Onah Indigo, the Oakland-based electronic musician and accordion maverick was reeling from a soured relationship and the lingering pain of a back injury when she created the music on Surrender. “The best way for me to work with pain was to make the music,” she explains. “It was a dark, heavy winter, and I just had to plug myself into the studio and focus on songwriting. I’m driven to process my emotion, and music-making transforms it into beauty.” Surrender is the result of this alchemical process: transmuting the emotional energy of that leaden winter into glitch hop-infused electronic tracks. At the heart of each track, eclectic beats are juxtaposed with the unexpected samples that are typical of noaccordion albums- if anything about noaccordion can be called typical.
Onah Indigo made a slew of recordings during an extended trip around South India. Her journey took her to several schools and to Gurukula, the nature preserve that gave her latest album its name. Balancing trap’s gritty edge with serene vocals and dubbed-out accordion licks, Gurukula ripples with energy, yet radiates calm, as the sound of bhajans and songs in Kannada entwine with the atmosphere of an untouched paradise, with its organic beat. “I love juxtaposition,” explains Onah, “whether it’s the accordion and club music, or children’s voices and 808 bass. When you put these samples into a trap framework, it changes both and says something new, something that’s both raw and contemplative.”
Onah digs deep into the polyrhythms and quirky phases of the heart. She taps MCs (Sunru, Chatterbox, Delwin G), beatboxers (Mastah Lock), and musical mavericks (guitar wizard Eenor) to get the party started–and to celebrate the glories of womanhood, from the elevated to the sensual. “The tracks on this album mark a major milestone in my movement toward greater confidence and joy, something I think a lot of women can relate to,” muses Onah, speaking of her journey through motherhood, divorce, renewed sexuality, and artistic transformation. “I feel I’ve grown musically stronger and set aside all my obsessions as an audio engineer. I’ve become a lot more open and playful. For me now, it’s about juxtaposition, yin and yang. It’s the light and the dark. We need to embrace both.”.
“Remember ’80s Brit band the Flying Lizards? They scored an international hit with their minimalist remake of the Motown classic “Money (That’s What I Want).” That song came to mind as I was listening to the latest EP from noaccordion, the nom de plume of Bay Area musician Onah Indigo. And like the Lizards, her vocals are rhythmically spoken, not sung. She also employs a number of acoustic and electronic instruments in the sparse arrangements that make up the EP’s six tracks, several of which would be welcome additions to any EDM club mix.” by Randy Otto, Sheperd Express
“In 1974, Japanese electronic musician Isao Tomita released the album Snowflakes Are Dancing, which featured reworked interpretations (some quite radical) of the music of French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. The album became a worldwide hit, and has since become a milestone of electronic music (and spawned many follow-up albums for Tomita). In the second of two simultaneously released EPs, Bay Area musician Onah Indigo (aka noaccordion) turns to another Impressionist composer, Eric Satie. In her first-ever “covers” project, all six tracks are instrumental adaptations of Satie piano works that definitely bear the stamp of Indigo’s musical stylings. While they aren’t quite the lush productions found on Tomita’s album, they do put an interesting spin on Satie’s music, weaving a soundscape that would appeal most to EDM fans (yes, there are beats to be found on several tracks).” by Randy Otto, Sheperds Express
Noaccordion’s third EP embraces a “time traveler, tribal, triphop” vibe and features heavily effected vocals, peculiar harmonies, local MCs and many elements of Electronic Dance Music. This EP includes accordion on only one song and marks Noaccordion’s leap into the Electronica Genre. Onah Indigo generated all of the beats, played all instruments, and only brought in 2 collaborators for this project who were local MCs Taj Angelo and Chatter. They each helped co write lyrics for a song. This EP was produced, recorded and mixed by Onah in her home studio in Oakland, California and mastered by the Humble Grove in Australia.
This second EP is described as “gypsy electronica triphop” and takes noaccordion’s sounds to the next level as it blends Electronic Beats and Synth Bass with live Latin American Percussion, Tango with Hip Hop, Punk with Triphop and Gypsy with Drum and Bass. The second EP embraces new musical collaborators including Evan Fraser(master percussionist), Mastahlock(beat box), Taj Angelo(MC), Abai(electronic music producer), Chatter(MC), and Danny Cao(trumpet). As opposed to the debut EP that had one song with a dash of accordion, the second EP features the accordion on four out of six songs.
This debut EP by the quirky, electro, pop project called noaccordion is spearheaded by the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Onah Indigo. Noaccordion’s songs have been described as “full of hooks”, “retro yet futuristic” and sounding like “Portishead meets the B52’s”. Noaccordion questions society about what it tells us not to do and why, while taking you on a wild ride echoing a European Cabaret Show coupled with 80’s Pop and 90’s Dance sounds.