Chela Shares Her Strangest Moment of 2014

Chela is one of Noisey’s highlights of 2014. We covered her constantly because her music is pop excellence, her style is tight (and charting its evolution was a joy to read about/view) and the girl let’s her limbs go cuckoo on a beat. This love culminated in us recently premiering her video for self-directed video “Handful of Gold” on Noisey’s YouTube—watch it above—which will surely encourage you to party at your nearest late night taco joint at the earliest available opportunity. In our continued quest to cover 2014 here’s Chela recounting her strangest experience of the year.

Chela: “One dark morning in July at my place in LA I had to wake up at 4.30 AM to get ready for a 7 AM flight to New York where we had a show. I headed straight for the kitchen where I was going to make smoothies for Justin (my pal/drummer), my sister (who was visiting from Oz), and our friend Aubrey (who was to drive us to the airport). Half asleep, I leant over the kitchen sink rolling a block of ice across my face as the fresh air came through the windows in front of me. Then, as though a man was vomming directly onto my face I heard a loud and sudden ‘learrgh!’ I dropped the ice block, shocked out of my brain, and ran into the lounge room where Justin was sleeping, but he didn’t care to hear of my fright (he was still half asleep). I went into the bedroom where the girls were sleeping and told them what happened, and skeptical, they dragged their sleepy selves into the kitchen to stand with me incase the supposed scary driveway freak was there again. They waited for a while, but nothing, so they hovered back to the bedroom. But just as they left, a loud and sudden blood curdling man’s scream came flying through the window again. Aubrey heard it so we ran and hid together, bewildered and horrified. Outside was pitch black dark, with just a driveway and the apartments next door across from us. We left the scene mystified and I never left the windows open at night again.

“Roughly a month later, around 10.30 PM I receive a knock on my front door, expecting it to be my cousin whom I lived with. Instead, it was a tipsy young man with black hair and bloodshot eyes. He said he lived next door, and stumbled on his words joking that my parties were too loud. I could see he wasn’t quite right so I tried my best to be polite, and keep the door half closed. But he whisked right on through, inviting himself in, nosily looking around the rooms saying he had always wondered ‘how it looked in here’ and ‘how my apartment looks from your house.’ He also asked if I was a musician and declared that he probably knew all of the lyrics to my songs (because I write music in the house, hoping that it’s not too loud). Creepy! Lucky my two friends were in the house with me that night, so I introduced them as being ‘Australian too’ and Emerson replied as he shook their hands with ‘The last guy I fucked was Australian.’ His psycho demeanour hit me with a thought. I asked him, ‘Are you the person who scared me that morning at 4.30 AM?!’ And he admitted to it, palming it off with a casual laugh as though it was no thang, saying he was probably drunk with his friends.

Then my cousin came home, confused by the tipsy new house guest, as he offered to give us anything we wanted from [insert high end designer brand which shall remain unnamed] where he worked. It took us a little time to mentally massage him to the exit. We have since seen him kissing himself in the mirror of his bathroom and smoking outside his house at 7 AM wearing a hoodie. A strange character. Happy to say, we are looking into getting blinds for the kitchen.