NAVA Shares Striking New Video For Single “Sarabe” + Announces EP Out June 12
May 8, 2020 BY Nettwerk
Enigmatic Milan-via-Theran electronic band NAVA have released the video of their new single “Sarabe,” the title track to their upcoming EP out June 12 via Nettwerk. The striking and expansive video builds the scenery for the mysterious and brooding song that balances club music’s cadences with warm, hypnotic Persian words and sounds into a perfect equilibrium.
“I see ‘Sarabe’ in shades of red, white and black, in blue skies, sand and rocks. I think of a vast monotonous landscape much greater than our control, like ‘Kavir e Lut,’ a majestic desert in the heart of Iran. The song and video express that melancholic and homesick feeling I live with,” explained singer Nava Golchini about traveling to her home country. “Sarabe is warm and familiar, a positive feeling, but by nightfall, all of those sentiments are stripped away. Just like the meaning of ‘Sarabe,’ which is a mirage, an illusion, a déjà vu which lets you consecutively lose the sense of reality.”
Once again, NAVA are surrounded by Milan’s hottest talent of visual and fashion design: the video was directed by Simone Rovellini, renowned for his off kilter video clips. “It’s an eerily fitting video for our current times, as the main protagonist is seen imprisoned by impenetrable marble walls surrounding him, as he struggles to break free from his ordeal and isolation. ‘Sarabe’ itself invites us to see reality as a mirage and reflects on the constant changes that we’ve been going through. By pure chance this video is so actual, but at the time of filming, there already was a very strange vibration in the air.”
The outdoors video location was filmed in an impressive marble quarry, shot literally on the verge of Northern Italy’s first massive lock down: initially it was going to be filmed in Tuscany, but the location had to be switched just 3 hours before the shoot due to the escalating Covid-19 restrictions in early March.
NAVA’s name giving frontwoman Nava Golchini wears a dress designed on purpose by Milan’s next big thing in fashion, Giorgia Andreazza, who translates her attention to 90s subculture and textile decomposition into belts, straps and space.
The four track EP Sarabe sees NAVA explore the darker subjects of human nature. The fundamental theme that runs throughout the record is the unknown limbo you find yourself diving, head-first, into the mist of a new encounter. “It could be magical, mystical and magnetic, yet in a split second it can all crash and burn and all you’re left with is ash. Basically, risk living in an illusion that could go either way.”
The EP was primarily recorded and produced by NAVA’s own producer/writer Francesco Fugazza. Its visuals, mainly produced in isolation, also feature top notch Italian creativity with works by long time collaborators designer Matteo Strocchia and Martino Pastori on previous single “Hold.” Multi-awarded visual artist Lorem provided a stunning trip through a melted reality by the use of Artificial Neural Networks in “You”‘
NAVA will be playing their first ever UK show at the Sebright Arms in London on September 8th.
Sarabe EP tracklist:
1. Hold
2. Sarabe
3. You
4. Skin
Formed in the cosmopolitan hotbed city of Milan in 2016, enigmatic Iranian singer Nava Golchini met producer & arranger Francesco Fugazza whilst studying music in Italy. The collaboration then expanded to include drummers Elia Pastori and Marco Fugazza. NAVA take cues from Italy’s current flourishing electronic music scene and international acts like Arca, Apparat and Purity Ring. They are a unique cultural blender, melding Golchini’s own Iranian background and the band’s incisive, experimental arrangements, into something truly visceral, both musically and visually. The quartet released their debut Body via international label Nettwerk Records in 2019 to acclaim, featuring exhilarating songs such as ‘Ritual’, ‘Camera’ and title track ‘Body’ has seen them gain attention from The Line of Best Fit, Rolling Stone Italy, Earmilk, Clash, BBC 6 Music and more. NAVA’s new forthcoming EP Sarabe will be released June 12, 2020.
