ISQ (Irene Serra) will hold her album launch at Crazy Coqs on 15th October, playing songs from her brand new record The Silence Is Deafening, out 23rd October.
ISQ has spent two decades earning a devoted following on the UK and Italian music scene, with acclaim from the likes of Time Out and Clash, and a band drawing players from the Cinematic Orchestra and Neil Cowley Trio who bring both an improvisational fluency and contemporary edge to the project
She’s now back with this fifth album and it’s a real shift in sound: darker, guitar-driven and cinematic. Strongly inspired by women’s lives, the central themes are about feminine resilience, intergenerational wisdom and social justice. Both personal and political, the record is a tribute to her mother’s resilience and the countless women whose stories echo her own.
After eight years away, ISQ returns with a significant shift in her sound – darker, guitar-driven and cinematic – infused by alternative pop and jazz soundscapes. The new record is strongly inspired by women’s lives; the ones lived loudly and the ones lived in careful silence:
“The songs on this album were a long time in the making,” ISQ explains. “This is my attempt to make sense of a shifting world and of the elusive human condition – its unexpected beauty and moments of light, alongside the sadness, the quiet and the everyday violence it contains. It is a tribute to my mother’s resilience and to the countless women whose stories echo her own.”
Across eight tracks, the record moves between the personal and the political – mountain walks and migrant crossings, mother-daughter relationships and modern dating, deception and survival. It is an album about inheritance: what we are handed, what we carry and what it takes to find your own voice inside it.
“The older I get, the more convinced I become that none of us arrives anywhere entirely by ourselves,” she explains.
Vocalist and songwriter Irene Serra has spent over two decades building something quietly singular within the UK’s contemporary music scene. Known more by word of mouth than by headline, ISQ is her original compositional project – music that reveals its full weight only in the rooms it was made for: intimate clubs, jazz venues and concert halls where Irene’s presence and the band’s collective intensity can truly breathe.
ISQ draws together a sophisticated jazz musicianship, alternative pop sensibilities and rich electronic textures. The current line-up of Richard Sadler (bass), Chris Nickolls (drums/electronics) and Luca Boscagin (guitar) counts credits across Neil Cowley Trio, Andy Sheppard and Cinematic Orchestra among its members, bringing both improvisational fluency and contemporary edge to the project.
Booking and full details: https://www.brasseriezedel.com/calendar
