Nautics—Thoughts on the Ceiling

Here’s an interview with Nautics, a space-rock band from New York, to promote their evolving sound and newest single, Thoughts On the Ceiling. We talked about the Talking Heads, getting unstuck creatively, and creating an atmosphere that’s not just music  

Gabrielle (Sleepover Zine)— How would you describe your music and tell us a little bit about yourselves, each of your instruments and roles. 

Kenzo— I’m Kenzo, I’m the front person of Nautics, and I play guitar and I sing.  

Levitt—I ’m Levitt, and I’m the drummer 

Amir— I’m Amir, and I play keys mostly 

Van— Hi, I’m Van, I’m the bassist

Kenzo— We formed in 2015, and have been playing together ever since then all around the city. And I would say our sound is kind of an indie-pop style, or like a pop rock-esque style. Levitt throws around the term space rock a lot.

Kenzo— I think that’s pretty good. And yeah I think generally we try to be like the most mainstream indie band possible. I think our sound has changed a lot, but generally we’re constantly working on what we can do to improve ourselves musically. 

Levitt— I think you hit the nail on the head 

Kenzo— Great, thank you. And we all just really support each other. 

Gabrielle— Our idea for the zine is how can we create communities of artists, so it’s not just one person working on one project, it’s everyone kind of being influenced, not just by music, but by art or writing. So I wanted to ask, who are some of your either musical influences or just like general art influences, or writing that you like?

Amir— My parents listened to a lot of the talking heads as I was growing up. So I’ve always admired the talking heads and David Byrne as an artist and with what he’s able to do visually with music as well. For art, we're lucky enough to live in New York. I live kind of near the met, so we go there a lot and look at the art there. But I don’t know, I went to French school, I like the impressionists a lot, in terms of visual art, but I’d say musically, talking heads for sure, I love those guys, and girls. 

Kenzo— I’d say David Byrne is pretty great too. Another David, David Bowie, and also David Lynch. And Davy Jones? Ah, no. And I think artists, a good example would be Childish Gambino. Just anyone who can transcend medium, and go beyond just one art form, and implement everything into that art form, because that’s why I think I want to do with Nautics. I do the paintings, and I try to do some of the video elements, Creating an atmosphere that’s not just music is something that we aspire to. I do appreciate and look up to artists that can do that. I have the classic rock background, my parents used to show me a lot of classic rock when I was younger, that was like my main influence, and then more so now like arctic monkeys, and then more pop like the gorillas. But this week I’ve been listening to a lot of Supertramp like that’s been my go to influence. 

Van— I really like Ryan Gosling. I think a man with that much range is just incredible, that you can transition your career from the notebook to bladerunner, within the span of like 8 years. Other dramatic actors can’t make that quick a transition, so just to see that. There’s a lot of talent there. 

Kenzo— I, too, love the Goz. 

Gabrielle— A lot of your influences mentioned the Talking Heads, how much are you influenced by New York bands from the past and present and who are some bands you like in New York now? 

Kenzo— I think an obvious one is The Strokes, they’re probably the biggest band that ever came out of New York. The Velvet Underground? No, no, no. The Ramones? No, no, no. Blondie? No, no, no. They all sort of got inspired by those people. I think there is sort of that New York sound. We started in the indie scene, in New York, in the very small, kid indie scene, and generally, I think watching those other bands I think both inspired us, but also almost pushed us to take things in a different direction. I think it was more atmospheric than really technical or sonically. Generally we always sounded a little differently than other bands, and not in a “I’m not like most boys kind of way” but, I don’t think we fit in all the time but we tried to use that and ran with that. But I think there is a distinct sound between New York bands, and west coast bands, middle America, or Japan. It’s maybe a sound that we can never escape no matter how hard we try. 

Gabrielle— It’s more of a scene than a direct inspiration.

Kenzo— It’s like a flavor. 

Levitt— New York bands we like that we play with a lot are, Earth Dad is great we played a few shows with them. Spud cannon, we played a show with them, they’re pretty cool. We play with some members in Michelle. Their new album is really cool. 

Van— They’re really good. It feels like we haven’t played a show in like ten years either. Our last show was with Spud Cannon, Earth Dad, and Arcadia, and all of them. I feel like the best thing about being in New York, is that the music that you hear is completely different from who you heard yesterday. 

Gabrielle— What do you visualize happening in the future? How do you think your sound will evolve, are you more interested in like you were saying the art aspects and other visual media aspects. 

Levitt— Making more music, for sure. The cliche answer would be before being a band we’re more like a family, so as long as we’re together doing something that’s fine, but it would probably be making more music and making more songs. 

Van— I think our sound as well is radically different from when we started. It’s evolved, it’s reflective of who we are as opposed to where we were, were in a different space emotionally. We pride ourselves in not repeating the same patterns.

Kenzo— And I think like Levitt said, like just keep making music that excites us. We’ve definitely been bending more pop in the past year, so maybe that direction, but just music that we all have the passion to want to make. But it’s hard to predict, it’s a little all over the place right now.

Gabrielle— But it’s kind of an all over the place time, right? It’s hard to know what you think about anything right now. It also has to be hard with your songwriting and music making, like you’re all separate. It’s hard to play shows, obviously right now.

Kenzo— Illegal, actually 

Gabrielle— How did you start finding your creative voice through music? 

Van— It’s in the blood

Levitt— Nautics or individually? 

Gabrielle— Individually, and then how that influenced Nautics. But I’m really interested in each of your creative processes. 

Kenzo— I did musical theater growing up, and that performative element definitely influenced what I do now and was a big part of my life before this. 

Levitt— I was classically trained in piano ever since I can remember, and when I got bored of the classical piano, I wanted to do the drums, so I got drum lessons, and I had known Van throughout my life, and he introduced me to a band program and van and I were in it with Amir, and that’s like the meeting point for us three and that was through music and we all had our backgrounds and that brought us there. Learning how to play different instruments and that brought me to wanting to be in a band. 

Amir— I was classically trained in piano also, but I did it through high school. And that was Jazz improv, and I really got interested in improvisation especially. It’s actually really funny the program they’re talking about, I was supposed to be in a jazz program where I was going to be a jazz pianist but they were full, so I had to do this other one. Foundationally, expressing myself musically came from those very simple jazz improvisations I was doing in middle school, I still kind of write that way. That’s the origin for me

Van— In terms of creative voice I think it’s a lifelong journey. It’s something you have to reteach yourself, I don’t know if I’ve found mine yet personally. 

Gabrielle— Yeah, I feel like it’s an ongoing process, and whatever you're listening to or looking at, is going to end up in your work, in any creative medium. I write, and I always find myself being influenced by different writers.

Van— Of course, especially with writing. I’m not a writer, but if you read a lot you start changing your vocabulary, or even adding a comma. I find it really fascinating.

Gabrielle— Even when you read things you wrote from high school or college you think like I was reading way too much of this person.

Gabrielle— What do you do when you’re feeling stuck? What do you do with music, or with art, or with writing? What do you do to get yourself unstuck? 

Levitt— Something else. 

Kenzo— That’s a good question. There’s a few sessions where brute force keep going for hours. And sometimes it ends up working, Because sometimes you get through it, but a lot of the time it’s like banging your head against the wall. I personally am not good at getting unstuck. And I just keep banging my head. 

Van— Me and Amir spent like seven hours writing the same bad song. I mean we’ve spent like seven hours writing the same good song, but like sometimes they’re bad. And we keep going, it’s like we’re one step away, it just needs something, there’s nothing it needs. 

Levitt— We’re very persistent in that regard. 

Kenzo— When I’m there, it’s better. 

Van— You just stroll in last second, Madonna 

Kenzo— I say, “I’m ready, I’m ready for my close up.”

Van— The more of us that are in the room the better.

Amir— We're all there to help get each other unstuck. 

Kenzo— Sometimes, it’s about what we’ve learned over the years, it’s also knowing when a project is not worth spending 7 hours on. I think sometimes people mistake a bad idea for writers block. But sometimes when you have nothing else to do with it, and you have nowhere else to go and you’re like this is terrible, just work on something else. Your creative energy will go somewhere else.

Levitt— It’s so hard to do that, because you get so emotionally invested, and you spend 7 hours on this one drum loop, and then you spend 5 minutes on one thing and it’s good enough to keep going with. 

Gabrielle— Alright last question, what emotions does your music invoke? When you listened to something you wrote or played a while ago, do you feel the emotions of that time come back to you? 

Levitt— I remember very well what we were feeling, what we were doing, what we were recording in the studio in Brooklyn we always go to. Not just that moment in our lives and how we were feeling, but like specifically recording that. It's kind of funny to listen back and remember the process, I think it’s really critical actually. 

Kenzo— Sometimes I’ll look back on things and I almost find it funny because it’s almost happy, like a sad song, or some lyrics are really deep or introspective, whatever you want to call it, and you’re like it’s so silly I was even that mad about anything. That’s so funny that I was that impassioned about something that right now doesn’t affect my life at all. It’s nice to have something to look back on to remind you that pain isn’t permanent, and things change, and you grow from those things. It’s almost a reminder of that threshold or that last checkpoint that you were at. 

Gabrielle— Especially things that early college or high school that you’re so angry about and you realize you get over that. 

Kenzo— Exactly! In a pandemic, you realize that all of those things don't matter at all. 

Gabrielle— What do you guys want to promote?

Levitt— Social media, and our song, and our fundraiser. We generally have been donating to food bank for New York, BLM, BVC, ACLU. And I think the newest thing we want to do, and I think we want to continue with this kind of energy,  but we are going to be sending mail to a group of people through USPS  and we’re going to be sending our money to the postal service. And I think if everyone was to buy $11 worth of stamps, and I’d be sending handmade doodles and thank you notes to everyone. And thank you so much for having us! 

Here’s where you can follow Nautics—

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/official__nautics/?hl=en

Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/Nauticalmyson/

Music: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/nautics/the-glorious-escapades-of-a-great-escape-2

And Nautics New Single: The link to our new single is https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/nautics/thoughts-on-the-ceiling