Nail The Cross: Nite Jewel Mixtape

Over the last four years, Nail The Cross has established a reputation for promoting the best in ground-breaking new talent, often skewed and electronic but no less engaging. The arts & music festival, curated by No Pain In Pop and Lanzarote, heads east to The Shacklewell Arms for this year’s event with acts such as Pariah, D/R/U/G/S, Patten, Halls, Echo Lake, Doldrums and Sex Worker all on show.

Former No Pain In Pop artist, Nite Jewel, aka Ramona Gonzales, purveyor of giddy pop, veiled in electronic gauze, headlines the Saturday. A new single is forthcoming on Love Letters Ink, the offshoot label of San Francisco blog, Yours Truly, followed by an album on Secretly Canadian early next year. Dazed caught up with Ramona to get the lowdown on her preparations for Nail The Cross, as well her exclusive mix for us.

Dazed Digital: What are you expecting from Nail The Cross?
Nite Jewel: To reunite with my lovely London friends.  To play for music lovers and clued-in kids.  To begrudgingly touch base with some industry-ers.

DD: What will your new material / live show entail?
Nite Jewel: The new material we will play at Nail The Cross is drawn from our second album, which sees release 2012 on Secretly Canadian.

DD: How did the Yours Truly / Love Letters Link link up come about?
Nite Jewel: Will from Yours Truly is a fan and approached us about doing a release about a year and a half ago.  He pressed us to get into the studio and set up some dates last January and filmed the whole deal. This became the catalyst for finishing our album.

DD: How did the songs evolve?
Nite Jewel: Over the course of two years from notepads to several different studios, including our home studio where we did all the editing.

DD: Tell us about your mixtape.
Nite Jewel: This mixtape features songs I have been obsessing over recently coupled with old classics that have seen their way back on to my music player.  I featured two new artists that I have been listening to a
lot of late: Connan Mockasin and Thundercat.

TRACKLIST
1. The Farther Away I Am - Daryl Hall
2. One Mo' Gin - D'Angelo
3. One On One - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
4. Summer Clouds -- Joël Vandroogenbroeck
5. It's Choade My Dear -- Connan Mockasin
6. First Punk Wars - Iron Curtain
7. Fleer Ultra - Thundercat
8. Accordion - Madvillain
9. Honky Tonk - Miles Davis
10. Is It A Star - Hall & Oates
11. You - Earth & Fire