Get to know: HANAH

Riding the gap between experimental R&B, ambient and folk, HANAH is a songwriter and producer that’s going from strength to strength. 

Following on from the release of her second EP ‘Colours of Now and Then’ on Saffron Records, we caught up with her to find out more about her upbringing, artistry and how music helps her to recognise and release her emotions.

How did you first get into making music? Were there any early influences that have shaped the creative path you have taken?

In general, my family is very creative and there was always music and art in our house and in my life growing up. My grandpa was a painter and my grandma his life model and a seamstress. My mum is an artist and art teacher, and my dad is a chef and musician. At school, I was always acting in plays, sang solo and in groups, and then eventually studied music. I have always sung and performed since I can remember to be fair. I don’t know if I was brought up to fulfil any other path than a creative one considering the family and surroundings I grew up in.

In terms of production, the first time I remember playing around with a DAW was around age 10. My dad had GarageBand on his laptop and we used to make silly tunes on it. Then, at about age 13, I was recording my own stuff (experimenting innocently and blindly) – looping guitar, my voice and found sound. This is when I really started making my own music and posting on SoundCloud. It was only when I went to uni that I started working with Logic.

How would you describe your development as an artist and the transition towards finding your own voice?

I would describe my development as an artist as trial and error. 

My development as an artist has felt monumental over the last year or two. Maybe because I have started taking myself way more seriously in music and my abilities. 

Although I am still happily learning who HANAH is, how they interact with an audience, how they dress, and how they perform. I am still unravelling who that person is on stage. In a way, I prefer to see HANAH as a performer, a concept or a separate being from me. It has helped me find more confidence when I’m performing and promoting my sound/music. 

Hannah is my real name so it’s been quite a complex process to detach from its deep-rooted and personal meaning. Experimenting with my visual identity has been pivotal in helping me detach from the Hannah at home and the HANAH on stage. Currently, I’m exploring how I wear makeup and clothing on stage and so far it has been really fun. I’m wearing things I would never wear day-to-day and it allows me to access a different performative side of myself. I imagine I will look back in five years and think ‘why did I wear that?’ but it’s all part of the process. 

On the other hand, finding my voice has been quite a natural process. Over time, you learn what you like and don’t like. 

One thing that has proven to be challenging and important is the act of saying ‘no’. Whether that’s saying ‘no’ to a collaboration that isn’t your vibe, a song you wrote with somebody else that you end up not wanting to release or saying ‘no’ to a gig that doesn’t feel suitable to you, it is as vital to say ‘no’ as it is ‘yes’ in my opinion.  

Finding my voice has been about being honest with myself. Although it is hard to do, now I feel grateful to be at a point where I am able to draw boundaries. These boundaries help protect my ideas as an artist and nurture my ‘voice’ that I have spent so long working on and refining. If something doesn’t feel right or represent me as an artist, I won’t be being authentic. Honesty and authenticity are so important to me, in my music and my personal life.

You’ve described music-making as a form of therapy, but visuals also seem to play an important role in your work. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to bringing sound and image together?

Sound and image are an incredibly powerful duo, and I love working with both of them. The process of creating visuals with my music is really a way to have fun and bring something else to the music. When I make music, working on the visuals is the next natural step for me.  Whether I’m filming something new, or collating old footage and seeing how it flows with the songs, I’ll usually improvise it all. Again, I return to trial and error. Without a plan, there’s more room for experimentation. I am used to working DIY with no budget, no plan and no idea of how it will turn out. Working with Lucy Werrett was the first time I’d ever been faced with a storyboard or a time schedule for a shoot, so that was a challenge for me!

I work mostly with my pal Fleur who takes all my press pics. She shot the cover of my most recent EP ‘Colours of Now and Then’, is on the cover of my EP ‘Watch the World in Detail’ and has been there with me making every single music video I have!  We met when we were 19 and haven’t stopped making art together since. During COVID we had the privilege of being locked down together and would go for big walks, pack the cameras, a speaker and some scarves, and then run through fields with dresses on and see what comes to us. 

A lot of the time during the filming/editing process amazing accidents happen. I don’t know much about the technical side and I’m an amateur so a lot of it is about what feels and looks right to me personally.  Sometimes we’ll end up using a scarf over the camera lens to distort its clarity and create a hue or using phone torches to cast shadows. Once Fleur purchased some sweets and used the wrappers instead of coloured gels. 

Your latest EP, ‘Colours of Now & Then’ is a love letter to your grandmother, who you lost last year. How does it feel for you to listen back to the tracks now? 

It feels good… dream-like. I can’t wrap my head around it all really. 

I have worked so hard for the last year, alongside grieving, finding my feet again and working out my place in the world… It has been so painful, joyful and inspiring, I’m still just laying low and trying to remind myself ‘I did that’. It is easy to put something out, especially when it’s online, and feel like it has almost disappeared. Every time I hear the songs I feel proud though, and I’m super happy with the tracks I chose to release. Singing my EP at gigs has been really rewarding, more so than all the online hype.

In your ‘note on grief’, you talk about the mixture of highs and lows you experienced in the days following your grandmother’s death. Do you think there’s something music can express about life and death that words alone may not?

Music constantly helps me to recognise and release my pains and joy. 

Making this EP in particular has highlighted how important music is for me personally to process my emotions, whether it has words or not. I love the idea that music helps us expand on those emotions we may not be able to execute verbally. 

In my case, I found grief so isolating, I didn’t have much energy to speak or mentally process what was happening day-to-day, even to my nearest and dearest. At the time I made the songs I was in no place to verbally underline what I was going through, yet the music has captured something I thought couldn’t articulate. Music has its own language.

So I think YES! Definitely. My EP is an example of this. The proof is in the pudding as my grandma would say.

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HANAH’s latest EP ‘Colours of Now and Then’ is out now on Saffron Records. Listen to it here.

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‘When Nobody is Watching’ – Video Credits

Director – Lucy Werrett

DOP & Grade – Jack Hayter

Edit – Jack Hayter and Lucy Werrett

Stylist and assistant – Amber Walters 

Sound Design – Hannah Roberts