In a local electronic music landscape often dominated by house and techno, Emma Hart stands out as an electronic artist ploughing a different kind of groove. Whether pushing more laidback tempos and textures fusing elements of hip-hop and jazz as HART (check her excellent, choppy audio collage Moon Jazz album, for some hazy summer soul) or as Nyphaea, where she ups the energy level with faster UK garage influences. Timmy Stewart caught up with Emma to give Dig With It the overview, in five.
Please introduce yourself to the Dig With It Readers in a few sentences, who are you and what do you do?
I’m a London-born, Sheffield-bred, now Bangor-based music producer. I love producing all sorts of music, but mostly hip-hop instrumentals, trip-hop, UK garage & 140bpm bass-heavy music. I’ve always loved music and the experiences it can give. I guess it’s a form of escapism and hyper-focus and gives me a sense of purpose and creative freedom. I’m happiest in my home studio making music with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other.
I know from meeting you on an AVA programme, that you produce music as Hart & Nyphaea, what are the reasons for the differing projects?
When I started making music, I was mainly experimenting with hip-hop and jazz which has been the HART identity up to this year but I’ve always been into clubby sounds like UKG, drum n bass and dubstep, so Nyphaea was a way to have a focus on that side of my music too. Both aliases take influences from all those sounds but more recently my main alias HART has kind of evolved into something personal, like me singing on my music, and I feel that reinforces a need for the separation between functional club sounds and more eclectic personal vibes.
What were your earliest musical influences there, when did you relocate to Northern Ireland?
I’m a bit of a nomad as I was born in UK, then moved to Los Angeles which had drastically different cultures to experience, and that definitely helped shape my creative curiosity. My dad collected a lot of vinyl and was always playing music, so I think it’s been engrained in my psyche. It was actually when I was living in Sydney that I started producing, and it’s evolved a lot since then. Liiving in Bangor for the past five years, I have developed a big love for the people here and the incredible coastlines.
Please give me one album or artist you always return to for inspiration?
It’s hard to pick just the one because each of these inspire me differently. I love the lyricism and nostalgia in Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not by the Arctic Monkeys, and will always pick up on new stories and rhyme patterns within it. But I can’t not include the beat wise, Smokers Delight by Nightmares on Wax, which reigns supreme.
Finally, you have five secs to tell us about something new, you have created.
“I drank a Guinness in the afternoon to iron out the thoughts of feeling blue. I paired it with a J of purple haze, I promise rain’ll not disturb my day.”
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