An Interview with Elmiene

Sitting at the head of a white boardroom table in a white room, at first glance British-Sudanese artist Elmiene seems to be the antithesis of his corporate surroundings. Despite this, he seems completely at home. Swinging back and forth in his chair like a restless school boy, flinging his arms wide or playing chords on the table to illustrate his points, he is rarely still. He doesn’t seem unsettled by where he is now but willingly admits that his younger self would have been surprised: “The fact that I even exist in this space I think is the most surprising part. I’m sure some of you might have seen but I was gonna be a security guard originally so this is a very long, long distance from what I was planning for myself…I was really ready to live in Oxford (UK) for the rest of my life so I think the travel aspect would be the most surprising thing - that I have seen as many places in the world as I have and that I travel as often as I do. There are so many times…I stop for a second and look round, I’m like, ‘What the fuck am I doing in Los Angeles? This is nuts, this is wild.’ I would have never in my life stepped in this country but here I am!”

Elmiene’s arrival at this point is the culmination of five years of steady growth, from his 2021 single Golden, through his 2023 viral cover of hero D’Angelo’s Untitled (How Does It Feel?), to this year’s album “Sounds for Someone” and a 27 stop world tour. The three singles already released (Reclusive, Honour and Cry Against the Wind) showcase his breathy, soulful vocals and ability to blend the sounds of R&B and neo-soul legends with his own exclusive take. He has made no secret of the influence his heroes have had on him and describes D’Angelo as ‘always, forever my marker…’.

However, rather than simply emulating the giants of the past, what he wants for himself and his music is to emulate their freedom. His admiration for D’Angelo stems partly from his ability to escape labels and boxes: “Because he exists I know that the boundaries of this genre are limitless, essentially. We can do whatever we want - we can’t let anyone tell us that this is how R&B or soul is supposed to sound because he went from Brown Sugar to Voodoo to Black Messiah and that three album run don’t even sound like the same artist every time. We just know it is ‘cause it's his voice. He is my beacon of freedom…the example that all of us should be following, the same as Stevie and Prince...They can just continually reinvent themselves but never compromise the quality of what they are making. It's never a half-arsed venture into something else. Whatever he was going into, he was going to make sure he really took his time. That’s what made him amazing.”

This duality, looking back to move forward, is only one of the many co-existing polarities that crop up in Elmiene’s work and character; whether it is his introverted-extroversion, the contrast between touring the world and spending days at home organising trading cards and cooking, and the juxtaposition of Tracey Breaker (British Children’s TV show) and One Piece, Elmiene seems to exist between two worlds and is equally at home in both. This is reflected when he talks about “Sounds for Someone” as existing between seasons: “It’s like it’s winter and spring at the same time.This album sits in between rebuilding and forgiveness - very intertwined. I suppose you need to rebuild in order to forgive and the other way round. That’s definitely where the album is and I hope that’s what people get when they listen to it. And what comes after that? I dunno. Happiness? Maybe that’s too positive but something in that world.”

If we can’t expect any definitive answers from the album, has making it answered any questions for him? “I think so. Well, I think sometimes the answers that you find are just the right questions that you didn’t know you needed to be asking, see what I’m saying? Like I now know that my shoulder is hurting, now I need to know why it is hurting and then I can progress from there. Writing these songs didn’t miraculously cure whatever I needed to be cured but I found out that there even was something to be cured in the first place. They are good starting points for me to look more within myself.”

And that is what he hopes the “someones” listening to the album get from it too: “The someone that these sounds are for in particular, for me is my father but my vision when the title kinda came to me was… I wanted it broad where anyone can put whoever that someone is in their life in that position and it will still fit. You know, whether it’s your brother or your uncle, your sister, lover, whatever - I wanted to make sure that that part was open…I just envision people, just real normal people who just wanna feel something with music in a way that’s beyond just ‘I wanna have a good time, or I wanna do this.’ I envision my listeners to be people who wanna ask questions and find out more about the world, I hope, which means finding out more about themselves ‘cause that’s what I am (doing). When I came into writing this album, really all I wanted to do was just discover more about myself and what else was out there that I could experience and bring into the music.”

The tour, and the intimate UK shows that he will preface it, are an opportunity for Elmiene to see how his audience connects with his work and, for him, this bookends the depersonalised nature of the music industry with the human element that drives the music making process. Live performances are “the human part of making music that you could easily lose if you never did those things… The making music part is human ‘cause I collaborate with people and I talk about real things that I go through. Everything in between is kinda in the middle. It’s easy to lose yourself… because after you make music, you gotta promote music, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, you gotta do this and, ‘specially with social media and things on your phone, you’re looking at whatever, it can really distance yourself from the humanity that was part of even making it - those conversations that were had with the producer or with the writer or whatever. When I do these small intimate shows it’s my opportunity to again refresh: ‘Oh, yeah! I’m doing this ‘cause people listen to it and I can see their faces and I can understand how it affects them’, and it just reminds you of what is important about making music - that it’s all just communication. Like I said at the start, a good song is communicating a thought articulately. Who are you doing that for and who are you talking to? When you see those people that’s really what makes it feel alive again and make sense…if you don’t do that you’re basically a robot. You might as well just replace me with AI at that point!”

Based on this conference, it would be impossible to replicate the warmth, humanity, energy and unpredictability of Elmiene with a computer programme. He ends with an impromptu outburst of beautiful, soulful song proving that, however difficult it is to guess what Elmiene will do next, it will definitely be great.

Listen to his song Reclusive now!