London-based singer/songwriter Maria Wilman recently released her debut album Dark Horse, produced by Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Slow Club) that offers a first taste of a much larger body of work written between 2019 and 2022.
Sparked by a comment by a friend, Dark Horse finds Wilman “interrogating the idea of what it means for a side of us to appear as if from nowhere.”
Raised in the Basque country, Wilman grew up during the controversial Franco years. Bilingual and bi-cultural from a young age, Wilman eventually made the decision to cross the channel for good. Having been a student of Psychology and later working for the NHS, Wilman pursued various paths in life.
Only in 2019, when Wilman turned 50, did she have an epiphany to pursue music. Entering a new decade “created a sense of urgency.”
She says:
It was always a matter of when I was going to make the jump. I knew it wasn’t going to be never, but at the same time I felt that the train was already passing by and that I didn’t have much to lose.
Wilman proceeded to create three albums, including Dark Horse.
The artist shares:
Sometimes we write songs that echo back a message we didn’t quite get at the beginning. It repeats itself like a mantra. Love was there from the beginning, spinning in an ever ending eternal sequence, interrelating everything. As you keep trusting your heart…
Regarding the timing of her turning to music, she adds:
I think time is irrelevant in the process. It doesn’t matter whether you arrive when you’re in your 20s or your 50s, as long as you get there. Maybe where I’m heading is not necessarily the end. The idea of a finish line is just what keeps us going.
