In December, we were lucky enough to be guests at Moth Club for a Sunday evening of music with HANAH.

HANAH’s sophomore EP is a true form of art. Playing like the pages of a sketch book, Colours of Now & Then beams with the love poured into it by its creator, delivering an emotional soundscape drawn up in some faraway log cabin or some isolated barn; surely somewhere separate from the blueprints of reality for this pure and unadulterated expression to surface.

Across the EP, HANAH’s vocals swoon infectiously with melodies of gospel and R&B, especially on lead single Solo, the most beat-driven and uplifting song on the record. But Colours of Now & Then stays very much in the abstract, where warped organs and spectral vocal loops create a tapestry of sounds, more like the electronic ambience of Josiah Steinbrick or Beverly Glenn-Copeland than anything rhythm based. At times the music collapses into sampled field recordings, where laughter and innocent screams percolate the soundscape becoming almost like a flit between memories, or a pause within the cathedral of HANAH’s richly reverbed production style.

I have long been a fan of the vulnerability of this record and the absolute transparency with which HANAH’s music reveals, so it was no surprise to see HANAH bring even more intimacy to her live performance. All the songs were reinterpreted live, including the most commercially successful Solo, a brave and imaginative feat reinforcing HANAH’s stance as an authentic creator. Some songs were even performed on guitar, absent of the record’s ambience but replaced with a direct connection to HANAH’s heartfelt poetry and raw creative process. The tide ebbed towards folk and more classically written songs, perhaps hinting to what the next project will entail, the next layer to be removed in a search for musical purity.

There is no doubt that Moth Club were captivated by HANAH’s performance, by her welcoming stage presence and her energy which matched that of an ensemble. Fixed in the current chapter of HANAH’s discography, we now wait patiently for the pages to turn, to follow and learn from this artist’s next journey into introspection.