STEVEN DAYVID MCKELLAR Comes To Terms With Himself In New Meditative Album “NAMA”… Out Now!
“… startling…. falling somewhere between Four Tet and a slightly straighter iteration of Thom Yorke’s work with Atoms For Peace.” – Under The Radar
“From its structure to the rich instrumentation, [McKellar’s music] recalls Amnesiac/Kid A era Radiohead.” – MXDWN
STEVEN DAYVID McKELLAR
Comes to terms with himself in new meditative album NAMA
Former Civil Twilight Vocalist/Songwriter
Releases new full-length album ‘NAMA’ following EP’s One and Zero and Stop Running
Photo credit: Lauren Stocker
SEPTEMBER 20, 2022 (Los Angeles, CA) — “It’s a call to my future and past self, in an attempt to be more present while the world frothed with uncertainty and change,” says South African-born/Los Angeles-based singer songwriter STEVEN DAYVID MCKELLAR about his new meditative full-length album, NAMA (released today via Sonic Ritual). A follow-up to his 2020 debut solo album ETHIO, NAMA furthers McKellar’s internal exploration of the last two pandemic years, observing the current state of the world as affected by isolation with the larger cultural context that the polarized socio/political environment has bred in this country. Featuring a collection of music from his former EPs (the introspective One and Zero and pensive Stop Running), NAMA also serves as a reflection of personal self-realization of coming to terms with oneself from the social and mental environment that was brought from the social distancing.
NAMA balances self-examination with an outward push into the unknown. Despite the seemingly restrictive minimalism of its construction, the album is teeming with a dense atmosphere, layers of crunchy, trancing beats, haunting melodies, and back-road, windows-down introspection. At the heart of NAMA, however, with its wide range of human expression, is an odd, paradoxical sense of joy — that particular sort of quiet pleasure that can only be found in the unsatisfied desires of life that, by their mere existence, that point us hopefully toward the unknown and the numinous. As McKellar sings in the record’s playful track “Nama Wind,” “Nama got a wind a blowing everywhere I be / In the darkest cave, in silence or in city / A foreign tongue hiding in the melody / The blade on the shoulder cutting through the deep bringing in.“
Deftly self-produced, the record is a musical psychoanalysis of McKellar’s own identity, where the primitive utterances of the subconscious are quite literally coaxed and arranged into fully realized expressions of song throughout the album, from the minimal electronic heartbreak of lead off track “One & Zero” to the haunted claustrophobia of second single “Stop Running” and the fractured beauty of album closer “Edge Of The Garden.”
Tracklisting:
1. One and Zero
2. Nama Wind
3. Slow Fade
4. Stop Running
5. Pull Away
6. Trillion Tiny Waves
7. Edge of the Garden
With his previous band Civil Twilight, McKellar had seen life on the big stage, having led the South African rock band through a very successful run, sharing stages with Jimmy Eat World, Silversun Pickups, Smashing Pumpkins and Florence + the Machine amongst others. Civil Twilight’s songs were placed on TV shows such as One Tree Hill, House, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Now solo and focusing on releasing music on his own terms, he’s thankful to continue being creative. “I’m just happy having some new music of mine out in the world,” he smiles. “I feel very blessed to be able to do that. I don’t really hope for things anymore. It’s not good for me.”
NAMA is now released via Sonic Ritual and available at https://lnk.to/NAMA.
