Name: DAMEDAME*

Where They’re From: Birmingham

When They Started:
Barbara: “I started making music around 2010. It would be around the time I started learning piano and started to compose my first original songs. The year I actually started producing and recording songs was 2015.”
Edith: “In 2003, I wrote my first rap verse in the car whilst moving from Wood Green to Walsall. I had already been playing the guitar since Year 3, however I didn’t have personal conviction to make my own music until I left London at the age of 11. During the isolation and struggle of relocating, I started recording what I would now describe as really ‘aggressive’ rap verses on grime beats using my webcam microphone [laughs]. Eventually, I discovered FL Studio and started making my first beats around 12, 13 years old. It became an after-school ritual for the rest of my school life; I haven’t stopped creating since.”

Genre: R&B, Neo-Soul, Jazz

File Next To: SAULT, Cleo Sol, Jorja Smith, NAO

Sounds Like:
Barbara: “A big mixing pot of all of our influences. Very eclectic and limitless.”
Edith: “Musical multiverse? Alternative pop? I’m never sure how to answer this question because I genuinely make whatever comes on the day without paying much mind to genre, whether in production or vocal style. I’d say there are some clear R&B, Afrobeats and grime influences, for sure.”

First Music That Inspired Them:
Barbara: “I think there are two songs that come to mind. One was when I was really young and I was nowhere near an age where I could produce or make music but I remember being obsessed with how ‘Ghetto Supastar’ by Pras would make me feel. The soulful melody paired with the hard-hitting drums and slapping bass was so addictive! The other was ‘Bad Blood’ by NAO. Before that point, I used to write songs at the piano but when I heard that, I was opened to the possibilities of the universe you can create with production. From the mix of the vocals to the textures in the beat and the vocal arrangements, I was very inspired and curious as to how they made that track.” 

Edith: “The desire to make my own music started somewhere between hearing ‘Remember The Time’ by Michael Jackson and ‘Right Thurr’ by Chingy. Between Chingy’s playful, bodacious cadence and Michael’s shy but charismatic musical genius, I was so impressed and forever aspired to live somewhere between those two styles of expression.”

You knew DAMEDAME* before you knew them...

For the last decade, Barbara and Edith have been working behind the scenes, helping to shape the modern sound of Britain. They produced 11 of 14 tracks on Jorja Smith’s Falling Or Flying, but that was barely the beginning. This year, they emerged into the spotlight proper with their own project, DREAMS ON THE PASSENGER SEAT, a landmark project and a watershed moment for Black British music.

The roots of DAMEDAME* go right back to their respective childhoods. Every element of their future-funk, soulful, jazzy, Hiplife cocktail has an origin story. Edith’s childhood alone has plenty of it, where the gospel and soul of her mum’s house mixes with the Ghanaian Hiplife of her dad’s family gatherings, finished off with the grime, R&B and rap of Channel U and 1Xtra. It’s a similar story for Barbara, but with a few key differences. Growing up in France in the early years, Barber’s mum introduced her to a lot of the American ‘80s and ‘90s classics—Cece Winans, Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men (“and she was obsessed with Lionel Richie”)—as well as a lot of West African music such as Congolese singer-songwriter Koffi Olomide and French-Beninese musician Angelique Kidjo. Her dad, she tells TRENCH, was ever the curveball, keeping “Manhattan Kaboul” by Renaud & Axelle Red on heavy rotation and a tonne of country and folk music.

Individually, they’ve both been making music since at least the early 2010s. Initially, it was only Barbara that had ideas of being an artist in her own right. “I wanted to make something a lot more pop like the stuff I heard on the radio but I was too embarrassed to do it as my old alias,” she explains. “Personally, I never saw myself as an artist despite always writing and recording my own songs,” Edith adds. “It was some sort of personal thing I did as a hobby and I was primarily known as a producer in my circles. DAMEDAME* gave me the courage to go for it, and that was always the intention behind starting the duo.”

Eventually, they teamed up in 2015, when their ambitions began to align. As solo musicians, Barbara tells TRENCH, they had been much more alternative, but over time, their direction shifted as they became increasingly interested in pop. By then, they were fully in sync: for the time being, they would focus on producing, working behind the scenes, gathering knowledge and experience, and waiting to launch their own project until the timing was right. “When people found out we produced, wrote and sang our demos, it became our USP,” Barbara says. “Amazing opportunities that we couldn’t deny came along and our artist project took a back seat for a while. We were working on our debut project very slowly but surely in the background. We learned so much from writing and producing for others, but deep down we knew that we had so much to say. We wanted to tell our stories and create our own undiluted universe. It took a lot of courage and fighting imposter syndrome, but the day came where we finally went for it, and I’m so glad we did.”

And there’s no question that their patience paid off. DREAMS ON THE PASSENGER SEAT is an astonishing accomplishment, the years-long product of two auteurs in perfect creative lockstep. Everything that makes Barbara and Edith DAMEDAME* is right there on wax, from the childhood gospel melodies and Hiplife grooves to the R&B and steel-tongued rap of their teens. It’s warm, thrilling, intricate, passionate, but at 10 tracks, it’s also impressively restrained. “It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Barbara says. “It took so much resilience and perseverance to get to the end of it. So many times it felt impossible to finish and something always went wrong, but I’m so proud of us for getting it out and letting the world hear it.”

It’s no doubt their proudest achievement so far. As Edith puts it, “It required every fibre of our being not only to create the music but to endure the obstacles and growing pains that came with the journey both on a personal and professional level. This is just the first chapter, though. DAMEDAME*, as an entity, is still growing. The next goal, Edith tells us, is “to become a touring act. There’s so much more to being an artist than being in the studio making music. A big goal is to be as proficient and confident performing on stage, in front of the camera and in all the other aspects of being an artist!”

And who knows, maybe album number two…