Amber Saqladi began her journey as a song-writer scribbling poetry at age seven, before graduating to writing songs with a felt-tipped pen on sheets of A3 paper. But it took some time for this pastime to evolve into a way of life.
"It's always been something I've done but it was never anything I really took seriously growing up. I was a very academic kid, so that's what I expected to do," Amber explains.
"Since then, it's become undeniable that that's the thing I enjoy the most - being able to be creative, and be academic at the same time," she says.
Amber quickly established herself as a familiar name on the music scene in her home town of Leicester, where she also recorded her first three singles at HQ Studios.
"The music scene in Leicester is absolutely lovely - it's very community based. I can always count on the other musicians there to support me, and I'd do the same for them. There's so much going on, and so much talent in and from Leicester. I gained this lovely following and always knew I'd see a familiar face at my gigs."
After moving to Birmingham - a much bigger and arguably more diverse, but equally supportive, music community - to study for a song-writing degree, she met King Tut (Marwan Elbergamy), a resident producer at the world-famous Metropolis Studios, who has worked with the likes of Professor Green and Jessie J.
Amber describes the confidence boost that his endorsement and willingness to work with her has given her.
"It's taught me to just ask for things, because anything can happen in this industry. It feels very vulnerable to put yourself in that position, but just doing it over and over again is what I'm trying to do, to make myself get used to it!"
Despite regarding herself as a very self-conscious person, Amber has embraced the - often scary - thrill of creating music and sharing it with others, both through her recordings and on stage.
"I’ve started to enjoy it more, because I'm more sure of myself, and it becomes really exciting. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it, but it definitely becomes easier," says Amber.
With fabulous honesty, she describes how nervousness can affect her; but it's clear that she never lets this get in the way of her enjoyment and passion for living the life of a musician.
"One of the most special things is when you step out on stage and you're so nervous, but you're so thrilled to be there, that it's kind of an other-worldly experience."
As a child, Amber mainly listened to country and pop music, but as she got older, she discovered a developing interest in folk and then, as a teenager, rock. This background has translated to an interesting cross-genre sound in Amber's own song-writing and music-making, and into an approach which is fluid and evolving.
"I don't like to tell myself I can't do something, because it doesn't fit my genre," she says. "I like being multifaceted in terms of my sound. So I'm trying to find a way to properly bridge it at the moment, and that's been really fun to explore: making country music sound quite dark, quite heavy," she explains. "I don't want my music to speak in one way - there's lots of parts of me that I want to express."
Amber's latest release, 'Siren Song', is markedly different from her last one, 'Summer Rain', a dreamy, shimmery, Americana-drenched ballad, full of tight harmonies and wistful chord changes. Now, as she seeks to push her influences and inspirations further, we see Amber unleashing previously repressed emotion, tapping into those rock roots, and embracing a darker side.
She describes 'Siren Song' as a "feminine rage-fuelled rock anthem", and says it came about as a way of expressing her frustration and anger about her experiences as a woman, and musing on feminine power - "what if women did fight back - because they could.”
"People viewed me as kind of a thing that was there, and I'd never seen a man experience that as I was growing up. A lot of what I heard around me was 'she just uses her music to get loads of guys'. So I wanted to play into that - because I'm not like that at all. I thought, what would it be like if I was like that - going out to just destroy men, for revenge. And it was really fun to make!"
"I've had videos from people of themselves sitting in the car listening to the song, and that's exactly what I wrote it for. I want you ladies to be bopping to this and telling yourself how amazing you are," she adds.
'Siren Song' is a song dripping with sarcasm, full of meaning, and expressing very effectively where Amber is as a person and an artist. And she says that with her upcoming releases she wants to take the elements she's played with so far and carefully mould what she wants her image to be. She is working on a new project which will tie things together from a writing and music standpoint, has just secured a slot to perform at Carfest on 25th August, and is more than excited at the prospect of working on music full-time once she moves down to London.
"At this point, I kind of eat music for dinner - I love it,” she enthuses.
When we spoke, Amber was looking forward to the release of the 'Siren Song' video, once again produced with Joe Noon, who has also photographed her. The video is now out:
"It's a new style of video for him and me, and we had a really good time getting our heads together on it," she says.
The two called on the skills of Leicester-based musician and visual effects artist Niles Boyton, who created a complete mermaid tail, turning Amber into a real-life siren.
"He did a really, really great job - it's everything I ever wanted," she says.
What comes through to me strongly as we wrap up our conversation is Amber's sheer, unadulterated passion for music, her meticulous and energetic approach to developing herself fully as an artist, and her philosophy that, despite the anxiety and the hard-work involved -- it's worth it.
