New Music Friday can be a lot. That's why every week we cut it down to the songs you need to hear for PLAY, our new music edit, and deliver a new cover feature to go alongside it. This week... Bel Cobain.
“I don’t want to create a world, but I want to be honest about my world,” says Bel Cobain. She's reflecting on the artistic impulses and conflicting emotions that make up her second EP, ‘Kizzy’, a standout release from someone who has experienced hardship and pain but arrived at a place of peace. It’s a raw and tumultuous listen from an artist who isn’t afraid to put everything out there.
“Honesty is the most important thing for me when it comes to being an artist,” says Bel, who is half British, half Nigerian and is based in London, a city that, for good or bad, inspires many of the experiences detailed on ‘Kizzy’. “The vision is about trying to be as vulnerable and honest as possible so that others and myself don’t feel alone. I want to represent common themes in how we’re thinking and feeling and processing and existing.”
The EP is Bel’s first release for esteemed British record label Brownswood Recordings, and it marks a new phase of Bel’s career following releases on Soundcloud and her intimate 2023 debut EP ‘Radical Forgiveness’. ‘Kizzy’ is on a whole other level, creatively, artistically and spiritually. “I was definitely blagging it to be honest for a while,” she admits, talking about her earliest releases. “I think it was a good thing because I didn’t have too much pressure and could just be free in my creativity. Now, I’m a bit more serious about it and conscious of the power of art and music.”
With that realisation of the real power of music came a focus on how to navigate what she was feeling as a person into her art. There is something beautifully perceptive about Bel and how she sees the world and the people around her. Some of that enlightened mind comes from her academic background. “I studied botanical studies for a while,” she explains. “It’s grounding. It reminded me a lot of humans and humanity and rhythms and cultures.
"I’m always trying to bring metaphors that connect us back to nature. I was learning about seeds at one point, and the difference between cones and seeds, and the different ways that plants propagate themselves. There was a really interesting native plant that grew seeds with seed coatings that would only break if they were in contact with fire. It brought my attention to the fact that life force really wants to exist and be there and adapt itself to pain and disaster in order to still bring the life force back.”
