zzzahara | Brighton
zzzahara Brighton
zzzahara live in Brighton at Green Door Store on 4th November! Get tickets above, or from SeeTickets.
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. “He’s so weird,” they laugh. “Always 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 shit, trying to see what it was like to dream again.”
The ensuing dreams were heavy and strange. In one of them, Zzzahara was a teenager, drifting through space and telling their brother, who passed away when they were 12, about their life. “He was asking, like, do you remember me? It really fucked me up.”
Their fourth album Distant Lands was born from the idea of communing with their brother; “talking to him about all aspects of my life across a long period of time.” The name comes from the sense that they exist, now, in different worlds – touching from a distance, as Ian Curtis would have it. It also references disconnected headspace Zzzahara was in when they were taking opiates in their early-twenties. “I would often feel like I was off in a different world, a dream world, blacked out and trying to connect to something that’s not there.”
Until now, the lyrical side of Zzzahara’s songwriting has been driven by their love life. Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a reckless coming-of-age in Highland Park. Their 2023 follow-up, Tender, marked a period of pause and introspection, which was quickly counterbalanced by 2025’s Spiral Your Way out – an album written in the aftermath of a breakup, which rejected the pressure to strive towards squeaky-clean personal perfection in favour of embracing themselves.
Distant Lands is a departure from all that. The dream about their brother prompted Zzzahara both to dig deeper and zoom out; sit with some old wounds and write songs outside their comfort zone of sex and romance. Rather than focusing on the turbulence of their recent love life, they took influence from long-standing feelings around their family life and experiences with opioid addiction. “I feel like I’ve lived a life filled with lust, having all these rendezvous everywhere – which is really fun, but it can’t be fun forever. I’m a fucked up person on the inside, from all the stuff I’ve been through, so why not write about that? I wanted to make something that was personal and authentic… and not about chicks,” they laugh. “It’s kind of a record about growing up, in a non-traditional sense.”
Produced by Casey Lagos, Distant Lands is a tender mix of lo-fi, dream pop and slowcore. Inspired by listening to a lot of early Beach House, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Microphones, the album takes the same approach of spinning shimmering gold from basic set-ups and old analogue equipment. “I tried to focus more on the music than the lyrics, and making it feel like more of an escape in that way,” Zzzahara explains.
Their arsenal of instruments was well stocked on that front, including but not limited to a Korg CR4 (four-track cassette recorder) Zzzahara bought off eBay from one of Drake’s producers, and a synth Lagos picked up for $10 at Goodwill. “Some of the best sounds can come from a cheap ass synth run through nice gear with a bit of reverb on it,” Zzzahara says. “That’s why I love lo-fi, and that was my thought process throughout this record. I wanted it to sound shitty but modern at the same time. That’s where Casey came in.”
The pair met through kismet at a mutual friend’s studio. Lagos burst in gushing about a fish and rice spot down the road he’d just eaten at, they bonded over being Filipino, and struck up a friendship. A creative relationship wasn’t immediately obvious; Lagos is a pop/rock producer first and foremost, working with mainstream chart acts like Kesha and Cold War Kids. However, his background as a musician in various post-harcore bands (Parkway Drive, Architects, Stick To Your Guns) made him the perfect fit for Zzzahara’s breadth of influences, which spans everything from old school screamo to contemporary dream pop – the underground, and the earworm. The recording process, then, was a matter of pushing Zzzahara’s lo-fi preferences through Lagos’ polished sensibilities to make a collection of songs that were intimate in vibe and vast in sound.
Though a departure from previous releases in some respects, Distant Lands retains Zzzahara’s characteristic looseness – something that was mirrored in their relationship with Lagos. Two Tauruses with a “work hard, play hard” ethic, they recorded in intense bursts, hitting the studio daily and wrapping tracks within an hour before taking a break to grab food or sweet treats or just kick back. They smashed the whole record out in just a few months – a totally different experience to the sporadic session work that went into Zzzahara’s other records. Since Lagos is completely sober, Zzzzahara also had the rare experience of making a record on the wagon. “I didn’t want to weird him out while we were working, so I was sober the whole time. He was a good influence for me.”
“My Little Dove” is a story about the dove that would visit the family home after their brother died. It’s an upbeat instrumental for material so delicate. Emotions fizz to the surface like bubbles, while the lo-fi production blisters and bursts like Lifted-era Bright Eyes. “We released doves at the funeral and then one day, I was in my house, and this dove flew in and just lived with us for like a month. We had cats, too, so I was like dude, what the fuck? The cats didn’t kill this shit yet? That’s crazy,” Zzzahara remembers. “Then, one day, it flew out. I feel like this bird was some sort of message of innocence – like, your brother’s in heaven in some sort of way. He’s saved.”
Over the last few years, Zzzahara has spent more time immersed in other people’s fictional worlds, rather than stewing in their own feelings. Their ravenous consumption of movies and books began to shape their songwriting back on Spiral Your Way Out, with headstrong authors like Charles Bukowski and Joan Didion informing the album’s re-assertion of agency in the aftermath of a relationship that made them feel compelled to try to become someone else. Distant Lands takes more inspiration from Wong Kar Wai movies – their flawed characters and terminal state of yearning – as well as works of literature that embrace the uncertain and follow the logic that many conflicting things can be true at once (Milan Kundera has made a significant appearance in their reading list). This self-administered cultural education is something they feel has given them a healthy sense of perspective that has led to more stability, without sacrificing their natural wild streak as captured on Spiral Your Way Out.
“With this record I thought, what can I say about my life that’s authentic to me without having to be ‘woe is me’? So that’s how I wrote the songs this time. Let me tell it like the facts,” they say. “My whole life, I’ve always been so fucking sad, and at some point you get addicted to the sadness. And then you get addicted to people treating you like shit. And then you get addicted to the feeling of hurting, you know?. Now I’ve reached a place where I’m like, nah, dude. I think I’d rather not.”
Staking a flag in the ground for living truthfully – and that not necessarily meaning perfectly – Distant Lands is laced with the stoic acceptance of life’s currents, positive and negative. There’s no bullshit to be found here – no solipsism, and certainly no regrets. “As long as you’re young and you still have energy then you should do things you love, because you never know,” they say. “You gotta just put your whip to the sky and fucking crack it.” https://zzzahara.bandcamp.com/
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ACCESSIBILITY: Fully accessible, on one floor. Disabled toilet, ask at bar for key. Full gender neutral toilets. Warning, cobbled floors which are uneven in places. If you require a carer ticket, please contact us at info@lovethyneighbourmusic.co.uk with evidence such as a blue badge or access card. If strobe lighting or standing for long periods of time is an issue, please contact us in advance so we can make arrangements.
zzzahara Brighton
zzzahara Brighton