"After quietly releasing one of the definitive debut albums of the 2020’s so far with ‘Glass Lit Dream’, Ian Mugerwa aka Dawuna returns with a further re-imagining of R&B that nods to Prince's genius Black-album era productions, and especially his high-pitched Camille alter ego, as well as Jai Paul’s effortlessly scrappy pop perfection - and so much more beside that, linking emotional contradictions and troubled narratives with production and vox that feel primal in their emotional register. High impact DIY brilliance - a huge tip if you’re into Prince, Sade, Jai Paul, Tirzah, Leila, D’Angelo.
Dawuna’s pointedly low key hush smoulders hard through the 14-part ‘Naya’, revealing further, fractured aspects of an artist whose unhurried take on blooz has come to occupy a unique corner of the modern/avant field. He pairs gripping turns of phrase with a knack for ephemeral atmosphere that jump in and out of the box, with an amorphous, metaphoric quality that depicts someone from the inside looking out, leaving us with the groggiest sensations despite being lucidly soulful and direct.
Featuring two cuts with languid soul guitars by Brian Davenport, ‘Naya’ lets the spotlight linger longer over Dawuna’s distinct take on the form with his most enveloping and satisfying work since ‘Glass Lit Dream’ placed him on the map in 2020. Crackly flashbacks, references to The Congos and Wings, broken production and layered, pitched, panned and phased vocals take us back to when we first heard Prince’s ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ - our first and perhaps most memorable encounter with music that was intrinsically strange and still somehow destined for the charts. We got a similar thing from Leila’s ‘Like Weather’ a bit over a decade later, to our mind a full reconfiguration of what pop music could be when operating within its own uncompromising, sometimes impenetrable, logic.
That’s all to say; Naya is that rarest thing: highly accessible music that cuts through layers of ambiguity. The more you peel off, the harder it hits."
