HALO

Mill Hill, north-west London · b. 2005 · FARA Records

HALO (Imani Blake, b. 20 February 2005, Mill Hill, north-west London) grew up in a quiet residential corner of the city on the very edge of it — the far end of a Tube line, leafy, suburban, and a long way in feeling from the London that people picture. Growing up somewhere overlooked at the edge of somewhere famous is a different version of the same feeling the record is about: near the thing, not in it, easy to miss. She's the emotional voice on the track and that's not an accident. She found her way in through singing at home and in choirs, then finding the bass scene through the internet rather than through anywhere near Mill Hill, which isn't a scene town. She's a singer rather than a producer, with a naturally emotional tone she's learned to hold back, and she met VANTA through a shared session.

Warm, clear and emotional, with real vulnerability she controls carefully — she doesn't oversing, and the restraint is what lets the breakdown land. Her job on this record is the hook and the exposed breakdown, where the beat drops away entirely and it's just her and a piano, the most naked moment on a very heavy track. She sings the feeling that the MC verses describe from the outside. Her influences run the lineage of emotional sung hooks over UK bass — vulnerable toplines on heavy low end — and, behind it, gospel and choir phrasing from home. She came to the genre through the songs rather than through the sound design.

Soft-spoken and warm, and steadier than she first appears. She carries the emotional weight of the live show without any theatrics — the breakdown, just her and a piano, is the moment the room goes quiet, and she can hold it. Her big moment on the record is the quietest one: the breakdown, just voice and piano, with all the bass gone. She holds the emotion back on purpose; the restraint is why the breakdown works. Gentle, watchful, resilient.