Night Party

Night Party is Katrina Urton and Daniel James (Efterklang, Hayley Williams, Canon Blue). Their debut record, All That Fades, features spellbinding contributions from friends like DIIV, Deafheaven, and Carlos de la Garza (M83, Paramore, Wolf Alice).

Meeting up at the suggestion of James’ wife in 2023, the two instantly connected over their shared love for ‘90s UK nostalgia, experimental films by John Cassavetes, and the writing of Rebecca Solnit. The expansive title track was written on the first day they met, with a collection of songs pouring out like streams of consciousness over the coming weeks. Urton’s raw, honest lyrics explore themes of addiction, co-dependency and the struggles that often arise in longterm relationships. The incisive lucidity of lines akin to Daniel Johnston and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, set against a vast musical landscape.

Later complimented by Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy, DIIV drummer Ben Newman and the vocals of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, the music combines the melting guitars of My Bloody Valentine shoegaze, the brutal blur of Low slowcore, along with the spacious post- rock of Sigur Rós and icy electronics of Fever Ray. James filters through broken synthesizers, atonal strings, and chaotic samples to color what are, at their core, heartbreakingly simple songs.

Night Party is at once intimate and distant, overwhelming and subtle, shapeshifting and stagnate. Urton and James recall dreams and faraway memories, old sounds misinterpreted into something eerily familiar yet strangely new. All That Fades is an ambitious debut — an attempt to seek beauty where there is pain, honor silence where there is noise, and find expansion in the face of defeat.