Nasimiyu

elf-taught composer/vocalist Nasimiyu brings forth her eclectic musicality with the dynamic force of her backing band, The Many Moons. These songs extend beyond the bounds of genre-specific classification, fluently slipping in and out of different stylistic tongues, to embody an over all sound that is imaginatively fearless, vivaciously timeless, and colorfully untameable. - Liberator Magazine

New Orleans is famous for its music, but many outsiders find the city synonymous with only certain genres and styles. Flying under the radar of trendy press coverage of artists featured in HBO’s Treme and bounce on late night television, is a diverse and tight knit movement of young emerging artists with an intelligent world view and unique, genre-bending talent.


The New Orleans Healing Center on St. Claude Ave. has become a something of a symbol of “new” New Orleans. The mixed media community center feels like the perfect place to meet with Nasimiyu Murumba and Jeremy Phipps. It’s midday on a Saturday, and the Cross Roads artist’s market is in full swing in the center’s front lobby. Nasimiyu greets me with a big hug, and as I ask her about her CD release party the night before, she eyes a necklace made from a reclaimed piano hammer at one of the craft tables. She introduces me to Jeremy, and we make our way over to Fatoush, the organic cafe in the Healing Center, to talk over iced coffee.

Much like the venue where we meet, the duo, who perform together as Saint Bell and in Nasimiyu’s solo project, represent a coming together of New Orleans heritage and fresh perspective that is much like the current social climate of the city.

Jeremy grew up in New Orleans while Nasimiyu moved here just three years ago.

“I actually came here to visit. I planned a week-long trip. I wanted to see the sights that I had been reading about in jazz history books, you know? I wanted to go to Congo Square and I wanted to explore the Tremé neighborhood. I got here and I realized after a couple days that there was no turning back and I stayed. That was August of 2009. I never planned on living here, it just kind of chose me and kept me. “

Like many young millenials, both Nasimiyu and Jeremy are self-educated.

“I have been writing songs . . . from when I was four years old, I have recordings of songs that I was making up. And then I really got serious about writing songs and getting into song structure at seven and have been writing my whole life. I’ve always been a self-taught musician, as well. Not by choice, but out of necessity because I wasn’t really a part of a family that supported the arts,” She reflects matter-of-factly, as she finishes her iced coffee.

“I taught myself piano at the age of 13 or 14, and I taught myself guitar at 16 and have just been trying to learn and grow organically, studying all different kinds of musical eras and forms and genres: Everything from classical to movie scores to theatrical soundtracks to, like we talked about jazz, global music . . . anything that can fuel my learning process. So, New Orleans was a really important chapter in that. If you can start to understand the roots of American music, in its baby form, you know, you can understand so much more about where that lead to. “

“I didn’t start playing music until I was about 14 or 15, but you know, living in New Orleans you just hear music and hear brass bands and just hear music playing all the time and live bands. They had a big part in my inspirations and where they came from, “ said Jeremy, comparing their experiences. He had a more creative family, but was still compelled to forge his own path.

“ I always tried to branch out. I never was school taught. My mama’s a painter, my daddy’s a painter and a poet. I have a couple of brothers that rap and a brother that plays saxaphone and a sister that sings. I’m thinking that had a big part in me playing music, but it was more like being motivated and sitting and practicing and, like really going inside myself, not taking it from other places. “

What’s most fascinating about Nasimiyu’s experience in her short time here is how the goals for her music changed so drastically, and not in the direction most would expect.

“I came here because I was interested in the tradition and at the time, my background was in doing trad jazz. That’s what I wanted to perform, that’s what I wanted to do, and that’s what I studied with the musicians that were here. I just really wanted to learn about those roots. Since I got here, I then did a 180 because I started to ask myself the question: At one time, New Orleans was a part of an artistic renaissance, and that’s what we keep celebrating, but that’s because somebody had the innovation and the ingenuity to make that artistic renaissance to happen in the first place.“

This is something the young singer has clearly given a lot of thought, and though she arrived in New Orleans seeking the roots of American music, she’s now a part of a movement of local creatives who are anxious to branch out.

“So what happened New Orleans? Are we just going to keep on recreating this same thing? Or are we going to keep looking around at all of the creative energy still that’s just as alive? Are we going to focus on innovating? Let’s talk about New Orleans not just being this really musically interesting place of the past. Let’s do it in the present, as well, and let’s keep doing it again in the future. Let’s continue inventing, why not? So I did a complete 180 in the time that I’ve been here. “

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This is part of the premise of the title track of Nasimiyu’s debut album, Rules Aren’t Real. Whether in street culture or a conservative upbringing, people often feel trapped by the social standards that have surrounded them. The young artists emerging in New Orleans right now are creating music that reflects their desire to move into unexpected territory and make something that is truly their own.

“That’s what I mean by ‘Rules Aren’t Real’ is that people don’t see that this idea that they have of what society tells them is just what society tells them, “ Nasimiyu explains.

“It’s not naturally what they came out of the womb thinking. As long as you can make the separation and know that you were told this and by whom and know why you were told this, then you’re clear, and you should be able to make your own decisions about how much you want to believe and internalize. I’ve been surrounded by a lot of people in my life who internalize it to a degree where they’re not familiar with the fact that they’ve just been indoctrinated and that they’ve never taken a step outside of their own culture, really. You take a step outside of your culture to see how much of that is specific to your experience and how much further you can push your own explorations if you kind of look at it from the outside, and say, ‘that’s just a book I read.’ Do you know how many more books there are in the world? Even more importantly than that, there are blank pages! That’s what life is about. Read all of the books, and then write your own. “ - Nola Defender

Paper Diamond, the new venture (formed in 2011) for Pretty Lights and associated artist Alex B, just released its new EP Wavesight EP on May 3 and debuted its first music video on MTV on May 9.

Now, before you get too excited, Paper Diamond aka Alex B is a Colorado-based act, but apparently he has no shortage of NOLA love.

The first video debuted for the EP this week features local singer Nasimiyu Murumba (aka Nasimiyu) and local, well, er, locations (with at least Magazine Street being clearly identifiable.)

Perhaps more important than my love of New Orleans architecture and street scenes, however is my love of New Orleans’ artists. Nasimiyu is a versatile artist who mixes genres and styles and is on a mission to poetically portray the world around her. In my humble opinion, her feature on Paper Diamond’s track doesn’t allow her to truly shine – she’s a bigger artist and more soulful singer than this video suggests, so be sure to check out her solo stuff. Her full album is due out this summer – June 23rd to be exact.

While you wait with baited breath for her album to drop, you can enjoy this amuse bouche from Paper Diamond with its smorgasbord of color, heavy beats, and dazzle. Bonus points to anyone who can identify all of the exact locations featured in the video.

Be sure to follow Nasimiyu on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, - InvadeNOLA

Maybe you've seen her causing a commotion in her hometown New Orleans, or opening for badass hard rock band The Memorials. AP member Nasimiyu is sharing her "fresh, dancey, gender-bending, flirtatious, and deliciously Afro-Punk track" 'Spooks' with us as a free download. Ain't that nice? Get your free mp3 below! - AfroPunk.com

Nasimiyu stands sweating shoulder-to-shoulder in a mass of dancing strangers, bouncing to the triumphant rhythm of trumpets, trombones, sousaphones and stomping feet as a gang of brass musicians march down weathered streets. She waves her arms in the air, releases any pinned-up anxieties, and lets the collective beat pulse through her body, embracing the crowd’s celebratory energy. This is exactly what she came to New Orleans for.

“At that moment, right then and there, I was like ‘Fuck, I can never live anywhere else now.’ I knew I wasn’t turning back,” says Nasimiyu. She leans in close, her voice charmingly animated, as she recounts to me her first second-line experience. “I went all alone, and I’m just retaking the streets and dancing with all these people, reclaiming the space,” she says. “At that point I felt like I was married to this place…I knew could never enjoy living anywhere else because I needed this in my life.”

This was September 2009, at the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club’s annual Labor Day second line. Nasimiyu Murumba, the singer, songwriter, pianist, and producer from Minneapolis, has now lived in New Orleans for nearly three years and is in no hurry to leave. Her songs have been greatly influenced by her new locale. In 2010, she released the EP It Ain’t Pretty, But It’s Beautiful, which pays tribute to her initial encounters in New Orleans, both good and bad. Since then her songs and sound have grown even more, and on Friday she’s releasing her first full-length album Rules Aren’t Real and celebrating with a release party at the Big Top.




Nasimiyu is one busy artist—intimidatingly so. She sits comfortably in a loose tank on an early Sunday afternoon outside of her favorite coffee shop Cafe Envie. It’s a lively caffeine haunt at the edge of the Quarter that attracts everyone from poets to tourists to heroin-addled hustlers. Her hair, a globe of ultra-curly ringlets, is a perfect reflection of the personality she exudes—quirky, bold and uninhibited. Sipping on a peppermint tea, a miraculous remedy for any sore throat, as she tells me, Nasimiyu passionately details the countless projects with which she’s currently involved, while remaining nonchalant about the extensiveness of her activities. Besides the band she leads, she’s also one half of the duo Saint Bell along with singer/songwriter Jeremy Phipps (who in turn plays trombone in her band). This January, she became the director of a new theatre program called “InterAct”, which is based on a program that originated in Minneapolis that engages adults with disabilities in the performance arts—from song and dance to acting and improvisation. Her eyes light up and her smile extends as she tells me about the participants’ “big personalities” and calls them “improvisational geniuses,” asserting that they can outdo any one of their instructors in that category. The artistic everywoman also serves as a vocalist in the funk band MinuteHead led by Tulane student and guitarist Elliott Slater, and she recently joined a jazz quartet called The Rainy Days.

“[Music] was the first interest that I ever had,” the Nasimiyu says. “When I was three or four, I can remember using anything for a stage—a couch, a picnic table, anything I could stand on—and using anything for a mic, like a hairbrush or what have you,” she adds, imitating pretending to hold an air mic in her hand. She was as ambitious in her childhood as she is now. She still has recordings of the first songs she ever wrote, from the age of four. When her parents denied her music lessons at 10 years old, she took it upon herself to learn piano on a “dinky Yamaha keyboard” using its pre-loaded classical music demos. Her first experiences on stage came with Cirque Rouge, the first traveling burlesque troupe in the Twin Cities, when she was eighteen. She started out performing ballet numbers and eventually began singing with the troupe’s house jazz band. “I’ve always been drawn to jazz, old soul like Billie Holiday and Jack Kerouac and people who were really influential in the sixties,” she explains, “so it’s not at all something that I think about, its just something that’s a part of me and no matter what, every time I open my mouth, something jazzy comes out.”

In the three years since her spontaneous move to New Orleans, Nasimiyu has held a series of “bizarre” jobs in the city, and she recounts anecdotes of working late nights on Bourbon Street, traveling with cabaret troupes, working alongside tarot card readers and fortune tellers, and performing “crazy—I mean crazy” gigs. In fact, it was one of her bizarre jobs that solidified her desire to relocate to the Crescent City.



“I never decided to move to New Orleans,” she says, “it just happened.” Having read numerous histories of jazz, Nasimiyu set out on a solo “pilgrimage” to its homeland in summer 2009. “It was kind of akin to a Muslim traveling to Mecca to make that big pilgrimage to the birthplace of what they worship,” she says. She had seven days scheduled for the trip, and on the third day, while exploring the French Quarter, she was snapping a photo of a “Help Wanted” sign outside of a voodoo shop on St. Peter Street, a token for her friends back at home who had nicknamed her “Voodoo.” Intrigued, she went inside and chatted up the owners, eventually inquiring about the sign. Within a few minutes, they’d written down a schedule for her to begin training for the position that same week—before she’d even had a chance to reveal that she was only a visitor. The curious side of her couldn’t pass up the opportunity. “Studying cultural anthropology taught me that these are exactly the kind of experiences that I wanted to look for in my life,” she says. “I kind of viewed it as an internship. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can work at a voodoo shop in New Orleans? That’s the perfect way to study this culture!” At first she thought she’d only try it out for a couple of weeks, then weeks turned into months and months turned into permanent residency. Her experiences at the voodoo shop influenced much of the songs on her EP, in both major and minor ways.

“You don’t choose New Orleans, it chooses you,” she tells me. “To some people it just says, ‘Oh no, you’re mine now, you can’t leave.”

She had a lot of stage experience under her belt before coming to New Orleans, but in some ways she has Bourbon Street and karaoke to thank for getting her comfortable in front of an audience. For over a year, she held down a job as a stage host at a gaudy karaoke bar, the standard Bourbon Street joint locals know and avoid so well. “I logged 25 hours of stage time a week…as crazy as that experience was and as unpleasant as it was almost 100 percent of the time, it really wiped out any stage fright I ever could’ve had,” Nasimiyu says. It also fostered an ability to cater to any audience with ease, to engage any crowd no matter how diverse…or intoxicated.

She notes the irony of her situation. “I always felt like it was a really weird anomaly that I was a part of. I spent all my days at my piano banging out as many original songs as I could, and then I spent all night singing other people’s songs. That’s how I would describe my experience thus far in New Orleans: making a living singing other people’s songs so that I could eventually work on my own.”

“I feel so wonderful to have left Bourbon Street in my past,” she says, “I learned what I needed from it.”

Low funds tested Nasimiyu’s dedication, but she put forth a strenuous effort to make the album happen, and throughout a grueling year of odd gigs and undesirable diets, she survived while putting her music first. “The most difficult part [of releasing this album], hands down, has been funding,” she says. “I’ve been completely on my own. I worked some crazy gigs to fund this album, and I gave up every luxury for over a year—I mean every luxury you can think of. I even gave up basic necessities so that I could build this album because to me, getting this off my chest was to me a basic necessity, more than rent, more than food,” she says. “Thank God for free red beans and rice night! That’s all I have to say!” she declares with a humble laughter that lightens the serious tone.

“I’ve just found a way to be thankful for it,” she adds, “because it has allowed me to look back and be proud that I made such a sacrifice for something that was so important to me.”



Now she’s finally able to see the product of her hard work culminate with her debut album, one that is politically charged, sonically diverse, eclectically original, and authentically Nasimiyu.



“I just exercised no restraint. I said, ‘Your album is your room in which you may do whatever you feel the need to do, and you don’t need to tone yourself down or accommodate anyone else. This is your space.’ And so I absolutely didn’t allow any of those outside voices who were trying to push me in one direction or another because I knew this was my creative space.”

She credits the Music Shed’s Ben Lorio, the album’s engineer, for resuscitating the project. “This record was on its deathbed a couple of months ago,” she admits. “It didn’t look like it was going to happen, and it wouldn’t have if Ben hadn’t come along and saved the day…He really just believed in me as an artist when a lot of people didn’t, and I have him to thank for that.”

She describes her sound on the new album as “colorful.” Nasimiyu doesn’t manifest one definable, signature sound or stick to a single era of influence. Some listeners argue that each song sounds like a different genre, and sometimes even a wholly different band.

“I think it’s fair for artists to be able to be multi-dimensional instead of being expected to fit so neatly into boxes all the time,” she adds. She compares it to a painter being limited to a specific palette of just a few colors. “Sure, it may be more marketable,” she says, “but you’re cheating yourself out of the rainbow of things you could be doing creatively. I tried for a while to stick to one thing and I just decided I’d be cheating myself out of having a full canvas to paint from as an artist.”

She admits some of the tracks can delve into strange territory, like the album’s opening track. “Some of the tracks on the album are super experimental and different, tracks I just recorded in my bedroom with GarageBand and no mic, experimenting with vocal layering and stuff,” she says. “Some of my musician friends were like, ‘Simi, it gets a little out there sometimes. I don’t think you want to include this,’ but those ended up being the songs that I was really excited to put out. The fact that it scares my friends, the fact that it freaks them out and makes them feel a little bit worried or uncomfortable…those were the songs that I felt I definitely couldn’t cut off the record, because those were the only songs that were just me, by myself, playing in my room at my purest.” She acknowledges that the songs are risky ones, “But I believe in risky art,” she says. “I don’t believe in making safe art at all…if you’re not taking a risk then you’re doing something wrong.”

Her lyrics are both intimate and universal. “The messages are basically dialogues I wanted to open with the world, and that I wanted people to open up with each other,” she says. “I knew that I didn’t want to make a record that was like, ‘Check me out and listen to all of my problems and what I’m doing with my romantic life right now,’” she says in an mocking tone. “‘No. I’m like, ‘Let’s talk about the political climate globally, let’s talk about societal pressures, let’s talk about what it means to be a woman and an artist.’ Those are the kinds of issues I brought to the table with this album because you only get a few chances in life to speak your peace.” And from the fervor in her voice and the way she unconsciously lays a fist down across the table as she elaborates, I can tell she’s passionate about these ideas and the philosophy embodied in record’s title track, “Rules Aren’t Real”.

Her favorite new song to perform is “War Paint”, an emotionally charged song during which she admits she often loses composure. “It’s got this super-hard driving energy, and it has so much emotional resonance for me. That’s the one song that I sometimes fall out of my chair singing. I just lose it, you know? Sometimes I don’t even sing that song into the mic. I just go to the front of the stage and yell it into the crowd, even towards the end, I just get so worked up.” Her voice is bold, ardent and at times angry. When she performs, as when she talks, she uses assertive hand gestures to complement her passion.

She hopes to inspire with some of her new works. “I feel like the most revolutionary changes that I’m able to make in this day and age as this individual that I am is to encourage people to find a revolution in themselves.” Nasimiyu reprimands the mainstream media for its current musical offerings and lack of substance, and even recommends psychiatric help to some of its producers. “When you turn on the radio, you won’t hear a single natural instrument, a single natural voice. You won’t hear anything real,” she says. “It just contributes to this culture that tells you that to be valuable in any way you have to be fake, and I want to change that.

“The music that is getting pumped down kids’ throats these days is toxic…All of the role models these kids have are just clinically insane. Like Lil’ Wayne? Come on!”

Her current artist inspirations include Theresa Andersson and Janelle Monae. She’s impressed with Andersson’s rapid creative progress and charmed by Monae’s ability to spark a cultural movement. “My standard of what you can do with music and how far you can grow has been just blown away by what [Andersson] has done,” says Nasimiyu. “I mean her last album Hummingbird, Go! was great, but the growth she’s exhibited between then and now is just sick.” As for as Monae, Nasimiyu remarks that what she’s created is “more than just music. It’s a movement, it’s a culture, it’s a community-building effort that she’s put together, and I would love my music to be at the center of some kind of building of community as well. That’s why the ’60s were so full of revolutionary energy. It was because of the art at the center of it all that was bringing people together.”





To gain creative inspiration, Nasimiyu often returns to that initial experience that attracted her to New Orleans. “Second lines refresh me in every way—spiritually, physically, creatively. I always feel like I’m just taking a big shower, like a fresh rinse,” she says. “I can just shake everything off and start fresh.” But she doesn’t seem lacking in creative energies as of late. “I’m already done writing the next album,” she says, then pauses—“and the next album, so I’m looking forward to getting back in the studio with Ben Lorio. My band tells me to take a break, but it’s so hard when they’re already ready and waiting.”

Of her ultimate musical goal, she says, gazing across the street contemplatively, “In the grand scheme of things, at the end of my career, if I can look back and see that I have put out bodies of work that are healing to people in the way that other people’s work has been healing to me…if I can just pay some of that back, some of what artists have done for me in my life, I’d be really happy.”

Right now though, she’s focusing on Friday night, releasing her first album, and reveling in the gravity of the personal accomplishment it represents.

“Up until releasing this album I never felt like I had contributed something to the world that would explicitly deliver the truth and wisdom that I worked so hard to gain in my lifetime. It’s like your whole life you work to gain clearer understandings, and are you just going to let it end with that or are you going to put it in the world so that it can last beyond you so that it can contribute to other people developing some clarity as well? I feel like everyday after this album is in the world and that it’s something beyond me, I can just breathe a little easier because I know that I’ve left a mark in a way that is redeeming.”

- Offbeat Magazine

Minneapolis native Nasimiyu Murumba (who performs under the mononym Nasimiyu) this year released her first full-length album, the sonically eclectic Rules Aren't Real. Besides performing with her backing band the Many Moons, she plays drums and sings in Saint Bell with trombonist Jeremy Phipps, she's in MinuteHead with guitarist Elliot Slater and in the jazz quintet Rainy Days. Murumba's also collaborating with Theresa Andersson and is involved with InterAct NOLA, a theater group for mentally challenged performers. She's happy being busy. "My schedule is completely full of exactly what I dreamed of doing for my whole life," Murumba says. — LaBorde - Gambit Weekly

One of my favorite listens of 2011 has been Nasimiyu’s EP, “It Ain’t Pretty, But It’s Beautiful.” This concept album captures the life-changing infatuation newcomers to our city often feel, the giddy, wallowing love that remains on tap for all of us, no matter how jaded or demoralized we might become. Even on a day when you’re absolutely fed up with New Orleans, when its tragedies and horrors have really gotten to you– maybe in a literal and personal way, or just emotionally– you can wander into an experience you’d never find elsewhere and fall back in love all over again.

Nasimiyu wrote, arranged and sang the music, a mix of funk and next-wave soul with a breathy folk twist, bookended by a French Quarter soundscape that includes the signature wheeze of the Natchez’ steam calliope. It’s a bittersweet realization, the awareness of being dreamily lost in an all-consuming and maybe unhealthy relationship with a place. “It was me combining the things I learned here musically, with the things I learned here personally,” Nasimiyu says. “The point at which a once-joyfully-intoxicated newcomer finds out how morbidly real the shit can get. The songs reflect experiences that were really really hard, and sometimes they do that in a way that makes you want to dance.”
Catching Nasimiyu live broadened my appreciation of her gifts. The crowd doesn’t necessarily want confession, they want a good time, and Nasimiyu onstage proves a capable and well-rounded frontwoman, someone who can rock a rowdy and even unbecomingly inebriated room. “In New Orleans,” she says, “for better or for worse, it’s all about the party. That’s great in terms of feeding off the crowd’s energy, making people dance, and having a good time. I’ve played the funnest shows of my life here. Sometimes, though, I feel like when I have some serious messages that I want to get across, they don’t always get as far as I’d like them to.

Her forthcoming album, “Rules Aren’t Real,” aims to dig a little deeper. The music’s not downbeat or less accessible, but the material I’ve heard from it has a heft, a richness and a new complexity; it’s more personal, marinated in the crockpot a little longer. There are cuts that will will rock the party, but there are also lyrics that will make you cock your head and contemplate.

“In the new album, I’m opening up to you about different philosophies and lessons I’ve learned, in a way that is not specific to any one place, experience, or period of time,” Nasimiyu says. “When I was making this album, I kept Assata Shakur’s statement in the back of my mind: ‘I don’t care who you are or what you do, when they put that microphone in front of you, try to make sure you have something worthwhile to say.’ I treated it like it was my only chance to communicate with the world.”
She hopes to get “Rules Aren’t Real” out sometime in February, if the fundraising and recording go as planned. “It’s really hard for me to have to wait that long, but my other projects keep me occupied enough so that I don’t get too terribly impatient.” Nasimiyu sets a hellacious pace, performing, recording and gigging with multiple groups including the intriguing La Nola Sirene, a duo with her best friend Jeelee. “It’s very different from my solo project with my band,” Nasimiyu says of La Nola Sirene. “It’s all acoustic, folky stuff that we bring to life just between the two of us.”

I’ve told everyone I know–catch Nasimiyu now, before she’s a $30 ticket at Snug Harbor. Catch her live and locally, before she’s locked into touring. “I’m a traveler at heart, always,” Nasimiyu says, and plans for an international tour are in the works for next year. It’s a privilege to watch her evolve as an artist, and there’s no doubt the best is yet to come… maybe as soon as February, when “Rules Aren’t Real” changes whatever we thought we knew about this fast-rising talent. - Juju Association

"Vocalist Nasimiyu Murumba came to New Orleans from the Twin Cities in 2009, and it’s clear from the title to the lyrical content of her EP that she’s set on making a new home, and making her music about it. It Ain’t Pretty but It’s Beautiful collects six of her original songs, and it’s obvious from song titles such as “Bayou Black” and “Swamp Foot” that she’s taken New Orleans as a point of departure. “Bourbon Street Blues” is a nice surprise; it replaces the frat-funk the title suggests with a noir-ish look at “wading through this garbage lagoon in your high-heeled shoes.” It ain’t pretty or beautiful, this time.

The music fits, for the most part, with the jazz-inflected neo-soul that artists such as Angie Stone and Alicia Keys made popular. Nasimiyu and her five-piece band bring music school precision and afterschool whimsy to those slow, breathy vocals and repetitive piano parts. They show a different musical side on “Fortune Teller,” which picks up the tempo, turns down the slickness, and lets the band cut loose a bit over a sixteen-bar blues form.

It Ain’t Pretty but It’s Beautiful is, truthfully, plenty pretty. There’s a lot of sonic space around and even inside the band throughout the songs. That gives it a live feel, and the EP begins and ends with street noise to give us a sense of the music’s place and ours with respect to it." - Offbeat Magazine