Koda explores our inability to forgive ourselves on starkly beautiful new offering "nazareth"

Koda is the moniker of LA-based produced Jordan Sudak, a nickname he received after his obsession with photography. To say he has lived an interesting life is by no means an understatement. The grandson of a famous Haitian singer, by the age of the fifteen, Sudak had lived in three countries and his family had joined a form of born-again Protestantism before eventually turning their backs on religion altogether.

The religious experience has evidently had a major effect on Sudak, as evidenced on this new track where he asks for forgiveness, speaks of prayer whilst ruminating on his mental health, speaking candidly of his state of mind and the thoughts that are going through his head. The subtlety of the beats and impactful understatement of his calming vocals put his words at the centre of the track as he says "I got to get mind right but first I got to fuck it / Fuck it up".

It's revealing, emotive and seemingly deeply cathartic for the artist, and furthermore proves his ability for creating carefully constructed electronically-driven songs.

Speaking on what the track means to him, Sudak says “it's all about self-sabotage, which has kinda been a constant in-grown hair on my psyche. I'm steeped in depression and guilt all the time. Like a very Catholic inclination to suffering - the name of the song comes from the flagellation of Christ and this idea that you would distort that and punish yourself as atonement for your percieved sins. We are all very, very bad at forgiving ourselves, whether we acknowledge that or not.

"I think even the most horrible, unredeemable people unwittingly project their guilt, like they're bursting at the seams with it. For me, there's a constant 'how dare I have good things happen to me' and I hate it very much. It's very toxic to want to suffer and yet here we are. It is like a ritual, like a lightbulb goes off and you say 'a-ha I can't deserve this i dare not' and you start to tear yourself down - to negate your gifts. It's very sad to me that something like that could be relatable.”