Ramona Gonzalez is a prolific songwriter from California who makes synth pop (with a dollop of funk), under the name Nite Jewel. Ahead of her first NZ shows, she talked to Tony Stamp about her distrust of technology, and 'updating her inner female dialogue'.
Nite Jewel Photo: supplied
Ramona Gonzalez is enthused. Asked about her first recordings, she launches into a vivid account of a mock radio show she made when she was nine, featuring music she'd written herself. On the line from her home in California, she's wryly funny, and more passionate than you might expect from someone who once labelled their music 'liquid cool'.
That music can be hard to summarise. It's defiantly DYI, even after eight years in the game, with a lo-fi approach to electronics that's somewhat outside the norm. And for an independent artist her influences are notably mainstream – she cites Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson as musical inspirations.
It’s these two seemingly contradictory impulses that define her output over the last eight years, a vaguely nostalgic strain of synth pop with a healthy dollop of funk.
Her husband, producer Cole MGM, has worked with Ariel pink, Nx Worries, The Lonely Island, and Charlotte Gainsbourg. He got his start in 2008 when he and Ramona laid down the first Nite Jewel song on a vintage 8-track tape machine.
Casting her mind back, Ramona says “We’d been married for a little bit. We were married very young. So by the time I recorded as Nite Jewel we’d had a working musical relationship for about a year and a half. It was very much in motion, our ability to work together.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t cry many times when he would criticize what I would do, because I was so sensitive! Now I don’t break down any more, which is nice because it’s been like eight years”.
The intriguing press release for Nite Jewel's latest album Real High talked about Ramona ‘updating her inner female dialogue’. She elaborates: “In Nite Jewel I’m able to engage with my feminine side a little bit more, and become more soft and sensual in the way I relate to others.
“A lot of my songs are about introspection.”
Another recurring theme is a distrustful attitude towards technology.
“Technology is a powerful thing. It can be an amazing asset to being creative, and being a human. But I feel that the way one engages with technology nowadays is really problematic. And it’s not the fault of the user, it’s the fault of the design.
"The fact that we’ve created a computer that is so fast and so small and we spend most of the time scrolling through photos of protein shakes is really depressing.
"Considering how advanced the technology is that we have, little is being done to further our lives in a positive way. Rather it’s impacting us in a lot of negative ways.
"And as a female artist dealing with imaging, and the whole way I relate to technology… yeah, it’s complicated! Since the early days of Nite Jewel this has been a common theme.”
Click below to see Ramona on Fact TV’s Against The Clock series. She says of the experience “I was dying. Oh my god I was so nervous”.
