Musician Spotlight: Noga Erez

Single-minded and razor-sharp, Tel Aviv’s Noga Erez has just released her politically-charged debut single, “Dance While You Shoot”, accompanied by a suitably striking, dystopian video. The grainy textures and potent atmospheres forged with her synths and ingenious beats bravely straddle genres, energised further by the environment in which she’s grown up.

She describes the hypnotically percussive “Dance While You Shoot”, as being about the globally–relevant realisation that “you can’t live without the government that ensures your basic needs, but at the same time takes your money, keeps you in the dark about the real, important matters that affect your life directly, while drowning you in manipulative media, ignorance and bureaucracy.” For Noga Erez, there was never any doubt that, whatever music she chose to make, and whatever she felt about her homeland, she could never ignore her surroundings. After all, even escapism acknowledges there’s something to escape from, and at times – like many who’ve grown up in Tel Aviv – Erez has wanted to shut herself off from a world rendered beyond comprehension by forces beyond her control.

The accompanying video was directed by Zhang + Knight and shot in Kiev, Ukraine. “We wanted to make a video that showed everything associated with violence and corruption coupled with a soft, sweet visualisation” Erez explains. “The idea of using the color pink to soften the disturbing images was inspired by photography works from Richard Mosse’s ‘Infra’ series, and images from the 2011 Kampala riots in Uganda where protestors were sprayed with pink paint.” Uncompromising and unpredictable, sophisticated and bold, Noga Erez is clear about her ambitions.

Patrick Miller
Photo: Tonje Thilesen

Click here to find Noga Erez on Facebook.