Ishmael Ensemble’s Holysseus Fly announces new single ‘Within The Water’, out 7th April on Severn Songs.

After stepping out as a solo artist with her debut single ‘Marigold’, Holysseus Fly, vocalist and pianist from critically acclaimed Ishmael Ensemble drops her second single, Within The Water.

She wrote the song in a few days from an improvised session with Jay-Z sampled Bristol pianist, James Graham. She sampled and then looped a section of the session and wrote a powerful vocal about rebirth into self love. Holysseus Fly’s strong vocal boldly tells a story of hope against a backdrop of watery piano textures.

“I was having a recurring dream that my mouth was full of grit. At the time I was struggling with my emotions after treatment for cancer, not speaking about them. Keeping them to myself. I wrote this song as part of my rebirth. A declaration of my determination to love myself and to speak my truth. The repeating lyric “loving you has been my greatest fear” is an admission that I needed to accept and voice these feelings in order to move forward. Similarly “I hope one day we will turn around, see what it made of me”, is my intention to look back with pride at how my cancer journey has made me who I am. I had to dig deep and confront these difficult feelings to arise from the depths of the ocean and float in the water.”

Words from Holysseus: