HALF WAIF RELEASES “ORANGE BLOSSOMS” NNAMDÏ REMIX, LISTEN HERE
NEW ALBUM ‘MYTHOPOETICS’ OUT NOW
“Beautifully rendered and deeply layered synth-pop.” – Pitchfork
“Stormy chord progressions and eerie pitch-shifts convey disquiet, while sweeping strings and Rose’s soaring vocals crash in waves of catharsis.” – Nylon
Half Waif aka Nandi Rose has shared a remix of her song “Orange Blossoms” by Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Nnamdi Ogbonnaya (aka Nnamdï) today – listen to it HERE.
“Nnamdi is, straight up, a legend,” Rose explained. “It is a deep honor that we share names that sound so similar, which is how he first came to my attention. But that’s where our comparison ends, because he’s just so in his own league. Brat is one of my favorite albums in recent years – there’s nothing else that sounds like it. Unsurprisingly, the remix he did for “Orange Blossoms” completely blew me away. His sonic choices are just not ones that I would make, which is what makes it so exciting. I love how he transformed the song into something totally new and badass and beautiful.”
The original iteration of “Orange Blossoms” is featured on Rose’s critically acclaimed new album Mythopoetics, which was released last month. “Mythopoetics[‘s] singles all suggest the musician has stripped some of the more art-damaged elements in favor of an even more theatrical and grandiloquent compositional technique—an artist confidently embracing her strengths, then playing to them,” said The AV Club.
“Orange Blossoms” has also inspired a scent collaboration between Nandi Rose and the fragrance and wellness start-up of Shocks of Love, who together created an Orange Blossoms all-natural aromatherapy oil, available here. The scent invokes the eponymous fresh citrus notes of the orange blossom, evolving them with smoky woody tones (vetiver, petitgrain), and peppering with sensuous spices and herbal notes (cardamom, coriander) that recall the rich olfactory heritage of Rose’s ethnic lineage.
Half Waif’s previous albums The Caretaker (2020), Lavender (2018) and Probable Depths (2016), garnered acclaim for their compelling journeys through solitude, desire and the search for independence, blanketed under a spectacle of deeply-layered synth-pop. Her fifth full-length sees her stretch her creative muscles, as Rose pushes through the barriers of self-scrutiny and transports us into a world of mythic proportions. Charting territories of addiction, memory and loss, Mythopoetics is animated by the traces of what’s been left behind: the ghost of orange blossoms, the tail of a meteor across the sky, the taste of loneliness in a crust of bread. It is a kind of modern-day storybook where memory is spun into song and the self is explored and acknowledged with tender, nourishing care.
This is the record I’ve been trying to make for 10 years,” Rose says. “My voice is changing, and my confidence has reached a point where I feel that I can sing however I want; I’ve finally come to a place where I don’t have to conform to what I think other people want it to sound like.”
