Sofa Session: Laura Mvula

Laura Mvula plays a Sofa Session for Jo, including music from her new album Pink Noise, which is out July 2nd.

Pink Noise explores a side of Laura previously uncharted. This is Laura in a new found light - still reflecting her distinctive signature sound but showing the progression of an artist who has come into her own.

It's an album borne out of both intense struggles and the positive realisations that come when you emerge reborn the other side. Lyrically it touches on ideas around break-ups – both personal and professional – but also a hard won appreciation.

“I was the original pop head in my family, I'm obsessed with pop,” she says, acknowledging the shift from the more experimental, baroque soul of her first two albums, 2013's Sing to the Moon and 2016's The Dreaming Room, both of which were Mercury nominated. “For some reason when I made Sing to The Moon that sound became permanently attached to me in people's heads. Like having the same hairstyle for the rest of your life, which for me is unthinkable. So this album was such a release.”

Laura says, “This is the album I always wanted to make. Every corner is made warm with sunset tones of the 80s. I was born in 1986. I came out of the womb wearing shoulder pads. I absorbed the dynamism of the 80s aesthetic right from my first moments on this planet. Wrestling with identity seems to be one of the rites of passage of the established artist. Making ‘Pink Noise’ felt like the most violent of emotional wrestling matches. It took 3 years of waiting and waiting and fighting and dying and nothingness and then finally an explosion of sound. As if it was always here this record is my most honest and unapologetic flying of the freedom flag. In my adult years I had forgotten how important dance was to me as a vital tool of my creative expression. I brought it back, just for me, so I could find my delight in dance again. And now I can’t stop dancing. I can’t wait to play this album live.”

Laura has previously won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Album, has been nominated for the Mercury Prize (not once but twice), BBC Sound Poll, the BRITs Critics Choice Award, two BRIT Awards in 2014 (British Female Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act) and won an incredible two MOBO’s in 2013 (Best Female and Best R&B/Soul).

Having caught the attention of her musical hero Prince while performing for the first of two times on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, Laura has gone on to travel the world, selling out shows and captivating crowds at every destination. Crowned “Queen of the Prom” and given a five star review from the Evening Standard for her Proms 2014 Late Night performance at the Royal Albert Hall, Laura’s critically acclaimed career has led her to work with real-life inspirations Nile Rodgers and touring with David Byrne.