Elmiene: Fry Your Brain, Save Your Soul
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PHOTOGRAPHY: FILMAWI / STYLING: CARA HAYWARD / CREATIVE DIRECTION: CHARLOTTE MAYUMI PHIPPS / HAIR: Shamara Roper / WORDS: GAFFER
There’s a moment early on with Elmiene when you realise the surface won’t hold. He’s funny, sure. Playful even. The kind of person who could build a story out of a sandwich. But spend more than a minute in his world and you start to hear something else underneath. A mind that wanders deep and wide. A heart that’s heavy with feeling. A voice that doesn’t just sing, it remembers.
“If I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably be a security guard,” he says, only half-joking. “Great Temps Court, Oxford. You just sit outside, eat your sandwich, get paid... well, not loads. But you’d be good.” He smiles at the thought, like someone who still lives in both worlds at once.
Because Elmiene didn’t come into music with the classic dream. He didn’t spend his childhood in front of mirrors pretending to hold a mic. There was no stage in mind. Just a voice. A gift. And then one day, a moment. A viral video, made for friends and family, took on a life of its own. “That was the first time I thought, oh... I could do something with this. It made me stop and go, maybe I should actually give this a go.”
He sings like it’s his only weapon. Because for a long time, it was. “I didn’t know how to play anything. I just had my voice. So I treated it like an instrument. It was all I had. That’s how I started. In the studio, I’d be like, alright, I can’t play keys, but I can be the keys.”
“The best thing is, my voice is my limit. Once you know your range, once you know what your voice can’t do, that’s when you find what makes it yours.”
He learned by imitation. Stevie. D’Angelo. Marvin. Johnny Gill. He studied tone and texture like it was science. But over time, what started as mimicry became something else. “I’d try and sing like Stevie... but it didn’t feel right. So I’d do it my way. That’s when I started to find those little pockets. The ones that belonged to me.”
There’s a softness in how he moves, but his mind is relentless. He talks through ideas like they’re half-finished songs, memory cards, energy shifts, theories on identity. Like how he can’t remember names anymore because he meets too many people. “It’s like a memory card that filled up. I used to be able to name everyone from Year 7 extra maths. Now? Nothing. Gone. You have to delete stuff to make space.”
He grew up between Oxford and Sudan. And when he talks about home, it’s with both humour and heat. He tells a story about squat toilets in Sudan. “I’m a big guy. I can’t squat. I gotta hold on to the walls” and how that experience gave him a newfound respect for a simple toilet seat.
“If I had to be anything in the world,” he laughs, “I’d be the toilet seat. Just a good one. With a flush.”
Then, without warning, he pivots. “I was in Lanzarote once, performing in a cave. Birds flying out the walls, water running through the stage. It was mad. I remember thinking, this is the best venue I’ve ever been in. Not a headline show. Just energy. You walk in and the earth is singing with you.”
“Music’s all about feeling. If it feels good, it’s right. There’s no formula. It could be one chord. One note. If it works, it works.”
He treats creativity the way some people treat religion. Not a system. A surrender. “Sometimes I write as Prince. Or as Future. Or as Sexy Red,” he grins. “Whatever gets the pen moving. I don’t want to be boxed in.”
Still, he knows what grounds him. One Piece. Jeff Buckley. D’Angelo on vinyl. McCoy’s kebab van in Oxford. “There’s no kebab like it. People come from Birmingham to get it. I met a guy in the queue once with an American accent. He’d flown in from Cincinnati. Real.”
The vision isn’t just music. It’s a shop. A vibe. A universe. “It’s called Fry Your Brain. Comics. Chicken. Old TVs playing animated films. Gloves on when you walk in, eat with your hands. Plastic everywhere. Soul food and soul talk. That’s the dream.”
“If I ever do it, I’ll have old CRTs, comics, fried chicken and D’Angelo playing in the back. That’s the shop. That’s the legacy.”
He thinks in scenes. In setups. He’d never headline a festival alone. “It’s Stevie Wonder. Full set. ‘Songs in the Key of Life’. Then D’Angelo brings out the Roots. Badu. Meth and Red. After that, Jeff Buckley closes. That’s the dream lineup. All soul. All story.”
He talks fast. Not rushed. Just ready. There’s no air of trying to be the deepest in the room. He just is. From coat-hanger hallucinations as a kid to a 14-hour screen time spiral in a Miami hotel room. From Chinese throat remedies to feeling weird about karaoke. “I saw someone say singers ruin karaoke for everyone. I get it. It’s not fair to step up there sounding good. It’s meant to be bad. That’s the point.”
He hesitates when asked about interviews and press. “At first, I was like, why do I have to do this? D’Angelo never did interviews. That was my example. But then I had to learn, my heroes are weirdos. I love them. But I’m not them.”
“There’s no point being uncomfortable and staying uncomfortable. You might as well just do it and have fun. Own it.”
And he is. He owns it. He writes music that bends genre. He sings like he’s remembering a dream he forgot too young. And he’s learning to live as loud as he feels.
Ask him what matters most and he doesn’t flinch. “The spark. If I felt it when I wrote it, and it’s still alive when I play it back, then that’s the one. No matter what anyone else says.”
So if you’re ever wondering where soul music went, don’t. It didn’t go anywhere. It just slipped into a new body. One with big hands, a bigger heart, and a voice built for remembering.
Elmiene stands, finishes the thought, and grins. “You know what? This is kind of gas.”
And yeah, he’s right.
