From Milan to Tehran (but never home)
Milan-based Persian experimental electronic artist NAVA (Nava Golchini) has announced her long-awaited debut album ‘GABBEH’, set for release on 14 November via Oyez!. Alongside the news, she’s dropped a stunning new single, ‘Fire’, featuring acclaimed producer Loraine James.
For NAVA, this isn’t just another release cycle. She can’t return to Tehran after speaking out for Iranian women’s rights, so her music is both protest and survival. GABBEH channels that complicated cocktail of displacement: nostalgia, resilience, guilt, and a deep-rooted ache for home.
‘Fire’ burns with memory and protest
On ‘Fire’, NAVA and James balance fragility with raw power, weaving real audio from the Women, Life, Freedom protests into its sonic fabric. The result feels less like a single and more like a living archive. An elegy and a rallying cry.
NAVA says: “Fire depicts the streets of Tehran during the Women, Life, Freedom protests. As my sisters took on the streets of Iran, writing Fire was the only way to heal my aching homesick heart from afar. The fact that Loraine understood my vision and brought it to life was even more precious.”
Created in intimate sessions with co-writer Erio and producer Fabio Lombardi, GABBEH emerged almost accidentally: a laptop, a guitar missing a string, and long conversations about what had never been said out loud. The result is nine tracks in three languages. Persian, English, and Italian, each chosen for emotional precision rather than commercial neatness.
Cultural threads run throughout: ancestral rituals like Yalda, fire-jumping celebrations of Chahar Shanbeh Suri, the red sands of Iran, the natural dyes of fabrics, and the mosaics of home. It’s music as preservation, resistance, and rebirth.
NAVA describes GABBEH as “a voice that no longer hides.” And that’s exactly what it feels like. Bold, aching, unafraid.
Stay unruly.
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