Vincent Littlehat is something of an anomaly: despite success as a professional performer, dancer and model, she is all but invisible…
which makes me wonder if there’s something behind the somewhat Scandinavian intonation of her vocals on the opening of Dreaming You Off, the new single that she has brought out together with veteran Berlin producer Chris Zippel. The modulation of her voice is reminiscent of those particular pop mysticists Aurora, Thea Hjelmelund and Moyka.
Throughout the track is a sense of loose experimentation, and a willingness to not have this questioning resolved. Tossed-off sounding lines are repeated and flow in and out….since “The lyrics are about the moments where you are stuck in an old friendship, listening to them complain endlessly about a situation”, explains Littlehat. “It’s like a broken record. Even when you suggest a new one they still want to listen to their old one and you just have to leave the party and let them play it all over again”. My mind is brought to the tail end of a party with the frothing beat that is part exuberance, part tiredness, where the narrator is wanting to go home and hoping her friend will stop talking and let her do that.
A whisper of eighties pop feel and a hedonistic nothingness of late nineties electro
A whisper of eighties pop feel and a hedonistic nothingness of late nineties electro combine to give a carpet to Littlehat’s musings that is somehow fitting in its sense of shifting and moving, without ever providing a firm ground to stand on, or a sure port to stop at.
“Your stories are pretty damn interesting but I have to get out” she says over and over again. From her biography I know that she has spent time as an independent artist floating around Berlin, and this surely too is a well-known aspect of the Berlin independent art life: a floating, a never settling, a seeking without necessarily wishing for a goal, and ultimately perhaps a lack of any kind of clear resolution.
Chris Zippel has collaborated with a wide range of artists from Pet Shop Boys to Norah Jones to Ich and Ich to Paul van Dyk
Chris Zippel has been producing and co-writing since the late eighties, embracing the 90s techno scene that enveloped Berlin at the time; as well as numerous other collaborations he has also produced and co-written songs with the Pet Shop Boys, and collaborated with a wide range of artists from Norah Jones to Ich and Ich to Paul van Dyk.
Perhaps what helped him to provide comfortable palettes for such a wide range of artists is what makes this single what it is – allowing Littlehat’s general vocal vibe a backing that embraces and extends this absence of certitude.
Vincent Littlehat has the confidence, the looks and the willingness to experiment that will ensure that she makes an impression on the music scene. Does she need to know where she’s going? I’m not sure. But I’m sure we’ll find out.
Vincent Littlehat on Instagram | Chris Zippel on Instagram
