Materia Medica, the long-awaited debut album by Irish / Sierra Leonean singer-songwriter Loah, is finally out and available to stream, download, and purchase on CD and vinyl.
The album’s name Materia Medica comes from an ancient pharmacology textbook about healing plants – a reference to the healing nature of music and Loah’s own journey in both the healing and the creative arts, having trained as a qualified pharmacist in addition to her work as a musician and actor.
The album is a culmination of the wide range of influences and collaborations that Loah has brought into her work as a musician over the course of more than a decade, having co-produced it with her close collaborators Brian Dillon (of Meltybrains? and The Line) and Daniel Forde. It features the likes of the late Eoin French (Talos), Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu, Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, her sister Fehdah, Gambian kora player Suntou Susso, harpist Allanah Thornbourgh, producer Ben Bix (Meltybrains?), drummer Dylan Lynch (Soda Blonde, Little Green Cars), and the Crash Ensemble amongst other musicians and producers, along with samples of 16th century lute music and Rachmaninoff to more contemporary sounds like 808 and Afrobeats.
“The ambition was to create a hypermodern body of work that sonically exemplifies the changing definition of what Irishness is, what femininity is and indeed what musical ‘genre’ is and its flexibility in the modern context. We have many excellent producers and musicians on this album - it is a collage of sound!”
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about Loah
Loah is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of half-Irish, half-Sierra Leonean extraction. Across her solo career she has released 3 EPs of a hypermodern fusion genre she nicknamed “ArtSoul”.
Loah’s music spans a wide berth of great loves which include Irish folk music and literature, West African rhythms and guitar, the singer-songwriter balladeer tradition, US soul music and modern production, all woven with regular nods to her Kildare childhood playing fiddle and violin in Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and Youth Orchestras.
Being raised across Kildare and West Africa, Loah seeks to authentically marry all that she is with all that inspires her. This Heart (2017), Sweet Sorrow (2020) with Bantum and When I Rise Up (2021 - a work of 1920s poems she set to music) were all released to critical acclaim.
Now she is set to release her debut album Materia Medica, a culmination of her rich and varied influences and collaborations, featuring the likes of Eoin French (Talos), Niwel Tsumbu, Suntou Susso, Fehdah, and Crash Ensemble amongst others.
Loah has co-written and performed with such artists as Hozier, Rhiannon Giddens, the Wainwrights, Lisa Hannigan, Narolane, Kormac, Crash Ensemble, Paul Brady, and Cassandra Wilson, and also enjoys a successful career as an actor and presenter.
“The Irish Sierra Leonean singer is a unique talent, a magnetising performer and any time you see her sing, there’s a palpable sense of a musician on the rise..”
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To purchase Loah music and merchandise, go to the Loah Bandcamp Store.