Nailah Hunter signs to Fat Possum & details debut album Lovegaze
NAILAH HUNTER
Signs To Fat Possum Records
Announces Debut LP Lovegaze
Released 12th January 2024
Shares First Single/Video “Finding Mirrors”
WATCH HERE
Today LA-based harpist/multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter announces plans to release Lovegaze, a bewitching testament to the resiliency of the natural world. Hunter has been recording mystical folk and ambient-inspired music since she shared her debut single “Apple, Maple, Willow” in 2019. Following that, she has released a series of singles and two EPs on Leaving Records: Spells and most recently, Quietude. Now signed to Fat Possum, Lovegaze is Hunter’s debut full-length, an enthralling album that draws listeners into her enchanting cosmology.
The announcement of Lovegaze comes with the release of the otherworldly lead single “Finding Mirrors” perfectly complemented by a stunning video directed by Dillon Howl.
According to Hunter: "This song began with a bass line, which is not usually how I approach writing. Of all the tracks on the record, it is the most purposeful departure from the comfort I found in making ambient music in the past. Letting the song exist in the form that it came to me was a healing reminder that I can make anything I want to. The song is about seeing yourself without warning."
With regard to the video, Hunter shares: "The video explores the concept of being haunted by our own unspoken truths and the catharsis that is to be found in being seen. It asks what kind of power we unlock when we surrender to our true desires."
The video’s director Dillon Howl shares: "With ‘Finding Mirrors,’ I wanted to play with the idea of multiple truths and selves happening at once. To visualize how catharsis and embodiment allow us to access the power of these seemingly disparate selves. How personal alchemy is like a storm that lets us touch the space between worlds."
WATCH the video for “Finding Mirrors” Directed by Dillon Howl HERE
As the daughter of a Belizean pastor, Nailah Hunter began her musical journey in the church where she played drums, guitar and sang in the choir. She continued on to study music at CalArts, where she studied vocal performance and was given her first harp lesson. Associating the instrument with fantasy, psychedelia, and dream worlds, Hunter became an immediate devotee, locking herself in a room for six hours a day to practice the instrument.
To make Lovegaze, Hunter decamped to a small coastal city along the English Channel where she began recording demos with a borrowed celtic harp. After being introduced to London-based producer Cicely Goulder, Hunter returned to England a year later to further develop the songs.
“While I was writing Lovegaze, I was thinking about humanity’s propensity to destroy the things we love,” Hunter says. “I was thinking about ancient ruins and structures that once provided shelter but no longer do. There’s beauty to be found in ruins, too.” The whole album was written during a time of both global and personal strife for Hunter, and while Lovegaze captures some of that sense of distress, it’s also a willful reminder of the fortitude and beauty of Earth’s natural processes. As Hunter says: “Nature remains; we’re the passing thing.”
Pre-Order Lovegaze out January 12, 2024 on Fat Possum Records HERE
