zzzahara - Distant Lands - CASSETTES

zzzahara's latest album came to them in a dream. Despite being born and raised in Los Angeles, Zahara had never really gotten into David Lynch. When he died at the start of 2025, they dove into his archive of films and interviews. InchHe's so weird,Inch they laugh. InchAlways talking about how 'everything's a dream!' And you know what? At that moment, I couldn't remember the last time I dreamed. I thought, that's fucked up. So I started taking magnesium and S**t, trying to see what it was like to dream again.InchThe dreams that followed were heavy and strange. In one of them, zzzahara was a teenager drifting through space, talking with their brother, who passed away when they were 12. InchHe was asking, like, do you remember me? It really fucked me up.InchTheir fourth album Distant Lands grew from the idea of communing with their brother-Inchtalking to him about all aspects of my life across a long period of time.Inch The title reflects the sense that they now exist in different worlds, touching from afar, as well as the disconnected headspace zzzahara experienced during opioid use in their early twenties. InchI would often feel like I was in a different world, a dream world, blacked out and trying to connect to something that's not there.InchUntil now, zzzahara's songwriting has largely centred on their love life. Distant Lands marks a shift. The dream about their brother encouraged them to dig deeper and zoom out, writing beyond their usual themes of S*x and romance. Instead, they explored long-standing feelings about family and their experiences with addiction.In recent years zzzahara has immersed themselves in other people's fictional worlds rather than stewing in their own feelings. Their deep consumption of films and books began shaping their songwriting on Spiral Your Way Out, where writers like Charles Bukowski and Joan Didion influenced it's themes of reclaim