“I started to feel like I was stuck…and I found it very difficult to finish songs,” says Canadian alt-pop star Sophia Stel, who transformed the downstairs of a Vancouver nightclub into a makeshift studio to craft her second EP.

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Considering that the producer, vocalist and songwriter could have elevated to working in flashy spaces following the viral success of her TikTok sleeper hit I’ll Take It – especially as it led to the alt-pop artist supporting PC Music king A.G. Cook, and counting Troye Sivan and Megan Skiendiel of KATSEYE among her fans – Stel’s decision to take such a DIY approach is commendable. However, for her, it felt totally natural.

Having cut her teeth in Vancouver’s local music scene (and juggled gardening jobs and painting houses while making tracks in her bedroom), the skating fan’s decision to turn part of the now-closed Paradise into a creative space made sense – especially as she had worked at the small after-hours spot in her home city for nearly five years.

“I needed somewhere I could be loud,” she explains.

The self-written, self-produced and self-recorded EP, How to Win At Solitaire, is a sonic mix of drowsy shoegaze, electronic pop and rave-y beats. “I knew that Paradise wasn’t open during the weekdays and no one was there, so I thought it was perfect,” Stel adds.

Stel wasn’t the only employee at Paradise — it was ‘a second job’ for other creatives, too. Her co-workers quickly became her close friends and collaborators, and the owners eventually allowed Stel to record music there, free of charge, when the venue wasn’t in use.

So, Stel would work late, set up the studio after each club night, tear it down again when they’d have to use it, and then repeat the process. Though such disassembling and rebuilding was laborious, she found it easy to transform the dungeon-like space.

This was undoubtedly helped by her “quite simple set-up”, which encompassed an Aston Origin microphone, an Apollo Twin Duo interface, a MacBook Pro 14-inch, studio monitors, a microKORG, a Squier Stratocaster electric guitar, and four guitar pedals.

However, she says she couldn’t really install anything permanent — “I had to take it all down for the club to open every week,” she says. Bearing in mind that this would happen the following morning after she’d finish a shift in the early hours, Stel remained impressively committed. “Each club night, I’d work until 4 AM, then I’d clean up the bar, and the next day, I would come and set up the studio,” she recalls.

With so much free rein, Stel liked that she was able to switch things up from day to day: “I had a pretty good system going, and I didn’t mind doing that, because I could bring in different equipment if I wanted to,” she recalls. “And I was always able to set things up fresh and how I wanted.”

As Stel usually makes music at home, it was a case of replicating that comfort in the club’s basement. “It was honestly the same as my normal studio set-up, but just in a different setting,“ she says. There was one key benefit, though: “I was able to play everything as loud as I wanted to, which makes a huge difference”.

When it came to working on the bones of the six songs that would later form the EP, she had a specific sonic direction in mind. She doesn’t quite know how to describe it, however — “It was more of a feeling,” she suggests. Nonetheless, the space in which it was recorded had a big impact on its sound. “It was very big and empty, so I think you can hear that on the project,” she says.

While the new experience of working in a makeshift studio was not only “very fun at first” but “exciting and cathartic” too, it came with its challenges. Chief among them was consistent, interfering noise from airways – “no matter how hard I tried to turn them all off”, says Stel.

Things got progressively harder as she struggled to finish songs and began feeling somewhat stuck in the basement. However, having her friends regularly pop by for a cigarette and to hear the songs as she was working on them helped to combat this. “That was really cool, and encouraging,” she says, adding that spending long nights there working (and partying) spurred her on.

Recording in such a DIY way also affirmed what Stel already knew of herself: “it taught me that I can work anywhere”. This approach also made her realise one important aspect. “Mostly, it taught me that I need somewhere that I can play music loud,” she says, adding that this is especially true when it comes to recording guitar.

Having enjoyed the time at Paradise – so much so that footage from the last party there before it shut down in March is heavily featured in the video for one of the EP’s singles, Taste – Stel says she would return given the chance.

“It’s sad that it’s closed now, but I’d do it again there,” she enthuses. “Even if I had a million dollars.”

‘How to Win At Solitaire’ is out now. Sophia Stel tours the UK and Europe throughout this month.

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