Roy Jurgens on January 17th, 2018

3

The opening minute of Nostalghia’s new single “Little White Moment” is a slow burn, with woodland creatures giving away to an ethereal drone, and then strings and finally keys. And then, the voice appears, unmistakably unnerving and yet strangely angelic, with unorthodox phrasing. Apathy be not only damned, but damned confusing, as her emotionally urgent pleas are met with a nursery rhyme chorus, throwing the song into a push/pull tale of lover’s remorse. It’s told in a voice at once dangerous, playful, wicked and gutteral, belonging to the innocent but not so innocent girl with a ice pick under her pillow, as the song erupts in full-bodied orchestration.

The single is just the second from Nostalghia (first name: Ciscandra) since she released her full-length “Chrysalis” in 2014. It’s also the first from a new release titled “Imago,” from which she will unveil a song every month this year. “Little White Moment” continues a rags-to-riches story that began eight years ago, when, broke and homeless, she found herself spending nights in the piano room at school. Self-taught, she named the vehicle for her songs Nostalghia, found a collaborator in multi-instrumentalist Roy Gnan on Craigslist and released the song “I Am Robot, Hear Me Glitch.” After the release of the album yielded some prestigious tour and festival gigs, she went on to write for film and TV, including the “John Wick” movies (even appearing in the second one), and won fans in the likes of Marilyn Manson, Serj Tankian, Skrillex, AFI’s Davey Havok, Evanescence’s Amy Lee and film composer Tyler Bates.

“Little White Moment” traverses emotional terrain in Nostalghia’s special way — gloom blossoms into catharsis, the listener wondering how exactly it happened.

||| Stream: “Little White Moment”