Nuha Ruby Ra - 'Fetish 2 Forget'
“Fetish 2 Forget” is the latest ensnaring single from East London’s eclectic noisemaker Nuha Ruby Ra.
Following last year's Machine Like Me EP, which gained critical acclaim and endless diamond-studded radio play by the much-revered BBC 6 Music gods, the promise of new music from this enigmatic artist is a thrill. Now with co-production credits as well as co-directing the video, she continually proves herself as a multi-faceted creative with a tantalisingly twisted vision. Her long list of captivating appearances already include sets at Glastonbury, The Great Escape, Green Man, SXSW, Manchester Psych Fest, and support slots with Warmduscher, Yard Act, Viagra Boys among many others, leaving many quickly learning how Nuha Ruby Ra is also a live act you don’t want to miss.
Rising from the ashes of this success, “Fetish 2 Forget” is a clashing post-industrial electronic erotic hellscape, with a music video to match. Nuha Ruby Ra embodies that metropolis warehouse rave lifestyle: raw, excessive, messy, endless guaranteed revelry.
Speaking on the single she says: “”Fetish 2 Forget” is a dance floor in a factory, with a few doms present ... with other thoughts on our minds ... the essence of the song lies in the lyric ‘Freaks trying hard at life / We’re dancing on the line / We pray to see the light / When we whisper in the dark’”.
Like the jagged unsettling music video, the track flashes between light and dark, angelic and demonic. As with the sharp cuts between unruly suggestive objects, her surly features, leather-gloved hands, and pops of PVC red, the track’s sonic backdrop is electronic bops of synthesiser and whips cracking, but it’s Nuha’s voice that does the talking, as a commanding whisper in your ear. It’s a very bodily-physical song but her vocals are more clearcut and refined, less tampered with than on previous tracks. The distorting nature of her style comes through though in the backing sounds and irregular tempos, to trip you up and haunt you, to leave you filled with intrigue.
Dark and dirty, dripping with allure without being overtly sexual, she plays with the juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, feeling good and feeling shame. She is the dominating figure here, with power over all men, she’s confident in her delivery. Nuha Ruby Ra is counterculture. A fascinating multi-talented artist that draws you into her world, this single is another cut from the underbelly of a city that never sleeps.
She goes on a short headline tour in April in celebration of her birthday and new music, including a home turf show at Moth Club that is destined to be a debauched night of pleasure you won’t ever want to forget. “Fetish 2 Forget” is out now via Brace Yourself Records.
Words by Alice Jenner
