<\/p>\n
Sounds like:<\/strong> Deconstructed art-pop<\/span><\/span>
\nSoundtrack for:<\/strong> Late-night scrolling and dissociating<\/span>
\nFile next to:<\/strong> The Femcels, ear, Bassvictim<\/span><\/span>
\nOur favourite song:<\/strong> city<\/span><\/i><\/a>
\nhere to find them:<\/strong> @_n_e_w__y_o_r_k<\/span><\/a>
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\n<\/span><\/pre>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
The first thing to know about NEW YORK is that they\u2019re not from New York.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\nCoumba Samba was born in Harlem, sure, but Gretchen Lawrence is from a suburb outside Tallinn, Estonia, while the band itself was born in a flatshare in London. The name is a misdirection, or, as Lawrence puts it, an accidental way to stay \u201cundercover\u201d. \u201cThere\u2019s a Berlin, you know?\u201d she shrugs. \u201cSo now there can be a NEW YORK<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe duo met when Samba, \u201ckind of low-key kicked out\u201d of her last place, as Lawrence puts it \u2013 though Samba strongly disagrees \u2013 moved in with Lawrence and a mutual friend. \u201cCoumba would host dinners or play music around the house,\u201d Lawrence remembers. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Damn, you\u2019re playing pretty cool music. I think our tastes align.\u2019\u201d Within a month, they were experimenting together, pulled in by a shared diet of Soundcloud rap and what Lawrence calls \u201cfootworky stuff\u201d. It was all weird, niche and mostly faceless.<\/span><\/p>\nThat anonymity crept into their early musical <\/span>experimentation. Their first tracks drew heavily on royalty-free sample packs, and the pair still swear by the form. \u201cIt\u2019s these simulation aesthetics where nothing is really dark,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cRoyalty-free music is always more upbeat and really weird, and the sounds are clashing in different ways. It\u2019s non-music music.\u201d That collaged, slightly uncanny pep runs through everything they\u2019ve released, from their 2022 debut album No Sleep Till N.Y<\/a>.<\/i><\/span>\u00a0to last year\u2019s <\/span>Push<\/span><\/i><\/a> EP, via 2024\u2019s double LP <\/span>Rapstar*<\/span><\/i>. It also extends to their own presence: they didn\u2019t bother with an Instagram for the first few years.<\/span><\/p>\nThey both arrived at music sideways. Samba, who studied violin and flute as a kid (\u201cmedieval instruments, kind of useless\u201d), never really tried making her own tracks until NEW YORK; she has a parallel practice as a visual artist and graphic designer. Lawrence, meanwhile, was in a screamo band called The Shape at age nine, and paid her rent before NEW YORK as a VJ and video editor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTheir formative listening pulls together a melange of millennial tastemaker-core: Samba grew up on Chief Keef, Arca<\/a>, MIA and Ariana Grande; Lawrence on My Bloody Valentine<\/a>, Miss Kitten, a compilation called <\/span>Berlin Insane<\/span><\/i>, which tried to bottle that city\u2019s electroclash scene, and MIA. <\/span>Again<\/span><\/i>. For Samba, MIA was the reason to try making music at all: \u201cHer beats were quite simple, and then it was just good melodies. The naturality, that way of making things easygoing and simple.\u201d Lawrence frames it more structurally: MIA, she argues, mastered the recipe everyone\u2019s now calling glitch-pop. \u201cEvery eight or 16 bars there\u2019s a totally new vibe shift. It\u2019s absurd and fun at the same time, even if the meaning behind the music can be quite serious.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThat vibe-shift logic governs how NEW YORK\u2019s songs come together, too. Samba sings melodies into her voice memos; Lawrence layers them over experiments she\u2019s been building in her library. \u201cWhen something clicks, it clicks,\u201d Lawrence says. The records emerge piece by piece.<\/span><\/p>\nTheir growth has been similarly unhurried. The first album went up overnight, with no press push, travelling by word of mouth: friends telling friends, people running into old friends at their shows. They threw exactly one party \u2013 though they\u2019ve since performed far less sparingly. \u201cWe\u2019re into the concept of a slower journey,\u201d Lawrence says, \u201cwhere we can actually manage and understand and have space and time to focus on writing good music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThis slow journey is, finally, picking up speed. New York are set to play Primavera and Dekmantel this summer, with a run of Australian dates in between \u2013 and they\u2019re already deep in new material. The mission, though, has not changed. \u201cWe just want people to have fun and feel at ease,\u201d Lawrence says. \u201cA great soundtrack to walking around the city feeling cute.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n