As well as premiering the video for the title track of her debut EP, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Freda D’Souza‘s Windowledge is also our Song of the Day (out tomorrow – 31st May – on Bandcamp & beyond). Freda is described as an artist who contentedly creates at a snail’s pace…but if this first offering is anything to go by, then the diligence and commitment she attends to her songs has most definitely paid off. Just as she values ‘forging space’ for reflection, the soundworld she has created is uniquely personal. There is a palpable homely warmth to Windowledge – the backdrop of rain bookends the song, and the subtly layered vocals are at once dreamy yet, at the same time, incredibly lucid. Despite the anxiety and intensity underlying the song, there is also a shimmering beauty akin to being lost in the comfort of a daydream that you’re happy to stay with uninterrupted.
Performed, recorded and mixed at home by Freda and mastered by Jake Reynolds, the EP explores the trials of intimate relationships (both friendship and romantic love) and the value of introspection and forging space for reflection. The five songs on Windowledge reveal a moment of clarity in the aftermath of a co-dependent relationship, opening a point of access into memory and the subconscious of their writer.
In Freda’s words: “Although I have been writing since 15, it took me a while to gather songs and record them in a way that I liked. I always ended up in these studios with older men and I would feel so tense and end up with a recording I was completely unhappy with. As well as this, I never felt any need to record my songs as I could listen to them in my head at any time – the songs already existed to me as living entities. Since 2020, I have been exploring the ways I could use demo recording to capture a space that would add to the song, as well as capturing a time span.”
The first part of that time span, and the first song to be shared, is the eponymous ‘Windowledge’, written at age 19; the song sees its writer on the precipice of both a new phase of life and an incipient, all-consuming relationship.
The accompanying video perfectly captures the song’s intimacy perfectly and was co-directed by Daniel Padgett and Freda D’Souza, shot by Daniel, and edited by Freda.
Drawing from classic and contemporary folk and experimental reference points (as much Vashti Bunyan and Joni Mitchell as Aldous Harding and Jenny Hval), Windowledge is a spacious and shimmering introduction to a singular emerging talent. In a collaboration between two one-woman labels, demo records and Crossness Records, the EP will be released on limited edition cassette tape, as well as all download and streaming services, on 28th June 2023.
Upcoming tour dates:
13th June – Grand Junction, London (supporting Mount Eerie) – sold out
2nd July – Green Note, London (EP launch) – tickets
7th July – Platform, Glasgow (with L.T. Leif and Housekind) – tickets
9th July – The Engine Room, North Shields
Further dates to be announced