NAVA shares new single ‘Fire’ (ft. Loraine James) honouring the plight of Iranian women and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement
Today, Milan-based Persian experimental electronic / avant-pop artist and DJ NAVA (AKA Nava Golchini) returns with details of her debut album GABBEH – out 14th Nov via Italian label Oyez!. The album comes on the heels of a string of highly praised singles and an EP that have seen her on the receiving end of plaudits from Vogue, i-D, Clash, Rolling Stone, FLAUNT and more, for her visceral and unique blend of western electronics and middle eastern instrumental samples. To mark the new album’s announcement, NAVA has shared a new single titled ‘Fire’, featuring renowned producer and artist Loraine James.
NAVA cannot return to Tehran, having spoken publicly in support of Iranian women’s rights and against systemic repression. Her new album GABBEH channels the complexities of displacement - nostalgia, resilience, guilt - while amplifying the voices of women in Iran and the Women, Life, Freedom movement, three years on from the uprising that continues to reverberate despite intensified and severe state crackdowns. For NAVA, these realities are not abstract but are woven into her being. Though she cannot return home, her music becomes a vessel for identity, protest, and cultural continuity.
Her collaboration with Loraine James on ‘Fire’ captures these key tenets powerfully, balancing fragility and strength, as well as incorporating real audio from the WLF protests, turning the track into a capsule of collective memory. Speaking on the single, NAVA says “Fire depicts the streets of Tehran during the Women, Life, Freedom protests. As my sisters took on the streets of Iran, writing Fire was the only way to heal my aching homesick heart from afar and the fact that Loraine understood my vision and brought it life was even more precious.”
Watch / share the visualiser for ‘Fire’ here
Each track on GABBEH is a page from NAVA’s diary: “an intimate, honest fragment, born from a visceral need to express myself and give voice to what often remains unspoken. It’s an album that doesn’t try to explain, but to reveal. A voice that no longer hides.”
The album came to life very organically, almost unintentionally. NAVA never sat down with the intention of “writing an album” the songs simply emerged during long sessions with co-writer Erio. Just the two of them, a laptop, and “a guitar with a missing string.” The songs began as spontaneous conversations: “What do you carry inside? What have you never said out loud? What do you want to release?” Sometimes a vocal effect, a thrown idea, or an improvised melody into the mic was all it took. Free from creative constraints, the lyrics took shape in three languages: Persian, English, and one song in Italian, each chosen for its emotional truth. Only once the heart of each song was clear did production begin, led by Fabio Lombardi. And when they realised they had nine finished tracks, they knew they had made an album.
GABBEH is a layered work, rooted in daily life and ancestral memory. It draws from Persian culture: proverbs, rituals, colours, and stories NAVA grew up with. But at the same time, it questions the present: what does it mean to live far from home? How do you carry your identity without letting it fade over time? Living abroad is a privilege, but also a quiet ache. It’s the tension of feeling free and guilty at once. It’s missing something, even when it seems like nothing’s missing. Distance wears at the roots, and the fear of forgetting who you are becomes part of your everyday life.
As highlighted on the new single, the album also gives space to the bravery of Iranian women, whose voices still echo despite everything, and to NAVA’s own urgency to examine herself, her path, her choices, her need to create. Who would she have been without music? Why did life take this shape? Throughout the record, vivid images and existential paradoxes appear: water, essential to life, also causes erosion. The flame that captivates the moth is the same flame that destroys it. In the same way, desire and artistic creation carry the risk of self-erasure, of burning out from too much intensity.
The visual and symbolic inspirations of the album are rooted in her homeland: the red sand of Iranian landscapes, the natural dyes of traditional fabrics, the architecture, the forms, and intricate mosaics. Ancestral celebrations like Yalda, the longest night of the year marking the triumph of light over darkness, or Chahar Shanbeh Suri, when one jumps over fire to purify before the new year, are deeply intertwined with the Persian calendar’s spiritual connection to nature, where the earth’s rebirth is mirrored in the soul’s renewal.
The album title, GABBEH, is a clear statement of intent. Gabbeh are handmade carpets woven by the Ghashgha’i nomadic tribes of Iran, made using natural dyes and patterns that tell the weaver’s life stories. Each thread is a memory, a tale sewn into permanence. This album is NAVA’s Gabbeh, her personal memory woven into music. The sound of the record reflects that same fluidity. Each song has its own voice, its own emotional and sonic story. NAVA’s voice is both the narrator and the instrument: it morphs, distorts, layers like a synth, shapeshifting from track to track.
GABBEH is not just an album. It is an intimate ritual, an act of courage, and a tribute to all those who carry within them more than one homeland.
GABBEH is out 14th November via Oyez! – Pre-order here
TRACKLISTING:
1) Poki
2) Lethal
3) September Skies
4) Jadoo
5) Ailse3
6) Fire
7) Concrete
8) Kashan
9) Digiuno
