UH - humanus (2023)

uh’s music represents a restless blurring of pastoral and urban. The brother-sister duo of Dominic and Fionnuala Kennedy’s debut album humanus is embedded in the London that they grew up in – it searches for the space and still that was a hallmark of their previous EP Seasick in Salts, but many of the tracks here are more skittish, urgent and beat-driven. It’s a record that hurtles into the expanse of its surroundings rather than carefully probing them.

Dominic and Fionnuala grew up in Harlesden in north-west London, where their parents had moved to from the west coast of Ireland before they were born. humanus, though, is a record focused on the present. Amidst its raw acid synths, long form hardware workouts and soaring vocals is an album that’s ultimately about the pair’s own relationship both creative and personal.

Recorded at PRAH Studios in Margate, these tracks on humanus speak to the urbanity of London in their club-leaning BPM and more densely-layered walls of sound; however, the search for the pastoral and peace within humanus remains.