Mistletone

Artwork by Alex Fregon

NITE JEWEL TOUR DATES:

SYDNEY FESTIVAL: KRAFTWERK’S COMPUTER WORLD PERFORMED BY NITE JEWEL & PEANUT BUTTER WOLF. Sunday 27th January @ The Famous Spiegeltent, 11:30pm. Tickets on sale now from Ticketmaster.
** just announced! SYDNEY: THURSDAY JANUARY 31 @ Goodgod Small Club w/- Holy Balm + Buzz Kull + Astral DJs. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix.
BRISBANE LANEWAY FESTIVAL: Friday 1st February @ RNA, Fortitude Valley. Tickets + lineup info here.
SYDNEY LANEWAY FESTIVAL: Saturday 2nd February @ Sydney College Of The Arts, Rozelle. Tickets + lineup info here. Presented by Mistletone + FBi Radio.
MELBOURNE LANEWAY FESTIVAL: Sunday 3rd February Footscray Community Arts Centre. Tickets + lineup info here.
** just announced! MELBOURNE: MONDAY FEBRUARY 4 @ Workers Club w/- Fox + Sui + LA Nites DJs. Presented by Mistletone + LA Nights. Tickets on sale now from the venue. Doors open 7:30pm.

Mistletone, Street Press Australia, FBi and LA Nights present the first Australian tour by Nite Jewel. Led by Ramona Gonzalez, a glimmering LA four-piece will bring Nite Jewel’s sophisticated, playful jams to Melbourne & Sydney dancefloors for two delectable club nights (see above), as well as joining Laneway Festival‘s east coast run and teaming up with Stones Throw’s Peanut Butter Wolf to interpret Kraftwerk’s Computer World for a Krautrock Classics at Sydney Festival.

California native Ramona Gonzalez first began her transcendent minimalist dance-pop escapades in the privacy of her own home in Los Angeles. With the aid of her multitrack cassette recorder and whatever keyboards, drum machines, and other instruments that were available to her, she very quickly developed her own unique sound and began performing live in the L.A. area under the moniker Nite Jewel. Later teaming up with Cole Marsden Greif Neill (co-producer of Mature Themes by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and current engineer for Beck), Nite Jewel became a four-piece live act, touring with Little Dragon, DaM FunK and James Blake.

Nite Jewel moved from Ramona’s bedroom to stages worldwide in 2009, thanks to the nonchalantly good debut Good Evening. Since then, Ramona’s airy voice has found new gravitas and charisma, the synth lines have gotten more agile and the bass pops tighter and tighter, the stuttered 80s synth R&B melodies unfolding into one another in ways both giddy and deceivingly nonchalant.

This year’s polished sophomore LP One Second Of Love (out locally via Inertia), is even more impressive, featuring tracks like the angelic, washed out “Clive”, later remixed by Jimmy Tamborello (aka Dntel). One Second Of Love is a re-imagination of Golden-era R&B pop, positing future-classic sounds alongside vocal sultriness. If Nite Jewel’s earlier work brought to mind the likes of Lisa Lisa or Debbie Deb on quaaludes, this new body of work may conjure up clearer images of Sade, Eurythmics-era Annie Lennox and Tracy Thorn. Produced with Cole MGN, the entire affair is pure, confident, singular-but-intricate and delightfully sophisticated, bringing Nite Jewel’s evolution of fidelity and nuance to a dizzy head.

Nite Jewel’s collaborative credits are many… from remixing Caribou and HEALTH, to interpreting Kraftwerk’s Computer World with Stones Throw’s Peanut Butter Wolf, to covering Frank Ocean… Nite Jewel is both indelible and sublime.

• “Layered, smart headphone pop and meta-dance music that messes with the classic song structures of pop music… Ramona Gonzalez has created her own uniquely Nite Jewelian style” – LOS ANGELES TIMES
• “This is a kind of liminal music, fascinating because it’s so much closer to credible pop… intense (and) joyous, full of precision, engagement and life force” – NEW YORK TIMES