
The 10 Best Autechre Tracks, according to Nite Jewel
Nite Jewel, also known as Ramona Gonzalez, is a singer-songwriter from Los Angeles who began her career by creating songs on a portable eight-track cassette recorder with help from her partner Cole M.G.N. – a 6x Grammy Award winning producer, who has worked with Snoop Dog, The Vaccines, Beck, Christine and the Queens and Blood Orange.
However after her twelve-year marriage dissolved, she found herself surfing friends’ couches. At the same time, she started her PhD in Musicology at UCLA, where she began research on women’s musical lament practices, which would go on to form the historical backbone for ‘No Sun’, her brand new eight-track album – a collection of avant-electronic pop made up of Nite Jewel’s delicate and elegant vocal. Her work asks questions like; “What does it mean to be a professional mourner?” It shows that although often female singers have been hired as emotional vessels for male composers, that these women are agents in their own right.
‘No Sun’ is a punchy and resilient body of work that tells the story of “the bitter side of loss with a sense of revelry and defiance”. It follows a preview of the album via the single ‘To Feel It’, a track that modulates to a new key, a sonic adjustment that is symbolic of her own capacity to endure. Nite Jewel has chosen to donate a percentage of the proceeds from ‘No Sun’ to ‘The World Stage‘, a charity that provides its community members with arts education especially for youth with a lack of funding.
Her aptitude for placing her organic vocal beside hypnagogic electronica means her music conveys both melancholia and euphoria all at once, and her forthcoming album ‘No Sun’ questions and remodels the archetype of female pain. Among influences like Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson, Nite Jewel also counts Autechre as one of her greatest inspirations (the English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who have released much of their work with Warp Records). Nite Jewel has selected ten of her favourite Autechre tracks below.
‘No Sun’ album is out on August 27th.
Listen to ‘To Feel It’ single on your favourite streaming service here.
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