​​Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud

In a new golden age for British dance music, few artists have shone brighter than Nia Archives. A string of wildly vibrant club bangers and a couple of stunning EPs since she burst onto the scene in 2020 have ramped up the expectations for the producer, DJ, singer and songwriter's debut album to sky-scraping levels. Fortunately, she more than delivers as 'Silence Is Loud' takes the Nia Archives sound of jungle at its most invigorating and turns it into a post-rave odyssey that journeys all the complex feelings and emotions of dance at its most transcendent.

Nia Archives is an artist who can do it all, and on her debut, she explores all the different facets of her musicality. Sure, there are plenty of bone-rattling and hyped-up breakbeats here, but this is an album of songs, frequently beautiful and affecting songs, in which the power of the beats amplifies the emotional resonance of her voice. On almost every track, Nia's distinctive vocals, bursting with personality, are foregrounded and provide the heartbeat of the album.

There's a wistful, yearning quality to much of the material here, like the soaring title-track, which illuminates the intimacy and, at times, isolation of its creation as Nia wrote the lyrics in her bedroom channelling her formative musical steps as a bedroom producer. While the lyrics are evocative and tender, the music is frequently expansive and dynamic as she opens up her club banger palette to take on different forms like the insistent guitar-based rush of 'Tell Me What It's Like' which echoes some of the indie-rock and guitar influences that filter into so much of her work.

As genre increasingly breaks down and the fluidity of an anything-goes approach becomes more common, Nia Archives offers a glorious example of this aesthetic as she combines the anthemic immediacy of melodic indie rock with the jumped-up fevered energy of the club.

'Silence Is Loud' is a record of expression and freedom. Freedom to experiment and make exactly what you want but also freedom to look deep within yourself and make something that has a legacy beyond simply the dancefloor. Something you can hold dear to your heart and also use as the soundtrack to one of the best nights of your life. Nights that promise to be soundtracked for years to come by one of our most vital and thrilling creative voices.