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.

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Tracklisting:

1. Hold That Thought – Joyride!
2. Betsy’s Back – Bloody Death Skull
3. Cold Spell – Lunar Quiet
4. Go To Sleep – Skinny Blonde
5. Limbaud – American Enthusiasm
6. Saurkraut – Your Dog
7. Ache – Dæva
8. Bound By Blood – Hollow Twin
9. Florida’s Warm – Day Joy
10. The Dark Side of the Holy Ghost – Young Elk
11. The Park Behind Walmart  – Boy Scouts
12. Fear & Force – Vagabon
13. Stanton Park – Luke De-Sciscio
14. uuu – Field Medic
15. Meeting Points at 2AM – dné
16. The Rain Thief – Honey Stretton
17. The Stranger – Tyler Butler
18. Nervousness Fangs – Will Johnson
19. Constellation – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
20. The Dark Streets of Newark – Monarch Mtn
21. Violet – Roddy Hart & the Lonesome Fire
22. Work – naps
23. Passage of Old – Seabuckthorn
24. We’re Stuck With The Beauty – Winter Villains
25. Why They Call You Blue – Jordan Buchell

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The first single, ‘Dream’, which premiered on The Grey Estates last week, combines two types of synths, the sparkling wonder of those in the foreground forever surrounded by an ominous background drone, suggesting an atmosphere that could go one of two ways – rise into some numinous joy or descend into something deep and dark and strange. Lyrically, ‘Dream’ plays like an oneiric flattening of time, past, present and future collapsed and presented as one.

We’re delighted to share a second track, ‘Ache’, a dream pop number submerged in chillwavey synths and sci-fi/JRPG-sounding electronics which eventually develop into an rhythmic dance beat. Again, the song is immersed in the dreamlike quality of being overly familiar and unnervingly uncanny, where memories and wishes intermingle to form a vivid-yet-spectral landscape perpetually on the verge of evaporating. Indeed, the meaning of the track is similarly ambiguous, emotions pushing in with tangible weight but diminishing upon closer inspection, like bright lights visiting your patch of sky before passing on, zipping up and away to wherever such things go, leaving only the slow creep of melancholy and a latent anxious twitch.

“All alone, all on my own

Can you sleep at night with the weight of all your fears
Will the visions in your eyes ever disappear
Where were you when I needed you, is this how you want it to be
Scully tells me to move on, Mulder wants me to believe”

Beta Persei is available for pre-order now from Furious Hooves, including a limited edition run of cassettes. Also, if you find yourself in the area, Dæva is having a release show at Catland in Brooklyn, NY on December 2, 2016 (of which you can find detail here).

The post Song Premiere: Dæva – ‘Ache’ appeared first on Various Small Flames.