For Nadia Reid, music is about the release of creation and the service of performance. Relaxing in the corner of a coffeehouse in Wellington, she explains this interplay. "I think deep in my core, I need to create records, in the same way that a painter wants to create a physical painting. At the same time, if I didn't have an audience to make them for, and no one was going to be listening on the other side; I'd probably just keep the music to myself. That's not to say my writing is for other people, but when it comes to what happens afterward, they matter."Over the last seven years, Reid, now 25, has become one of the most significant voices to emerge from New Zealand's burgeoning modern music scene. Across two albums, 2014's Listen To Formation, Look For Signs and Preservation (released early in March), she's cultivated an evocative soundworld where the tender closeness of bedsit folk and the expansive dreamscapes of gothic neo-psychedelia intertwine like crisscrossing rivers; truth pushing against metaphor as their currents collide.Although you could cite the likes of Mazzy Star, Sharon Van Etten, Joni Mitchell and Laura Marling as reference points, Reid's affecting voice and elegant guitar work locates her within a space all her own. "These two records are me," she says. "That's why I chose to have portrait photographs of myself on the covers. They're who I was, and what was happening in my life in the years before I made them."Read the rest of this article on NOISEY.
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