A painter, poet, songwriter and storyteller, Lancashire’s Toria Wooff stands in the crossfires of gothic literature and pained Americana.

Telling tales of love and malevolence, her delicate guitar and haunting vocals shine amongst a storytelling far beyond her years. A master of scene setting, ‘Badlands’, Toria’s forthcoming EP, is the zenith of her craft drawing you into another world.

Without Tinder it’s unlikely the vivid palette of ‘Badlands’ would exist. That’s how Toria and producer James Wyatt from Sloe Flower Records first met; “he understood my ramblings about colours and feelings and managed to get all my crazy thoughts into some kind of form” she explains. It’s ironic that something so absent of tradition could play such a significant role in the creation of something so classic and timeless.

‘Badlands,’ Wooff’s second EP, comes straight out of the gate with an accomplished and wholesome sound unreflective of her small back catalogue. The scale is immeasurable, the lush soundscapes and Wooff’s aptitude for storytelling truly deserving of the term ‘epic.’ The drums trot, the guitars and strings segue together effortlessly while Wooff’s breathtaking vocal bowls you over entirely.

“My songwriting is almost an exploration of colour that I try to showcase through physical paintings” Wooff explains. And indeed, once the demos were recorded, Wooff - a beautiful painter in her own right - picked up her brush, crafting iconoclastic canyons along with a human hand obscuring the beautiful backdrop. Wooff proceeded to hang it in her bedroom, its constant presence informing the next stage of the process.

A desire to make the EP ‘browner and orange’ with ‘oaky guitar tones’ emerged from that painting. Although already deeply important to artist and producer, this painting transformed ‘Badlands’ into a bona fide passion project, the two spending months and months in the studio to land upon a particular sonic palette. This result was a 70s driven and more folk-rock indebted EP that sounded like ‘smoky topaz’ and ‘burnt sienna’ as Wooff would put it.

Ultimately what ‘Badlands’ is about, is the sound of an artist surer of herself than ever before. It documents Wooff’s realisation of her potential and acts as a true representation of her wonderful craft. Let its colours transform you irreversibly.

Badlands is released on 25th July 2019 on Sloe Flower Records