Neu Jed Nayef

: Jed Nayef
Based: New York
Listen: Soundcloud.com/jednayef
Similar To: Nzca/Lines, Kindness

Music will always have its outsiders. Self-professed weirdos murmuring pensive diatribes lurk in every dark recess of Soundcloud ready to ensnare unsuspecting ears. However, it’s slightly rarer to come across someone who balances their eccentricity with a healthy dollop of talent. Which is where New Yorker Jed Nayef steps in.

His debut track, ‘Freaks’, is a skulking blend of squelching breaks and dark, sultry murmurings. His lyrics, which sit confidently in the driving seat, are quietly poetic, pairing dystopian visions of crumbling empire with self-indulgent despair. It’s a mixture that might have been cloyingly narcissistic were it not for Nayef’s playfulness. His subject matter might be dark but his delivery is faultlessly light and wrapped in a reassuringly cynical lounge-noire sheen. Despite a growing swell of media interest, including frequent comparisons to Bowie, there’s little information on the project outside of some grainy press-shots and a typically uninformative Tumblr feed.

For now, it seems that this discrete New Yorker is happy to slip back into the shadows, leaving us with one of the most perfectly formed tracks of the year and the sense that something quite special is on its way.