When the world faced unprecedented times, Lightfoot entered uncharted territory.
The Boston beatmaker’s new album Terra Incognita, out today (June 25), whimsically frames pandemic-induced discoveries in terms of ye olde cartography. As 2020 exposed ample “unknowns,” the process of creating a 16-track beat tape offered Lightfoot the will to face them all.
And when he didn’t know where to begin, an overheard Sade tune nudged him down the right path.
“The pandemic stunned me in a lot of ways, and I remember looking at the state of the world, my life, past, present and future and just thinking ‘what is even happening?'” he tells Vanyaland. “These moments were magnified in the early weeks of lockdown when I couldn’t even muster the energy to create anything. I woke up one morning, about a month into everything, and heard this Sade song playing from the apartment upstairs and felt compelled, for the first time in weeks, to make a song.”
That inspiration led directly to his song “All Caps Size,” the unofficial starting point on his map to contentment. As for the other 15 tracks — Lightfoot says they “screamed” out to him from his computer when it came time to assemble his first draft of Terra Incognita for Canadian record label Chong Wizard.
“While these tracks had a similar sonic thread, they also held a significant emotional weight and resonance to me. It took me a majority of the pandemic to realize that weight is due to the way I create holding so much of my emotional processing,” Lightfoot explains. “There was a sense of clarity after I sent in the initial draft to Chong. It felt like I had packaged up a year and some change worth of thoughts, doubt, dream, emotions and put it in a book. Almost like I had been writing a diary on loose pieces of paper, tossing them around the room and then putting them back together again.”
Lightfoot describes the album as an “unintentional diary,” but more accurately, Terra Incognita is a levelheaded battle against a year of discomfort, wielding the palliative power of contemporary chillhop. The struggle of 2020 doesn’t feel present in the album’s 16-track journey, which points to Lightfoot’s level of craftsmanship. It is called chillhop, after all. Blissed-out beats and relief are the goal, and Terra Incognita gets listeners to that resting place every time.
“Terra Incognita holds a lot of emotions for me, but I don’t expect, nor want really, people to feel like they have to approach this project with that weight,” he concludes. “There are a lot of feel good high energy moments throughout the project and while I hope some of those initial feelings I had while making it come through to listeners, I mainly hope that people can just get lost in this album. This album is about about the journey being the destination.”
Take a trip with Lightfoot below.