Think for a moment, what is music? Can you imagine? Well, re-thik again. Jerome Faria, better known as NNY, deconstructs our conception of sounds, cadences and rhythms creating a new and more abstract musical tones reflecting on an unusual listening experience. A trip with textures and nuances that is accompanied by images. Confused? Not much, just listen and let yourself go...
Tell me about your musical career.
Jerome Faria: Essentially I started more or less as teenagers begin playing guitar and drums in garage bands. In my twenties, I was part of many groups, from rock, heavy mental and even participated in rural shows. I played piano, bass, guitar, as was needed. However in 2003 I started my interest in the computer as a tool of production. Then I began to explore the possibilities that existed with sound, as raw material in addition to the concept of music as a song, or at least the traditional structure.
Your work has a strong visual component. When did it start to make sense to insert images in your musical?
JF: I previously had an interest in the image before I start working on music and given the abstract nature of the sounds I work with thought it was an interesting help mainly in Madeira. It is a type of music that is unusual it seemed a good idea to associate the image as a visual representation of what I'm doing. The images I use are reactive or are in a way that people can more easily perceive the influence of these defaults. Turns out to be more interesting for those who do not know, get caught by the imagination to see images and a visual representation of music.
You make collections of sounds of nature before you even create new shades?
JF: Yes, but I cannot say that there is a fixed process. I can use as much musical instruments such as the nature and noise of day-to-day.
How do you start this creative process?
JF: It's a process of research and learning. Find a new technique, a new synthesizer, anything that allows me to acquire new knowledge. The results ultimately suggest other ideas and mix with existing previous recordings. I often try to synthetically reproduce a natural sound, try to make it from scratch. Or even the day to day and try to deconstruct it, or break down to be something completely different. This is the process that ultimately experience suggests ideas and then is a matter of intuition.
Your music as you mentioned earlier is abstract. The audience attending your shows does understand in the end?
JF: A word that is often used as a description of the concerts is travel. Turns out to be interesting, because what I try to do is also essentially suggest a universe, an environment where those who are listening are part with their imagination. Eventually. There's a rhythmic or melodic structure in my work. It makes little sense that people look for something to happen. Typically, structures are layers and nuances that then mean that people get carried away. I like to think that my music evokes a sense of nostalgia at times. This aspect of being carried away in a room with fifty or one hundred people turns out to be an individual experience, because each interprets it differently.
On your compositions you use sound and image. Have you thought of using a third element within the thematic approach of your concerts?
JF: I've thought about it and I have a project in development that is linked to the image, but with the narrative component that is called the concert film. That is, I'll be creating in real time, with improvisation, a soundtrack for a silent movie. I think this kind of musical style have a significant influence on the emotions images evokes. In this context, I would like to interact with other instruments or sounds to capture nuances of traditional sayings, are noise, or strokes of a violin. All forms of not playing an instrument, but that emit sound.
A concert for when?
JF: Hopefully, this year, since I'm working on it for about a year and a half. It should have happened last year, but for practical reasons it was not possible. The idea was narrowing it here in Madeira, in a film session. It was important for the film in question. This is an important record in the history of cinema and especially the dumb. It would be important for those who do not know this movie see it and also who has seen, have a different interpretation. The title is "the office of Dr.Caligary." It's a symphony that is the computer that will process these sounds, that is, the musicians will play in real time their instruments and I'll try and use these shades I will process them so that in this case the raw material ends up happening at the moment and I have the same role of improvisation that musicians through a computer.
http://www.nothing.scene.org/nny/work.html
