NOGA EREZ - MAGI MERLIN

“Makes politically charged dance music — throbbing stuff whose aggressive, cathartic force is only magnified by messages about power and independence.”

Noga Erez burst onto the scene with her debut album ‘Off The Radar’ in 2017, winning acclaim across the globe. While the music she makes in collaboration with her partner and co-producer Ori Rousso, exploits many of the more physical, dynamic elements of electronic, hip hop & pop music, it also embraces a cerebral sensitivity that’s made her one of her home city’s most exciting, idiosyncratic artists. The grainy textures and potent atmospheres forged with her synths and ingenious beats bravely straddle various genres. Her 2018 standalone singles “Bad Habits” and “Cash Out (feat. SAMMUS),” and 2019 collaboration with ECHO, “Chin Chin” as well as her 2021 album, KIDS, saw her continuing to forge a path of uncompromising and unpredictable, gritty, truth-seeking alt-pop. Noga’s style is a crisp bombastic sound. Her music explores themes of tension and release, anxiety and remedy, and masterly melodic licks in swipes of stomping brass, all wrapped around Noga’s versatile vocals that quick-switch from clipped flow to smoky purr; from stadium chorus to street-ready beats. 

MAGI MERLIN

Magi Merlin (MADGE-eye) grew up in Saint-Lazare, Canada. A place that may sound unfamiliar to you, but rest assured it is a lot closer to home than you realize. A wet dream created by people like Nixon in the 70s, a place for white folks, by white folks. The suburbs is the epitome of “normal” unless of course you replace white with black, straight with queer, that is when normalcy is challenged. This, amongst other subjects — such as the impact of capitalism on art, nepotism, the relationship one has to taking pleasure in belonging to those things while rejecting them all, is what drives and inspires the creative universe behind Gone Girl - Merlin’ latest and most audacious effort to date.The EP draws on influences from 90’s house, drum and bass, Motown, to acid-flecked hip hop. Merlin’s voice, alongside Funkywhat’s recognizable production style, reminds you of a smoky after hours club — if the windows were shattered by bass lines, the walls leveled by 808s. The self-described “cheeky nihilist” combines jazzy scats, raps, and breakbeats together in her musical cauldron to address issues like generational angst, fake friends and casual racism.

Funky and energetic — yet also confrontational and brooding and pained — Gone Girl shows Merlin equally capable of dazzling her fans with soulful dancefloor numbers as she is grabbing the mic and presiding queenlike over her ever-widening stage.