19 year old Nayana Iz announced her arrival with last years ‘How We Do’, and ahead of the release of her debut EP “Smoke & Fire”, out 26th June via Different Recordings, she’s released a couple of tracks, ‘Walking’ and ‘Final Hour’.
Of the former, Iz -who professes to have been born in London but made in India, says it’s about “that feeling when you go for a walk with no set destination to head towards… you just go where feels right in the moment. That time off where the stress finally falls off your head and you just roam and take your surroundings in without a messy mind. It puts me in that same mindset of when I was a kid and saw so many possibilities in everything I looked at, like the flowers being as tall as the tress. I used to write loads of stories those days and ‘Walking’ feels like it’s one of them.”
It’s this sunny and beautifully wonky R&B hip-hop track, which sees her rhyme over this shuffling, but slightly off-kilter sample.
‘Final Hour’ is darker, built on this string melody that sounds like it could have come out of a Bollywood soundtrack, over which Nayana is in much more forthright mood, pulling in good friend and collaborator Lorenzorsv to join her. The two trade and join up in fine style in the track, which Nayana says “It’s the final hour before it all changes, the new beginning. Dealt with liars and fake friends, now their reign is over… They timed our success to be short lived now theirs has run out”
Nayana Iz – Smoke & fly EP is out June 26th via Different Recordings.
