/ Plenty of us don’t know what is the right point to start putting their project out there into the scary universe of the unknown. Maybe it truly is simple. Just jump.
I firstly want to thank you for giving unheard music, talent and voices a platform. It’s platforms such as this which reiterate the humanitarianism that will never be taken from the force that is music. No matter how corporations and money can sometimes seem to be at the centre of this industry, without heart there’s no music and so, no industry. Music will always be an art form in itself, but I think it’s clear from history and from how it can make us feel, that music is so much more than its form. In my opinion, the legacy, the emotion, the social change and reflection music provides, makes it the most powerful magic in this world.
I want to talk about my debut EP ‘& so...’ (came out on 11 Nov 2016) The title is a double entendre. ‘And...So!’ sounds like an introduction to something but also reads as, ‘And? So? Yet another new artist, why should I care?’, which in the context of this blog gives the irony I intended real weight. ‘Nail Polish’, the track you will find directly here, is the lead single. The video, which will be online very soon, was co-directed by my friend Rebecca Courtis, we studied Fine Art together at Central St Martins, and we shot the video in our studio. She made all the moving image visuals which we projected onto me live for each take. If I was to personify a song it would be ‘Nail Polish’, that emotional grit, the grunge. It’s just very me. I wrote it when I was 17, and now at 22 it has never felt better to play live. I’ve just graduated, I’m trying get my music off the ground, I’m at a crucial point in my life and there’s this fire in my belly which I can really tap into with this song. Sonically and lyrically there’s a kind of ugliness to it, a dissonance which makes it really cathartic to perform. I’ve got to thank my producer Christov Brilliant for that electronic eeriness on the track!
I wrote ‘Echoes’, another of the three tracks, when I was 16 years old; an angsty, insecure teenage girl with an obsession for music but too scared to sing. Writing ‘Echoes’ was a pivotal moment for me, it was the moment that I really knew my contribution to this world would be song-writing and that only I could be the one to sing my songs. It was the catalyst for a really crucial song-writing spell in my young life. Before this point I would labour with frustration to feel an ease and contentment with my craft. ‘Echoes’, a song about grieving the loss of my aunt just poured out of me with such fluidity and gave me a such feeling of fulfilment, empowerment and otherworldliness that I knew this truly was what I needed to do in my life.
Lady Gaga, who is a momentous figure and role model for me, while discussing her creative process said some of the most wonderfully vivid and vital bits of indirect advice that will never leave me: “honour your vomit”. She refers to that moment when something within you takes over, an urge to regurgitate all that you feel or want to play or sing or say. That’s the magic, that’s your talent working in your subconscious. Honour your creative vomit, let it spew and then craft it to the point of personal fulfilment. Not perfection, not satisfaction, but fulfilment.
These songs, such as that on the EP – ‘Echoes’, ‘Nail Polish’ & ‘When I Was Younger’, and many others still to be heard, have shaped my sound and set me up for what I now really need to express as a young woman with so much passion, anger and love for the world in which I exist. I am now at the stage where a seed is planted in the song-writing process, crystallising as a record and then becoming something other when I perform. I want to feel reborn on stage. Live performance is this new exciting element in my life and in my work that I finally feel ready to explore. My sociopolitical views have become vital to who I am as an artist and my personal struggles are now something I want to reclaim in order to empower not only myself but hopefully others. And this is now what feels so thrilling to be a musician, visual artist and filmmaker; these cross creative disciplines are now ready for an orgy. I have so much to say, so much to reveal and so much I want to achieve but this is just the start. It’s scary, it’s exciting, it’s unpredictable but bring it on!
While I am inextricably a music maker and artist putting something out into the world, it all starts with what you hear, what you see and what you absorb. I have met such incredibly talented, creative, open-minded friends and collaborators whilst at art school, who have quite frankly changed my life. In the space of two weeks I will have seen PJ Harvey, James Blake and Peaches perform live, all artists that I admire and aspire to emulate in different ways. In this mad, enigmatic 21st century we have such a calibre of music, film and artwork available literally in the palm of our hands. So I will conclude this ramble by echoing the sentiment of Lady Gaga’s phrase: honour your awe, honour your inspiration. As this is where the cyclical magic begins and where it ends...only to begin again.
Submit your story to Letters to YVYNYL.
