Emmit Fenn is a name you should familiarize yourself with. The singer/songwriter and producer from LA has just released his first EP titled Prologue which features nine tracks. The 23 million listens on Spotify he has gathered so far is a testament to how good the music is.
With the mesmerizing title track Painting Greys and collaborations with artists like Yuna on the track Modern Flame, NYLO on Oceans and guitar by NoMBe on Woman, Prologue is a great body of work. Emmit's hauntingly soulful voice, addictive melodies, slow rhythms and deep base makes for a chillingly engaging listen.
His music has been described as a mixture between RnB and Electronic, to which he enthusiastically responded “Yeah RnB and Electronic, that’s a good one”, when I caught up with the artist over a phone call earlier this Thursday. He added that his music often encompasses Indie Electronic and sometimes pure Indie.
But Emmit is keen on change and experimentation with music and expressed that each EP he is due to release will feature a new sound. He stated “Each EP is kinda in its different world”. Whatever the genre, his music is arresting.
I was curious about the meaning behind the title Prologue. The artist explained that many of the titles for his work come from books. “I was skimming from books and the first thing I saw was Prologue, and it just stuck out to me. Its the first EP, its like the beginning of the journey and kind of implying that there is a lot more on the way, its not the ending there’s a lot more coming”.
With the unique sound his music offers, I was eager to get to know more about the singer/songwriter’s background and influences. The 21 year old musician told me about his own college experience.“I had a super rough first year of college and I went to college in Virginia”.
Emmit confessed that “Freshman was the worst year of my life, I had super bad acne and super stressed out all the time”. With sincerity and humor he described himself as a “cave dweller” during this period. “But I had so much time to myself I ended up writing a lot, writing a lot of stories, a lot of poems, thats when I kinda decided yeah this is what I want to do.”
Emit had a strong background in music as he started playing the piano at the age of 12 and later picked up the guitar and violin. However, friends he met in his first year of college taught him technicalities of making electronic sounds. “ I became obsessed, after that year in Virginia I moved to LA and decided yeah I’m gonna try and just do this”.
Growing up Emmit was a big Sade fan, “I had all of her music, that was probably my biggest inspiration early on” Other key inspirations where Cold Play and Classical piano players. Currently the artist listens and takes inspiration from instrumental music, Canadian producer and DJ Kaytranada being one of his favorites.
An exciting accompaniment to Emmit’s music is the experience his website provides. The singer/song writer collaborated with award winning digital production company Active Theory to create an interactive component to the music. Each song is coupled with a symbol and listeners can play with the graphics online as they hear the soundtrack.
Emmit told me that “when we were creating the website, we were brainstorming a lot about what the images would be we create mood board for each song, me and Andy from Active Theory created certain images and symbols that repressed each song: Painting Grey a grey is a tunnel of thought”.
Like his Mahogany live set, most of Emmit’s live sets so far have been acoustic, performed on his piano. The music unsurprisingly translates smoothly onto an acoustic sound due to his strong background in musical instruments.
He told me that “pretty much all my songs are written on the piano or the guitar. Thats just my process and I’m most familiar and most comfortable with with acoustic”. However, the musician just did his first Electronic show a month ago for the Sony Live Festival, has a whole Electronic show on the way and is currently planning his tour.
Emmit voiced his love for collaborations and the artist he featured in his EP. When asked about Yuna he replied saying “She’s just such an amazing wonderful human being”. Though he originally thought Yuna was “unreachable”, she recorded the soothing track Modern Flame a week after he contacted her. He expressed equal admiration of NYLO as he stated “She followed me on sound cloud and I followed her back, I had this instrumental that i really liked, that I wanted a singer on, i sent it to her and she just killed it, that one was super easy and she’s amazing too”.
I asked Emmit who his number one pick would be if he could collaborate with anyone to which he responded “Bon Iver is always my idol, he’s amazing. I don’t know if its collaborating with him on a song or just performing onstage, just cause the emotion he puts out when he’s singing is really pure and really fun to watch”.
Emmit is coming out with a new EP titled Eclipse next month which will present its own new sound. However, for now take a listen of Prologue, an exceptional soundtrack that will leave you wanting more.
