tahjii Bares It All On 'leaving a mark'

The New York artist's raw new single trades polish for voice memos and unfiltered grief.

There's a particular kind of vulnerability that comes from letting people hear you think out loud, and that's exactly what tahjii is doing on 'leaving a mark', the first taste of his upcoming sophomore EP 'DEMO'.

Where his debut EP 'vacation' hinted at a diaristic streak, this new chapter leans all the way in. tahjii isn't dressing up heartbreak here, he's sitting inside it, working through loss, self-doubt and the slow business of finding solid ground again. Much of the recording process reflects that instinct: rather than polishing everything in the studio, tahjii captured takes straight into voice memos, letting room noise, stray textures and the natural crack in his voice stay exactly where they landed. The result feels less like a finished record and more like being let in on something private mid-thought, which, going by the EP's title, is precisely the point. There's also something quietly pointed about a young man choosing to sit with grief in public rather than perform past it.

“To me, this EP was my way of documenting and processing the wave of emotions I felt after the loss of something I thought I needed. I wanted to make room for doubting myself, and also knowing and coming back to who I am," tahiji shares.

The single's release was marked last night an intimate show at New York's hi-fi listening room Silence Please, hosted by Talia Goddess' Trance Records. The event is the second iteration of ARE U LISTENING?, the label's curated listening series creating space for musicians, music lovers and tastemakers to experience music as a communal act, inviting audiences into the creative process through dialogue and real-time reflection, rather than simple consumption.