Six years after her debut, Nabihah Iqbal’s sophomore album, DREAMER, emerges from a treacherous creation process. The London-based musician lost her demos in a 2020 studio burglary, then spent COVID lockdown with family in Pakistan, away from most of her equipment. Reworking the LP from scratch, the artist stepped away from go-to electronic recording programs and picked up a more analog approach to composition.
“Relying so much on your computer … you can just go back to it and see what you’ve done. That’s not a safe approach,” says Iqbal, formerly known as Throwing Shade. “There’s a real comfort in having the ideas in your mind, knowing exactly what you’re doing, even if it’s just the skeletal version of the track.”
“But then, somehow I’ve managed to meld the worlds together in a way that still stays true to my sound palette, and doesn’t feel pastiche or anything.” – Nabihah Iqbal
The final version of DREAMER transforms Iqbal’s initial ambient demos into a lush soundscape populated with electronic beats, synthesizers, and, more surprisingly, sitar and harmonium. The latter two instruments trace back to Iqbal’s Pakistani heritage, but she’d never incorporated them into her professional career until the April 2023 release.
“I had a very adamant view about not mixing the two,” explains the British Music Embassy showcaser. “It just felt like the two worlds were separate and I wouldn’t try and do it. But then, somehow I’ve managed to meld the worlds together in a way that still stays true to my sound palette, and doesn’t feel pastiche or anything.”
Sitar peeks out from layered acoustic guitar in instrumental centerpiece “Lilac Twilight,” while harmonium – a keyboard that makes sound by pumping air into reeds rather than hitting strings – reverberates in album opener “In Light.”
Contrasting these atmospheric tracks is breakaway hit “This World Couldn’t See Us.” The gloomy-but-infectious nugget of darkwave gold was inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which the artist calls “the best book that I’ve ever read in my life.” The My Year of Rest and Relaxation of the Victorian era, the novel follows a particularly downtrodden young woman.
“Every time she gets even a glimmer of a positive feeling, everything around her just shuts it down,” Iqbal explains – a fitting inspiration for her in-track whisper, “If death is freedom, then kill me now.”
After the burglary, Iqbal’s camp offered a lot of unhelpful consolation: “’Maybe it’s happened for a reason, and it will turn out better,’” she recalls hearing. In hindsight, her supporters may have been right. “I’m really happy with it,” Iqbal says of the finished album. “Maybe it was meant to happen that way.”
Nabihah Iqbal
Thursday 14, 9:30pm, British Music Embassy
Saturday 16, midnight, The Velveeta Room
This article appears in SXSW 2024 Festival Guide, Part II.
