Nuha Ruby Ra: Blending The Experimental

Mar 3

Mar 3 Nuha Ruby Ra: Blending The Experimental

If there was an award for the hardest-working musician in the UK right now, Nuha Ruby Ra would certainly be among the nominees. Having spent 2022 on the road supporting the likes of Yard Act, Warmduscher, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard and Viagra Boys, in addition to an intensive schedule of festival slots, the artist has also been busy putting the finishing touches to her brand new EP ‘Machine Like Me’ set for release on Brace Yourself Records on March 17th.

Ahead of the release of the record, I was lucky enough to catch up with Nuhu on a rare day off, just days after her short tour across the UK as part of her ambassadorial role for Independent Venue week. “Sleep, that’s probably the biggest thing I crave and going to find some trees,” she explains as we discuss in jest how she typically kicks back after time out on the road. “Staying in one place, just living in a hoodie or pyjamas, just all of that good stuff.”

My first experience with Nuha Ruby Ra was back in 2021 during a day festival in Leeds, with stages set between various venues within the city. On the line-up, was now Grammy and Brit award winners, Wet Leg, who played a small room in Headrow House just days after the release of ‘Chaise Lounge’, however, it was Nuha’s performance from earlier in the day that stayed with me. Truly unique, it was the embodiment of raw, DIY, punk energy and was possessed of an intensity I am yet to see replicated anywhere else. “My start in music was through art. I went to art school and I was interested in sound art and I started to explore that,” she explains as we discuss the foundations of her career within the music industry. A true autodidact, she taught herself everything she knows and only decided relatively recently that music should act as her primary occupation. “It wasn’t until a few years ago that I felt a real want to make music but I wanted to make it in my own way.”

““I produced ‘Machine Like Me’ with two people; Ben Hillier and Simon Milner... It was more to help me while I demoed some tracks but as we carried on working on things we thought these are actually sounding pretty good””

Her new EP ‘Machine Like Me’ is the embodiment of Nuha’s independent spirit and marks a great creative leap forward from her previous release ‘How To Move’. Blending experimental instrumentation with her sharp-tongued lyricism, the record takes on an industrial quality and explores a range of different genres from post-punk to electronica. On ‘Self Portraiture’, one of the lead singles taken from the EP, the artist sings “I take the place of six men / and I keep doing it and doing it and doing it again” – on this record she fully actualises that sentiment, standing proudly alone and in the spotlight.

Co-producing the project and playing almost everything across its six tracks, this is the truest representation of Nuha Ruby Ra the artist to date. “It wasn’t my intention when I first started writing the songs,” she explains of the decision to create a record almost exclusively independently. Originally she’d planned to demo and in turn find collaborators to play on the record, much like the process that went into putting together her previous release ‘How To Move’. However, when the tracks began to take shape she thought “it would be a really fun challenge to play all the instruments myself.’

Discussing her relationship with her close collaborators and the small team that helped put together the EP, Nuha explains, “I produced ‘Machine Like Me’ with two people; Ben Hillier and Simon Milner. Simon is a good old friend of mine, a really brilliant musician and producer and I started to work with him as an engineer first. It was more to help me while I demoed some tracks but as we carried on working on things we thought ‘these are actually sounding pretty good’, so then he stepped into a co-producer role with me.”

The result of the project is something truly unique and boundary-pushing however, as Nuha outlines. “This was not about perfection, it was about my own exploration of creating certain types of sonic structures and exploring different sonic architecture and seeing what I could do with those,” she explains. Dense and expansive, the tracklist offers an immersive listening experience and rewards attentive consumption as it displays the full kaleidoscope of Nuhu’s sonic palette. Thematically, the project takes aim at several targets including the amalgamation of a lifetime of obnoxious men in bands, the doubters and all of those other obstacles that she has had to overcome as she has moved through her musical career. Tackled with a wry smile and acerbic flair, Nuha makes light work of all of these topics in what is her most confident release to date.

Listening to the record, a range of influences clearly permeate the artist’s work, most notably the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten and The Birthday party, who have always held a special place in her heart. “Birthday Party was my entry point for anything to do with Nick Cave, there were a lot of things that really weren’t correct about the sound and not technically right, there was a real ugliness to the music that was very real and very raw,” she says. “Nick Cave’s voice at the time technically wasn’t great either but, this is one of my favourite voices because I can feel that person and that’s all I ever want from any musician or artist.”

These elements of Nuha’s influence have clearly infiltrated her persona as a performer today. Her music rallies against the idea of traditional commerciality in favour of the pursuit of the avant-garde and the progression of the art form. “The ambition of making the music hasn't come from a place of wanting to be a massive pop star but from making something that has real feeling in it, that really means something, that it can deeply connect with people,” she explains passionately.

““It [music] has the strongest power to move people. It evokes memories, it evokes feelings of joy, sadness and ecstasy. There isn’t another form of art that moves people and means as much to people as music””

As Nuha moved away from the pursuit of art in a visual capacity, she very quickly grasped the fundamental value, intrinsic to the form of music. “At some point, I have discovered that music is the most potent form of art,” she says, before pausing to think. “It is the one that has the strongest power to move people. It evokes memories, it evokes feelings of joy, sadness and ecstasy. There isn’t another form of art that moves people and means as much to people as music.”

It’s for that reason Nuha Ruby Ra is truly a breath of fresh air in an industry that stands bereft of funding; individuals like her will inevitably become fewer and further between as time goes on and room for artistic flair is brushed aside in favour of streaming numbers and album sales. However, for the time being, we have the opportunity to enjoy the work of a true multi-hyphenate. Nuha Ruby Ra has it all… and her upcoming EP is an indication that she is only just scratching the surface yet.