Exclusive Premiere: There’s ‘Trouble Up’ for Toronto’s Jordana Talsky in Her New Video

When it comes to vocal looping, Toronto singer-songwriter Jordana Talsky is among those artists who craft an entire song without making you realize she’s only using her voice (and body) and no instruments whatsoever. That’s the crowning glory of her euphoric and moody 2021 EP Zahava, which is built upon only loops made on her trusty Roland Boss RC 505 station.

The vocal looping method gives a lot of room for Talsky to explore hooks, choruses and rhythms in a constructed yet seamless manner. You can hear that on her song “Trouble Up,” which is now accompanied by a music video directed by filmmaker Jacq Andrade in a room in Nanaimo, near Vancouver.

The video sees Talsky all in black and seemingly confined in a sunny and somewhat dilapidated room, even as it cuts to the outdoors and shows the artist in a summery floral dress, a throwback to her music video “Oh Yeah.” Talsky says, “This song is about resurfacing depression and the anxious mind. It was an expression of angst that came out in music, which ultimately led me to seek help to address my mental health concerns that I had earlier resisted.”

To add to the intensity, the video was filmed around the time of lockdown. “The song came to have additional resonance for me because society was [and still is] palpably anxious, with mental health struggles becoming an even larger and widespread issue,” Talsky says. In making a connection between the two videos for “Oh Yeah” and “Trouble Up,” she says the imagery of her dress became a motif. “‘Oh Yeah’ is a joyous and uplifting song about reflecting on life and seeing ourselves in a fresh light, whereas this song is brooding, about being steeped in negative thought patterns and confronting our dark self,” Talsky explains.

The songs on the six-track EP all reflect how she’s “a person of several voices.” Zahava, which refers not only to Talsky’s middle name but also translates to mean “golden” in Hebrew, draws together a larger theme of human traits. She adds in a statement, “I value the concept that we are born golden – unblemished and unburdened – and then, as life happens, we acquire our various traumas, griefs and grievances, which cause us to lose connection to our intuition and spirit – the ‘gold’ inner light, if you will. The dress [from the videos] symbolizes this light that we are, throughout our life, either closer to or farther away from, and since both of these states of being are true representations of me, I wanted to include that concept in the video for this song.”

Watch the music video for “Trouble Up” below. Listen to the Atmos remix by Vic Florencia here.