Ethan Kogan (drums), Hank Languish (laptop), Emmanuel Michael (guitar), Esteban Castro (piano), Nick Joz (bass), Steph Clement (trumpet)

Nu Music is a genre-bending experimental band rooted in jazz that uses everything from memes, movies, field recordings, car commercials, and original prose to blend the worlds of contemporary jazz improvisation and sample-based electronic music. Making nods to indie-rock, vaporwave, ambient and noise, the band—a collection of New York’s most breathtaking young improvisers and composers—creates thoughtful, lush, and loud music that meaningfully bridges gaps between styles and artistic disciplines.

he project attempts to metabolize the over-stimulated nature of our lived experience. Constant media consumption today serves as a baseline—one which numbs and pacifies us while illuminating some of the most profoundly intimate moments of our humanity. Nu Music uses these moments—in reels, social media posts, news reports, and even from recorded music itself—to architect narrative structures inside its performances. Improvising within, alongside, and against these sounds sampled from an endless scroll, something novel emerges. Something familiar becomes alien; something normally passive comes under our control; and in the music, something deeply personal takes definitive shape.