Unum: the Latin word for oneness, unity, a sense of being whole. The debut album of Ġenn is a hard-earned statement of evolution, woven from the band’s four distinct threads of influence and identity to reveal an arresting tapestry of ambition. It follows on from their 2021 debut EP Liminal which was born of isolation, a fragmented jigsaw puzzle put together at a distance in the pandemic era. The project triumphed against all odds, but Ġenn knew that the EP walked so that something far greater could run. Unum is the product of that long-awaited togetherness; it captures that lightning in a bottle which strikes when four distinct strains of talent – four best friends - are free to create. Ġenn have never sounded so limitless. Always present in their minds and music is a sense of feeling like outsiders. With Janelle, Leanne and Leona’s Maltese roots, no matter how hard they try to assimilate into their adopted hometown of Brighton, they always felt that they remained on the margins. Sofia’s background is Jamaican, Portuguese and British, and while she was raised in Brighton, she experienced a sense of otherness through a unique lens: being part of something while still being separate from it. Unum grapples with questions of selfhood, the contradictions of identity and ancestry. “It all relates to identity and the search of it,” shares Leanne. In Unum, the band wanted aspects of Maltese heritage to bleed into its sound. Janelle felt inspired by the fingerstyle guitars and raw spirit of Għana, a kind of traditional folk music. “Calypso”, in all its jazz-indebted catharsis, was named for the island her mother hails from; she had a vision of it being embodied as a destructive mermaid. From Leona’s perspective, its lyrics are a homage to the Maltese poet and playwright Mario Azzopardi, who left an indelible effect on her use of language.
