Kat Duma’s “Lullaby” embraces the hypnotic pull of the night

Duma has long been drawn to liminal emotional spaces and the psychological openness of nighttime. It’s a realm she describes not as a foreboding darkness, but “more as a kind of searching.” At times her sound has aligned with more of a classical discipline, at others seen as a DJ and musical curator, and increasingly as a cinematic composer. Duma’s practice resists easy categorisation. ​

Returning with her first new music since her 2023 debut Real Life, “Lullaby” is a song that feels suspended between emotional states and preconceived notions of darkness. Verses settle into a fragile sense of comfort before the chorus swells with uneasy tension, signaling a psychological drift.

Originally trained in classical violin, Duma eventually pivoted in her teen years towards electronic soundscapes. “I wanted to create a world. I like the idea of world-building in any creative pursuit, especially through music. So I started working in Ableton when I was 17 years old, and it took off from there,” she explains. The result was Real Life, a looming dream pop album and a debut that explored the relationship between the material and metaphysical world, together with a soaring cover of the Pixies’ “Ana”.

Duma’s work has continued to evolve through collaboration and production. Notably, she co-produced for Talvi (Faustmann of Prince Innocence), specifically the ghostly synth-pop ballad “The Day We Met Never Ended for Me”, alongside Chromatics’ Johnny Jewel, released as part of Italians Do It Better’s After Dark 4 compilation. Collaboration also extends into her listening habits. She cites Toronto-born songwriter Scott Hardware as a recent inspiration for her new music, praising his album Overpass and revealing that the pair are currently working on new material together.

“Lullaby,” produced in collaboration with Alex Tanas, further signals her affinity for cinematic textures and nocturnal romanticism. Built from exchanged vocal loops, the track unfolds like a descent into the night. Layered reverbs and phantom harmonies form what Duma describes as “a whole world” of sound. This time around, Duma found herself less focused on traditional instrumentation and more absorbed in crafting an atmosphere through voice and texture. “Because I didn’t do all of the production myself on this record, I leaned into exploring my vocal production in different ways,” she says. “Sometimes you put on a certain reverb or delay, and you almost hallucinate a harmony that isn’t there, and then you realize you need to sing that part into the track.”

That intuitive approach extended into the song’s finer details. While shaping another track from the same sessions, Duma became fixated on what she describes as “sparkly chime-like sounds” that seemed to exist only as a phantom resonance within the mix. The solution came in the form of an omnichord, with soft synthetic tones materializing the texture she had been imagining all along.

The word “lullaby” itself is also soft on the surface, but in Duma’s song, it becomes a portal into something more ambiguous. In the lyrics, Duma plays with the idea of a lullaby, detailing her adoration for the word and what it signifies. “I play with the duality that surrounds it. [The song] could be seen as an anti-lullaby, but I like exploring the opposition to what people would normally associate with darkness.”

Her universe also moves fluidly between genres and moods, as she imaginatively places her songs in unexpected contexts. When asked where she might position “Lullaby” within a DJ set, she suggests it could sit “between a traditional folk recording and a driving techno cut,” a curatorial juxtaposition that is also evident in her own sets for NTS, as she moves from the folk roots of Philip Koutev Ensemble to Madonna’s Ray of Light with ease.

​If Real Life proved Duma could produce a complete artistic vision, “Lullaby” feels like the beginning of a new chapter as Duma follows her instincts, with ethereal sounds and textures lighting the way. Like a lucid state between waking and dreaming, “Lullaby” invites listeners like a siren call to linger in Duma’s realm, anticipating what’s next to come.