Noga Erez

Tel Aviv-based producer, singer, and songwriter Noga Erez crafts experimental electronic pop that fuses daring sounds with sharp social observation. Her first album, the 2017 release Off the Radar, confronted hypocrisy, paranoia, and privilege through driving tracks whose style evoked M.I.A. and Flying Lotus. She expanded her scope on the 2021 follow-up Kids, tempering her steadfast outlook with a more inward-looking lens.

Erez entered the world one year prior to the outbreak of the Gulf War and spent her childhood studying piano and guitar before completing composition studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. At age eighteen she served as a military musician in the Israeli Defense Forces; once her service concluded she performed with the indie-folk outfit the Secret Sea and started a jazz trio. She soon decided her direction lay in electronic music, and in 2012 she began a creative partnership with producer Ori Rousso, who is also her life partner. The pair shaped an atmospheric, rhythm-centered aesthetic that framed Erez’s commentary on some of the most contentious subjects of the twenty-first century’s opening decades. In 2016 she appeared at the Rio Olympics within an official Israeli music showcase and signed with the Berlin label City Slang. That November the label released her debut single, “Dance While You Shoot,” which addressed the unease of residing safely beside conflict zones. Early the following year came “Pity,” prompted by the reported gang rape of a woman inside a Tel Aviv nightclub, and “Toy,” a critique of entitlement and privilege; all three tracks featured on Off the Radar, issued that June.

In the ensuing years she continued issuing singles, among them 2018’s “Bad Habits” and 2019’s “Chin Chin.” By 2020 Erez and Rousso were immersed in work on her next album, previewing it with tracks such as “Views” and “You So Done.” The resulting record, Kids, arrived in March 2021 and matched her striking productions with songwriting that adopted a closer, more personal stance toward the themes explored on her debut.