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’s a record that hurtles into the expanse of its surroundings rather than carefully probing them. humanus 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. Their sibling connection allowed uh to align with some self-made rules when it came to the creative process. Eventually recorded at Prah Studios in Margate, many of the tracks that make up the al-bum existed in various forms within their pre-pandemic live performances. The duo were keen to keep these moments as natural as possible when it came to committing them to record, minimising any editing and layering so as to avoid overworking the music. Although structures inevitably began to take shape through repeated play, they weren’t overthought or forced. “As a rule we were only using the sounds that were available through the synthesisers and hardware vocal FX” they say. “Making very limited exceptions when it came to the odd tweeting bird or windy gusset.” These tracks 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. Ultimately everything comes back to their brother-sister relationship, though. humanus is bookend-ed by prelude and final track, sister. The former is a programmed spoken word piece that takes in a section of children’s lullaby, Lady Button Eyes, that uh’s mother used to read back to them. sister, meanwhile, rotates around latter-era Talk Talk-esque percussion and pared-down synth shimmers, Fionnuala’s vocal making one final flourish in their choral-like delivery.