Unbridled & Ablaze - Zialand (08/06/18)

• Artist: Zialand
• Release Date 8th June. 21018
• Genre: Soul-Pop, Singer-Songwriter
• Record Label: Glittermouth
• Tracks: 9
• Website: http://www.zialand.net/

Following her recent singles ‘Landslide’ and ‘Shelter’, the latter of which was played on BBC Scotland, BBC Ulster, Soho Radio, Resonance and Juice FM (Brighton), the Norwegian artist ZIALAND (aka Zia Meyer) will release her new album, ‘Unbridled & Ablaze’ on 8th June. 

A new single entitled ‘Running Cold’ is also scheduled for the early summer. ZIa describes 'Running Cold' as “a song about a friend of mine and the deeply painful relationship she experienced with her alcoholic dad. Her pain was a complicated tapestry woven over time, blended together by watching him distance himself from the people closest to him and her profound love for him and the need for a dad. But her needs were never met because he always chose the bottle. She was the one who found him, barely conscious as he was slipping into a coma. Blood on the floor, on the walls and in the bed. She was the one who cleaned it all up, stayed by his hospital bed and was there as he fought the inevitable. His death wasn’t pretty. "I wanted to honour her and pour some love onto all that pain by writing her this song, bringing a kind of witnessing and a reckoning to it.”

Other highlights on the album include ‘Fever’ (“about living in exile, the vulnerability and precariousness of life in that existence, not knowing what comes next”), the aching ballad ‘Don't Look Down’ (“about a good man losing his partner to illness and his way of loving her is by showing up and being there in all the ways he can”), the powerful ’Shelter’ ("a love letter to my daughter”) and the intense torch song ‘Cleaved’ (“longing for your soulmate, the one you know is out there but not the ‘where’ or ‘how’ or ‘when’ you will meet”).    

Zia thinks of the album as being about “‘in-between' moments, when something is ending and something new beginning. That moment where you finally give way to the transmutation. For anything to move and transcend, something else needs to die or be let go of. To me, these moments are imbued with both the deepest of grief as well as a most delicate beatitude and rapture. I think I’ve always been on the hunt for these moments because they are so elusive."