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Photo: Joshua R Drakes

Egyptian and Sudanese, spending most of their upbringing in Cairo and now based in the UK, Nxdia is the meeting of many dense cultures in one stew, spitting out someone artistically incomparable. Fatigued by the idea of feigning comfort and palatable positivity, their debut EP in the flesh is a dark-pop trauma dump with a sinister bite, letting people into parts of their soul light hadn’t yet touched.

For a debut EP, Nxdia has impressively mastered a sound both unique and weighted, storytelling with such emotional eloquence you can’t help but see bits of you reflected back. Paired with moody vocals and grungy guitars, it’s clear they’ve been a rockstar for many lifetimes, at the mercy of a destined fate.

in the flesh speaks to Nxdia’s experience of being paralyzed in their own mind, witnessing life happen at and around them with a body unable to participate. It’s no wonder they’ve seamlessly harnessed an audience so intimately connected, as they’re bravely speaking to an experience so insidiously universal. Upon the EP’s release, the artist shared “It’s so, so nice to have a project that summarizes a section of my life, how I felt, what I was thinking, and just learning the process of making music and writing and figuring out how to put all this life stuff into words.”

“decay” serves as the project's lead single, speaking to the frustration of living in the confinement of an unforgiving economy and internalizing its disempowerment. The track stands as a rejection of systems that drain our vitality as fuel, aiding in the reckless reclamation of voices once muted.

Music is Nxdia’s response to a lonely upbringing, inadvertently cultivating community through the bareness of their music and the emotional nomads it validates. Introspective and brash, Nxdia is an artist you don’t come by often.

Listen to in the flesh below: