Nite Jewel

Nite Jewel is the alias of Ramona Gonzalez, singer/songwriter from Los Angeles, California.

Biography

Ramona Gonzalez began as Nite Jewel in 2008 as the result of her juggling music with undergraduate studies.^[1] She cites artists such as Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey as her musical inspirations.^[2] With assistance from her husband, Cole M. Greif-Neill, she created songs on a portable eight-track cassette recorder.^[3] She stated that "moments of ecstasy, emotion, and hardship" were her inspiration for those recordings.^[4] Gonzalez is the niece of the English soccer commentator Clive Tyldesley, affectionately parodying his commentary style on the song 'Clive'.

Soon after starting her MySpace music page, her song, "Suburbia" was selected to be in Noah Baumbach's film Greenberg.^[4] Within a year she was touring European festivals.^[1] Her music draws comparison to Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam.^[5] Nite Jewel describes herself more as "liquid cool" citing English electronic music duo Autechre as a major musical influence.^[6]

Ramona Gonzalez has a bachelor degree in philosophy from Occidental College.^[7] She is also a multimedia artist and has exhibited a number of video and sound installation pieces in the L.A area, one of which was entitled The Question Concerning Technology.^[5]

December 6, 2011, Nite Jewel released her single, "She's Always Watching You".^[8]
On March 6, 2012, Ramona released her second album (and debut release for SC), "One Second of Love".^[9] Secretly Canadian will reissue Nite Jewel's first album, Good Evening, in the fall of 2012.

Since releasing her debut album for Secretly Canadian, Nite Jewel has toured both North America and Europe. Performances included a date a Midi Festival and a forthcoming show at Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest! In addition to playing her original music, Ramona performed Kraftwerks's Computer World in Los Angeles' Krautrock Classics on June 1, 2012. Later that summer, she traveled to New York City to perform in the same event at Le Poisson Rouge.^[10][11]

On April 29, 2012, Nite Jewel performed at the Brandeis University Springfest.^[12]

Discography

• My CD (Demo - 2008)
• Good Evening (Album - 2009)
• Want You Back (EP - 2009)
• You F O (Tour EP - 2009)
• Am I Real? (EP - 2010)
• She's Always Watching You (Vinyl - 2011)
• It Goes Through Your Head (Vinyl - 2011)
• One Second of Love (Album - 2012)

Collaborations

• Nite Jewelia - collaboration between Nite Jewel and Julia Holter^[13]
• "Am I Gonna Make It" - Nite Funk (collaboration between Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk)^[14]
• Heart Shaped Rock EP - Jason Grier w/Nite Jewel^[15]
• "Thinking About You" - Frank Ocean cover done by Nite Jewel & Nicholas Krgovich
• "What We See" - collaboration between Nite Jewel & Julia Holter for Dublab

References