Delilah Holliday, North London’s homegrown DIY icon, will release her new EP, ‘Invaluable Vol, 1’, on July 7th via One Little Independent Records.
‘Invaluable Vol, 1’ exists in the space between fantasy and reality. It collects six tracks of downtempo electronic art pop with added layers of trip hop, that make up a musical and aesthetic environment using an intoxicating medley of heady synth, penetrated by dancefloor beats. Sonically it’s transportive, but in her lyrics Delilah was keen to keep things grounded. These opposing elements are capitalised on throughout; it’s consistently dreamlike but never without awareness, keeping the listener in expectation purgatory.
The EP was co-written and co-produced with audio/visual composer Suckour both remotely and in his Waterloo studio. As such, they found the location fed the process, with the grinding mechanics soundtracking Delilah’s train journeys and the bleak visual backdrop sculpting the narrative. She tells us that “we wanted to create a sonic world where each song had its own characteristics. We visualised the EP being a house, and imagined how all the songs would sound and feel as rooms in this imaginary house. If you listen to the tracks closely you might be able to hear some trains in some of the vocal takes. ‘Everything I Ever Wanted’ was created on Don Cherry’s piano in Neneh Cherry’s house in Sweden which I recorded then cut up and resampled”.
Fittingly ‘Steel Charmed’ kicks off the release yearning to be set free, Delilah explains that “it’s about being trapped in steel and just kind of being paralysed on the spot. And just looking out your window being like, “where to next?” Sort of like a longing for adventure. Like to open it up”. It was written using a technique popularised by David Bowie, taking the lyrics and cutting them into pieces, physically mixing them up and pasting them back together in a random order.
Delilah’s themes explore structural inequality and poverty, they’re politically nuanced, and without gratuitousness. On ‘Burn Money’, she reflects directly on the cost-of-living crisis but uses her metaphor to address consumer capitalism as the root cause. She says “it’s about the scare of most Brits not being able to put on their heating. And you know, we're all working hard to heat our homes. It's the concept of feeling like you’re physically burning money, but then it also has a double-sided concept of this kind of capitalist culture, you just burn money to afford the latest clothes and essentials too”.
On ‘Silent Streets’ she used an otherwise isolating notion to build a club anthem. She recalls that at the time “people were too scared to go out. And the streets were kind of silent still. And nobody was really interacting. And I just thought that was a really abstract, interesting concept to put in the song and sort of make it dancey, because Suckour sent me the beat and it had a nice industrial feel to it and reminded me of the streets of London, and I just wanted like a groove over the top of that, with that particular concept of being too scared to mingle, but it's a clubby track. And I like the juxtaposition.
This whole project really is about juxtaposition and mixing things together that don't really go because that's how started. It’s the spark that inspired all the other songs. Genre blending and putting pieces together that don't quite fit”.
She tackles love at the end of the world on ‘Everything I Ever Wanted’, which speaks on the desire to runaway together, as well as an acknowledgment that all things must end, a story that unfolds delicately over a breezy, textured and atmospheric ballad. Follow-up ‘Looking Over My Shoulder’ works as a Tricky-esque spoken word interlude about paranoia and feeling claustrophobic in busy spaces.
Finally, ‘Invaluable Vol, 1’ ends with gratitude. Titled after an affectionate nickname Delilah’s father has for their local Holloway pub, ‘Heaven’s Waiting Room’ is a sublime soundscape penned to the characters who frequent it.
Delilah Holliday grew up writing songs as a child and found an affinity with music from an early age, forming the punk band Skinny Girl Diet aged 14 with her sister Ursula and their cousin Amelia. In 2018, after a successful run, SGD went on a hiatus & Delilah posted her first solo song ‘Babylon’ on Soundcloud, which she wrote & produced herself. Since then, Delilah has been mentored by the likes of Neneh Cherry and Suckour.
The EP, the first of two, says that we are all a product of our upbringing, and Delilah’s creativity is intrinsically linked to her surroundings. She concludes; “Aesthetically I really wanted to communicate all the experiences that go into making yourself. All of us on this planet have had a unique experience. And I feel like they're invaluable experiences, and they are the riches in life, because they make you who you are. Growing up on a council estate, I feel like that's made me the person I am, made me create the art, and I just want the visuals to reflect that and be real. Because although I love conveying fantasy worlds and things like that, I do feel like sometimes realism is very important. And the brutal nature of London is the making of me personally as an artist. And although I like to be away with the fairies, it's good to come back down to earth and to portray that”.
For more information contact Stefan.Hayes@v2benelux.com
Tracklist
- Steel Charmed
- Burn Money
- Silent Streets
- Everything I Ever Wanted
- Looking Over My Shoulder
- Heaven's Waiting Room
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