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Photo by Claryn Chong

Some bands burn out chasing their own vision, while others just get better with time. It's almost like they were aging like a fine wine, and it was all building to this moment all along. Six years and countless sold-out rooms into their career, London-based siblings Will Gao and Olivia Hardy are proof of the latter. Drawing inspiration for their sound from their Chinese-British heritage and classical training, Wasia Project have spent the better part of the last decade building a sound that feels genuinely otherworldly and borderless. Now, on their debut album Nocturne, they’re finally handing us the whole picture. 

Nocturne is out today via AWAL Recordings, and one listen through this record and it’s more than obvious why people are paying attention. The record's opener, “2515” wastes zero time in planting you straight into Wasia Project’s world with spacious, unbound vocals that feel like they‘re whispering intimately in your ear. Suddenly, you’re close enough to Wasia Project before you’ve even settled into their world yet. 

Producing this record is a longtime collaborator of the duo, St. Francis Hotel, who has been the ear behind records for Adele, Little Simz, and Arcade Fire. It’s very easy to hear the influence of that lineage pumping throughout the ventricles of this record. Although this is technically Wasia Project’s first full-length record, it doesn’t sound like it at all. This is the sound of a duo who have been quietly leveling up their game behind the scenes for years, and finally decided to show their whole hand. Nocturne’s twelve tracks go for something more cathartic and emotionally raw than anything they’ve released before, still blurring genre lines but with the stakes dialed all the way up to eleven. 

“Vogue” is where that push really lands, its lush strings tangle playfully with careful, precisely laden percussion while Olivia Hardy’s gossamer vocals float on top. It’s the musical equivalent of an optical illusion, soft and delicate at first glance, but it still cuts straight through if you actually sit with it. 

The back half of Nocturne is where this record truly earns its name though. “Strike Me Down From Heaven” is straight out of a movie, where the duo's vocals stretch tautly over some tension-laden instrumentation that feels made for a big screen and not just your headphones. Then “Moon Goddess” flips the script entirely, stripping down to something almost skeletal in nature. It’s deceptively simple at first, and then haunts you completely. That’s the magic trick of this record, Wasia Project lets a song sit in near silence at one moment and swell into something orchestral the next, and somehow it never feels like whiplash. 

The closer of this record, “Wildfire” ties it all together with a driving, rhythmically relentless, practically vibrating with momentum little bow. It’s not so much of a closing track as it is a mission statement, after a decade spent building an audience room by room, “Wildfire” sounds like a band that already knows they’re here to stay. 

And really, why wouldn’t they be? Wasia Project has already sold out headline runs across the U.K. and U.S. including two nights apiece at LA’s The Fonda Theatre and NYC’s Irving Plaza, plus a stop at the legendary Blue Note. They’ve shared stages with artists we can’t get enough of over here like Laufey, Tom Odell, Rachel Chinouriri. The rollout leading into Nocturne has been absolutely generational: “Vogue,” “Bleeding Gold,” and “2515” all landed as Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1’s New Music Show with Jack Saunders, and “Whale Call” even scored a placement in Netflix’s Heartstopper Forever. Taken together, it’s crystal clear that Wasia Project have musical instincts way beyond their years, weaving their heritage and influences into something no one else could have possibly made. 

The bottom line is that Nocturne doesn’t just prove we needed a Wasia Project full-length, it proves that they’ve been more than ready for one. What makes this record even more special is the range, the way it swings from the hush of “Moon Goddess” to the sweep of “Strike Me Down From Heaven” without ever losing the thread, because Hardy and Gao are always chasing emotional clarity over genre rules. For a debut, it sounds remarkably unhurried which makes sense for being six years in the making, but other bands have certainly made more rushed records in that time frame. 

If you’re into lush orchestration, aching vocals, and that classical-meets-modern sweet spot, Nocturne is a must-add to your rotation. Fans of Laufey’s jazz-pop fusion, beabadoobee’s cosy indie-rock nostalgia, or Mitski’s theatrical emotional gut-wrenching lyricism and deliveries will all find something to love here because Wasia Project truly has range enough for everybody. 

Listen to Nocturne below: