“
Even if I had new material pretty soon after 'Defrost', it's always like that with me - I take so long to finish the music that it doesn't end up resonating with my current mood. I was living in Canada, mostly isolated. The infinite highways in North America wire themselves up in the shape of a cage, it's impossible to reach anywhere. And I needed some home to go to. I am someone to romanticize every single past period of my life. This time, I surprised myself admiring that 16 year old self. That boy who felt nobody would ever find him attractive, or interesting, or enough, was now the object of some self-incestuous narcissism 10 years later. I have always been a huge fan of Lana del Rey's lore. I have folders of her unreleased pre-Born to Die tracks, several versions of them. It clicked: I had to pay homage to this 16 year old Tumblr boy and tell him: hey, all these Lana songs you're listening to about flying away to a heavenly paradise above this toxic town, well, they're kinda true.”

SINGLES FROM GRANTED

“
These Lana del Rey songs gave a voice to my teenage self. This album is to me a companion to 'Discover', they are two sides of the same coin. But these songs are not mine. They are the voice of a generation. When I would go into Tumblr, yeah, we were all talking about mental health and social justice, but the core of it to me was hope. That community was built on some underlying message that said "one day, this will be over, we'll get through and create our paradise". There was an energy that made us be unapologetically ourselves. All of this was present on Lana's early music, it's kind of a religious statement. Where are the Tumblr people now? I guess we all grew up, moved to Twitter, and got a daytime job that would pay for our artistic endeavors. We're still as bad as before. I feel we now lack that promise of a better future and that feeling of community. Still, making this album made me reconnect a bit.”


✨ EXPLORE DOWI'S OLD TUMBLR ✨

Pictures shot by Dowi in Canada, between June and November 2022.