NightNight – Love Decayed (Album – Nocut / SPV)
Genre/Influences: Ethereal-Pop.
Format: Digital.
Background/Info: “Love Decayed” is the debut album of the New-Yorker (USA) female artist New York multi-instrumentalist and producer Yasmin M. Haddad. She got a helping hand from a few guests featuring Chris Harms (Lord Of The Lost).
Content: I never heard of this project before and discovered an intriguing piece of sensual-ethereal Pop music. The songs are pretty minimal-like, composed with electronics plus guitar and violin. Yasmin M. Haddad is also taking care of the vocals which have something fragile and precious. Some songs are into a Ballad style while others are more into an evasive Electro-Pop approach reminding me of Hooverphonic.
+ + + : NightNight has something special and definitely different from established standards. It’s hard defining this project, but I experienced it as a kind of fragile-, sensual- and Ethereal-Pop format. It sounds minimal, sometimes a bit Electro-Wave like and also moving through melancholic passages. The addition of violin playing accentuates this melancholia with a deeply artistic touch. Last, but not least, the production of the vocals is also one of the album’s main characteristics.
– – – : NightNight is an original project but hard to label. So I’m really wondering which kind of audience NightNight will appeal to.
Conclusion: “Love Decayed” is an original, beautiful, sensible and fragile piece of music.
Best songs: “Down”, “Strange Dismay”, “Different”, “Leaves”.
Rate: 8.
Label: http://nocut.de / www.facebook.com/spvhannover
“Love Decayed” arrived on 28 January 2022 as a self-released digital album, with the CD following through NoCut and SPV later in 2022. The thirteen tracks are “Different”, “Leaves”, “Maybe It’s Too Late…”, “Ashes”, “On His Mind”, “Love Decayed”, “Little Sister”, “Somewhere Outside”, “Their Man”, “Strange Dismay”, “Down”, “Ugly” and “Untied”. Side-Line had already carried the video for ‘Leaves’ in January 2022.
Yasmin M. Haddad wrote every song and plays vocals, violin, guitar, synthesizers, drum machine and samples. Sylvia Massy co-produced ten tracks with Haddad at Studio Divine in Ashland, Oregon, and also plays drums and percussion on the title track. Chris Harms produced and engineered “Ashes” with Haddad and added instrumentation to it; that track was mixed by Benjamin Lawrenz at Chameleon Studios in Hamburg and mastered by Jeremy Cimeno. Joshua Lago adds guitar to “Their Man” and “Down”, Arista Illona adds vocals to “Different”, and Lisa Keane, Bill Murphey, Ivan Handwerk and Gabriel Lucas play auxiliary percussion on “Strange Dismay”. Marcel Fernandez mixed the remaining tracks and Stevie B mastered them. Sean Waple made the artwork.
Listen to “Love Decayed”:
About NightNight
NightNight is the project of American multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Yasmin M. Haddad, who works between New York and Los Angeles. She writes all the material and plays vocals, violin, guitar, synthesizers, drum machine and samples herself, mixing ethereal pop, darkwave and post-punk.
“Love Decayed” is her first album under the name. It was recorded at Studio Divine in Ashland, Oregon, and at West Alley Recording in Los Angeles, with additional work at Chameleon Studios in Hamburg. Producer Sylvia Massy and Chris Harms of Lord Of The Lost are the two outside voices on the record.
The album was self-released digitally in January 2022 and then picked up for CD by NoCut and SPV, the German label group that also handles Eisfabrik. Side-Line covered the project first through the ‘Leaves’ video, and the review here followed in April 2022.
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