If you’ve been looking for an up-and-coming indie artist, you’ve found her. NOCT is the one to watch.
Noor Harajli has come back with her single ‘EVERYTHING IS RIPE’ - a hard rock banger. It packs a punch with shredding electric guitar, then calms into layered vocals, then launches right back into heavy drums. It’s an experience.
I had the pleasure of interviewing NOCT about her inspirations behind the song, which she described as coming from “my own quarrels with my routine and lifestyle.”
The lyrics explore the feeling of watching opportunities pass us by as we chase success. “Time accelerates as you get older, and begins to feel slippery. It can feel daunting to not be at the stage you thought you'd be at. At some point, you begin to surrender yourself to this time-anxiety, which is a theme I've explored in previous songs.”
She recalls the melody came to her when she was “driving around in the city, at night, with no functioning lights in the streets.” This echoes through her lyrics: “All I do is drive / I’m checking all the signs / While a humble lack of lights / Is beaming through the night”. She captures that feeling of reaching out only to find “an empty, dark road” with strumming guitar meeting crashing drums.
She continues, “It’s also inspired by the chaos of the world we live in. A lot of decay, ripeness, and destruction exists in our world and parallels the destruction we face internally as well. All the so-called ripeness seamlessly coexists and numbs us.”
NOCT wants people to connect with her music and get lost in it. “Ultimately, the music I make is for my own selfish pleasures. Whatever expression you’re listening to, you’re essentially getting to know me better. In me putting out this music, I’m just extending an arm out and saying, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve experienced, this is what I love, hate, despise, and this is how I feel about this topic’”. She treats her lyrics “almost like a diary– I look back at songs I wrote 3 years ago and suddenly it’s like I’m time travelling and meeting the person I was when I wrote it.”
This time travelling aspect she talks about is very present in how her art looks, too - she’s bringing nostalgia to the new generation indie scene. NOCT’s music videos and album covers look as if they’ve been ripped from an analogue camera and plastered with abstract effects, calling back to trippy 2010s alternative hits like ‘Locket’ by Crumb. Her music is “fun, reflective, chaotic”.
But that’s not the whole story. “Some songs are less fun and chaotic than others. Whether the lyrics are about my love for oatmeal, or the passing of time in your early 20s, they’re all connected and give the listeners a raw piece of NOCT cake. In that way they are also varied from one another.”
She’s right. Her music ranges from the heavy rock of ‘EVERYTHING IS RIPE’ to dreamy indie like ‘teeeth’ from her 7-song project listen very closely, released last year. She explains, “I find it important to surrender oneself to the song and not get too attached to genres, or sounding a certain way.”
Whatever she produces, she’s growing a following of listeners around the world. With roots in Lebanon and Brazil, and now “slow-cooking” in London according to her Spotify artist profile, NOCT combines these rhythms within her songs. “I take a lot of inspiration from Brazilian bossa nova and jazz, and for that I have to credit my Brazilian mother for bringing me up with that beautiful, rich culture.”
She also credits The Beatles as a huge inspiration “as a group and individually. Without this turning into an essay, they really paved the way for artists such as myself to experiment with different sounds.” When she finds herself “birthing an idea”, she remembers “a cliché saying from Paul McCartney” - “something along the lines of ‘If the song is good enough, you’ll remember it!’” and doesn't record anything right away. If she remembers it and feels that “it’s sat well with me, then I’ll come back to it and maybe record a demo.”
Noor has been busy performing headline gigs around London, gaining recognition for her music. She says her favourite memory from playing live was when she “opened for Hyphen in February, and performed ‘oatmeal’ for the first time. The song is silly, very aggressive, and overall a great tune to perform live. The crowd interaction with it was electrifying.”
So what can we expect from NOCT in the near future? “My focus for this year is to really tighten things up with the band and perform more around the UK. I’m working on a grand album, but that will probably be another year or so. I want to take more time to refine the music I write and collaborate with more people in the recording & mixing process.”
And, of course, a music video for ‘EVERYTHING IS RIPE’. Stay tuned.
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