Support our efforts, sign up to a full membership!
(Start for free)
Register or login with just your e-mail address
Pop / Rock 12/05/2021

Hear The Debut Single From The Narcotix, A West African Art-Folk Band Based In Brooklyn

Hot Songs Around The World

Water
Tyla
306 entries in 20 charts
Stick Season
Noah Kahan
313 entries in 19 charts
Houdini
Dua Lipa
285 entries in 26 charts
Strangers
Kenya Grace
442 entries in 24 charts
Lovin On Me
Jack Harlow
293 entries in 22 charts
Popular
Weeknd, Playboi Carti & Madonna
266 entries in 18 charts
Lose Control
Teddy Swims
316 entries in 25 charts
Beautiful Things
Benson Boone
159 entries in 24 charts
Si No Estas
Inigo Quintero
283 entries in 17 charts
Greedy
Tate McRae
621 entries in 28 charts
Unwritten
Natasha Bedingfield
291 entries in 22 charts
Anti-Hero
Taylor Swift
615 entries in 23 charts
Cruel Summer
Taylor Swift
572 entries in 20 charts
Snooze
SZA
223 entries in 13 charts
Hear The Debut Single From The Narcotix, A West African Art-Folk Band Based In Brooklyn
New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Today The Narcotix shares its first official single, "John/Joseph" from the forthcoming EP Mommy Issues, which the band will self-release on June 11.
The Narcotix is a West African art-folk band based in Brooklyn, with feathers all over. It is many-limbed and limber, a five-piece with voices, guitars, bass, keys and drum set. Reverb-laden vocals blur and swell in dissonant intervals, buoyed by a riverbed of shimmering Congolese guitar riffs, thumping P-bass, cavernous synths and traphouse hi-hats. The result is a compelling musical statement whose relationship to identity is as fraught, complex and ever-changing as anything else in this time.

Composers Esther Quansah (guitars, vocals) and Becky Foinchas (keys, vocals) met in an elementary school chorus class in the ghostly woodlands of Woodbridge, Virginia. The daughters of African immigrants (Quansah from Cote D'Ivoire and Foinchas from Cameroon), they soaked up influences as far-flung and varied as choral symphonies, African wedding music, and progressive math rock, distilling them through a unique lens.

While attending the University of Virginia, Foinchas and Quansah met Sierra Leonean guitarist Adam Turay, showing him their compositions and bonding over a shared love of both avant-pop music like early Grizzly Bear and Stereolab and African music like the intricate soukous guitar rhythms of Koffi Olomide and the pulsing chimurenga of Thomas Mapfumo. They became interested in applying these ideas to popular western forms, using unconventional ways to arrive at accessibility. The nascent Narcotix found a home in the DIY venues and house shows of Charlottesville and Richmond, merging meticulous, vocal-driven arrangements with raucous performances.

Quansah, Foinchas and Turay relocated to Brooklyn in 2017, developing their West African-inspired psych-folk concept and playing at clubs and venues like Rockwood Music Hall, C'mon Everybody, Berlin and Mercury Lounge. Galvanized by these live experiences, the Narcotix embarked on tours from Brooklyn to SXSW, driving through the American South in the midst of significant political upheaval and touring the Bay Area and L.A. a year later.

The full ensemble came together after a few years in the city. The Narcotix met N.Y. native Jonathan Joseph in Bushwick's thriving neo-soul scene, instantly drawn to his love of trap music, his appreciation for D.C.'s go-go music, and gospel chops honed by playing in his grandfather's church every Sunday in Far Rockaway. New England Conservatory alum Jesse Heasly rounds out the rhythm section, his pocket bass playing and avant-garde sensibilities providing an ideal complement to the music.

Mommy Issues was recorded in a quarantine-fugue state at the exquisite GB's Juke Joint in Long Island City (Samia, La Vida Bohème, Vicentico). It is a culmination of boyish triumph and charm, belied by mesmerizing snapshots of contemplation and isolation not specific to this time. It is a collection of spectral elegies for the living, a macabre homage to Brothers Grimm folklore through an Afromasochistic lens.






Most read news of the week


© 2001-2024
top40-charts.com (S4)
about | site map
contact | privacy
Page gen. in 0.5362091 secs // 4 () queries in 0.005232572555542 secs


live