Hatis Noit has announced that she will release her debut album, ‘Aura’, this summer, while also putting live the album’s title track.
As a live performer, Noit uses looping to build layers of vocal tracks, recreating her songs from scratch each night with immediate feedback from the audience. This is how she feels most comfortable making music, but for two years that option was completely cut off to her.
“During the pandemic, I really struggled”, she says. “As a singer, I’m not very good at working on the computer. I much prefer doing live performances in physical spaces. Being with people, sharing the same space with them and feeling the atmosphere and energy of that moment, inspires me every time. To me, art is that - that shared moment”.
Despite this reticence to make music in isolation, she eventually found that working on the music that became the album allowed her to process feelings of mortality brought up the pandemic. She explains: “We cannot live forever, do everything or be everywhere. But that makes our lives unique and invaluable. I wanted to be focused on our limitations and show how precious life is”.
She tackles her own experience of this in the title track, ‘Aura’, recalling getting lost in a forest on the island of Hokkaido in Japan, where she was born.
“I felt as if I was close to my death”, she says. “I could feel myself dissolving into and becoming a part of nature rather than just being an individual. This sense of awe and peace found there is always the place where I start making music from”.
The album was recorded in Berlin, with Noit laying down her vocals in just eight hours. Thrown into lockdown again, the completion of the record was delayed. In that time, producer Robert Raths came up with the idea of playing back the album in a church and recording the sound within that space, bringing the final version closer to Noit’s live performances.
“It was almost like a miracle when Robert came up with the idea”, she says. “That was the moment that changed everything for the album as the physical space with its organic ambience brought everything to life”.
‘Aura’, the album, is set for release on 24 Jun. You can listen to ‘Aura’, the single, here: