NOMI RUIZ - Love Louder

Who says grief can only be processed through the same old sad ballad? Or that post-pandemic nightlife in modern-day New York has to bow to the exhaustion of the most ruthless gentrification? Sure, life flows on relentlessly, and it's impossible not to notice the scars it leaves, etched both on skin and in the heart. But electronic music has a flip side, a cathartic force all its own, sometimes subtle enough to slip past unnoticed beneath a steady 4/4 pulse — and that's exactly the explicit message of this record, titled like an exhortation: "Love Louder". Far from being a simple dancefloor-filling racket, the record gracefully strings together a sequence of silky beats and crystalline melodies, shifting from the emotion of a goodbye to the anger and regrets of love, and on to the most languid and unsettling nocturnal sensuality — because life arrives all at once, and it's not up to us to decide the order of its troubles.

Two veterans of New York's underground scene now piece the fragments back together in their own way: Eli Escobar, DJ and promoter, today also the head of his own club, and Nomi Ruiz, the warm, melted-butter voice once known as Jessica 6 and, before that, a member of Hercules & Love Affair.

The two have been collaborating for years — their first encounter on tape dates back to 2011 — but "Love Louder" finally crowns their synergy: house music, of course, now rough and street-smart, now sun-kissed in a Balearic glow, framed by gusts of lounge atmosphere and mechanical blips, but also with notable echoes of 1980s synth-pop tension, making for a pulsing yet at times inscrutable and solitary listen. Nomi — a natural nocturnal presence, a skilled songwriter and vocalist raised on soul food, R&B and hip-hop — rides every style and genre with versatility. The result doesn't assault the casual listener or scream hype from every pore; instead, it lets the emotion seep through little by little.

That's exactly what happens with the majestic title track, inspired by soul singer and keyboardist Donny Hathaway, pleading and melodramatic over threads of electric piano and drum machine, written in memory of a mutual friend (DJ Blu Jemz, who passed away in 2018), or with the desperate "Full Fantasy", as urgent as a Pet Shop Boys number, caught between emotional urgency and breathless backing vocals. The hypnotic "Blindside" even thrashes about over a merciless, Moroder-esque groove to offset the bitterness of its lyrics, while the foul-mouthed, aggressive "Juice" is cut from a very different cloth, squared-off and robotic like a New Order machine, and the introspective "Glitter And Gold" offers a sidelong glance at the queer nightlife of days gone by.

But the record also knows how to turn emotionally dark: underscored by hypnagogic brushstrokes that seem to come straight from the vintage hands of Dâm-Funk, "Go Be Gone" lets Nomi become a desolate, reflective muse, while over the slow pace of "The Spell", a tearful synth ballad in the vein of Desire/Chromatics, the theme turns toward a love gone to ruin. The record reaches its compositional and production peak with the frenzied "Heathens", built with a hip-hop edge and darkwave pattering over a shimmering house pulse you can almost feel under your fingertips, with Nomi this time acting, panting, pleading and threatening, playing with shifts in rhythm as if she were the star of a cabaret act.

Eli named his own club Gabriela in honor of a friend who passed away during the pandemic, and on his own he keeps producing the most varied work, even dabbling in ambient and sound collage. Nomi has been kicking around the scene for two decades without ever getting the recognition she deserves. Two lost souls against the backdrop of a loud, distracted New York, as the music industry races past them without a second glance. And yet it's precisely here that their music breathes and flexes its muscles, in everyday situations, in the flow of a life that can be cruel and merciless, to be met, always and only, with two words: "Love Louder".

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02/06/2025