We first laid ears on Shura way back at the start of the year, when the young Londoner unveiled her debut release Touch on Soundcloud. Pretty much without any kind of fanfare, Touch quickly drove acclaim – whilst it didn’t take long for the track to make it into the playlists of both bloggers alongside various radio mixes (and, like many new artists breaking this year, have much thanks to pay for Annie Mac’s inclusion of her music into her Sunday night shows).
Very much along the Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) vibe, there’s something impeccably-exciting about Shura – the haziness of her sounds will instantly place you in a dream-like ‘summery’ state; regardless of how shit the weather is outside, you can count on Shura’s music to lift spirits. Further tracks have appeared online while the year progressed too, with each release being picked up by more and more of the online community… plus it hasn’t taken long for the rest of the industry to play catch-up. Self-taught on Ableton, Shura produces a majority of her work, alongside taking the helm on the singing and writing credits too…. and it’s these, amongst many other reasons, as to why she’s on this ‘Ones To Watch’ list.
Probably one of her finest moments however came during the summer, when Shura dropped her surprise remix of Jessie Ware’s Say You Love Me – essentially a fucking brilliant piece of output, that sidelined her more 70s-inspired soul/funk to an icy lo-fi electronica approach. Now as we turn the year, Shura’s new single Indecision gets its own remix treatment (thanks to the Nile Rodgers-esque Formation edit, alongside Jungle’s recently-unveiled take).
Now Shura, where’s that fucking album?
