Interview: natureplayer

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to sit down in a call with natureplayer. He's a pretty cool guy, but his music is even cooler- take this chance to learn more about the inside scoop on his recent album, solo project.

(Start interview)

Finch: Hey! Before I ask anything else, I have to ask: why the bear hat?

natureplayer: I do get this question a lot. It started very accidentally. The whole natureplayer project started early pandemic. Early into 2020, I wanted something to do and I was on Twitter. I was looking for a Twitter profile picture but I wanted it to still be anonymous, so I found this selfie of me in the mirror with this hat and I photoshopped on a mask and glasses. It stuck around long enough that I made it my thing, and switched it out for a real mask and sunglasses. I got recognized wearing it to a concert, and I realized it was good branding, so I started wearing it whenever I think I’ll see people from the scene. It’s a fun little thing that adds kind of to the character.

Finch: I'm also curious, where's the name natureplayer from?

natureplayer: It's terminology from game theory that basically means a random number generator. My header is a screenshot of the Wikipedia article. It’s the technical term for the dealer in a game of poker, the player whose only role is to cause chaos. I like that idea, to have randomness and cause chaos. I also just really like board games.

Finch: Nice. What was the inspiration for solo project?

natureplayer: Part of this was just that I’ve been dropping singles for a while. I had a bigger and bigger catalog of things I haven’t released yet, but I wanted to release something that felt like a first initial statement of what I’m doing- the things I’m writing and producing. I wanted it to be experimental, not really any "top hits". I see them as things that could be on someone’s playlist, but not meant to be singles; They are more meant to be songs that needed a place. There’s a lot of personal stories, all the things I’m telling are things I experienced in the last year or so- like running a meme page, my cat eating my phone charger, or someone I was seeing for a while. I like writing about the little things. It makes it feel more personal and intimate. Despite the mask and everything, I want this to be a picture of me.

Finch: There's a lot of stylistic differences in the different songs on solo project- is there a reason for the harsh changes in mood?

natureplayer: It's because I didn’t come into it thinking about a certain sound. Most of these songs, I was just feeling a certain way on a certain day. I made the song I wanted to make on that day, and so it changes a lot in terms of tempo, energy, and mood; I try to have the threads that connect it be certain production qualities and tricks. Certain sound choices and the way that I write also are a thread. The way that I write is more of a narrative and conversational, almost like a stream of consciousness. Every song has guitar somewhere, and in most of them it’s pretty prominent. Most of them have a drum kit in there somewhere. I use similar plugins throughout them, even though the songs are pretty different. It’s supposed to be a showcase of the different things I can do, and because I listen to so many types of music, I’m inspired to make many different types of music. I don’t want people to expect just one certain sound from me.

Finch: That makes sense- musical diversity is important. My next question then would be what kind of sound do you want to have?

natureplayer: I am very inspired by indie rock and indie pop from the late 2000s and early 2010s. The goal is to take those elements and combine them with hyperpop. It’s kind of hyperpop, but that’s a word that doesn’t really have a meaning anymore. If you think about the artists in the scene, I'm very inspired by them. I don’t use heavy 808s, I like more raw drum sounds. It’s hard to pin down the sound exactly, but it’s more trying to take the things I enjoy and put them together. I really like the band Animal Collective, especially the stuff they were making in the late 2000s, they had some watery synths that I really liked and not something you hear a lot of. Also strings are something I heavily use in the project and I think are really cool, they’re taken more from the folksy and indie stuff that you don’t hear much in the scene.

Finch: "the village" has such a gorgeous opening and continuous cello, if I pinpointed the instrument right, in the background. That heavy string sound isn't very present anywhere else in the project, so why this song?

natureplayer: It is a ton of different types of strings. I used the Ableton presets of strings and different orchestral parts. The main driving bass line is a double bass with viola on top. When stacked, it sounds like MIDI, but all of them are supposed to sound like real instruments. There’s even an oboe somewhere. The guitar though is all real and played by me. On one day, I just had the feeling to make strings. Even the opening to "bright red" has strings. The first minute of "lose less" has strings, but you’re right, "the village" has the most strings. One of my favorite recent albums is Black Country, New Road from the Ants From Up There, so I wanted to make a hyperpop song while still using those elements. I could have used other elements and production techniques to make it more of an upbeat dancy song, but I wanted to make it with real instruments, and that’s how "the village" turned out.

Finch: "bright red" has some really interesting lyrics; my favorite was the phrase "you burned my soul and i couldn't repent it". What were the emotions like during the writing of that song?

natureplayer: There’s definitely these two halves of that song, the lyric you mentioned being from the last half of the song. Thematically they aren’t too similar, other than the phrase "bright red". It starts with me comparing two places, New York City (where I have been) and Lisbon (where i haven’t been). They’re glorified for very different reasons, and it was really exploring that. Then there’s the part what does it symbolize- where I’m making fun of myself, talking about all these things in the world, then there’s the “wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go out and live in it”, and that’s me exploring all these visceral emotions. This is like when you’re calling someone out for something, and they say “well oh, you did that too” and it stings a bit. People leave an impact on you, for better or for worse.

Finch: On the other hand, "I cut veggies with a pocket knife" is one of the funniest lyrics I've heard in a depressing melancholy song ("purple elephants")- why did you choose to do that?

natureplayer: The title "purple elephants" refers to the thought experiment that I’d heard of. Try to not think of a purple elephant and you can’t not think about a purple elephant. That’s the hook, I don’t want to think about it. The feeling of things you aren’t going to do, you can’t force yourself to not think about doing it. The song is about how I have feelings to do dangerous things, and how I often avoid situations just to avoid hurting people. I don’t like being on rooftops or balconies, and so I live on the first floor. Getting back to the lyric, I use a small knife because I’m scared of big knives. The song is trying to evoke the goosebumps feeling of standing on the edge of a balcony, and you don’t want to or plan on doing anything, but you could. The song is not about wanting to do these things, it’s more about wanting to avoid the immediacy of them.

Finch: Patience is a really detailed song, do you mind explaining what that opening part means or is about?

natureplayer: This was a thing somewhere I used to live. Someone tried to shoot up a church, and it wasn’t clear if it was domestic terrorism or meant to be a suicide by cop situation. I was right there. I didn’t know what was going on, but I started seeing these headlines. You start to think, which is worse, I mean no matter what happened, it was awful. There’s a line in Halloween by Phoebe Bridgers about hospitals. It’s one of my favorite line from a song with really dark lyrics. This was the time when all the hospitals were full, so it was great no one else got hurt, because they couldn’t get help at a hospital.

Finch: One last question- you work alone for almost all your songs. Why?

natureplayer: So a lot of this is I have a lot of collaborative songs that are being saved up for something. I’ve done some SoundCloud only collaborative releases, like on GOOPHOUSE. There’s some songs that came out a year ago with some friends, nobody really in this scene. I very much combine the songwriting and production process, so that’s a big part. I start on something and keep working until it’s a demo. For these songs in particular, they all had a shape that made sense. There wasn’t really an open on a verse for someone to come in. There are plenty of those songs that I have made, they just haven’t come out yet.

(End interview)

Overall, natureplayer is a cool dude. Longest interview I've had if I'm not wrong, but it was overall very interesting to learn about him and his music. Go stream solo project now!