ALA.NI, the enigmatic British singer, songwriter and musician whose voice seems to exist outside of time, has partnered with Emmy Award winning composer and producer Adrian Younge for Proud of Me, a deeply personal new album nearly a decade in the making. Set for release on October 9, 2026 via Younge’s label Linear Labs, the record captures a diaristic snapshot of ALA.NI’s life across several years, tracing love, longing, grief and self-discovery against the backdrop of Los Angeles.

The collaboration began in the summer of 2018, when ALA.NI’s publisher sensed a creative kinship between the two artists and brought them together in Los Angeles for an initial session. The chemistry was immediate. Working within Younge’s signature analogue, vintage inspired production style, the pair quickly developed an intuitive rhythm. Younge would build the musical landscape during the day, while ALA.NI would return home each evening to write lyrics and vocal melodies shaped by the mood of the music and whatever she happened to be living through at the time. The next morning, she would return to record vocals. Five songs emerged in their first week alone.

The album was completed during a second session just before the world shut down in 2020, with Younge later adding expansive string arrangements at his Linear Labs studio.

What emerged from those sessions is an album that feels suspended between eras: intimate yet cinematic, classic yet difficult to place in any one time. Younge’s rich, psychedelic tinged arrangements create space for ALA.NI’s voice — clear, understated and emotionally direct. Rather than chasing contemporary trends, Proud of Me leans into atmosphere, honesty and feeling.

“The first half of the album was very much a dialogue with what I was experiencing at that moment,” ALA.NI says. “Songs like ‘Middle of Nowhere’ were literally just me writing about being picked up from LAX and driven to Topanga. It was very close to the bone.”

The emotional core of the album reaches deeper still. The first song written for the record, the title track “Proud of Me”, emerged after ALA.NI’s father revealed he had cancer. Much of the album’s second half was then written and recorded in the weeks following his death. “I used music to ground and support whatever I was going through at the time,” she says. “Or to block it.” The result is a record shaped not only by love and relationships, but also grief, memory and the search for emotional clarity.

Across Proud of Me, ALA.NI writes plainly about desire, grief, intimacy and self-possession, often leaving the emotional edges exposed. From the hushed intimacy of “Face in the Evening” to the hazy romance of “Middle of Nowhere”, the album traces the story of a woman learning to trust her own voice and experience. Younge’s meticulous analogue production, informed by years of work with artists including Roy Ayers, Ghostface Killah and The Delfonics, surrounds ALA.NI’s vocals with warm soul arrangements that move between psychedelia, cinematic orchestration and late night jazz.

With Proud of Me, ALA.NI steps further into her own world, creating a record shaped as much by instinct and atmosphere as confession. The result feels both classic and deeply personal, without ever sounding nostalgic or overly polished.