Hatis Noit – Aura

Hatis Noit’s debut album Aura is teething, plaintive, long-anticipated and devoted to performance. It builds on her 2018 EP Illogical Dance with a clarity of purpose. It refines her numerous curiosities, her vocal styles. All takes were recorded in an eight-hour stint in Berlin before the pandemic, and between various lockdowns, producer Robert Raths had the idea to reamplify the vocals in a London church, adding a spacious, unifying reverb throughout. Only one track, Inori, includes sounds not produced from Noit’s voice and Aura, altogether, demonstrates her dynamic, growing range; it’s the throat that whirls, fades, throbs and lives on the eerie limits of the wordless.

We are invited into its misty, enveloping crystalline landscapes with the rhythmic loops in Himbrimi, the layered sirens in Jomon and the pop lullaby refrain of Inori. Borrowing all at once from Gregorian chanting and Gagaku, it reminds us that the voice, our bodies, act as junctures of past and present. Where this pops is in the lament: 'Words cannot describe everything we feel'. This drives Aura’s ability to evoke, communicate and flow without lyrical, or semantic, underpinning. This is a stunning vocal experiment, one that constructs immaculate, dreamt and abundant worlds.

Listen to: Jomon, Inori, Himbrimi