Britain’s Best New Act talks exclusively to ARTHUR EMERY about her avant-garde raves, the new London party scene, early 90s sequencers - and how to handle being a massive star in Japan before you’ve managed to turn 17
I’m sitting in a cafe in Neukoelln, Berlin smoking a cigarette and waiting for Miss Keisha Byte to turn up. In town for the annual Asphalt Handbag party in Yorkstrasse, she’s the name on everyone’s lips right now. However, she’s already 20 minutes late and just as I start wondering if this is going to be one of her famous no-shows the doors literally burst open, and in she comes. Frankly, no-one these days enters a room with the sheer Maye West charisma of 16 year old Miss Keisha Byte, not wearing a costume like that. So, i ask her, did you make that yourself?
“yeah i did innit, these are my staging garms babes. Made ‘em out of clingfilm and greaseproof paper out my old ladie’s kitchen drawers - but they looks like feathers innit?”
And this rather sets the tone for the rest of the interview. At times racing ahead, giggling constantly and speaking a strange form of hackney patoia, whilst dressed in a style that Lady Gaga would die for, Miss Keisha Byte is certainly entertaining offstage as well as on. Having been recently charged with punching a police officer and disorderly conduct I’m careful not to upset the pace of the interview by prying too far into her personal life. But Keisha’s story is one of hardship, struggle, a little bit of innovation and a whole lot of fame.
“it’s a rags to bitches story really” she tells me, kicking her head back in fits of laughter, yet unconscious of how witty she comes across in her plastic plumage.
Growing up on the Pembury estate in Hackney, London - the daughter of a single mother with MS, and as a part time carer always missing school, life would never be easy for Byte.
“There’s gangs all round you growin up on Pembury. If youre a young girl, then youre a target as much as the boys, you get me? if you don’t give dem boys head and shit, then they gonna fuck you, so you have to stand right up and be fierce from a very young age, got to be man as them just to survive “
And what do you do if you then decide at 12 years old that you are a lesbian I ask her?
“Yeah, all that lessie shit gets me right down you know? I was going out on the gay scene in London when I was 12 years old. And there's a lot of dirty old mamas out there, I'm tellin you! But I had it with that and mates from school were goin off to these parties in the Hackney Wick you get me, sort of raves yeah? And I thought that was well sick, so I got into being a dancer, making me own shit to wear and that. And then I thought, why's these posh kids dressed like Adam Ant putting on these raves and running off with all the cash you get me? So my girl Hayley and me put on a little party in the cellar of this empty house in Stratford. Never used facebook or nothing to spread it, just texting mates and that. I got up and MC’d with my boy Bless’ed (garage DJ) and that was when I met Sister Shit (her songwriting partner). She had like this old keyboard she’d found in a skip yeah, a roland w30, so I was hanging at her aunties place and we started messing with it making our own tunes. I had like this lyric, “Sister, i got so much hate to give, so much hate to give, you're such a piece of fucking shit” and Sister was laying down some beats over it, and bass with this crazy little old filter making it all real dirty. We did a party in Tottenham, that was our first proper gig, and this German guy turned up who ran a record label, and we got signed for one song, for one song you get me?“
The song she refers to, the now iconic electro / punk / futurist rave extravaganza “In Hate (wiv u)” was released on Hamburg based Trans-Sauros Records at the tender age of 14, quickly entering the German dance top ten. From the opening sample of Tony Blair emoting - ”she was the people’s princess ” to the very last beat, this single marked a totally new direction for British pop. Not garage, not quite electro, Sister Shit did the programming and Byte would lay down the vocals. The first single was recorded using a pound shop microphone tucked into an empty cornflakes packet (to act as a reverb chamber) and recorded straight onto cassette tape. It's this sort of instinctive, almost Motown innovation that brought about their now iconic sound which even Marc Ronson cites as an ‘influence’.
However, it really kicked off when follow up single “Sabrina Is A Teenage Bitch”, with all its Prodigy-esque sampling and breaks went to number 1 in Japan and Geffen records came to call.
“It was crazy times, crazy times! We was in Japan and sister was doing this interview. We walked out of the tv station and there was like 300 hundred screaming boys waiting for us.”
That was the last time that Byte and Sister Shit went out in Tokyo by themselves.
Now followed around Japan with a 4 strong security team at all times, I ask Keisha how life has changed for her and what it’s like to be a star abroad, but relatively unknown at home.
“I aint really changed to be honest with you yeah? I’m just like any normal teenager. Its a bit wierd when you're getting messages on YouTube from greasy old Japanese business men, but i can handle that innit. Its crazy, like one minute we’re touring Asia with like a security guard with us, kids waitin outside the airport and shit, next minute and we fly home, go down Tescos on Mare St and no-one even knows your name. Which is kinda cool.”
With the re-release of “In Hate (wiv u)” out in the UK next month, but this time produced by Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas (and now pressed by a major label), Keisha can soon kiss goodbye to going out to the supermarket alone. You have to hand it to her, for a young kid, she’s shown remarkable media savviness and a natural head for business. Not to mention the fact that her own fashion line comes out in Japan in 2011, Miss Keisha Byte is set for global stardom. And i have to say, she deserves every bit. Miss Keisha Byte, we salute you.
“In Hate (wiv u)” is released by Geffen on October the 27th this year.
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