The Transmission

Narrowyth [N]: Nobody is Here is a post-punk/darkwave album that takes lots of inspiration from some of my favorite bands like The Cure, Slowdive, and Have A Nice Life and many more. It's an album made up of lots of negative thoughts and emotions that were put together as a way to express them through music, and it's very heavy in atmosphere to make the listening experience feel almost like you are in a place that feels long abandoned and forgotten.

SE: Where did the name Narrowyth come from? Does it have a particular meaning to you?

N: No particular meaning at all actually, just made up word that sounded cool.

SE: How long have you been making music, and what initially got you interested in making music yourself rather than just listening to it?

N: For the longest time I wasn't really a music listener, until I was around 12 I discovered the artist Jack Stauber and I immediately knew that I wanted to do exactly what he did. From that point on and over the years I learned guitar and slowly learned more about how to actually put music together and edit songs. What I spent a lot of that time doing to learn this was making covers of songs I liked and posting them on Bandlab.

SE: What caught your eye with Jack Stauber? Was it around aesthetics?

N: Jack Stauber's work really caught my eye because of his unique art and music style. He was someone who I'd never heard of before and it felt like I'd finally found music that only I knew about.

SE: Have you been involved in other musical projects, or has Narrowyth been your main outlet so far?

N: Before I started taking music seriously me and some friends created a satirical hiphop/pop/experimental band called Public Alley 438. Most of the music was intentionally bad and we'd all individually make songs and then put them together to make an album.

SE: Haha, that's great! Some of those silly projects tend to be very endearing. Does any of it persist anywhere?

N: Unfortunately almost all of the Public Alley stuff was deleted, I would've loved if it was still up.

SE: You've mentioned some bands giving you some sonic inspiration for the record. I definitely hear them, such as early Have a Nice Life, with that haunting sense of space in the atmosphere of the record. Did you have that particular sonic idea in mind when you started the album or was there a particular song that helped establish the direction of the record with the themes you alluded to above, especially of negative thoughts and forgotten places?

N: The one song that really motivated me to make the album was "Woe Unto Us". I was laying in the dark listening to the Time of Land EP for the first time, and after listening to that song I just decided I was gonna get up and start making something and that's when I knew I wanted to make post punk the main genre. The darkwave influence came from bands/artists like Pastel Ghost, Them Are Us Too and the Have A Nice Life side project Black Wing which has a very desolate and barren atmosphere that influenced Nobody is Here.

SE: Are there any songs on the album that took a particularly different path from where you initially imagined them going?

N: "Painkiller" was originally an entirely different song before I just decided to start over and make a similar song using the same lyrics and somewhat similar vibe. The original version was heavily influenced by The Cure song "One Hundred Years".

SE: How did you approach the recording and production of the album? Was this something you recorded yourself, and if so, how much of the sound comes from limitations or choices you made while working?

N: This album was entirely recorded on my phone. I have audio interfaces and cheap microphones that I could have recorded on but recording on my phone felt easier and sometimes even sounded better.

SE: Wow, I would have never guessed you used a phone to record the record! When you were mic'ing for guitar/bass, did you have to do a lot of trial and error around phone placement to your amp for finding a sweet spot?

N: For the mic placement I really just had to place it in a good spot not too far and not too close to the amp.

SE: Was there anything you learned while making Nobody Is Here that you want to carry into whatever comes next?

N: If I could go back and give myself more time on this album I would definitely work on the mixing and post production a bit more, but at the same time it helped me learn to focus more on stuff like that for future projects and hopefully I can look back at it one day and see my growth improvement.

SE: When you're writing, do you usually start with a melody, a guitar/synth part, lyrics, an atmosphere, or something else?

N: I always start with something different when it comes to making a song. Sometimes it's playing around with drum patterns, sometimes it's creating a melody on my keyboard, but usually I start with making the bassline and going from there.

SE: How important are lyrics to the way you approach songwriting? Do you generally start with something you want to say, or do the words develop alongside the music?

N: I usually start with making the music first because after that I know how to write the lyrics in a way that they'll fit in with how the music sounds.

SE: How do you know when an idea is worth developing into a song?

N: I try to give every idea a chance because there could be something great that comes out of it, but you'd never know if you don't try.

SE: Do you tend to have a fairly clear idea of what you want a song to become, or does the finished song usually end up somewhere different?

N: Songs mostly are never the idea of what I wanted them to be, but they're also not an entirely different thing, its somewhere in the middle and that can be good because it comes out better than how I originally imagined it to be.

SE: Is there a particular mood or feeling that you find yourself returning to when you write?

N: Most of the time I start writing something when I'm feeling down or something is bothering me and making art out of it is my way of being able to express those feelings.

SE: Do you enjoy the non-musical parts of being a DIY musician (recording, artwork, releasing music, promotion, figuring out how to get people to hear it) or do you mostly see those things as necessary parts of making music?

N: I really enjoyed making the album cover artwork since art is one of my hobbies, and while I probably won't make every project cover an original piece of art I look forward to creating more designs that fit how the music sounds.

SE: What's your favorite art media? Do you ever have visual media influence your music in that direction as well?

N: I mostly do sketchbook drawings but sometimes I do digital or oil paint depending on if I'm working on something bigger. Visual media influences my music a lot actually since I have synesthesia, so an album or single cover for me feels like it has to have certain colors depending on what I see while listening to the music.

SE: How important is Bandcamp and the independent music community to what you're doing? Do you feel like there's a particular community or scene around the kind of music you're making, or do you feel like you're operating somewhat independently of a scene?

N: I feel like I'm being more independent with it, but I am also trying to find a good community where my music belongs by doing things like reaching out to other small artists with similar sounds.

SE: In terms of a music community, what characteristics make something a good community in practice? Do you find it's related to good communication and dialogue with fellow artists and listeners or something else?

N: I would say simply to have a good music community there just needs to be good people who aren't assholes.

SE: What have you found to be the hardest part of trying to get your music heard?

N: I feel like the hardest part is just trying to find the right people who want to listen to my style of music since I personally don't know many people who would.

SE: On the other hand, what's something about being an independent artist that you really enjoy?

N: I love being able to create at my own pace and feel like I can take as long as I want to make something.

SE: Do you think whatever comes next will continue in the direction of Nobody Is Here, or are you already interested in taking things somewhere completely different? Is there anything you're hoping to experiment with that you haven't gotten around to yet for a future release?

N: I want to keep it close to the same style but also want to bring in more shoegaze since that's what I originally started with when making music, that could also mean I could experiment more with distortion and all kinds of effects.

SE: What are you listening to right now? Anything you've discovered recently that you think people should hear?

N: I started listening to the Swans discography from beginning to end, really enjoyed the album Children of God and how it can be so ominous, chaotic peaceful and calm all at the same time. I started listening to Swans after finishing Grouper's entire discography and I thought it was interesting hearing how Liz Harris' music evolved over 15 years from dreamy ambience to being more folk based. Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill was definitely my favorite from her.

SE: Swans are awesome! I was very late to the party on them for so many years, but I love that early period. I find myself returning to Holy Money quite a bit personally. What would you like Narrowyth to be doing a year from now?

N: A year from now I'd like to stay as a solo creator where I write and produce all my songs by myself but I also hope I can meet the right people to start a band with and maybe start playing live.