Ntu
2021 HEAR US Awardee
Ache-filled elegies, knuckle-dragging beats, and ethereal electronics comprise Ntu's singular brand of R&B, rock, and soul: where the visceral meets the cerebral. Through song, dance, theater, and visual splendor, Ntu offers a world that is poetic and animate, replete with Black sensual matter.
Project
Rememory
Rememory is an expanded version of my debut EP Perfect Blue, made in collaboration with friends and artists across New York's underground electronic music scene. The project takes its name from Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved. I use “rememory” to extend the visual, sonic, and choreographic worlds of my music through new tracks and videos—similar to how techno duo Drexciya extended the life stories of Black persons drowned in transit during the Transatlantic Slave Trade through writing new Black Atlantean myths. I'm not interested in revisionism; I'm a bit interested in forgetting; I'm most interested in communal remembrance and restoration. "Konke," for example, is a song about the marvel of Black friendship through time. On the original Perfect Blue EP, “Konke” is a frenetic ballad comprised of R&B, gospel, electronic, and industrial elements. On Rememory, Nohri’s remix of “Konke” distills the spiritual ecstasy of the original and smatters it across an IDM track that sounds like it’s sputtering out of blown-out speakers. The original “Konke” embodies some fear, some sense of precarity, in Black living. The remix lets it all go.
