Running Free With Azure Ryder

The story has been my life that’s still being written and I promise you’ll hear it through my music. I can tell you the moment when I first felt the wild inside when I knew this is what my purpose was when music truly became the biggest part of me.

I was around 5 and my mum and dad heard me singing from the bathroom as you do get excited by the simplest things as a child like the acoustics in the bathroom (had to be magic !?)..the echo mesmerised me so I sang away as I felt my voice echo off the walls, and I guess through them too because not long after that my parents put me in my Primary School Church Choir. This was where I first really found my voice and realised the complete power of music, it’s ability simply magic. I was going to be a musician from that day forward.

I didn’t have the words, in the beginning, to articulate what this energy of colours was that I visualised in my mind and felt in my heart, all I knew is it was vivid, it both ran deep and flew high and I would fell it when it had found its way in front of me.

My heart has always been with the classics, you know the songs that never leave you, every time you hear them they still affect you like the first time you heard them, they are timeless. That has always been a goal of mine, wanting to create music that spoke to people now and still did so in 10,20 years and beyond. Folk music was my first love, a song with a story entangled in a beautiful melody, I call that heaven. I also grew up singing in church and immersed myself in the energy that moves with that sweet sweet soulful gospel, the enchantment of a choir and layered harmonies, call it power, call it magic.

So I started to combine the story, the melody and the groove, all the elements that I love about the classics, everything I love about folk and trace it in something golden, something fresh as the ocean breeze at sunrise. My sound is made up of me, heartfelt, dreamy and distinctive.

Music entered my life from a very young age, my first memories were growing up in my family home spending days with my parents surrounded by the likes of Dusty Springfield, Sam Cooke, Carol King and Elvis Presley, while my older brother felt it was his duty to educate me on the world of RnB and Hip hop, so I was too soon familiar with Tupac and Beyoncé. All poets in their own right, all music that moved me, intrigued my heart, so as I grew, the music grew with me.

I don’t see a best and a worst, to me every experience high and low is a part of the journey of an artist, it’s a part of life. I have a Dizzy heart and I am totally at peace with that. Some of the best things come from the worst parts, it’s like there being no light without darkness. I am just so grateful to be living and dreaming as an artist so whatever that comes with I am going to ride with it!

I am undoubtedly hooked on Boxing! Whenever I mention it to people they usually appear quite shocked haha. For me it is the ultimate form of exercise physically and mentally, your mind and body can’t be anywhere else but, at that moment, I like to think of it as my active form of meditation. Ooh, and I can’t go a day without Peanut Butter. Crunchy of course! No peanut butter… gone is a piece of my heart.

Just reading this question makes my heart tingle aah! I am bursting to get out and perform, It’s the most important thing to me, its fire, the highest love. I am a very visual person so when I write I am always envisioning how a song will look and feel live if I can do that, I know it’s something special. Each song has an energy and I hope for the show to be a journey that we can ride together, leave them feeling powerful, loved and FREE! So I am going to take everything out on that stage, and give every piece of myself to the audience. This voice is for them, my stories I give to them, this live expression I give to them because beyond everything else, connection is the most powerful thing we have as humans.

I think it’s safe to say everyone is feeling uneasy about 2020 so far, there is no doubt a wide-open wound on the world that we have to heal in time but with a number, we do not know. It definitely threw me off guard as where plans were dreamt and made, plans have changed but one thing that can’t change is the power of music !! Music has always been a healer to me and now more than ever is a time when people need that, they need something to hold onto, find comfort in and I want to give that to them. I am most looking forward to giving people music that will hopefully give them a space to breathe and a place where the darkness has been but the light has won… My heart.

I don’t believe I have been in love yet, I have been in situations where I tried to convince myself I was because I wanted to know so badly what it felt like to love and be loved in that way, so much so that I said those 3 words and didn’t hear them back but when I saw clearly, I knew that it wasn’t it. This hasn’t stopped me from reaching for the romance in life though, if anything I probably love too much at times but I would rather see the world through rosy eyes because at the core of all things, at the core of the universe lies love. So when the time comes for me to be ‘in love’ I’ll know what it is and I’m sure you will hear about it in a song… stay tuned!

Be open, keep your eyes and your heart on what makes fills your soul and live through each step no matter the direction it leads you because where it goes is where you’re meant to be.

This is actually such a hard question because I’m in love with words, lyrics are so important to me so the ones I write I am deeply connected to otherwise they wouldn’t exist. I’m sorry I can’t pick favourites !! but from the first EP, I will say that lyrically ‘Wolves’ is something special to me, a dance between nature, romance and the world. “I dropped my heart in auburn leaves, and held the moon between my fingertips. The night was stolen by the thieves but your wide listening light found a home in me… You swept me up in evergreen, a colour that I didn’t know existed, and I got caught in the Holocene, we’re all following time instead of taking what we need.”

Everything you are experiencing, every time you fall, you’re going to turn your scars into art.