After walking under the alias Leila, Naz Hejaz emerges from the wreckage of pop, technology and psychedelic nostalgia to deliver an even more intense offering. Her debut album, Human Halfway House, is a portal into what could be described as a dark fairy tale told by a melancholic cyborg.
The album, released on 5 April, is a musical experiment that floats between the vintage fantasy of Disney, the pulses of seventies disco, the sensuality of Italian erotic cinema and the existential atmospheres of Pink Floyd. But far from being a simple collage of references, Human Halfway House has a voice of its own: it is a work that observes, with tired but curious eyes, how the human spirit slowly crumbles in the face of the cold glare of screens and the sweet trap of excess.
During ten songs, Naz Hejaz invites us on an intimate journey through the less comfortable corners of the human condition. Robotic voices, spectral synthesisers and drums that sound like electronic beats build a universe as seductive as it is disturbing. It is music to dance to on the edge of the abyss.
The first single, released a week before the album, Incurable Dreams, is a five-minute piece that begins with a funky groove, dips into whispers and experimental monologues, and eventually dissolves into saxophone notes that feel like a slow goodbye. Produced alongside Tim Carr, the song captures that irresistible desire for what consumes us. It is addiction-turned-music. It is the demon we don't want to exorcise.
Naz Hejaz doesn't come to give us answers. Rather, with Human Halfway House, she gives us an invitation: to lose and overload ourselves, to feel too much and to accept that, perhaps, there is beauty there too. Listen to it if you've ever felt caught between the promise of the future and the nostalgia you can't let go of. Listen to it if you're ready to enter the halfway house between the human and the irremediable.