About Suki Emmanuelle
Suki Emmanuelle began making boundaryless, maximalist music during the endless nothing days of lockdown. Her sound is complex, arresting, ancient and modern, electronic and human – a rejection of simple pop formulas.
A snapshot of Suki’s influences will tell you what she’s not. There's mention of traditional choirs; the Electric Light Orchestra ("It's not of its time"); Japanese composer Jun Miyake; Joanna Newsom ("Her lyrics could be a whole book"); Disney's Fantasia soundtrack; Jamie xx; 70s folk records; the songs Paul Williams wrote for The Muppets (“Genius”) ... Not the usual names.
“I don't feel like I belong, artistically, to my generation. A lot of the pop being made today, it can sound fine, everything's in the right place, but you can hear the money and the multiple writers. It's not bad it's just forced.”
Having struggled to fit in at school, in a small town, music became a support system. “I listened intently to every facet - the lyrics, the instrumentation, production, everything. I don't think I was hearing what other people were hearing. I could see it was affecting me differently to them.”
Despite a childhood exposed to the eclectic music tastes of older relatives, writing her own songs remained a remote possibility until the enforced solitude of the pandemic.
“When Covid happened, I started to sit at my keyboard and almost meditate - filtering all these ideas. It was a time when we had little but our own thoughts to listen to; that's when I started writing. Once lockdown lifted, I began collaborating with the multi-disciplinary composer Lily Oakes, at her West London studio. After that the songs didn't stop.”
Suki’s songs are not your usual songs, either.
“There's so much more to life than love songs. I don't write about break-ups; those kinds of lyrics are too on the nose for me. I'm interested in the emotions, but I like to write in such a way that people find their own meaning beyond my specific personal experience; sometimes singing from the perspective of other characters, far removed from me.”
Her voice is unlike anyone’s you’re likely to hear. Emerging from pulsing patterns of electronica, she sings from a whisper to a scream; extreme to serene – the emotion of the words deciding the vocal register. There is theatre to it, with Suki becoming her own Greek chorus, as voices interweave or echo one another. But there is also a directness; a sincerity that commands attention.
“I want my music to do for people what music did for me. I want to help someone escape.”