[Cover photo credit to Dillon Howl]
LA-based harpist/multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter has announced plans to release Lovegaze, a “testament to the resiliency of the natural world.” Hunter has been recording “mystical folk” and ambient-inspired music since 2019. She then 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.
The announcement of Lovegaze comes with the release of the lead single “Finding Mirrors” complemented by a video directed by Dillon Howl.
Hunter shares about the track:
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 adds:
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.
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.
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 concludes: “Nature remains, we’re the passing thing.”
