NZIRIA is an experimental project by artist Tullia Benedicta, born and raised in Ravenna from a Neapolitan family. Hard Neomelodic, the term used by the artist to describe their music, is the sound created to make a new space of hybridisation of different concepts, like North and South, traditional and contemporary music, masculine and feminine identity. NZIRIA integrates the main forms and themes of the Neomelodic song, while regenerating the cis-heteronormative scenario. Through a powerful and androgynous singing, they reinterpret the stereotyped, almost archetypal stories of the Neomelodic genre, welcoming narratives of the LGBTQI+ community and singing of queer love and mercurial identities. NZIRIA debuted in 2022 on Gabber Eleganza’s imprint Never Sleep with a full-length titled XXYBRID. Recorded during a period of worldwide lockdown, the album represents the artist’s psychomagic act to redeem their Neapolitan origins and to reinterpret some of the topoi of the Neapolitan culture. Through the album, NZIRIA re-appropriates the Neapolitan dialect, which they learnt from their grandparents: the word itself, ‘nziria, is an almost untranslatable dialect word, indicating the obstinate and unprovoked tantrum of children when they’re tired, a sort of primitive desire. NZIRIA has been selected as SHAPE + artist for the year 2022, participating at CTM Festival 2023 with a site-specific performance titled “And Then a Flame Rumbled Like an Earthquake”, in collaboration with light designer / director Bianca Peruzzi, and Berlin-based performers Franka Marlene Foth and Janan Laubscher.