Lockimara, the project of Nicholas Gay, has announced his sophomore album ‘Only Sun, Only Moon’, due July 24, 2026 via Play Dead. Alongside the announcement comes lead single “December,” a song built on buzzing bass, driving drums, and a piano-led refrain whose infectious melody carries the full emotional weight of a difficult goodbye.
“This song is the most vulnerable on the album,” Gay explains. “I usually veil my emotions and life in stories and fiction, but I was going through a difficult goodbye with someone I loved in November, and I felt like it deserved the respect of honesty and candidness in expressing how I felt, even through song.”
‘Only Sun, Only Moon’ draws from several years of upheaval, international moves, and personal loss. Gay left a social work career in Vancouver, relocated to Toronto to revive Lockimara’s live presence, and then moved again to New York to pursue a master’s degree in music production, all while a long-term relationship came to an end. The album emerged directly from that period.
Across nine tracks, Gay balances acoustic delicateness, experimental textures, and dance-forward electronics into something genuinely genre-less. Sample-heavy, glitchy environments sit alongside songs built from reversed melodies and half-timed arrangements. “Tastes Like” leans into a hooks-first electronic pop approach, while “Every Day” pairs gentle acoustics with soaring atmospheric synths. The album’s two titular tracks reflect a central dualism Gay wanted to explore, the polarity between emotional extremes, tied together into something cohesive and contrasting at once.
Gay wrote and produced the album entirely himself, performing nearly all the instrumentation. His debut ‘A Vision Again’, released in 2025, introduced a songwriter chasing the emotional register of Elliott Smith, the Postal Service, and My Bloody Valentine. ‘Only Sun, Only Moon’ takes that foundation somewhere bolder and more personal.
‘Only Sun, Only Moon’ arrives July 24, 2026 via Play Dead.
‘Only Sun, Only Moon’ Track Listing:
- Tastes Like
- Every Day
- December
- Only Moon
- Lose Her
- Only Sun
- Stress
- Heart Beat
- Kissing You