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Reviews 354: Nailah Hunter

As its name suggests, Nailah Hunter’s Spells is a sonic experience devoted to ritual and incantation, one that sees the artist painting the air in restorative hues of new age fantasy and dreamscape ambient via angel voice, effected harp, and a minimal palette of cosmic electronics. As discussed in Leaving Records’ press materials, this luminous journey of vibratory mysticism traces its origins to Hunter’s choice to rethink her approach to songwriting and performance, which then lead to the inspired decision to craft musical spells, where, in the artist’s own words, “each layer is one of the steps in an incantation.” In striking upon this new path, a sense of meditative freedom emerged, for the artist was no longer tempted to overthink things, relying instead on intuition and ritualistic process to create layered ceremonials guided by the flow of the universe. As well, Hunter is here focused on using music to create a sense of place, with each individual spell meant to induce visions of serene natural settings, or, as the artist calls them, "sonic places of rest, places to ponder and consider your feelings.” In fact, several of the otherworldly locations evoked by the music are breathtakingly rendered by Ianna Vasale, whose fantastical paintings of gemstone caverns, sunset beaches, ancient flower field structures, glowing potions, and swordbearing sky goddesses are woven together across the J-card panels with written spells of Hunter’s own creation, so that the textual and visual elements work together to enhance the album’s air of mysterious adventure and its function as a tool for magical healing.

Nailah Hunter - Spells (Leaving Records, 2020) Opening track “Soil” is accompanied by the spell “a seed is sown / a song from silence,” which is fitting, as the composition billows in from the void and immediately establishes an aura of mysticism and wonderment. Harp arpeggios decay into empty spaces…perhaps even into the gem-encrusted caverns depicted by Vasale on the cover art…while heavenly hazes of reverb kiss the flowing melodic clusters and interspersing chasms of silence, which are eventually filled by Hunter’s operatic flutters. The artist’s voice moves through wordless vibrato enchantments awash in atmospheres of mystery and melancholy and eventually, the harps drift away from the mix, leaving druidic vocal incantations that slowly transmute into a resonant shadow. Something else the artist explores throughout Spells is synesthesia, and for second track “Ruins,” Hunter suggests the warming hues of magenta and clementine, colors which radiate off of the song’s smoldering drone clouds…these thick banks of swirling fog suffused with the light of a cinematic sunset, or, ”the dying light of gold” as described in the accompanying spell. Psaltery sparkles like crystal, or like the “dust of rose at dusk,” and sub-bass synthesizers float the body while elsewhere, key changes owing to spiritual jazz change the vibe as synthesizers bend in ways reminiscent of dopamine deep house and 90s extasy ambient, with everything coming together like some lost Beverly Glenn-Copeland meditation. Insectoid streaks of noise thread throughout the mix and pitch-shift over a bank of chirping crickets and tropical birdsong and eventually, the shimmering psaltery chords are overlaid by fantastical harp explorations, with the sparkling diamond cascades and high-note melodics touching on energies both ancient and futuristic.

The spell for “Enter” involves repeating the phrase “enter in”…a sort of mantric invitation into the track’s filtering galactic wavefronts and modulating color hazes, which swirl together into a psychoactive miasma of deep space drone. Lasers swoosh upwards, streaks of starlight sparkle overhead, and if you listen closely, you can hear Hunter’s harp dancing far in the distance. At some point, the immersive walls of cosmos drone unexpectedly recede, leaving behind a glorious passage of multi-layered vocal fantasy…a sort of gothic expanse of Enya-style singing that invites the mind to picture some goddess of the forest lost in a trance, her mysterious vocal incantations flowing outwards like silver threads, which are then caught by nymphs and satyrs and woven into spectral mirage that slowly fades towards darkness. “Quite Light,” as described by Hunter, is meant to evoke the “feeling of being like golden light in a cold still pool of water.” And in the accompanying spell, Hunter writes: “take up now this silver sword / find yourself restored,” which suggests the aforementioned pool of water is in fact the cave lake depicted on Vasale’s album cover, where hovers the silver sword of restoration. As for the music, plucked harps and barely there keyboard meditations sit above spiritual blankets of soft-focus electronic and prayer bowl-sourced drone. Chittering insects are effected into fractal droplets as the harps continue their dance of dreamfolk romance and a monstrous current of squelching alien acid synthesis emerges randomly to disturb the flow, bringing with it quivering bass synthesizers and their chanted cosmic mantra. Garbled vocalizations are heard amidst the eternally ringing prayer bowl drones and later, as the harps dance on starbeams, they radiate pearlescent colorations in all directions.

Returning again to the album’s explorations of synesthesia, there are mentions of white, navy, and lilac in the spell for “White Flower, Dark Hill.” And going further, Hunter describes the track in the press materials with the following poetic string of thoughts: “the idea of the purples and navies of the night sky and the way that shadows appear under full moonlight, the different shades of moonlight, and how it always brings out the color white.” Sonically speaking, electronic chords flash, bend, and mutate into an ethereal panorama of dream magic while lullaby harp arps dance through washing waves of ambient warmth. Strummed psaltery jangles in the light of the moon while vocals alight on ambient soul and dreampop adventures, which pull my mind towards the work of Grouper. And eventually, almost everything fades way, until all that remains are child-like harp melodies and transmuting vocal babbles. The fact that Nailah Hunter resides in Los Angeles is perhaps most apparent on closing track “Talisman,” which is built around these sparkling synthesizer cascades that overflow with emotional currents of sunset melancholy. In fact, the vibe here is not so far off from the paradisiacal synthwave, both real and imagined, of Cliff Martinez and Symmetry, though of course, Hunter’s harp can be heard glowing deep in the background ether, with all attack sanded away, leaving the instrument to generate muted hues of rainbow warmth. Clouds of of angel mist and solar haze sit over the entire mix and at crucial moments, Hunter executes thrilling key changes that rush the spirit ever closer towards an exploding sundown horizon. And as the track progresses, with hissing wisps of starshine threading around blurred synthetic howls, we find ourselves entering spiritual communion with “soil / air / and sun.”

(images from my personal copy)