EP Review: Sabiyha - 'Hollow Bones'

London-based singer-songwriter Sabiyha has released her powerful 5-track debut, EP 'Hollow Bones', pulling on a contemporary blend of blues, jazz and folk influences.

 
'Hollow Bones' opens strikingly with 'Wolf' - a stunning assault on the senses. With its engaging pizzicato strings, regimental drums, and dramatic orchestral flourishes, the track commands its listeners immediately.  Sabiyha's  poetic lyricism and magical folklore storytelling is delivered through an exceptional vocal, that rises to an almost feral, ethereal range as she calls out to nature and connects with her own inner wolf.

'Bird' opens powerfully with dark chord progressions, and angry strumming. The foreboding and ethereal mood to the track is completely captivating and again, Sabiyha's vocal takes on an earthy, powerful, beguiling folk tone, truly magnificent in terms of creating another  unoforgettable, drama-infused song.




The rest of the EP is relatively more low key and chilled sonically, although lyrically throught-provoking and powerful in its themes of love and loss.  'Five Months' sees Sabiyha's strong bluesy vocal at the forefront of the song. Alongside, 'Still' and 'Letter', 'Five Months' showcases the more dated influences that have inspired the EP, but all tracks are executed timelessly.

Produced by Andrew David James, ‘Hollow Bones’ is a striking EP that holds a range of potent emotions. The EP sees Sabiyha move effortlessly between the big songs that intend to floor its listener and take them to a different place in a fantastical kind of way, to the smoother songs that impact on a more concrete level in connecting with the universal themes of human emotion. Really gorgeous stuff.

Words of Karla Harris