The Narcotix: African Art Pop by Way of NYC
Inside the duo’s incredible debut LP Dying
On their debut album, Dying, the women in The Narcotix take a deep dive into the mysteries of life.
The LP unfolds like a suite, tracing a human’s journey from the moment before conception to the moment of death, and perhaps beyond. The duo at the core of the band – Esther Quansah on vocals, guitar and bass and Becky Foinchas on vocals, keys and percussion – were aware of the foreboding nature of the album’s title when they chose it.
“The word ‘dying’ is a verb,” Foinchas said. “It signifies the process of decomposition into organic matter, to be reused, repurposed and reborn into new purified parts of plants and living beings.”
“The album has songs that follow the process of dying, which starts with birth, into life and death.” Quansah adds. “For us, when we’re creating the music, there has to be a level of spiritual death and ego death that allows us to be one with the art. In the music, there’s often no verse/chorus. We like letting go of structure and seeing where we can go, led by our true inner spirit.”
The arrangements draw on various rhythms from Central and West Africa, American folk music, jazz and progressive rock. “The album took shape over a period of years,” Quansah continued. “For part of it, we were in a quarantined fugue state.”
One of the places the music took them was Mexico. “We sequestered ourselves in various jungles,” Quansah said. “We had to wheelbarrow a drum set into the jungle, to make it our space. Our music is inspired by nature, so it was fitting. It was the first part of the process: composing music by passing around ideas and gluing them together to create new ideas. Then we took six months to rehearse with the band and get everything tight.
“Recording was another phase that took a year. The engineer we work with, Colin Mohnacs, is very intentional and experimental. He found the best way to capture every sound. He recreated the feel of the jungle, infusing the compositions with everything we put into them. It took a lot of trial and error, experimenting in the studio with new parts.”
The result flows smoothly, starting with “The Mother,” a song that imagines a soul looking for a portal into a life on earth. A sustained synth chord and West African percussion accents introduce the overlapping vocals of Quansah and Foinchas, as they invite a spirit to find her earthly home. Guitarist Adam Turay adds a rippling soukous guitar line to their vocal improvisations. It ends with a French children’s song, “Le Coq Chante,” that segues into a peaceful scat interlude. “The Lamb” finds a young woman approaching maturity, looking for a relationship. Breathless, entwining vocals from Foinchas and Quansah ride a jazzy rhythm, as the woman slips into a garden full of possibilities.
“The Maiden” describes the joy of a passionate relationship, with the duo’s vocals backed by a rolling bass line, and layers of African and Latin percussion. The song ends with the vocals bursting into free form shouts of joy. There’s a ska/reggae feel to the “The Magician,” the album’s last tune, a prayer imagining what might lay in wait for us, after our last breath on earth. It closes with overlapping harmonies with a Southern gospel feel.
When they play live, the band includes drummer Matt Bent, guitarist Turay and other players.
“It’s really insane,” Foinchas said. “We perform exorcisms on ourselves and the audience. We play out the themes of vulnerability in the songs. We have a multi-media show that allows people to witness what was in our mind’s eye, at all levels, at the time of writing.”
Foinchas and Quansah have known each other since they were eight years old. They grew up near each other in Virginia, both daughters of African immigrants. Quansah’s parents are from Cote D’Ivoire; Foinchas’s from Cameroon.
“Our parents played records from all over Africa,” Foinchas said. “Congo, Mali, all over. The heartbeat of our music comes from those sounds and the music played at family parties, weddings and dances. We met in grade school, listening to rock music, so combining the two felt natural, although we never intended to start a band.”
VIDEO: The Narcotix “Esther”
The duo grew up playing piano. They sang Medieval and classical Western music in school choirs and arranged covers of rock songs for an a capella band they were in briefly. After they moved to Charlottesville to attend university, they met Adam Turay, a guitarist who loved soukous, a style of dance/rock music popular in the Congo (Zaire). They began to think about writing songs and putting a band together.
“We started sending ideas we’d recorded on our phones to each other,” Quansah said. “I moved to Brooklyn and started laying the ground work for a band. When Becky and Adam joined me, we started writing songs and found players for a group.”
“We still have day jobs,” Foinchas said. “We book and manage ourselves, but it’s a Herculean task. We’re looking for help, so we can do music full time.”
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