spotify), and worked with musicians in the Manila indie music scene, like Ean Aguila of the band Ang Bandang Shirley, Nick Lazaro from Moonwalk, Luis Puno, Andrew Panopio from Ben and Ben, Miles Malferrari-Camomot from Dearest, and Aaron Gonzales who runs a recording studio called Point Bee.
I’ve always been independent, which has given me a lot of freedom in terms of creative direction, so I feel lucky to have been able to explore quite a lot. Genre-wise, my sound has always shifted shape a little bit, I went through a big folk-pop phase throughout my late teens, and was melding that with indie rock in my early twenties, but to be honest I don’t really think about genre when I make music. I’m intentional about capturing a feeling, and including elements of production I feel inspired by, but otherwise have a difficult time defining my work.
Throughout the pandemic, I was on a break from officially releasing music, but I was still writing songs for myself. I put these raw demos out on a regular basis on a newsletter I did called Voice Notes. It was during this period that I started writing pop music, with bigger, more anthemic melodies than I had before.
Now I’m based in London, where I’m making new music. My EP is called We Only Ever Meet In Strange Dreams and it occupies a kind of gritty, ethereal soundscape. If I were to define it, I would say it’s alternative dream pop, but it takes elements from a wide range of references across different genres and time periods, and as a result my producer Alex Haines and I have created a kind of nostalgic but also contemporary sound.
What was the creative process of making We Only Ever Meet In Strange Dreams like, from the EP’s inception to the release? Were there any unexpected challenges you faced or pivots you had to make?
The EP came to fruition as the result of five years away from officially releasing music. During this time, I changed a lot both as a person and as an artist, my creative palate had developed, my taste had changed, and the accumulation of personal experiences and creative inspirations had simmered within me through the years. So I came into the process of making music from a different angle than I had in the past.
The songwriting process followed a really funny pattern. Each track on the record began with a seedling from the past, whether it was a verse, a line, or a melody—something small I had come up with years ago, but could never finish into an entire song. In the recording studio with Alex, I would take this small musical seedling, craft a scrappy structure around it, slap together a demo, and then slowly edit and refine both lyrics and melodies from there as we fine-tuned the production with each session. I was going through some intense situational circumstances at the time, constantly feeling a thousand things at once, and there was so much I wanted to say. I wrote these songs during this period, about this situation, so it feels like such a visceral snapshot of my life at that moment in time.
I could talk for ages about the inception of the project, and the setbacks we faced, as well as how we overcame them. It was such a special time for me, to work on this record. Alex was incredible to work with, and helped me coordinate with our mixing and mastering engineers (Tom Archer and Alex Killpartrick, respectively). We were on a tight timeline and a tight budget—I was working in hospitality at a cafe at the time we started this record, and then shifted to a 9-5 PR job in fashion in the middle—but we really made it work.
When did you get connected with Alex Haines in the making of your EP, and what was it that made him the right fit for your project?
I worked at a coffee shop in North London last year. Alex was a regular at the coffee shop, he’d come in from his studio down the street, I’d make him an oat cortado, and we’d chat about music.
I had just graduated from my masters (I did a postgraduate degree in Culture, Criticism, and Curation at Central Saint Martins) and was applying to jobs at cultural institutions and galleries while working in hospitality. I’d uprooted my entire life from the Philippines to move to London in the hopes I’d find my path, but I didn’t know where to begin. At the time I was working at this coffee shop, I was feeling a little lost and creatively unfulfilled.
But I had also spent the past year falling in love in so many ways. In a literal way, but also, I was enamoured with London. It opened up a door to a completely different world for me, and in these broadened horizons I found myself falling in love with music again. My time away from releasing music officially allowed me the space to sit back and observe what I connected with as a fan, and not as an artist. It was easier to follow my feelings when I wasn’t trying so hard to stick to a particular mode of working. This attraction to a range of different soundscapes intensified when I moved here. I discovered a lot of new artists and records just from going about my daily life—whether it was through a night out with friends, or hearing something over the speakers at a shop, or within the relationship I was in at the time. The manager at this cafe had the most incredible taste in music, and I discovered a lot of new stuff just by coming to work.
Towards the end of last year, I started to chat to Alex about potentially working together on a project. I was itching to create something new. I felt like such a different person from who I was when I last released music, and I was curious to see what might come out of this current version of me. I knew that I needed to get some kind of structure and plan together, and find people to work with in order to make this happen. But I was scared to make the leap and actually do something. It felt impossible and far away.
And then December hit, and a lot of things in my life upended all at once. I went through a painful breakup in the middle of a lot of other turbulent circumstances, and found myself feeling even more lost than I had before. Everything felt uncertain and unstable, and I couldn’t see a way out. But then I thought, maybe music is the thing that will save me.
I met up with Alex over a coffee, and what was meant to be a quick exploratory chat ended up being a two-hour long conversation. We were both buzzing with so much energy, talking about music and sharing influences – there was a lot of overlap in our music taste. We fangirled over Blood Orange and ML Buch and spoke about the production of Caroline Polachek’s last album, and I told him about my dream project. We agreed to meet up a few days later for a studio session and experiment with recording a track, but we were quite clear that this would be a non-committal exploration. We wanted to see what it would be like to work together first, and it ended up being great. I came into the studio and pulled out a chorus I had written many years ago, but had never been able to finish into a complete song. I showed it to Alex, he got excited and put down a simple chord progression for it on a synth, and I started writing the rest of the song on the spot. It was funny, because for so many years this chorus was lodged in my brain like a grain of sand, but I could never find the rest of it—and then, in the midst of everything I was going through, I was suddenly able to find the words. I was in the thick of an intense period in my life, and I wanted to capture the immensity of loss. It’s both heavy and weightless at once, like the split second of turbulence on a plane. We were pulling up references like One Dove and Massive Attack, and thinking about nostalgic guitar sounds from contemporary artists like Mk.gee. The music started flowing out almost effortlessly. We took out a bass, an electric guitar, and did a little drum machine loop as well. By the end of the day, we had a raw demo for “Getaway Car”, and the entire song was complete.
The whole thing felt inevitable and perfect. As we were walking out of the studio that night, Alex and I turned to each other and said, “We have no choice. We’re making a fucking record.”
Where does the title We Only Ever Meet In Strange Dreams come from?
The title comes from a line in the EP’s first single, “Strange Dreams.” (We only ever meet in strange dreams/Where I run and you can’t chase me).
I have a post on Instagram from the day after I recorded “Strange Dreams” in the studio, and the caption is that line from the song: we only ever meet in strange dreams. This was before I even knew what this EP was going to be called. (Cringing at myself to have named my EP after I captioned an Instagram post but it is what it is!)
It’s funny, about that post—it captured moments from this insane day. I had spent all of it at the studio, feeling raw and buzzing with adrenaline. I was still reeling, all the time, from the things that had happened in my life that I wrote this song about. At the studio, I sang these lyrics to “Strange Dreams” and it felt like my heart breaking open. Afterwards, I went straight from the studio to the club and had a night like a movie.
I had gone out with my friend, and when the night was over, we went home in a taxi at 7am, the sun starting to rise as we drove through London. It was the tail-end of winter. In the back of the cab, I started to cry. When we got to my flat, battered from this night out, I played Tara the demo of “Strange Dreams” I’d just recorded the day before. We were sitting on my couch, slowly sobering up. I had just tried to have what my therapist later called a “reparative experience with the DJ” (seeing Avalon Emerson at Fold in London for sentimental reasons) and I wasn’t sure if it worked. But it was time to let go of what I had been holding on to, and on the dance floor that night I realized that. It took me a while to truly listen to that, though. Sometimes you don’t get to leave (or come into) things until you’re truly ready, not only in your mind, but also in your heart. I do genuinely believe that the universe teaches you lessons this way.
The next few months that followed, as I was wrapping up this record, were completely unexpected but also undeniably inevitable. My heart opened and then broke again. The process of finishing this project and the period of my life in which it happened was bizarre and often painful, but sometimes beautiful too, and I don’t think I’ll be able to make sense of it for a very long time. It was like some kind of fever dream, and looking back there’s a strange, almost poetic coincidence in having experienced that, thinking about We Only Ever Meet In Strange Dreams.
In any case, this project feels like such a visceral snapshot of this moment in my life: the year I fell in love, followed by the year I surrendered to loss, but this turbulent time allowed me to realize what I’m made of, over and over again. I found a lot of strength through (and within) my music practice.
I find it difficult to separate talking about craft from talking about life—both feel so intertwined for me. I wrote this album during a difficult time. I joke about having named it only after captioning an Instagram post, but there’s a reason that line always stood out to me. It’s about that sense of longing you have after a big loss, where you feel like something that was once so real and so close to you is gone, and you can only touch it again as a memory in your dreams. But energy doesn’t disappear, it only transforms. Years ago I came across a quote that read, “anything you lose comes round in another form.” I have found that to be true. I burned through a lot of life these last couple of years in London and so much of that has gone into my music. Whatever magic I felt I was grieving during this period, I had already brought into my own life myself. I redirected that energy into the music I was making.
Why did you pursue music professionally?
It felt like the only choice! I started making music at a really young age, and grew up with this big dream to be a music artist. It also kind of just happened. I was making music and ended up meeting people along the way who also made music, and I started getting exposure when I was being booked for gigs in the Manila indie music circuit. Everything just sort of progressed from there.
How do you keep yourself motivated as an independent artist?
Motivation is tricky. I do think it’s very important to have a day job while you’re pursuing your craft, and to view it as though that day job exists for the purpose of supporting your art. I also think it’s important to be a fan first and foremost, and to allow yourself to be inspired by forces outside of you. Collaboration also helps. Personally, I find it difficult to maintain momentum and motivation when I’m working in a silo, completely on my own. Creative energy is infectious, and it can be so inspiring to work with other people you resonate with.
It helps to go into pursuing independent music with a clear mind, grounding yourself in knowing what you’re in for. Independence comes with just as many benefits as it does setbacks. While you have all the creative freedom in the world, it can be a challenge to break through business-wise when it comes through exposure with press, radio airplay, playlists, and live shows. It’s good to know the tools you’re working with so you can make the system work for you as well. Stay inspired and keep focusing on the art and the satisfaction of the process, and in valuing the people who believe in you and your work no matter how big or small that community may be. I’m still figuring this all out myself so I don’t feel very qualified to give advice but these are the things I have learned throughout the years I’ve spent making music as an independent artist!
What is the most personal song on the EP for you, and why?
It might be “Strange Dreams”, for the reasons I shared—it took this truly strange shape with the role it played in my life, in an almost meta way. It’s also the last track on the EP, and was the last song I wrote and recorded, so it feels like an amalgamation of the previous tracks sonically. It’s also the track that feels the most like crying on the dance floor, which was a feeling that felt so important for me to capture in this record. I was in the thick of heartbreak and going out a lot, and dance music had become almost sacred to me during this time. There are a lot of elements of dance music that inspired the production of this track.
Of all the songs, it’s the one that feels like a surrender. Unintentionally, all the tracks on the EP are full of questions: why do I go walking around like it’s fine, I don’t really know what I was looking for, why do I keep holding you close when all you do is fade. There’s so much uncertainty and not-knowing subsumed in the lyrics of each song on the project. “Strange Dreams” is full of questions too, but it also answers itself. There’s that lyric in the chorus, “Where do I put all this wanting so it doesn’t burn/Only one way/Let it break first”, and in that way it feels like a release.
Sonically, it just coasts. It occupies a slightly unusual structure, because the chorus feels more like a pre-chorus melodically. And in that way, you get the drop, the big anthemic moment, in the space between, when there are no words and it’s only the music washing over you.
Is there anything we should be looking out for from you for the rest of 2024?
The EP comes out on September 27, and then two days later on September 29th I’m having an album launch gig at Next Door Records Two in East London. I’m really excited about the event—it will be my first show for this project, and I’ll be playing with a band setup I haven’t had before. The show has an incredible lineup as well, Phoenix Yemi will be doing a spoken word and music performance, followed by a set by the indie electro-pop artist Khazali. I look up to both of them immensely and am a huge fan myself, so it feels like such a privilege to get to play alongside artists I admire so much. I’m performing with Jack Dora on guitar (he has an incredible psych-rock band himself called Gonzo Fever) and my friend Alex Blackbourn on keys/synth/phone. The joke is that our setup is like the xx and Alex is being Jamie xx, DJ-ing on his phone. The sound we’ve come up with for the live set is really exciting and unique, and I’m excited to perform.
I’m also working on music videos for each song on the EP, with the incredible team at Parakeet Pictures and their friends. It started when I met the film producer and director Maddy Williams at a music festival, just days after I uploaded the first single (“Strange Dreams”) to my distributor. We’re working with an incredible team who have collectively done music videos for Mura Masa, Fred Again…, Beabadoobee, and Rex Orange County. The visuals we’re creating are so beautiful, I’m really excited for the videos to come out.
On top of this, I’m working on an extended version of this project, collaborating with DJ/producer friends from both London and Manila who are doing remixes of each song on the EP. I’m working with the Filipino music producer Eric Trono (he goes by Thrones for his DJ work, and produces for major labels in the Philippines, working with artists like James Reid, Curtismith, and Jolianne Salvado), musician, producer, and filmmaker Ardy Bernardo who works as an editor at Nowness, London-based DJ Adnan Khadra who does incredible live sets at places like Fabric and The Cause, and is also about to release his own EP with a label in Berlin, and my day one bestie Alex Blackbourn who is an incredible producer, writer, curator, and artist. I think we’ll be releasing these remixes either towards the end of this year or the beginning of next year. I kind of love that—winter club tracks!
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