Julie Campbell is the enigmatic - but incredibly authentic - Manchester rooted singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ, who’s work as Lonelady reaches across genres and who, quite rightly, has a devoted following far beyond her North West base.

She’s just back home from a string of European dates supporting Sleaford Mods - her final show was last Tuesday in Paris at the famous Le Bataclan. Before she headed off - Mag North got to spend a couple of fantastic hours with her in the shadow of the Wing Yip Pagoda in Ancoats, to talk music, psychogeography, sound mirrors and bolt cutters.

O! Peste Destroyed on Oldham Road is the location for our chat - and even before Julie arrives - I feel a bit like a kid in a sweet shop. This extraordinary bar-cum-artspace-cum-bookshop is overdue its very own Mag North moment, but for now just trust me: get along to M4 5EB for incredible literature, chandeliers, ecclesiastical artefacts, a basement art gallery, incense - and the opportunity to purchase your very own copy of Albert Camus 1947 absurdist novel – that gives its name to The White Hotel’s avant-garde, daytime HQ.

When the artist arrives, she’s seems underwhelmed as I remind her we once shared a DJ booth (the White Hotel again). Ms Campbell was dropping beats ahead of a Manchester Collective show - while I took some photographs. I apologise for mentioning it - and also for the probable standard of the forthcoming interview.

“I Like lo-fi things. The more lo-fi the better.” ( I think that’s an example of Lonelady kindness.)

We start with Fine art:

Julie: “I did a Fine Art Painting degree here in Manchester at Manchester Metropolitan University. I did my foundation course here as well.

“Yeah, I mean - painting and drawing - fine art has always been my first love. My earliest memories of childhood are just drawing all the time and just being creative in a visual way. That's kind of what I was obsessed with throughout my childhood.

“Fast forward to my degree. I was painting. I was into Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele - and it was very figurative, my painting. And then I got involved in making prints and also bronze sculptures. My Fine Art Final Show was actually small bronze figurines.

“I've really got really great memories of that time. It was a happy time for me. It was a place of just, discovery, really. On an art degree you learn so much, it's like all the other degrees blended it into one. You learn about history and philosophy and religion. It was a great time of my life.”

Like so many art students, music is intrinsic to their art, it seems to run alongside. Where was the music at that point in your life. Other than as a consumer?

“It just feels like it was a natural evolution. In my mid to late teens I started getting more interested in music - and I was fifteen when I got my first guitar and I just I taught myself to play from a book. I bought this really cheap guitar off Ashton Market and then that just evolved gradually and I got an electric guitar at some point along the way and started writing songs. Not very good ones at first, but it was all evolving quite slowly over a period of years, really. So I do think the music came at the same time for me. It very much came to the fore after the art degree.”

There was a catalyst moment when Campbell bought her first four-track recorder and began recording songs and mixing, in what she describes as a fairly rudimentary way.

“I think that really just set a blueprint for how I would go on to work - and still do work. I'm a solo artist and I play all the instruments and mix it myself and produce it as much as I can, so that was a real key moment, because after that I put out a few CD-R self-releases. By this point I’d started sending them out to record labels.

“And then in 2009, I met Jason White from 4AD label - the very famous label - and he liked what he heard and put a single out on Too Pure [the London based independent label] - and then that led to being signed to Warp Records for a three album deal. So that's a kind of potted history covering quite a long period of time. Nothing has happened especially quickly for me, it's all just a natural evolution - from being signed to Warp - to where I am today."

And when you went out and bought that four track, was that completely new territory for you. Was that a whole new way of learning?

“Yeah, it was. Looking back, I don't even know how I got the idea to buy that. I must have seen it in a shop somewhere, but it was a real sort of catalyst moment,  because once I started recording things properly - and a lot of musicians say this - but it's a very visual thing for me [music-making]. It's a very painterly thing. I used to start with blank canvases and build up the layers and making music is no different to me. I still do love constructing a song like that: Laying beats and building a scaffolding and then adding the layers onto it. I keep peeling things back, adding things and refining things. I think the four track enabled me to start doing that. Later on. I got a laptop which meant I could use GarageBand and Pro Tools. Then I could become even more detailed in what I was doing. I never really started off with much technical equipment. It's all been pretty lo-fi for quite a long time really."

We've jumped straight into the music, but before that, I wanted to talk about architecture and your interest in psychogeography particularly…When you describe where you live - you describe it as a Tower Block, when maybe some people wouldn’t use that term, but describe it a as an Apartment Building.

“It's always been a Tower Block to me. Well, I moved in there when I started my art degree and so I've lived in a tower block next to the Mancunian Way for a lot of years and I think that just started to affect me. I sort of used it creatively. I do feel very influenced by the landscape and my surroundings and the urban landscape and I think it just naturally evolved into being interested in things like the concrete environment and concrete as a material in particular. It’s something that kind of has obsessed me and still does.

“I think I've gravitated towards it because I've lived amongst it [concrete], I've felt like I've been surrounded by it and sometimes encased in it. The tower block and the motorway are both quite hard urban spaces. Sometimes it's felt very negative, but as with everything I use it in my sort of creativity. It shapes my outlook, I think living in environments like this has evolved into becoming interested particularly in Military Architecture like Bunkers, Cold War Bunkers and Sound Mirrors. I've recently been in Folkestone and there’s a lot of military architecture dotted along the coast. I particularly like the Sound Mirrors there, so I feel it's just a material that resonates with me, because of where I've lived for so long."

And when you make trips to Folkstone, or the East Yorkshire coast - and looked at this military architecture, does that ultimately either consciously or subconsciously inform your music - or are the two completely separate elements of your identity?

“I think they do. They're not separate at all. They do have a relationship and they intertwine in ways that I couldn't really fully explain. I think that my music sounds the way it does because of my upbringing and where I've lived. It’s just a theory - and it might be wrong - but what music would I make if I lived on Hawaii for example. I do feel that.

“Living in an urban environment, among the hard surfaces has given my music a kind of urgency. But the psychogeography thing is massive. I didn't even know I was already doing psychogeography before I knew of that word, I didn't know the term existed and then I kind of bumped into it along the way. And that was like: 'Oh, that's what's what I've been doing all this time.' My second album Hinterland in particular lyrically really goes deep into that. The ideas about psychogeography - in particular, the outskirts in the city and places that I have spent my whole life seemingly, you know, wandering around and making music in these crumbling mills, which are now changing and disappearing.

“That whole landscape, transformed into something kind of beautiful and meaningful for myself and all it's just the weedy, outskirts of the city. But it's my landscape. It had meaning for me. It's just about transforming small, humble things into something magical, really, which is kind of my some of my methodology. It’s about turning the Tower Block and the Motorway into something meaningful.

“That word [Hinterland] is a really evocative word and I came across it halfway through writing the album. I'd written out a load of titles on a typewriter and had them stuck to my wall. Over time the word just started to glow - and it was really obvious that that was the name of the album. And once I knew that was it, it helped me finish the album."

Julie spends a great deal of time in Hull and also on the East Yorkshire coast - and feels ‘Hinterland’ fits with that part of the world.

“Hull is a Port - and Hinterland has got so many different meanings, but it initially I read it as a kind of nautical term almost. It's like the land between the docks and where the city begins proper. So it is a kind of strange, nowhere place. It's also used to describe quite nondescript areas. For me, it's all the places in East Manchester where I'm from and where I grew up.

“The direct translation from German is ‘the land behind’, so that’s also the psychological space that you live in, which as a sort of solo creative person - I live in my head a lot of the time, so it's Hinterland – I just love that word so much because it just encapsulates so many evocative, meaningful things, really. And we've all got our own hinterlands. We’ve all got our places where we grew up and have meaning for us all. It's just a really beautiful word.”

After university, did the painting stop abruptly, or did it gradually slow?

“Everything with me just very slowly merges into the next thing. I was continuing to paint and make visual work, but over time the music took over. I suppose I did make a conscious decision at some point because also during this time I was writing a lot. I'm a big fan of poetry. I was writing a lot of poetry and getting published in various zines. It got to a point where you have to sort of choose something. And I did choose music, but of course all these things have come from the same source. Everything I do is very carefully crafted, so I think the poetry and the visual art is very much present in my music. That's what's great about music, because it can encapsulate so many worlds."

Retreat or Danger. Tell us about that.

“That was an installation - a residency I did at The Barbican in London. It was great to be offered that opportunity, in one of the most, iconic brutalist buildings in the country. That again was drawing together all my experiences and interests in concrete. I was kind of making a parallel with tower block living in a way that had an effect on your psyche. I made a video installation and a sound piece that included some footage taken from the Barbican. It had some animated quotes as part of the visual installation from Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology, which is one of my favourite texts. He just he talks about military architecture from a point of view of what happens when it ceases to function as military architecture. I thought there was something really evocative and compelling about about bunkers and sound mirrors - that they still exist and yeah, but obviously we're not in wartime. (Thank God). So they now become almost like sculptures. Pieces of art. I was really interested in that. I felt there were parallels with that and living in in a tower block for a long time.”

And what about ‘Shutters Down’?

“These have been one-off projects - or happened once or twice. Events where all these interests coalesce, so that took place in the bunker space next to the White Hotel. I actually also used to have a studio for a while in the White Hotel and ‘Shutters Down’, was named because of that area in Cheetham Hill near Strangeways Prison. There are all the semi-legal shops there with all the shutters pulled down. You can still access the shops, it's just the shutters are down. Again, it referred to this exciting off-grid space existing in the shadow of Strangeways.

“I wanted it to be a celebration of non-official spaces - the sort of run run-down buildings that you might have sneaked into as a kid.

“I played live with the band and again there were projections. The whole space was very immersive that you were really stepping into. We were on the outskirts of the city - in the wilderness, really. And that kind of wilderness space is something I love. I like to celebrate it really.”

So Bunkerpop. We’ve just touched on it briefly. You've obviously got links to East Yorkshire, to Hull and Hessle Road. Did you go to the Yorkshire coast specifically to see the architecture?

“I've known Gareth Smith [also known as Vanishing] for a lot a lot of years. So we’ve spent a lot of time in Hull. That dilapidated bunker, [in the video] we actually just stumbled across that and I just saw it and thought I'd have to have this in a video at some point.

“In Hull there’s a lot of abandoned, unloved areas - and all along the coast. The Marina and along the river - it's very beautiful. I’ve spent a lot of time there and I know certain parts of that city really well. I think it's got a real magic to it. There's a lot of history. The relics of the fishing industry make for a real grandeur to the place. And you know, it's got some of the old oldest pubs that I've ever been in and I just think there’s a lot of treasure there to see. But it does get overlooked, because it's out on a limb, and that goes for Spurn Point too. It’s really magical and I am drawn to places like that.”

We've got to the three albums so far. And the first one Nerve Up. Did that take you by surprise how well received it was?

“You know, I come from a sort of working class background and a lot of the things that came along - that I had to get used to were difficult at first. I absolutely wanted to be there and do all of it, but I found the touring and travelling abroad - I'd barely ever been abroad by that point - it seems funny now, but I was so green and I certainly didn't know what to expect. A lot of people nowadays seem quite sophisticated when they’re very, very young, but I really wasn't. I did struggle to adapt because I just didn't understand how it all worked. I still don't really, but I’ve obviously got the experience now.

“I look back and I love that album very much. It's a real document of the way I recorded it, which was quite crazy. To sort of build a room within a crumbling mill, you know in in Miles Platting. It just seems madness now to do have done that. That was a really unique way of making a record really. With that record and all the imagery around it, I can almost smell the damp mill building, because it's so evocative to me. It takes me right back: Freezing days and nights in there and being on the outskirts of the city. I talk about Miles Platting a lot. I've sort of romanticised it in my mind to the point where I'm sure people go there and they're like, What on earth is she talking about?!”

Is the mill still there or has it gone?

“It's still there, but it's very much tidied up. It used to be the sort of place I would not have been able to come home from - on my own - in the dark. One time we turned up and every single room in the mill had been broken into, except mine because it was made out of breezeblocks, so they couldn't get in. I remember the police found a cache of machetes hidden in a room near mine once.

It felt like a genuinely wild place then. I'm really glad that I've documented that time, I can envisage that place when I listen to the album and those songs remind me of that time in my life. Really it's a personal sort of diary for myself."

Lonelady has been rather responsible for putting Miles Platting on the map. Can we talk about your 2022 Christmas Eve message, which I think is incredible?

“Yeah. That's funny… that’s what I get up to in my spare time I suppose. Also in the background is Brunswick Mill, which has recently sadly had the same fate as most mills – and been turned into flats, but that mill has really been a grassroots resource for so many bands for so long. I was in there for quite a long time and I've prepped all my last tour, my Former Things tour. So it's just a really invaluable cheap space. And it's gone now.    

“So that's the mill you can see in the background and on the site of that video [on the on the corner] there was this white building that I was obsessed with. It's on my Hinterland sleeve art and it just crops up a lot in my imagery, a white building that just was half knocked down and then just gradually turned into rubble. So I was kind of devastated. And I just kept going there and I took some of the rubble. And I salvaged a metal door plate off one of the doors that said Miles Platting Development Trust.

“I can't really even remember what I was rambling on about in that message really, but I remember there was some orange tinsel, which I left on the side and it stayed there valiantly for quite a long time.”

There was also some bolt cutters involved.

“Bolt cutters. Yeah, yeah. I took some mesh and some razor wire. They're great those bolt cutters.”

They look it. They look proper.

“They are proper, I'll say no more, but they are proper. Every girl should have a pair.”

You don't have a team of people, you do almost everything on your own. Let's talk about your name, Lonelady. What is that? Is it: I like to be - on my own?

“No, you kind of get stuck with these things and I chose that name when I was relatively young and stupid. You know you don't quite grasp that you're going to be stuck with that name for a long time, so it was just a bit of a daft pun initially on The Lone Ranger, because when I was a kid in my teens, I used to go to this riding school in Daisy Nook in Ashton - and ride horses there. And so it was just a bit of a daft image really. But I also think there was a seed in there that holds true today, and this idea of - almost being like a Frontiersman, you know, like you're exploring a frontier. And there's a kind of cause. ‘Lone’ means something very different to ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’. It's not the same thing. Lone to me has always had connotations of adventure and bravery. That's kind of where I'm coming from with that really.”

But you're also very self-contained as an artist. Where a lot of artists might have a team around them, that creative process is very personal to you.

“The creation is entirely me, but then when an album is to due to be released, I do have a team and I wouldn't want to take anything away from their work. There's just so much work. I think that people don't really realise what goes in to putting a record out into the world and actually trying to get people to hear it and be aware of it. So when I'm in an album campaign, I very much do have a team. The label are there - and we're working very hard on that.

“But yeah, prior to that, the creation is just me. It's not a manifesto or anything. That's just how it naturally happened. It’s natural to me to be like that. I don't question it really. This is my music. It's all mine and that's how I like it.”

The Somerset House residency, how did that come about? And again, where you in the basement there?

“I was, yeah. None of my three albums have been recorded in a proper studio, they've been mixed properly, but Hinterland was written in my tower block. So yeah, all three albums have never been written in in a conventional space at all really.

“So I was invited by the Director [of Somerset House] Marie McPartlin to come and have a look, because they were setting up a new artist studio in the basement of Somerset House. It’s a magnificent Grade 2 listed building right in the Heart of London and they were setting up a subsidised space and they really wanted to bring artists back into the centre of the city, which is a great initiative - and it's still there. It's gone from strength to strength and I was one of the very first artists in there. The paint was still wet on the walls when I moved in.

“But they showed me the proper studio spaces - as in music spaces and they were all shared, so it was just not an option for me. Then we just happened to walk through this weird concrete basement and I kind of went ‘hang on a second, what about this space'? They were great. They were very accommodating. To cut a very long story short – after a lot of hard work, I got Arts Council funding to make the move. And I set up in this very odd space - and it was never really about using the space because it was a huge, long, narrow concrete room with a concrete ramp leading down into it. So again it kind of was another continuation of my fascination with concrete spaces and cave-like spaces and bunkers.

“That’s where I wrote Former Things pretty much. 80% of it was written at Somerset House. I really hung on in there until the money ran out. It was an amazing place to be, because for the first time really since being on my art degree, I was part of an artist community again, and that was just amazing for me. I had the best of both worlds, because I had my own studio, so I could shut the door and I painted the front of it grey and put hazard tape on it, so it looked like the entrance to a Nuclear Fallout Shelter, basically, so I could just be alone in there. And then I could just open the door and step out, go down the corridor and chat to twenty other artists who were just there and I had a really great time. I also loved having such close proximity to amazing art galleries. And it's just a very stimulating city to be in, you know? I was very much energised by being able to get out of Manchester and be in a different city for a while."

Can we talk about the title track Former things - and the accompanying video? We have you - and your younger self - and that really spoke to me. It made me look at myself now and as a kid.

“Musically it was a lot more Electro. Really, I just kind of went deep into a sort of mourning - and a sort of celebration. I had a really strong image of myself as a kid, maybe just getting into my teens and sitting on my bed in my bedroom and light flickering from the TV, and I just sort of remember having been full of dreams and ambitions and excitement about the future. So I was spending a lot of time looking back to that ambitious child, full of dreams and hopes. And then looking at myself now and just looking at the spaces in between and reflecting on that. So a lot of it is very mournful and bittersweet.

“It’s a sort of Super 8 tinged place that you're always trying to get back to in some way, or trying to remain true to - which as an artist I'm always trying to be authentic and interrogate what that means for myself. But yeah, it's very mournful and it is my tendency to have a melancholic outlook on things and so I kind of really leaned into that lyrically on this record. The album cover featured the banner, which was a real 6 foot mediaeval-type banner that I designed and had made.”

The exquisite banner seen on the video and artwork and - also on display for a time in Peste, was created by artist Amanda Allen, who works with a variety of materials. Julie first designed a paper maquette and created the unique font before Amanda made it real.

“It's a beautiful piece of art. But again, in my mind, with that record, I was almost taking this banner on a procession through the streets of my childhood, in a kind of mournful procession. It was like mourning and celebration at the same time.

“I do tend to get pretty existential with my lyrics and really ask: What do you want to do with this one life, that we are gifted - and are you happy with what you're doing, what you've done? I think that kind of interrogation for me, always has a melancholic outcome to it.

“And there isn't a remedy. The way to happiness is - happiness is the way. It’s in small moments. I’m a believer in life having a big arc and I think this is it, from minute to minute. This is it. It's now. So I spent a long time in that place. Looking back - and looking at the gulf - if there is a gulf - between my hopes and where I am now.

“The funny thing is, though, with a lot of with my stuff, you can go deep into the lyrics if you want, or you can step back a bit, because I always sought to make catchy music and very melodic, rhythmic music, so you can kind of step back from that if you want and just sing along with the chorus. I think there's playfulness to the music that allows it to be as light or as dark as you want it to be."

I think you you've probably already answered this question, but are you an avoider? I’m keen to witness, to observe, but I’m less anxious to be ‘involved directly’.

“I don't think I am. For a lot of years I was really happy in my own company and and the creativity, you know, being an artist - a solo artist - I've been very happy for a long time living in that space, living in a sort of ‘art dream’ as I put  it. So in that in that sense felt like I didn't really need much else, but I feel like there's been a shift in the last couple years and feeling very much like I would like to step outside of the cave as it were. And actually be more involved in the world. Because you know, when I was at Somerset House, I was constantly engaging with exhibitions and things that."

So maybe a new epoch?

“Maybe. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the professional side of it. It's not just up to me, it's whether someone wants to buy my next music - and nothing is a given - and increasingly less so.”

Can we then talk about more generally about the creative scene up here in the North. You made that shift, you went to Somerset House. I'm constantly talking to people who feel that we're the poorer relations up here, both creatively and financially, and now we haven't even got a new railway line coming. How do you see the cultural landscape, firstly here in this city. But more broadly, in the North of England?

“When I first started out, I made a point of going to London as much as I could. To play down there and out of the area, really. I just instinctively felt that I didn't want to become hemmed in to my own city. I’ve always tried to set my sights much wider. It's my home and sometimes you've got a complicated love/hate relationship with where you’re from. As a young artist, you're just a drop in the ocean, so how do you get your head above the parapet and get someone to listen to you? I still think physically going to the place you want to be is really invaluable. If it's London, yeah - go. London is a kind of succubus-type creature that drains resources and people and talent from the rest of the country, so everyone is somewhat second-class in terms of the resources - but not in terms of talent. The rest of the country simply isn't given the access to the opportunities that you do if you're in London.

“Personally, I couldn’t just keep playing the same places in my own city. I've made a point of not being tied to an office from 9 to 5, so I have the luxury of travelling wherever I want, whenever I want. Obviously my finances don't quite allow that, but I think it is important to get out there ‘see things’. I‘ve never really got attached to a particular scene. I think it's important to follow your own nose."

A big change in momentum in the coming weeks: on tour with Sleaford Mods - how did that come about?

“Just organically really. I felt pretty late to the party. I’d just started listening to their music and loved it because I can really relate to their sort of economical setup. It's quite minimal and I think you have to work really hard to make something really good when you're using minimal means and so I just love that the music has no fat on it and it's so urgent. I've always loved lean, mean music, you know? I really like the sort of aggression. I think there's a lack of that genuine kind of aggression. I've been running a Patreon - like a membership for a year now, and one of the things I do as part of that is a Culture Dispatch, so roughly once a month, I'll just do a round-up of all the things that have been inspiring me lately - and so I was talking about Sleaford Mods and I just sort of tagged them into that - and I just got chatting with Jason via e-mail. So that's been a nice off-and-on thing. They're really busy of course and I've been doing my things and it's just been nice. I was nudged to ask them about the support. So it's really amazing to be offered the European support."

And so that those of us who aren't involved imagine it's an amazing time going on tour, but it's actually really hard work?

“It's really not a holiday. I do enjoy the travel though. And it would be great to finally get out of the country. I've not been out of the country for about six or seven years. I did have a European Tour booked for my last album, but it got cancelled because of COVID, so it would be great to be back out in Europe again."

So you go to the gym with Sleaford Mods and then you'll be home in November. What will Christmas look like? Will there be another video message from Miles Platting?

“Yeah, there should be. We'll do that again. And as always, I’m working on new material."

And you can’t talk about that?

“Well, you know: I know what it I want it to be. I know what it's going to be. I just need to do the work."

So are you building towards the fourth album?

“Yeah, absolutely. Very much so. It's just nice after you know - I think I kind of got the Electro stuff out of my system with a lot of things, so it's nice to just spend time with my guitar again really, 'cause I am a guitarist after all. I don't know how many gigs I've done. Thousands, I suppose. And every gig I've ever done has been with my Telecaster, so it really is a part of me. So it's nice to just go back to it really."

What we can expect? Much more guitar-based stuff?

“Yeah. Well, that's kind of who I am really. I think Former Things will be the anomaly, but there's actually quite a lot of guitar on that record. It's just that I didn't write with a guitar - I was writing with a sequencer, and synths instead.

“And figuring o what comes next. As an artist, you're always creating. Every day is a blank canvas.

"I’m very much looking at and working on the next record. I Think there's a lot of possibilities and with my Patreon too, because it's direct between the artists. The albums and tours are really just the tip of the iceberg. It's just so much work that goes into the process. For me that involves so many things: art, poetry, architecture, all this stuff. And running.

“And I've I have found with Patreon that people do want to step inside your inner world, so it's good, because it's curated. It's not like I’ve just whacked up CCTV in my flat. It's very selective, but it's nice for me to be able to share. I can show some of the huge amount of work that goes into these albums and tours.”

And the way you interact with your fans - I don't want to use the word family because that's perhaps too much, but there is a real connection between you all?

“Some of them are called Groovers. My Patreon has different levels, so you can be a Groover or a Caver or a Nerver. And you have different levels of access. I recently performed at an awards ceremony at Abbey Road Studios, which was judged by Ian Rankin. It was awards for music photography. It wasn't open to the public- but for example, I could invite Nervers to that event - which was brilliant for them - and me.

“Anyone subscribing to my Patreon you can get VIP things - and it's nice to sometimes share early versions of songs, before they’ve been fully mixed and produced. More sort of low-fi versions of album tracks and stuff like that, that I would never share online. I share them with my Patreon subscribers, so there's all sorts of things. It's worth it because it seems to be getting harder and harder for us [as artists] to actually earn money directly.

“I am very cautiously optimistic things will eventually be a bit better for artists. It shouldn't have to be such a fight, really. And it is unfortunately. You can't alter the fact that the artist is the last person in a long list of people taking a nibble here and nibble there. And when you're working at my level, there's usually nothing left for you at the end of it all."

You've talked in the past about the importance of physical products and Sleeve Art. You are the musician, the artist and the poet - so there's very much, for me wanting to go and buy your album and access your album - the sound is only going to be part of it. I’m looking forward to a multisensory experience. Where you're at currently - you're working on new music - are you also thinking about the creative process that's going to produce more than the music alone - and how?

“Yeah, I think those things just exist in my brain at the same time, really. So all those things evolve together. For example the title of the [next] album - which obviously I'm not going to say - but it was written on a piece of paper in my studio when I was at Somerset House.

“That embryonic germ of something can appear long before you actually get round to it. So I think in different layers in my mind. Things are always bubbling away really and almost forming themselves.

“I already have some ideas about what I'd like the record after this one to be, but I haven't finished this one yet. It takes me quite a while to realise my thoughts and the moods and become creative.

“They are atmospheric clouds that appear in my mind, really.”

It's impossible to overstate that artists like Lonelady represent utterly essential components of ourselves, our communities - and our society. Art - in whatever form it takes - isn’t only an expression of emotions, but just as importantly, a vital medium for communicating ideas.

Julie Campbell is the embodiment of the bittersweet subject matter she sings about. She takes listeners from the ecstatic joys of youthful discovery, to the regrets and disappointment of later life in a way that should leave even the dimmest of us looking at our own journey’s anew.

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Header Image - Nigel King

Other Images in Gif - Gaelle Beri, Matt Cork, Lone Lady Youtube