Lockimara Breaks the Mold with Emotionally Glitchy New Album ‘A Vision Again’

Photo:Gudrun Wai-Gunnarsson

If you’re not already tapped into Lockimara, now’s the time. The Toronto-based project led by Nicholas Gay just dropped a genre-blurring, emotionally layered album called A Vision Again, out now via play dead and Homie Shit Mag. Alongside the release comes a video for the title track, a visual that’s just as disorienting and hypnotic as the music itself.

Built on a foundation of shoegaze haze, folky sincerity, and digital noise, A Vision Again doesn’t stick to one lane, it blows up the whole highway. One minute you’re floating in ambient synths, the next you’re hit with glitchy percussion and blown-out guitar riffs. But somehow, it all feels cohesive.

That’s the magic of Lockimara: chaos in form, clarity in feeling. The title track sets the tone, featuring pitched-up vocals and jarring yet intentional production choices that never feel like a gimmick. Directed by Kai Trotz-Motayne, the video captures the same mood, fractured but focused, dreamy but grounded. It’s weird in the best way.

Tracks like “Halo” and “Bible” swing from digital shoegaze to country-laced folk without warning, but the transitions never feel forced. Gay’s voice, raw, unfiltered, and occasionally soaked in autotune, acts as the glue. Whether he’s whispering into reverb or shouting over distorted drum loops, the emotion always lands.

What really makes A Vision Again stick is that it’s not trying to be trendy. It’s personal. It’s reflective. It’s weird. Gay wrote this album after losing his grip on music during the pandemic and clawing his way back to the heart of it, not the industry, not the clout, just songwriting. It shows.

“This album is about waking up again, creatively and emotionally. It’s me getting back to what I love without needing it to be perfect.”

Started in the Montreal DIY scene and now reborn in Vancouver, Lockimara isn’t just a project, it’s a lifeline. With nods to artists like Spirit of the Beehive, Alex G, and Caroline Polachek, this record doesn’t mimic, it mutates. Acoustic guitars tangle with warped vocals. Shoegaze collides with folk. It’s not clean, but it’s intentional.

A Vision Again is messy in all the right ways. And that’s what makes it one of the most interesting underground releases of 2025.

“A Vision Again” feels emotionally raw and sonically chaotic in the best way. What was the headspace you were in while making this album, and how did that shape its sound?

I cycled through a few different headspaces during the process of the album. I think it started with a sense of calm determination to just make anything, which was quickly pushed aside by a strong sense of ambition as I started to make and discover more and more songs that I fell in love with. From there, ambition turned to exhaustion at some later stage, when I started to understand the enormity of trying to see a 14-song album through from start to finish as a bedroom artist. That being said, I shouldn’t make it sound like I made it all on my own; I had a lot of support from friends and my family that helped make this possible. All of that is to say, however, I think that the emotional turbulence of making the album is reflected in the songs. My subconscious was trying to express different things at different points, and you can hear that in the tastes of the production and melodies of songs written in the earlier days of the album, compared to those I wrote later on.

You blend so many styles — from folk and shoegaze to glitchy experimental pop. Was that a conscious choice, or did it evolve naturally while writing?

I think it was a mix of conscious choice and natural evolution. I listen to an eclectic mix of genres and artists, and I think I’ve always found it hard to stick to one genre, even within a song. Within a given week, I would find myself listening to shoegaze and thinking “what would it sound like if I tried to write something like this?” and then listening to folk and finding so many ideas that I wanted to also realize. It definitely got me into a situation where I had all of these songs that I wanted to package together somehow, but I wasn’t sure if it would actually work. The only tangible glue I could discern between them was just that I had made them, which I hoped would end up being enough.

You’ve talked about losing your connection to music during the pandemic. What was the moment that made you want to start creating again?

I think it was in 2022, when I was hearing music that others were starting to release after their own Covid hiatuses. One example that comes to mind is listening to Boat Songs by MJ Lendermen the spring it came out and feeling totally inspired by the simultaneous genius and relatability of songs like “You are every girl to me.” I think in starting to feel inspired again I also realized the time I had lost, which turned into a sense of urgency. I actually wrote and recorded an EP after that, which I eventually overhauled into the album. None of those first songs are on the album, and I never imagined it would be so long before I actually put something out.

The title track and video are both beautifully disorienting. What’s the story or emotion behind that specific song, and how did the visual concept come together?

The music for A Vision Again came quickly to me. I was entering a phase of experimenting with fusing beats and electronic production with acoustic guitar and folkier rhythms. From there, both parts emerged in one evening. I don’t totally remember when the lyrics came together for me after that, but they’re some of my favorite lyrics from the album now. For me, the song really became about capturing the elusive feeling of peace that one has in moments of perceived clairvoyance. Where the future appears visible and fated. The visuals became a project of trying to capture that feeling. At the same time, I had been excited for some time about trying to collaborate with a contemporary dancer for any of my songs, and so when that came together, I started to work with a friend, Kai Trotz-Motayne, on making that into a video.

Lockimara has been evolving for almost a decade now. What do you want this new era to represent — both for longtime listeners and for people just discovering your work?

I think in a lot of ways I want this album to feel like a starting over. I have so much love for all the music that I made with Lockimara and the multiple interactions of the band in Montreal, but the band also started before COVID and kind of ended during COVID. So with a few years of separation, this revival of the project feels like a new project to me in many ways, one where I’m much more focused and driven. In that vein, I want this album to be seen as the first of many more to come, as well as the initial exploration of many more sounds to be discovered.