Words by Anton Spice

Whether in the house where she grew up or in the car visiting her nan, Yazmin Lacey adored listening to the radio. And not just for the music. “I loved the way they would talk about things and the conversations they had,” she enthuses, remembering how her dad would tune into local pirate stations on the not-so-long drive from East to North London. “That’s just how I learned. Because I love talking, in case you haven't realised!”

We’re about an hour into our interview at this point, but that’s no bad thing. Communication, talking things out, and expressing yourself - whether that’s in the studio with producers Dave Okumu and Melo-Zed (aka Zachary Cayenne-Elliott), on a night out with friends, or in a quiet moment with her phone - are fundamental qualities of Yazmin Lacey’s music, and one of the reasons why her debut album, Voice Notes, feels so knitted into the fabric of real life. 

A vocalist and songwriter, Lacey’s path into music has been similarly intuitive. Having spent several years running a charity for young people in Nottingham, Lacey’s breakthrough came via Gilles Peterson’s Future Bubblers programme. She subsequently released three EPs - Black Moon, When the Sun Dips 90 Degrees and Morning Matters - which quietly earned her a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting jazz and soul vocalists.

However, it was in ridding herself of these expectations, generic or otherwise, that Lacey found the peace of mind to make her debut. She speaks warmly of the mentorship of Dave Okumu in creating a safe space to take musical risks in a studio environment that foregrounded play and suited her verbal approach to songwriting.

She regularly refers back to the conversations that formed the basis of her process, the way she would work out melody and mood in discussion rather than through the painstaking abstractions of sheet music and computer software. There are moments where Voice Notes feels deeply intimate, others where it is epic, a kind of balance Lacey identifies between the cinematic and the lo-fi. Imperfections are all part of the offering.

The result is a powerful and personal work, made all the more attractive by the open and sensitive way in which Lacey speaks about it. “I don't feel like music owes me anything,” she says, not with disdain but with a sense of respect that comes with perspective. “It has helped me have a deeper understanding of myself.” Voice Notes collects the stories she wanted to tell. 

Releasing a debut album is a big undertaking. How long have you been working towards Voice Notes?

It's been bloody ages! But it's just that I'm really feelings-based with it. I knew I wanted to make an album but it couldn’t ever be a process of 'cool, you’ve got three weeks, three months, three years in the studio’. It wasn’t about time, it's just that some things needed to come together naturally. I’d say it was about two years, which is so weird. And parts of those two years I was like, 'I'm not making it!’

How come?

I think I felt a lot of pressure at first to make a particular thing. I didn't know what it was, but it was like, 'OK, this is your album now, so it must mean something’. I remember saying to my manager Amy, 'I think we've had a good time, I don’t know what else to make, I think we should just leave it there!’ And she was like, 'just write your stories, I’m interested to hear what you have to say’. So from there, I eased into the fact that you're just expressing yourself. It was only when it becomes something more for other people that I was getting tangled up. What is your debut album supposed to sound like? It sounds like what you’re feeling at that time, doesn't it?

More about embracing the process than thinking about the outcome?

That is the album. I've let go of those emotions. I've channelled them into the album, so for me, there is an element of moving on now. That is the deepest bit for the artist, the process. It's the only time when it's just for you.

How do you know when you have reached the point where you’re ready to say ‘it’s finished’ and let it go?

I like the offering. It is as is, this is who I am, this is how I expressed it at that moment, and we're done now. Me, Dave [Okumu] and Zach [Cayenne-Elliott] - who I also spent a lot of time with on this album - talked a lot about imperfection and what it means to each of us. So I suppose finding the time when it's finished is about accepting the imperfections that are yours.

The first track ‘Flylo Tweet’ is based around the quote 'self-consciousness is the creativity killer’. What does that mean to you?

I saw that tweet years ago and remember screen-shotting it and thinking 'this is my issue with music'. When you can just free yourself up enough to do it, it comes. I feel like that's me across life, to accept things, to be open to things. It's true that to do the album I had to move out of my own way. Some of the songs, I didn’t even sing them in the session because I was too nervous.

I'd never set out to do music in the beginning. I've just sort of gone from one record to the next, which has been lovely, but I feel like when I started getting into the meat of this album, I was like, ‘I really want to do this’. I realised the depth of what music brings to me and just how lucky I am. I need that to always be a part of my life.

The thing that's great about working with Dave is that I can say something like 'at the end, I'd really like it to feel like it's bursting and fizzling out' and he will get what I mean by that. Developing that kind of language and communication with the people you're working with is really important. It takes time, and that's probably why it took two years.

To what extent does the album draw on actual voice notes? How did this idea play out in the studio?

The name Voice Notes was one of the things I decided so early on. For me it's very much the way I've always done music - my secret voice notes that I barely share with anyone. Every song, whether it made it to the album or not, started with some sort of voice note, whether that was a conversation between me, Zach and Dave, or between me and a girlfriend. And some are maybe not voice notes, so for example, ‘Fools Gold’ is a conversation at a bus stop that I had with someone. But the first iteration of any melody I lay down, I'll probably just say into my phone.

The song 'Match In My Pocket' is a voice note because I'd been thinking about this idea that we have the power to change things, to set things alight, and when things are burning what are we going to do about it? That was a conversation that me and Zach have had over and over again in various formats. In the morning, when I woke up before I went to see him, I sent him a voice note saying 'Morning babe, so I'm hearing this…' and then I hummed out the parts.

Because I don’t read or write music - I can read a little bit, but I can’t write charts or anything like that - I don’t know a lot of this technical stuff, it’s all feeling. But he could hear in my voice I was saying 'it needs to feel like a call to arms, the energy behind it is like we're about to go on this journey’. And he was like, ‘I've got it’.

Do you think that not having had that classical training has influenced the way you use your voice? I love how sometimes it’s like a texture in the track and sometimes your articulation is really punchy and clear.

I think coming into music by just jamming with musicians, that's how I see my voice. The melody always comes immediately to me. I might have a phrase written down but for the majority of songs, if I hear something happening in the room I'll be like, 'this is it’. Using my voice differently, I think that's because I'm still learning and experimenting with what it can do.

On something like ‘Pieces', I’m not trying to use my voice in any way, I just like that you can hear all the cracks in the song, and then on something like ‘Tomorrow's Child’ there's more delivery because it's a different subject that I feel passionately about. I hope that my tone runs through the whole thing to tie it together, but I do think I use my voice in different ways because it's just how I hear it when it comes to me.

I wondered whether ‘Tomorrow's Child’ is explicitly drawing on your experience working with young people, and I was interested to know how those two worlds live alongside one another for you?

When I first gave up working for the charity I felt deeply guilty. I really felt like I was playing a part in something that was problematic in the world, and it was really tangible. And in that charity, we did so much stuff with young people where I had to put myself out of my comfort zone. I had to represent to them not to have fear and that made me stand out of the way of myself. Also, I fell in love with being outdoors and nature in a way that I didn't really have before.

Also, when you work with vulnerable young people, you learn how people just move on from things in life, and you learn not to take yourself too seriously and not take things for granted. I always try to remember that this is a bonus in my life because I was really passionate about doing something before. This is not all that I am, whatever happens, it's just opened up a completely different world that I didn’t know existed and I absolutely love that side of it.

So I think how they live alongside each other is that I learned a lot about myself and that allowed me to centre and ground myself a little bit in order to go into this. I had a lot of fear about going into the studio with everyone, sometimes being the least experienced person in there.

Is the stage fright that you've talked about in the past also something that gets easier over time?

It's changed in the sense that when I first started singing I used to be ill before the show, but after the show, it was so overwhelming. I can hold that bit of it down now, but I still feel super nervous. And I care! I know it's not cool to say as a musician, but I care what people think. I'm human and I'm bloody sensitive, it's not like I'm writing a number-one pop hit for somebody else. This is my life and I'm working out in real-time

It feels like some of that inspiration from nature really comes through on the final track, ‘Sea Glass’. The song ends on a refrain of the lyrics ‘everything is everything’, which made me think of both Lauryn Hill and Donny Hathaway.

Obviously, I love Donny Hathaway and I love Lauryn Hill - two people who I feel like just really express themselves. But also my dad always says it too. If I'm sad about something, he’s like ‘everything is everything’ - there's good there's bad, there's small there's great.

I think that the album starts off so chaotic. To Dave, I'm always like, ‘can everyone tell how all over the place my head is with this album?!’ And he was like, 'it's very you!' And that’s how it is. We're going through all the emotions and then we find a little bit of peace at the end. 

And I think that's how I felt in order to let go of it. It was literally the last vocal that we recorded. Me and Zach had a blissed-out day in the studio. I was like 'everything is everything' and I just burst into tears, because I was like, ‘oh my god, we're actually finished now’. I don’t know how to explain it, it's just the way my dad says it, it's very comforting and it always just means it'll be alright, be at peace, chin up kinda vibes.

Yazmin Lacey’s Voice Notes is released by Own Your Own Records and is out now.