Journal

I am a producer and songwriter with an intuitive and artistic style, creating song-worlds that reflect the subtle poetry of life.
My passion for music-making is spiritual in the way that it allows me to feel what is present in that moment, connecting me to all life and the mysteries that surround us. Writing songs, for me, feels like weaving separate experiences linked by a certain essence. I am inspired by the potent glimpses of understanding and knowingness, that glisten from within the many layers of the human experience. My relationship to music-making has always been of an intimate, healing nature, so I have always tended to write about the inner process, somewhere at the intersection of psychology, philosophy and spirituality, illustrated by moments that capture the beauty of this journey.


I started songwriting aged 13 at a time when I could no longer bring myself to speak, due to an overwhelming mixture of shyness, conflicting pressures and childhood relationship trauma. I became enraptured with producing albums as soon as I casually began doing it, using a four-track that my dad had randomly bought. It soon became my way of documenting life; my way of sharing all that I felt and perceived. Initially I just enjoyed the process so much, I would lose myself in the flow and the tactile, methodical nature of the whole project. The feeling of finishing a song had changed my life, it gave me a deep sense of confidence and security that nothing else could match. It provided me with an identity, a fortification, it literally felt like a super power, and it was exactly what I needed to shield myself from the agonising blandness of school. So I put all of my care and attention into creation, honing my gifts, and pursuing my vision.

I progressed to forming bands throughout school. One of these was my post-punk, indie band Prince Harry which enjoyed some success in the Brighton music scene, also winning a songwriting competition that lead to the recording of an EP. 

After a painful breakup and a period of escalating self-destructive behaviour that culminated in a cluster of traumatic events, I left home and went to study French and Linguistics at York University. I began learning ashtanga yoga, devoting myself to the practice in a way I had only ever done with songwriting. The practice transformed my life, reconnecting me to my body and allowing me to develop a sense of inner peace and strength. These new experiences of consciousness and sensitivity resulted in new taste and directions in music. At the end of my second year I finished my first solo electronic album Hotel Rosemary, using predominantly the Alesis Micron synth that I’d bought the year before, this was engineered by Chris Fenwick who suggested working together after seeing me play at an open mic.
We managed to get it done just before I left to do my year abroad in France, taking my synth and loop pedal with me. There I wrote many songs, listened to a lot of electronic music, and had many ideas for future projects. I started realising these ideas as soon as I returned to the UK for my final year in 2014. Once again I used my grant money to invest in musical equipment. This was a very exciting time for me as I began to explore the possibilities available with my new setup… I acquired a cracked version of Ableton Live, and an SP404 sampler, as well as receiving a field recorder for my birthday.

I will never forget the excitement and disbelief I felt when I read the email saying I’d won the Lynsey de Paul prize. I had never felt this level of recognition or success before. It was the moment that my passion solidified into a career. Fate would have it that I found myself moving to London with Kirk Barley very shortly after this, sharing a room in a shared house with friends to afford it. I will also never forget the moment I read the email telling me I had been accepted into Future Bubblers… on the night bus coming back to south London after a grim shift working as a waitress for a catering agency, one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had, suddenly finding myself hit with that same feeling of excitement and success. I had forgotten that I’d even applied for it, I didn’t even know what it was.
These opportunities provided the platform and support that I needed to be able to release my music properly. At that point I already knew I had three albums lining up, it’s like the universe was arranging for it to proceed. I don’t know how I had the energy to release three albums in a year whilst working about 25 hours a week in part time jobs. I had so much drive, with this thought at the back of my mind that I needed to do this before I die, I could not under any circumstances leave these unfinished. They were important parts of the story, a much needed release of creativity, and I also knew that this was a learning phase, and the amount of things I wanted to create didn't even bear thinking about it.

So I continued creating without thinking about it, without planning, just consistently following the vision and the thread of excitement wherever it would lead me. I felt so free and joyous to finally be able to put my music at the centre of my life and call it my profession. That was the feeling that guided the album Citrus Paradisi.

By 2019 things were going so well, but looking back it’s like I knew that something was going to give. I was being increasingly overcome with waves of sadness. I remember being in Vienna with Kirk and Matt in early 2020, breaking down in tears inexplicably. I remember being in Moscow in 2018, relentlessly running off to be sick on the day of my set after drinking too much the night before. At this time I was working on LUPA and I was beginning to unravel, and unhealed wounds were starting to surface. I’d been asked to write a song in response to suffering in silence, and the work I put into it kept rolling afterwards. I reflected a lot on societal pressures, ideals and norms that imprison us, and what you would have to do to free yourself. I started wanting to know more about the source of suffering. I reflected a lot on my own troubles, my self-deprecating tendency, social anxiety and bouts of depression, my inability to ask for what I want… the things that happened that I brushed under the carpet, ignored, and never spoke about. I was already half way into a phase of upheaval when lockdown came as an invitation to completely let go and dive in to this work. There were certain books, invitations and conversations that landed in my lap with perfect timing. I felt that I had to live the concept of LUPA in order to make it. It’s like I was researching the depths of the psyche and spirit, navigating a dark, windy forest, scraping and foraging in the ground for gems of understanding, and bringing my findings to the album. I felt like I had truly given of myself when I released it, and to be honest releasing it was actually terrifying.


Over time albums have become an unquestionable presence in my life, but something that I cannot force to happen. I’ve come to find that they come through of their own accord. I’ve come to see it as cyclic and synergistic. Each one seems to box off a period of time, and contains the essence and lessons of that phase. I feel that I have to be transformed by the process in order to complete it, perhaps more so as I get older. This is why it has taken a long time to complete Chaos Emeralds, the album to follow Lupa.
The last few years has been an intense wave of transformation that took me from place to place, often far away from where I was when I’d started the project, and where I needed to be to complete it. I had to honour my energy which was so often simply asking for rest, stillness and integration. 
The truth is that I had descended gradually into burnout, and for most of 2022 I could not bring myself to do anything at all. Eventually I was able to work on the album that I’d started making during and after the tour I somehow managed to do in autumn of 2021. This music brought me a lot of joy and comfort, and was perfect for rolling around on the floor in an embryonic state. I was committed to rebuilding my life with better foundations. This meant purifying my relationship to my art, which had been tainted by the formalities of the industry. Simply not doing it showed me how much my self-worth was entangled with it. I continued teasing apart my true self from the behaviours I had adopted throughout my life in order to fit in; shadow work and trauma-healing, energetically clearing space for my self to expand into, using tools such as yoga, breathing, dancing, journalling and studying spirituality.


I felt like I was watching my career crash and burn as I withdrew from releasing. It has not been enjoyable to see. However I wouldn’t change anything, because I have never felt more free, peaceful and awake than I do now. My intention is to stay open to creative possibilities, to keep finding new ground, to keep pursuing my vision, to keep seeking out truth, joy and beauty and keep feeding it into music, and keep giving that to the world.

31/3/2015

Why I recommend yoga and meditation. A singer-songwriter’s perspective.

When I’m lost in the process of creating something, I am distant from all other things. That is why I like making things; it’s like a retreat into the world of infinite magic and possibility that exists in our imagination. Making music and lyrics is what I have become the most intensely involved in over the last twelve years of my life, I love the art of songwriting so much that for a long time now I have, knowingly or not, more or less devoted my life to it. I have become part of it, as it has become part of me. We are one and the same. This is what I perceive passion to be. I place it on a pedestal, at the heart of my existence. I love it and want to feed it, and make it grow. It’s like a beautiful tree, that can blossom with unimaginable colours, through the channeling of feelings that I may never have otherwise understood.
It’s a practice that, like most artistic or creative activities, draws greatly on intuition, lucidity and open mindedness. When I started doing yoga I was fully aware that it had multiple benefits, but over time, and the more I did it, the more I understood. Of course your body thanks you, you can feel it smiling. It makes me feel stronger, as well as more in tune with my own strengths and weaknesses. In this way I feel steady, balanced and able. I now can say that my yoga practice has become an equally essential part of my being. Sometimes we forget to breathe properly. It sounds strange to say but it’s true that we are often so preoccupied that we never slow down and bring our concentration back to the most basic and brilliant elements such as the rhythm of breath, the sound of being alive. Yoga reminds me of this every time, it brings the focus back to your inner strength and calm, that which will always be there throughout your life, supporting you beneath each and every strain you experience in that time. That is why it’s important not to neglect it, but to nurture it.
I feel as though yoga and creative energy occupy the same place in my life. They invoke the same stillness and faithfulness, the same godly energy. The difference is that yoga accesses it mainly through physical processes, and in music I access it largely through mental processes, which I can then translate into the physical aspects of playing an instrument, controlling a machine or writing down words. But that is all part of it. It’s the truth of the experience that enraptures me. Yoga and meditation seem to strengthen the connection between body and mind, and thus intensify the flow of ideas and facilitate the decision-making of the artistic process. In a beautiful radiating armchair of oneness, the ideas find you, and you no longer find yourself searching them out (although that may also be partly due to the increase of patience). They both require connection with feeling.
In many ways I think it’s the strength that yoga gives me that helps the most with creating music; the physical and emotional strength. It gives me confidence in my ideas, and I trust them even if they seem weird at first, the point is that I trust the place it came from. Songwriting is still a mystic thing to me, since I was young I’ve always felt like there’s another being inside of me, with its own agenda, who I can’t control, and who I would do best to believe and trust. This voice definitely finds comfort in the yoga practice, and I owe a lot to it for diversifying my creative output. I used to feel very tortured and depressive, and songs were a way of expressing or releasing this often inexplicable feeling that lived within me. Although yoga and meditation have opened windows and let light flood into my perception of the world, they can awaken all of your senses to an alarming degree, and this sensitivity can uncover a vulnerability to the emotions that you do experience. But it makes you more able to accept them, understand them and move on from them, allowing yourself to return to a more earthed and wise place. One thing I’ve noticed over time is that I normally end up writing a song about something only after the emotional drama of the experience, big or small, has settled, and my mind can process it into a different form, such as a song. It may be different for other people, but this is how I have found it to be for me.  Even if you don’t have an artistic passion I think there is a lot to be discovered through spiritual practices, I recommend it to everyone. I think the world would be a better place if we were all more in tune with this steadiness and strength- if our actions and reactions were less governed by the irrationality and extremity of emotions. Of course we need to experience emotions in order to learn from them and grow, but it is what we do with them that is important.