View this post on Instagram

A post shared by COLORS (@colorsxstudios) on Sep 1, 2020 at 8:02am PDT

Hurt, which debuted on August 18 as Annie Mac’s hottest record of the week, is a powerful song that explores alcoholism and depression. Her performance of it for COLORSXSTUDIOS takes place in front of a plain rust orange background and in it she displays artistic confidence beyond her years.

COLORSXSTUDIOS, in the same vein as MTV unplugged and Tiny Desk Concert, is all about paired-down production ‘without distraction’. Whats interesting is that Park’s voice sounds virtually the same on COLORS as it does on the single itself, a testament to her natural talent and the veracity of her records.

When asked the question ‘what motivates you at the moment‘ Arlo replies: ‘helping others… thats always been something that has driven me‘. She cites this as one of the main reasons for sharing her art with the world. This makes sense when you consider Park’s songs as a catalogue of human conditions.

On her first EP, the eponymous track Super Sad Generation was a soulful lament to her contemporaries. Parks sang over a tight percussive beat ‘we’re a super sad generation// killing time and losing our paycheques‘.

In the next verse, she moves into spoken-word, softly saying ‘We’re bugging out it’s not hard to see// Dropped three tabs quick in the back of the Prius’. Parks is putting words to the shared ‘generational-anxiety’ of “Gen-Z” to make sense of her own feelings but also to help listeners make sense of theirs.

Her single Eugene, released in February this year, is about having ‘complicated feelings towards someone you’ve known for a long time’. Parks said she has had this experience before, which makes sense given how honest and personal the song feels.

Eugene takes its listeners on a journey by telling a story, a story that most people have lived but not heard in the form of a catchy song on Radio 1. Park’s is helping listeners by showing them that they’re not alone in falling ‘half in love’ and feeling jealous watching their best mate go off with a new boyfriend.

COLORSXSTUDIO then asks Parks if she is afraid of being vulnerable, and to this she replies that, for her, ‘the fear of being vulnerable is outweighed by the beauty of connection’. This is clearly true for such an honest artist who uses her song-writing skills to make others feel less alone, in the same way that a good writer can echo our own thoughts back to us on the page.

2 years ago I made a documentary with FOREVER FILMS about growing up around West London free party culture – in light of official #NottingHillCarnival being cancelled we decided to put it out to the world@NOWNESS just put it as their pick of the week https://t.co/8NSSLDmqdT pic.twitter.com/jQ33Y0ez4O

— LAVA LA RUE (@lavalarue) August 28, 2020

In the video, Lava La Rue talks about the DIY rave culture in West London in the 90s. The Windrush movement that started in the 1950s brought an influx of Caribbean people to Notting Hill and Portobello.  At this time, ‘Caribbean people weren’t welcome in the clubs‘ so ‘had to move the party elsewhere‘. Elsewhere was the ‘crumbling West London terraces‘ that now cost around £4 million. At these ‘blues parties‘, Stranger Cole and Patsy Todd would blast out of the sound-system.

In West Born, La Rue tells us her parents arrived in England in the 1990s. Gone were the ‘blues parties‘ and in their place was an evolving rave scene based on a DIY community ethos. Lava La Rue talks about these days fondly, though she experienced them through the lens of childhood. ‘I was around sound-systems and thumping booming music from a very young age… [I was] the little kid running around barefoot while everyones on a trippy one‘.

It was an unorthodox childhood, but one she enjoyed thoroughly. So much so that she wanted to start putting on similar parties in her teens, desiring to ‘curate a space‘ that felt safe and shared the community values of the ones her parents went to.

In the documentary, she and musician Louis Culture discuss East v. West in terms of nightlife. Louis contends that East is ‘kind of winning’ at the moment, and Lava agrees ‘there’s been an attack on the arts in West… for some reason securing a venue in West is difficult to obtain… it’s the prices, they’ve not made it accessible to locals.’

Toward the end of the video, Lava La Rue stands on Tavistock Road talking listening intently to Leslie Palmer, Trinidadian community activist and one of the pioneers of Notting Hill Carnival back in the mid 1960s. Palmer’s vision was that people from different Afro-Caribbean communities would come together to make Carnival bigger and better. This was certainly achieved as Carnival is now a festival of  thousands from all different cultures.

Lava La Rue holds Carnival close to her heart, saying in Vogue that her first carnival was ‘in the womb‘. This intimate connection makes her documentary both authentic and inspiring to watch.