Leeds-based acoustic artist Claudia Fenoglio has been received warmly as an artist to watch as she continues to hone in her sound and flourish in her musicality. Retrospective lyricism has caught the ear of fans and tastemakers, with the likes of BBC Introducing, Launchpad Leeds and Youth Music offering their support. Festival performances at Live at Leeds, Long Division and Wimin Festival have been paired with radio play from BBC 6 Music and Amazing Radio in the lead up to her debut EP.
‘What If I’m Here Forever?’ combines Claudia’s recent run of singles with new track ‘Stay With You’. The fresh single strikes a balance between the folk-influenced ‘Alaska’ and ‘Forever’ and the indie-rock twang of ‘Girlfriends On TV’. Alongside the floating, gorgeous vocal harmonies and wistful instrumentation, come infectious, grooving guitar riffs that get you swaying side to side. As the last track of the EP, it also takes on the role of leaving you with the right feelings, which it does with a climactic ending full of screaming distortion, driving rhythms and the faint melodies of Claudia’s voice. The whole EP shows off the quality at which Fenoglio is writing music, wearing her influences on her sleeve but developing a innovative soundscape that blends familiar and other-worldly sensibilities.
Claudia shares, “The songs on this record all came about in the same way; sitting on my bed with my acoustic guitar, mumbling melodies into my phone. After figuring out the melodic foundations of each song, I would spend hours envisioning how I wanted them to sound in my head and compiling playlists of inspirations.
I would then become attached to certain words and moments in my head that I wanted to write about, and I’d begin to write out the lyrics and tell a story. I was half influenced by my own life experiences, including past and present relationships, nostalgia and queer love, and also the relationships and characters off of television shows that I love. The track ‘Alaska’ was written about the tumultuous relationship between Villanelle and Eve, from Killing Eve.
After sending some extremely rough demos of each song to my friend and producer Tim Malkin (Talkboy and Fizzy Blood), we’d enter The Green Room studio fully caffeinated and ready to record. For each song, we would track drums first which was a new experience for me, mainly because it was vital that we could be blessed with Sam Newham’s (Heir) extraordinary talent, to get the creative juices flowing.
Between recording a vast number of vocal takes (due to being a perfectionist) and spewing rogue descriptive words at Tim of how I would like each particular guitar note to sound, we created four songs that I am immensely proud of and reflect whole- heartedly the life of a 25-year-old girl, who is still trying to figure everything out.”
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