On her new single & video ‘Silent Streets’ Delilah uses the experience of isolation to build a club track.
Delilah Holliday, North London’s homegrown DIY icon, will release her new EP, ‘Invaluable Vol. 1’, on 7th July on One Little Independent Records.
On her infectious new single ‘Silent Streets’ she uses an otherwise isolating notion to build a club anthem. She recalls that time “people were too scared to go out. And the streets were kind of silent still. And nobody was really interacting. I just thought that was an abstract, interesting concept to put in the song and make it clubby, because Raphael sent me the beat and it had a nice industrial feel to it that reminded me of London streets, and I just wanted a groove over the top of that, with that particular concept of being too scared to mingle. 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”.
‘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, and 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.
She revels in otherworldly sounds and visuals that play with the abstract, the psychedelic and the conceptual, but the lived experiences she mines for creative themes remain at the core of what she does. Delilah’s themes explore structural inequality and poverty, they’re politically nuanced, and without gratuitousness. Growing up on Holloway Road and beginning her creative endeavours with family members has clearly impacted this, and a sense of community provides her bedrock.
Her band, Skinny Girl Diet, which she founded at the age of 14 with her sister Ursula and their cousin Amelia, were a staple of the 2010’s UK indie-punk landscape. She then successfully transitioned to her current solo moniker with the release of her debut single ‘Babylon’ in 2018. In a short time, she’s worked with some of the best across both the music and fashion world including Neneh Cherry, Vivienne Westwood, Matt King, Tyson, Baxter Dury, Étienne de Crécy, and more. She’s also presented her own monthly NTS Radio show since 2016.
‘Invaluable Vol. 1’ was co-written and co-produced with composer Raphael Ninot 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. “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’s house in Sweden which I recorded then cut up and resampled”.
“Aesthetically I 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, 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”.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;
artist: Delilah Holliday
title: Silent Streets (from ‘Invaluable Vol. 1’ EP)
label: One Little Indie
date: single 31st May | EP 7th July
silent streets | Invaluable Vol. 1
Tracklist
1. Steel Charmed
2. Burn Money
3. Silent Streets
4. Everything I Ever Wanted
5. Looking Over My Shoulder
6. Heaven’s Waiting Room