2025 has been a great year for shoegaze, and there’s probably a reason for that. Like all the years preceding it, hitting the quarter of a century mark finds mankind floundering in brutal wars, a White House that’s been transformed into a nausea-inducing palace, and a populace that can barely keep a roof over its head. Shoegaze is the clamorous internal sound of this emotional chaos echoing against the chambers of our craniums, like being held underwater by your bully cousin. Turkish musician nazire, at 23 years old, is showing that these feelings defy geographical boundaries. As a reluctant shaman for the Gen Z experience, nazire‘s new song “toybeat”, being debuted by Everything Is Noise, is a tight, two-and-a-half minutes of glitchy, over-driven, noise that sounds like you’ve either given into that bully cousin’s violence or took his knees out underwater.
The song juxtaposes digitally processed breakbeats and overly distorted guitar against reverb and chorus drenched leads and Sinem Nazire Bereket’s lilting soprano. nazire finds beauty in the noise, with lyrics that seem deliberately obtuse, allowing the listener multiple entry points. Often compared to artists such as Clairo, Cherry Glazerr, and Mitski, Bereket’s project is much more than the sum of those parts. While there is certainly a pop music heart at the center of “toybeat”, nazire takes a lot of liberty with surrounding those hooks with abrasive sounds and glitches. If “toybeat” is any indication, her upcoming album glitchfolk is shaping up to be an intriguing debut record.
In her own words, nazire‘s upcoming album is taking ‘her most experimental step yet—merging dusty, glitched guitars and shoegazey textures with electronic beats and ethereal vocals to create immersive dreamscapes that push both Turkish and international underground music forward.’
In a world that’s clearly going to shit, it’s fine to take a moment to glance at our feet on the ground and realize how connected we are to this terrestrial globe. But as we all engage in this fine art of shoegazing, it’s good to know artists like nazire aren’t afraid to turn the overdrive up to 10 to try and keep our heads above the water.
glitchfolk comes out soon on Mezvu Records. You can follow nazire and her shamanistic ways on her Instagram.
