NEW MUSIC: Art School Girlfriend, Enny, Hannah Holland, Pollena & Mimi Webb
New tracks from the most musically productive county in the country right now, writes Rob Hakimian
We have added all tracks to the ‘cene #KeepitKent Spotify Playlist HERE
Art School Girlfriend - Softer Side
Instagram: @art_school_girlfriend
With a series of EPs and singles stretching back over four years, it’s a joy that we finally have the news that Art School Girlfriend will be releasing her debut album, Is It Light Where You Are, in September. Along with the news, she’s shared a single from the album, Softer Side, a deep-dive into interior feelings as rendered through a beautiful chiaroscuro of hazy synths and stylishly restrained beats.
Here, Art School Girlfriend welcomes us to her late night mind as she works through conflicting feelings of love and frustration, privately asking her partner “where’s your softer side?” Rather than ask this directly to her partner, she turns it into a song, so we can hear her revolve through her emotions in beautiful detail.
ENNY - I Want
Instagram: @ennyintegrity
By this point, you’ve probably seen Thamesmead rapper Enny everywhere - she’s absolutely bossing things with magazine covers, Annie Mac approval and a Jools Holland appearance. It’s no wonder she starts her latest, I Want, by celebrating “I finally made some time for me / I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm jiggy, I'm sweet.”
She carries that energy through the track, a funky house-rap jam that puts her on the front foot as she presents a list of all the things she wants: the handbags, the cars, the vacation home, the Nigerian boo. “I want what I want and I want when I want it,” she sings in the earworm chorus – in this kind of form, it’s hard to deny her.
Hannah Holland - Shutters
Instagram: @djhannahholland
DJ, producer and soundtrack artist Hannah Holland has been a mainstay in London’s rave and gay scenes for a while, but it was upon moving to the Kent coast that ideas for her long-awaited debut album started formulating. Said to be “Inspired by deep summer heat. Sizzling daytime dancing. Straight up genre defying UK dance,” her album Tectonic arrives in September, and it’s heralded by the luminescent trance track Shutters.
Not one that goes mental on BPMs, Shutters is happy to bring you under its sway through its depth and dynamism, its myriad of tones carefully arranged to create an immersive sound that places you in an unbreakable trance.
It’s a compelling piece that feels like the pre-party to what Holland will bring en masse in Tectonic.
Pollena - Stand Up
Instagram: @pollena_ldn
Building on the success of last single Glitter, rising alt-pop star Pollena delivers a blistering follow-up with Stand Up. A hypnotic pop-house track that utilises a crisp rhythm over crushed velvet synths, it would be a stand-out just for the production.
However, Pollena uses this basis to send a message of personal strength and change that she hopes to radiate to everyone; “I’m gonna make a change” she repeats over the hypnotic arrangement, “stand up to the people that gave up.”
She says the song is “about giving people the confidence that they need to make that change happen”, which, in its supple and magnetic way, it certainly does.
Mimi Webb - Dumb Love
Instagram: @mimiiiwebb
Mimi Webb’s elegiac and soulful voice remains her most valuable asset and she puts it front and centre on new song Dumb Love, introducing us to the high drama of a lost relationship with visceral immediacy: “tattoo all your skin / with a safety pin.”
It’s a symbol of the depth of love she’s singing about in this song; even if it was so called Dumb Love, it was still “the kind that cuts you up inside,” and you can hear that in every aching note she sings.
Even as the beat kicks in and a silken pop arrangement takes hold, Webb’s voice maintains focus and puts us right alongside her, reliving every moment, every breath, every pang of this lost romance.