GIFT

Brooklyn-based GIFT shares the new single/video, “Feather,” from their debut album, Momentary Presence, out October 14th on Dedstrange. The radiant “Feather” was conjured in bandleader TJ Freda’s apartment, written the morning after waking up from a lucid dream. “This is one of the most personal songs on the record,” says Freda. “One night I connected with a loved one in a dream, except I was in their mind. I was standing right in front of them and kept trying to call to them but the world in this dream was too loud and noisy. They couldn’t see or hear me. ‘Feather’ is about trying to help someone who can’t be helped, but in the end you accept them for who they are and love them no matter what.” On the psychedelic ballad, Freda sings of “psychic destabilization and the quest for balance” from a patchwork of warm lo-fi electronica.

In the accompanying video animated by Freda, director Dylan Brannigan does his own dance of reality, performing magic acts of audiovisual alchemy to transform GIFT’s metaphysical disturbances into a series of surreal vignettes; each rendered in hazy, saturated hues like a contraband bootleg VHS of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain.

Momentary Presence introduces TJ Freda as a sorcerous and versatile home-recording engineer. GIFT’s full-length debut contains recordings that seem to tease something seismic coming around the corner, as well as dense, layered productions that feel complete, definitive, and impermeable. Each moment has richness, complexity, and singularity. Inspired by Be Here Now, the 1971 spiritual guide and counterculture landmark by guru Ram Dass, Momentary Presence is a meditation on working through the anxiety and self doubt that we all, at one point, carry. It’s a natural match for Dedstrange, the new label co-founded by Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers and Death by Audio.

Composed of Freda and his bandmates Jessica Gurewitz, Kallan Campbell, Justin Hrabovsky, and Cooper Naess, GIFT have a knack for conjuring soundscapes that are simultaneously turbulent and gorgeous. Together, they share the quest for perfect sound, harmony during times of trouble, and radical openness. Can you open yourself up and appreciate it in its fullness – the ugliness and confusion as well as the beauty and joy? The members of GIFT believe you can. Momentary Presence is a chronicle of that chase, and a celebration of the eternal now.