NÆ’s debut album, Push Button Future, has been applauded as “a dance-pop confection with a biting edge, commenting on modern-day issues of consumerism, commercialism, and influencer culture,” by Scapi Magazine. Her sharp wit and humor are balanced with levity, imagination, and a cosmic effervescence that is both captivating and clever.

IG & TikTok: @naesynthpop
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NAESYNTHPOP/

Be All End All

Strip! (Blizzle Album Remix)

Unicorn Party

Dacron Duvet

Runaway Bay / Bae

Get Off On Ur Msgz

Sugar Pumps

Press Only - Album Releases October 27th, 2023

NAE’s otherworldly, atmospheric dark pop album Isolazen is equal parts meditation, dream, and nightmare. This experimental voyage pulses with her own emotional reverie emerging from a state of forced catharsis.  

Isolazen transitions from NAE’s iconic caricatures and satirical pop sound of her 2021 album Push Button Future. The Isolazen project began when collaborators NAE (JaNae Contag) and Blizz (Ryan Black) recorded glassy synth washes and sharp, digital textures while coping with c*vid symptoms during the first month of the global health crisis in 2020. Contag and Black crafted the instrumentals as a way to purge their minds of health-related anxiety. 

In Isolazen, NAE's vocal style is marked by silky detachment, while being fiercely self-aware. NAE’s layered harmonies are a warm complement to Black’s estranged, alluring soundscapes. The sonics conjure imagery of peaceful rafts floating on water, creatures lurking in the forest, mid-century radio samples, and treacherous night drives. Black’s production leans heavily into both his sound design experience and jazz influence. He merges diegetic atmospheres with percussive arpeggiators, mutated synths, and wistful drum beats. The result is a constructed universe that conveys cinematic imagination and lush realism.

IG & TikTok: @naesynthpop
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NAESYNTHPOP/

Cave Searching

Wake Till Sleep

Synanapse

Hatchling

Raft Solitude

Life, Love, Laughter, LOL

Aching Silver

Waiting Acceptance

Walk Between

“Strip! The Original Strip Mall Shopping Video Game” is an interactive installation video game that the viewer plays using a motion sensor (Leap Motion) that responds to “credit card swiping” motions of the hand to collect and purchase items like food, toys, cosmetics, clothing, tickets, gas, and more. The scene in the background traverses moving aerial landscapes the artist “curated” from Google Satellite images of strip malls in the Midwest. The game’s objective is to accumulate an expensive shopping receipt as the user / viewer is rewarded for combinations (Date Night! or Taco Tuesday!) based on items purchased in sequence.

NÆ worked with Creative Developer, Nathan Glynn as well as Artist and Audio Engineer Ryan Black (Blizzle) to create this work in the Unity Game Engine. It has been exhibited at The Wilmette Theatre for the interactive Black’s Backbone performances, The North Park University Brandel Library, the Wilmette Chamber of Commerce, and at The Palatine Library.

The music that accompanies the game is a 8-minute audio track the user hears through headphones of the artist NAE featured in a video game remix (by Ryan Black) of her original pop song, “Strip!”. The song satirically lists various stores at the strip mall with the chorus, “I can come and go and you don’t mind / I know you’ll be there for me every time.”

NÆ’s debut album, Push Button Future, has been applauded as “a dance-pop confection with a biting edge, commenting on modern-day issues of consumerism, commercialism, and influencer culture,” by Scapi Magazine. Her sharp wit and humor are balanced with levity, imagination, and a cosmic effervescence that is both captivating and clever.

IG & TikTok: @naesynthpop
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@NAESYNTHPOP/

Strip! (Extended Video Game Remix)

"Waiting Acceptance (Nurse Remix) paints plenty of interesting, yet dark imagery throughout and maintains a steady groove despite not relying on a full-length drum track. The thematic use of a wicked synth arpeggio is carefully developed and woven through the track, grounding the listener into a world of polyrhythmic syncopation and dark dreams."

This trance-meets-synthwave track was originally recorded and produced in Chicago in the artist’s home studio in a state of forced catharsis during the global health crisis. The original version of “Waiting Acceptance” is on the album, “Isolazen” (2023). Artists JaNae Contag (NÆ) and Ryan Black (Blizz) asked LA-based artist, Nurse to remix song from the album, and she was ecstatic to bring her trance, mid-tempo, and techno vision to the existing dreamscape. The result is an eerie, arpeggiated journey drenched in electronic drops, and complimented by NÆ’s ethereal vocals.

Waiting Acceptance (Nurse Remix)

Enter the captivating and clever world of NÆ, a Chicago-based synth pop and electronic artist. Her music satirizes the absurdities of American aspirational lifestyles – think unicorn parties, sugary coffee drinks, and sexting. NÆ’s debut album, Push Button Future, has been applauded as “a dance-pop confection with a biting edge, commenting on modern-day issues of consumerism, commercialism, and influencer culture,” by Scapi Magazine. Her sharp wit and humor are balanced with levity, imagination, and a cosmic effervescence. NÆ is the persona of visual artist JaNae Contag. Producer, mixing engineer, and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Black performs on stage with NÆ as Blizz, and is her core collaborator in the writing and recording process. Black’s production leans heavily into both his sound design experience and jazz influence.

Hot off the heels of their recent performances as a featured artists at the Sound & Vision Synth Series in Rochester, NY, The Performing Arts Series at University of Minnesota Morris, House of Vans Chicago, and The 150 Media Stream in Chicago, NÆ and Blizz recently released their full-length dark pop/experimental album, Isolazen.

NÆ

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