Delilah Holliday Drops New Single 'Silent Streets'

North London’s homegrown DIY icon Delilah Holliday has today shared a second single, “Silent Streets,” from her upcoming EP, Invaluable Vol. 1, prior to its upcoming July 7 release via One Little Indie Records.

On “Silent Streets” Delilah uses an otherwise isolating notion to build a club anthem. She recalls that at the time, “people were too scared to go out. The streets were kind of silent still. And nobody was really interacting. I thought that was a really abstract, interesting concept to put in the song and sort of make it dancey, because Raphael [Ninot] sent me the beat and it had a nice industrial feel to it and reminded me of the streets of London. I just wanted 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 it started. It’s the spark that inspired all the other songs. Genre blending and putting pieces together that don't quite fit”.

The nightmarish accompanying video, directed by Swarmm, perfectly captures this. “For the Silent Streets music video, me and Swarmm wanted to create an apocalyptic metaverse inspired by London, reimagined if the pandemic lasted for 20 years and how that would effect the natural phenomena around us. Which the song also touches on. We achieved this by 3D Scanning my body and inserting into the environment Swarmm created. The whole aesthetic of the video is inspired by the dawn of artificial intelligence.”

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 capitalized on throughout; it’s consistently dreamlike but never without awareness, keeping the listener in expectation purgatory.

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”.

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.

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.” Lead single, “‘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”.

Growing up on Holloway Road in North London and beginning her creative endeavors with family members clearly impacted Delilah as an artist, giving her a sense of community that provides her bedrock. She founded her band, Skinny Girl Diet at the age of 14, with her sister Ursula and their cousin Amelia.

A staple of the 2010’s UK indie-punk landscape, the group were featured in The FADER, Office Magazine, Vice, Teen Vogue, DAZED, The Guardian, amongst many others. Delilah then successfully transitioned to her current solo moniker with the release of her debut single “Babylon" in 2018. Shortly after, she would appear on the Baxter Dury album B.E.D, alongside Étienne de Crécy.

In a short time, Delilah’s worked with some of the best across both the music and fashion world including Neneh Cherry, Vivienne Westwood, Matt King and more. In 2021 alone she hosted a ‘Goddess Energy Experience’ show at The Old Blue Last with Tyson and Grove, headlined St. Pancras Old Church, partnered with Marshall Amps, and she performed an exclusive A/V live session with FACT Magazine. Invaluable Vol. 1 is just the next chapter in an already storied, yet young career.

Photo Credit: Amy Pleskett

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