Saina dates her EP Hotel 555 for 23 October

Saina releases an EP called Hotel 555 on 23 October, and the first song from it, Darkest Hours, is already out. The Japanese-English artist has been building toward a full-length record for years without quite making one, and this is the closest she has come to a single sustained statement.

Darkest Hours has a specific source. It draws on Joe Hisaishi's compositions for Studio Ghibli films, music Saina grew up playing, which is a more precise influence than the vague cinematic reference most artists reach for. Anyone who has sat through those scores will recognise the harmonic habits she is borrowing.

The EP around it is loosely conceptual. The hotel of the title is imagined as a place of anonymity and transformation, somewhere guests can step outside their everyday selves for a night, and the songs work through what that does to a person rather than simply using the setting as decoration.

She puts it more bluntly herself. "Hotel 555 has been my biggest leap of faith yet," she said, describing the record as an invitation into her own thoughts and shadows, her brokenness and healing, and asking listeners to decide whether escapism is their friend or their enemy.

One credit needs correcting from our earlier note, which recorded zuriel as co-producer of the single alone. Saina wrote and co-produced the entire EP together with zuriel, not just Darkest Hours, which makes this a two-person record rather than a solo release with a guest producer on one track. A short film shot in Tokyo arrives with the EP next month.

Her catalogue so far is a scatter rather than a line. She has released a string of collaborative singles, short EPs including the three-track LUNDUN LULLABIES, and music for short films, but no full-length album. She is a BRIT School alum whose work folds alt R&B and nu-soul into electronic textures with Japanese folk lyrics, and she is one half of the London DJ duo ZEE-2.

She plays The Jazz Cafe in London on 8 October, two weeks before the EP arrives. No tracklist and no label have been published. Confirmed release dates go on the release calendar, and more from this corner sits on the pop hub.