"Carnival" is my sophomore EP where I explore the sideshow variety of repertoire that I have been building and writing, mostly over the last two years. I had been releasing singles and other works of art over the last little while, but I felt the need to put out a more complete body of work, since my fist EP “No Angel”. In “No Angel”, I used sound clips from the 1933 movie “I’m No Angel” about my namesake, a carnival lion tamer named Tira (Mae West) which is the same pronunciation as my name - Tyra. “Carnival”, my second EP, in a way is an evolution and continuation of the theme of the first EP (ie. I’m a fairground baby).

I listened to the songs I had been working on with my producer, Kyu, and found that we had really been experimenting with many styles and sounds (from reggaeton to amapiano, latin and afrobeat rhythms, siren voicings, and foley sounds used as percussive elements), but this common thread of “carnival” and “fairground” sounds kept speaking to me. I was trying to sleep one night, and kept seeing the word “carnal” within the word “carnival” and immediately woke up and went to draft the artwork for the project. The sounds on “Carnival” are both diverse and odd, like carnival sideshows, but also express a sexiness, a thing of earthly and carnal desires, in their beat, in their melodies, and in the provocation of my lyricism. This project is about the hedonism of the human realm of earthly delights, which I feel is best represented at the carnival, where there is an outward expression of this chaos in the scenescape of the fairground, the hallway of mirrors, the funhouse, and hidden in the sideshow tents. I love to explore the theme of grace amidst chaos - I call myself the Dionysian Princess, after the Greek God Dionysus - god of ritual, ecstasy, harvest, madness, chaos, wine… the “party god”. These are themes I visit both sonically and in the lyrics of “Carnival”, and across my broader body of work.