Revelstoke’s Aza Nabuko, known around town as Aza Deschamps, described her first full-length album as self-exploratory, coming of age, collaboration of thoughts made into scenarios.
“I find that that’s the way that I get a more original song that won’t be strapped down to one situation,” she said. “Because you want the song to be timeless.”
She doesn’t write about boys breaking hearts.
“There is a lot of music in this album that comes from a place of anger,” she said.
Nabuko described herself as an angry teenager, mad at herself and mad at the world, often mentioning climate change and politics in her music.
At first, she was hesitant to make music from a place of anger, but she found it was a good outlet.
“Scream about it and get it out,” she said.
Indigo, which comes out on June 4, features two halves. The first being the Indie pop she is known for and the second going a little deeper, getting a little darker and feeling more real.
“I’m nervous to let it go,” she said. “It’s been the project that I have been cradling, that kept me motivated through the last year, but I’m ready for it to go. What do I work on next?”
Nabuko and her team at Blue Lights Studio and JumpAttack! Records have been working on the album since the fall of 2019. While her EP was a collection of songs she had written in the past, this time around it was a collaborative effort to write an album.
Nabuko said you will hear the difference and recommends listening to the songs in order, as if you were listening to a book.
READ MORE: Revelstoke teen musician releases first EP
Nabuko was supposed to move to Vancouver to pursue her music career in the fall of 2020, she graduated from high school in June of 2020. However, since she still needs to supplement her income with a job in the service industry, she decided to stay in Revelstoke for the year, until the pandemic smooths over.
“I am literally like COVID police,” she said.
When travelling to Vancouver to work on Indigo, Nabuko went directly from the studio to the hotel, ordering takeout and watching movies in her free time.
Despite the pandemic putting a hold on live shows, Nabuko’s fan base has grown – she has more than 10,000 monthly listeners and one of her songs, Fade Away, has more than 200,000 streams. It was featured in one episode of the Netflix series Tiny Pretty Things, which aired in December 2020, and has exploded since then.
Funnily enough, it is a song Nabuko wrote when she was 12 and had hoped never to revisit.
Though an album release party is not yet scheduled due to pandemic restrictions, Nabuko is playing a virtual live show on June 4 as part of the Blue Light Sessions concert series.
The show will be broadcast live from the studio using a 360-degree camera and can be watched on Youtube.
Nabuko has also once again submitted a song to CBC Music’s Toyota Searchlight competition, she made the top 100 in 2019 and 2020. Voting closed on the first round but the 2021 top 100 will be announced at the beginning of June, from there voting will open once again. Keep an eye out here: cbc.ca/music/searchlight/#/welcome.
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