Middle Boop Mag recently had the opportunity to pick the brain of the innovative beat-smith Naytronix, (also known as Nate Brenner, bassist oftUnE-yArDs) prior to the release of his upcoming second solo album - the cheekily titled Mister Divine.
Middle Boop Mag: It’s been three years since your debut solo project Dirty Glow, which was loosely based around a vision of post-apocalyptic robots. Is there a clear concept to Mister Divine?
Naytronix: Its more of a loose vision than a concept, Mister Divine definitely isn’t a “concept album”, but I did decide to use a similar theme throughout. A recurring subject is dealing with and thinking about the past, present, and future, while ultimately trying to make sense out of life.
Naytronix: Its more of a loose vision than a concept, Mister Divine definitely isn’t a “concept album”, but I did decide to use a similar theme throughout. A recurring subject is dealing with and thinking about the past, present, and future, while ultimately trying to make sense out of life.
MBM: Initially a sonic scrapbook of sounds to be used in DJ sets, what led you to release this material as your second record?
N: I decided to book some days with a mixing engineer at New, Improved Recordings, a studio in Oakland, as a way for me to set a personal deadline in which to wrap up the stuff I’ve been working on over the last two years, and to finalize it all. While we were working on the mixes I started getting some interest in playing live - something that - at that stage I wasn’t sure I was going to do. I decided to just go with it and said yes, and since then I've been experimenting with a whole range of ideas for the creative process of playing live.
MBM: In the time between your debut and Mister Divine, tUnE-yArDsreleased another record, how do you separate both projects in your mind? Are you ever tempted to bottle up your best ideas for your solo project?
N: It’s really easy to separate the two projects because tUnE-yArDs is predominantly the vision of Merrill Garbus. I help her to write the songs and offer advice, but she’s the main producer and leader of the group. We've had the opportunity to work with some amazing recording engineers and producers like Eli Crews, Olivia Oyama, Malay and John Hill so I’ve had the chance to learn a lot about sound, recording techniques, and haverecieved creative ideas from all of them. We also studied Haitian drumming with Daniel Brevin while we were making ‘Nikki Nack’ so I was able to bring some of those poly-rhythms into Mister Divine.
When we were working on ‘Nikki Nack’ I was constantly getting ideas forNaytronix songs. We were both just living and breathing music, learning so much from the people we were working with and pushing each other to make crazy music. The challenge for me was turning those ideas into real songs and finding my own voice.
It took a while and I was feeling that my vocals were really holding back the music so I decided to take voice lessons and took a break from recording until I felt like I could record a vocal take without being completely embarrassed. In the past I would have hid behind a vocoder or some other vocal effect but I just wanted to be able to sing without a crutch, and recordings never lie!
MBM: What do you feel are the main differences, the purposeful differences between the band’s material and Naytronix? Was there an initial inspiration for going solo?
N: There are a lot of similar sounds between the two projects because we use pretty much the same gear when we record. But the biggest difference is that the sound of tUnE-yArDs is dominated by Merrill’s voice and lyrics, whereas Naytronix is all about the groove and bass-line.Going solo was a way to challenge myself to become a better musician, songwriter, producer, and singer. I was having a lot of musical ideas and just wanted to have fun and get some good jams out into the world.
Listen to new track 'Back in Time' on the Naytronix Soundcloud page.
Naytronix with be playing two UK shows next month:
25th November, @ The Rainbow - Birmingham
28th November, @ Shacklewell Arms - London
