Tag: Akala

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Ayanna Witter-Johnson Shares Gorgeous, Meditative “Blue”

Born and raised in North London to Jamaican parents, acclaimed and rising, Music of Black Origin (MOBO) Award-nominated composer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ayanna Wittter-Johnson grew up surrounded by the sounds of reggae, gospel and classical music. After earning a first-class Bachelor’s degree at Trinity Laban Conservatory and a Masters at the Manhattan School of Music, supported by a Higher Education Scholarship, Witter-Johnson has built a career founded in authenticity and cross-genre collaboration.

From composing to performing, the London-born artist’s work is a sonic bridge between worlds, seamlessly blending jazz, reggae and soul while celebrating her Jamaican heritage, culture and identity. Witter-Johnson’s recorded output — 2014’s Black Panther EP, 2018’s Truthfully Still and Ella, Reuben & Aly EP, 2019s full-length debut, Road Runner, 2021’s Rise Up EP and 2023’s sophomore album Painted Light — has seen her collaborating with producers Marc Mac and James Yarde, as well as pianist Robert Mitchell, vocalist Cleveland Watkiss and rapper Akala while earning critical acclaim and widespread acclaim across BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1Xtra, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC Music 6, Jazz FM and Magic Classical. 2023’s Ocean Floor, a collaborative album with the London Symphony Orchestra Percussion Ensemble dove into her Jamaican heritage, weaving classical textures with island rhythms and ancestral storytelling.

As a composer, Witter-Johson has won the Nordoff and Robbins 02 Silver Clef Classical Award and an RPS and AIM Awards Best Life Performer nominations — and she has been commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, Chineke! Orchestra, Guerzenich Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as numerous chamber ensembles.

The acclaimed London-born artist has been both prolific and very busy: She’s currently working on a major new commission for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to celebrate their 90th anniversary and co-scoring her first TV drama for Sky Arts, which is slated for release this year.

Witter-Johnson’s highly anticipated album New Roots is slated for a September 18, 2026 release through her own Hill and Gully Records. Written across a series of retreats, hotel rooms, quarantine lockdown and quiet pockets of life on the road, New Roots documents moments where stillness becomes a portal, a place to her ancestral voices, confront personal truth and re-anchor yourself in what matters. Further cementing the London-born artist as a world-builder and musical polymath, the album sees Witter-Johnson delving into her heritage and spiritual practice, reflecting on British-Caribbean identity, the inheritance of Windrush Generation wisdom, grief and remembrance and the the strength required to keep choosing oneself. (By the way, the Windrush Generation was the Caribbean Island folk, who moved from the island nations from 1948-1971)“It’s an album about finding centre — personally, culturally, and cosmically — and about learning that new roots can be grown even in unfamiliar or fractured ground,” the acclaimed artist says,

Sonically, the album reportedly sees her expanding on her signature fusion of R&B, soul, classical and jazz, while tracing her Jamaican heritage through lush orchestration and raw, personal storytelling. The result is an effort that’s both deeply rooted and yet forward-looking.

New Roots‘ latest single “Blue” is built around a sparse yet gorgeous arrangement of Witter-Johnon’s percussive cello playing and subtle bursts of strings beneath her expressive, searching delivery. The result is a song that’s intimate, lived-in and yet cinematic. Sonically seemingly to nod at Joni Mitchell, Meshell Ndegeocello and contemporary R&B, “Blue” was originally written pre-pandemic during a “write-an-album-in-a-week” retreat, and was a way of processing the emotional fallout of a toxic relationship. But with distance and reflection, the song took on a new life.

“With distance and reflection, ‘Blue’ has grown into something broader: a meditation on patterns of pain and the ways in which victimhood can quietly shape multiple areas of life,” Witter-Johnson explains,. “The song now stands as a metaphor for a range of difficult relationships and situations — moments where suffering becomes familiar, and where growth comes from recognising and gently releasing that identity.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hannah Williams and The Affirmations Return with the Achingly Devastating Visuals for “Late Night and Heartbreak”

Hannah Williams is a Bristol, UK-born and based singer/songwriter and soul artist, who can trace the origins of her own musical career to growing up in an extremely musical family; Williams’ father was a musician and minister at the local church, and her mother, recognizing that she had some talent, allowed Williams to join the church choir when she was 6. Unsurprisingly, like a a lot intensely musical homes, Williams learned how to read music before she could actually read words. 

With the release of her 2012 full-length debut Hill of Feathers, Williams exploded into the both national and international scenes, thanks in part to the success of album single “Work It Out,” which received attention across the blogosphere and airplay on radio stations across the US, Australia and the European Union; in fact, at one point, “Work It Out” was the most downloaded song in Greece, and according to her label, Record Kicks Records, the video has — as of this point — received over 1.5 million plays on YouTube. Adding to a growing international profile, Williams has played sets at some of Europe’s biggest festivals including Shambala Festival, Valley Fest, Wilderness Festival, Cambridge Jazz Festival and Larmer Tree Festival,as well as some of Europe’s well-known clubs including Hamburg, Germany‘s Mojo; Manchester, UK’s Band on the Wall; Camden, UK‘s Jazz Cafe and others with the likes of  Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Cat Power, and Charles Bradley. 

Williams’ sophomore effort Late Nights and Heartbreak, which was produced by  The Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto, and marked both the first time Williams has worked with Catto, as well as the first recorded output with her backing band, the Bristol-based soul unit, The Affirmations, comprised of James Graham (organ, piano and Wurlitzer), Adam Holgate (guitar), Adam Newton (bass), Jai Widdowson-Jones (drums), Nicholas Malcolm (trumper), Liam Treasure (trombone), Victoria Klewin (baritone saxophone) and Hannah Nicholson (backing vocals). And as you may recall, the album, which featured singles like the fierce, Dusty Springfield-like torch song “Tame in the Water” and psychedelic soul rendition of “Dazed and Confused” that managed to draw from equally from the original version written by Jake Holmes, Led Zeppelin’s legendary cover and The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” as well as some of the most personal and heartfelt material I came across last year, was one of my favorite albums in 2016, decidedly taking the top spot on last year’s Best of List. 

Recently, the Bristol-born and-based soul artist and her backing band have received greater international attention after renowned, smash hit producer NO I.D. convinced Jay-Z to use the hook of album title track “Late Nights and Heartbreak” for the superstar artist’s album title track “4:44,” making his track a personal statement of his infidelity in response to Beyonce’s Lemonade. Of course, as you hear on Williams’ “Late Night and Heartbreak,” the song focuses on infidelity but also on the narrator’s crippling and confounding inability to figure out their own desires, their fears of vulnerability and heartbreak and their deception both to themselves and their partner. But at the core of the song is something that the song’s narrator and the most people don’t want to readily admit — that it’s difficult to face yourself  and your own life with the sort of unflinching honesty that you may have for others. And as a result of the song coming from a deeply personal and lived-in place,  it packs an unexpected and devastating wallop, especially if you’ve been on either side of a troubled, deception-filled relationship. 

Directed by Nick Donnelly, who has worked on videos for the Wu-Tang Clan, Martha Reeves and Akala and DJ Khaled, the recently released video for “Late Nights and Heartbreak” was filmed in Williams’ hometown and focuses on the sort of deeply troubled relationship at the heart of the song. As Williams explained to Complex, the video “depicts the realisation that sometimes the most burning love is for ones’ own passion, and when a human relationship gets in the way it will lead to heartbreak.”