We are super proud to premier Annabel Allum's latest video, for her track 'Another Wall'. Annabel shot this stripped live session. The make-shift Guildford studio GUArt. The space used to be a popular commercial shop which closed due to Covid, and a bunch of local artists have dug in their heels and taken residency. "It was a super fun experiment to try and record three outfits as the only visual inconsistency in an other wise minimalistic production. We wanted to document the song in its rawest form before we take it into the studio next month." 

Filming & Photography: Emma Hiley

Annabel is an inspiring singer and song writer showcasing an ability to marry folk-style storytelling with indie. The Guilford based singer has performed a number of prestigious slots, notably supporting Beth Ditto across her last UK tour. Have a read below of the piece she has written explaining her coping mechanisms over the last 18 months. Defo worth a read. 

"Hard work. Whether we define it as a coping mechanism, or purely a survival method, for the majority of us that reach the end of our days with aching limbs, minds numb to further information, and the ability to wake after a few hours to do it all over again, the recent announcements regarding the opportunity to jump on a flight to a designated green listed country for a much-needed break is music to our ears.

Oh heck- to breathe in some sunshine, absorb some culture, and get out of our heads! I’ve been daydreaming and night dreaming about this moment for a long time. After the novelty of lockdown wore off last year, and all my half-finished projects found their places to slump on my shelf, the deep longing for escapism became an itch I could not scratch which lounges right in the middle of my forehead.

It remains.

Often finding coping strategies in the depths of my despair (hence the many miserable songs in my back catalogue!), submerging myself into work has been a saviour. Filling my hours and days and weeks and months and..year (!) with carefully compiled schedules ensuring little to no time for myself has been glorious! Yup – I seem to have been playing the game of “how hard can you push yourself before you crack”. 

My manager and most of the people around me would call it ‘toxic productivity’, but how can something be toxic when it feels so good? To end your days knowing you gave it your all- no, really. Maybe it’s just mania…maybe I’m onto something? 

Perhaps I’ll never finish those projects, and maybe I’ll never get to 0 on my inbox. It’s a probability the check list will never be fully ticked and potentially my ideas will always be bigger than I am humanly capable of. But we move. We finish most projects, we answer most emails, we tick most boxes, and we work all our ideas.

Most importantly we dream until our days are done. We Work Hard because working hard works for us. 

The itch’s scratch, and the scratch’s itch.

The holiday can wait."