Having grown up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia but now calling Brooklyn home, Gigi Mead went into music as a mode of both exploration and self-expression. A vehicle able to delve beyond the surface of things, to investigate what lies beneath. “A way to explore her shadow side through song writing,” as her bio puts it. Taking on an alternate persona in order to more fully understand her true self, and to express this as faithfully as only art can allow.
Released under the name Dæva, 2016 album Beta Persei focused on an unrefined, instinctual dimension of this self, with both the moniker and title evoking ancient demons and finding a sense of empowerment within the attached connotations of force and independence. This manifest itself as a growing confidence across the record, the music showing a clear development as it progressed. The icy, dreamlike synth pop style grew richer and more fully realised, often compelling itself into motion with dance rhythms which found power in intuitive movement. Put simply, it was anxious and introverted bedroom pop that transcended itself by tapping into the elemental nature of supernatural forces.
That Mead has decided to change her moniker is therefore significant. For new album Vocivos, out via Furious Hooves on the 27th March, Dæva has become Deva Grace. A shift away from ancient demons, Mead explains, and toward “her core being as a plant spirit.” This turn to a more personal essence is born out in the album through an intimate, diary-like style, and though the otherworldly post-Witch House sensibilities remain, Mead employs a richer palette of instrumentation. Deva Grace moves beyond the strictly electronic confines of Dæva and embraces a warmer sound with layers of harp, bass, guitars, Korg Minilogue and Omnichord.
We’re delighted to share a three-track sampler ahead of release to introduce this new aesthetic. The shimmering column of synths in opener ‘Ego Death’ is clearly indebted to Beta Persei but markedly different too, as if blossoming in the space its predecessor created. Likewise the cold haze of ‘Ephemera’ and the way it wears its shadows so lightly, holding the ominous depths as an inviting mystery rather than some inhospitable void. ‘Ribbon’ embraces this luminosity most fully, Mead’s vocals cycling with hypnotic charm. “A ribbon grounds me / voice manifesting” she sings, a mantra that charms the bright instrumentation around itself as a kind of rebirth. Dæva is no more, long live Deva Grace.
