about

Music is a kind of magic. On her bewitching, beautiful and long-awaited upcoming (change to new once released) album, Latent Echo, singer-songwriter Aruba Red weaves her own spells across eight songs about love, survival, nature and connection. “I see this album as a creative extension of myself, something that’s been brewing for a long time,” she says. Each song is being released on a full moon, amplifying their spiritual power.

Aruba has long-commanded respect among her peers, including collaborators like Grammy-nominated producer Prash “Engine-Earz” Mistry and revered composer Nitin Sawhney, who invited her to work with him on his cross-cultural and cross-border exchange project, Aftershock – involving a show of original material performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London. She was then commissioned by Jude Kelly, then the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, to take part in an 18-month residency alongside figures such as Riz Ahmed, Ayanna Witter-Johnson and The Anchoress (Catherine Anne Davis).

But while her career began to flourish, Aruba found herself trapped in a decade-long toxic, controlling and abusive marriage during which time she was forced to forgo her music. She became a mother, too, and her father – a renowned figure in rock and a significant influence in her life – passed away. “I ended up taking care of his legacy,” she explains. “He really struggled with addiction, and when he met my mum in the early 80s he had nothing, despite being in this huge rock band that sold millions of albums… he came from a very poor working-class background in Glasgow, and he didn’t know what he was getting into when the band signed their contract.”

So while Aruba’s upbringing was far from glamorous, she was immersed in the world of touring and music from a young age: “It was a huge education, and my dad never lost his passion – he released his last album a few months before he died.”

After she found her way out of that toxic relationship, Aruba slowly began to rediscover herself: “I wanted to learn about myself, about why I’d allowed so much to happen for so long.” That emotional process inspired her 2018 EP, Holy Waters, and the 2020 follow-up, Shadow Work, a moving five-track project that explored personal trauma, healing and redemption. But yet again, not long after she signed a publishing deal and performed her debut headline show, the world went into lockdown, and Aruba began to suffer from a string of health complications including endometriosis, chronic pain and POTS. 

“Life completely changed,” she recalls. “I was fainting a lot, and I was in bed for months – I didn’t think I’d be able to live normally again, let alone make music.” But she persisted, slowly regaining her strength and sense of self: “I’m still dealing with pain on a daily basis, but it’s not as bad as it was,” she says. “In the depths of it, I didn’t think I’d be able to go on like that – I had a migraine that continued for over three years… It got really dark at times.” She found strength and empathy in figures such as Kurt Cobain, who suffered intense, chronic stomach pain from his teenage years, as well as her own father: “There are so many people out there forced to live in pain all the time.” 

From that compassion, new song ideas began to unfurl. “The Cave” is both tender and frank, a stream-of-consciousness style delivered in Arbua’s alluring, breathy whisper over plucks of the double bass and acoustic guitar. “When I was first diagnosed with endometriosis, doctors found I had a ruptured ovarian cyst and this toxic blood in my system, and that was why I was feeling so unwell,” she explains. “They said it should be reabsorbed after a month and then the headache and the dizziness and nausea would stop, but then four months went by, then a year, then two, and it never went back to normal – doctors couldn’t help. So ‘The Cave’ is about that feeling of being stuck and not knowing how to get out, and no one else has the answers.”

She recorded the album of eight songs in just eight days, using only 16 audio tracks per song, with her long time trusted musical collaborators, Ivor Novello award winner Renell Shaw and percussionist ‘dub wizard’ Camilo Tirado, at a residential studio in the Somerset countryside. “We set ourselves the challenge to record the whole thing in that week, and it shifted from being, not just personal, but a way of processing.” They decided to abandon any notions of “perfecting” the songs – “which was a real struggle because I’m a perfectionist,” she admits with a laugh. But she stuck to their agreement of no changes or overdubs, resulting in an album that is raw, vulnerable and real.

This is best exemplified on “Candle Magic”, a song that came to her suddenly, as she rode on the back of her now husband’s motorbike through the streets of London. “I felt very present but also free, in this strange meditative state,” she remembers. “Candle Magic” was written about the “triumph and justice” of what occurred after she escaped her first marriage: “The relief of it.” She also calls to the “maidens, mothers and crones”, the circle of women who supported her through those fraught times. The song sways with a dreamy rhythm, soothed by soft grooves from an electric guitar and shimmering percussion. 

“Willow Tree”, meanwhile, with its call-and-response lyrics, invokes a traditional folk sound that is darker in tone, imbued with a restlessness, or hope, that the sun will rise soon. “Sometimes when you’re really struggling, the moment the sun comes up can make everything feel easier somehow,” Aruba says. She sings to her son on album closer “All I Want for You”, a pared-back tune delivered like a prayer, or a spell: “All we can really hope for in life is for ourselves and our loved ones to be happy, and to be free,” she says.

Aruba has worked ceaselessly to overcome trauma and pain, but she knows there’s more work to do. Latent Echo is the culmination of how much she’s achieved, a deeply personal work into which she has poured her fears, her desires, her pain, love and hope. “It feels really good to have made this music without any outside noise, without anyone telling me what it should be,” she says. “This is my voice and my truth.”

Roisin O’Conner, Music Editor at The Independent, August 2026