A Trip To The Zen Garden w/ Nuage Knight

Phuture Collective : Welcome aboard Phuture, Nuage! Pleasure to have you here. Tell the listeners what brought you here & what you had for breakfast!

Nuage Knight : Some little bites mini snickerdoodle muffins and a banana.  If you get full from the first bite of anything when you wake up like me, it’s literally the best breakfast snack everrrrrrr.   

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Phuture Collective : We love your track for issue nine | TRANQUILITY! Mind going over what inspirations were behind ‘A Trip To The Zen Garden’?

Nuage Knight : yooo thanks a ton! For this one, I going through a rough patch in my life at the time so I sat down at my computer and was like, “I’m just going to try and free my mind of all the bullshit that’s going through it and just create.” Which gave me this amazing mindset that led me to create in any way possible.  I found myself pulling in the most random samples like weird foley sound effects to whale moans(idk why i have whale moans on my hard drive lol) to an old recording I had of me and an old buddy had of us having a 3 hour conversation, to recording my own vocals and recording me hitting random things I have around the house, pretty much anything I could think of at the time that I thought would sound even remotely cool. (I don’t use any synth or melody samples though, I create all my synths and play the melodies myself.)  Some stuff worked, a lot didn’t, but the process of basically making something out of nothing was hella fun. I can’t believe how long it took me to realize that should be what you’re doing most of the time you sit down to create anything but before this track, I was usually trying to get better with sound design or purposely trying to fuse genres together, just trying to execute specific things within the song in order to learn and form my own sound.  

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Phuture Collective : How long have you been producing? What DAW & what kind of equipment are you working with?

Nuage Knight : I’ve been producing for about 5 years now although I’ve only been producing electronic music for about 3 years.  And I actually use the old version of logic, Logic 9 it’s just what I’m comfortable with. My equipment is pretty standard for a bedroom producer, just got my interface to connect my trusty m-audio bx8 monitors and my macbook.  Also got a 49 key keyboard which I should really upgrade soon and a small condenser Blu microphone. A microphone, no matter how shitty, is so so so so crucial for creating any type of music, and in my opinion, even more so with electronic music.

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Phuture Collective : Name your top 3 favorite / most inspirational songs of all time.

Nuage Knight : So Fine–Pomo . Counting Stars–Nujabes . The Statement–Wiz Khalifa

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Phuture Collective : Looking through your tracks you’ve developed a sound which you can claim as your own. With soft synths, lush environmental textures, and a story to be told with each piece. How would you describe your sound to our viewers & who are your inspirations?

Nuage Knight : Thanks so much! Developing my own sound is still something I work on and think about every time I sit down at the computer to work on music but like I said earlier, recently, I’ve been trying to let go of all thoughts and just focus on creating.  But I’d describe my sound as a blend of electronic sounds with catchy melodies and hip-hop rhythms.  My inspirations have definitely morphed over time, as it does with everyone I’m sure.  When I first started producing it was hip-hop producers like Sledgren and 40 because all I listen to was hip-hop from whenever i started listening to music to 18, but then I was shown Nujabes and I literally listened to all his stuff non-stop for around a month, after that my roommate, Lunar Satin, showed me Kaytranada for the first time.  And I had never heard anything like that before and I fell in love.  Then I started doing more research on my own with his help of course to really find what I love which the funkier, but still electronic type of sound.  Guys like FKJ, Pomo, Kaytranada, Darius, and a tons of others are killin this type of sound right now.

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Phuture Collective : What does the World need more of? What about less?

Nuage Knight : More understanding of different cultures and more of people trying to learn from conversations rather than prove themselves right and less judging and assuming about other people.

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Phuture Collective : Name a time when you wanted to give up. What pushed you to continue?

Nuage Knight : This is going to be a hella linear answer but this is literally the only time I thought about giving up.  About 3 1/2 years into producing seriously and I wasn’t getting booked for any shows.  And I would go to shows, see the local acts, look them up later and realize they weren’t making any music, just DJing.  And this is one of the things that makes me mad about the EDM music scene.  How DJ’s get confused with producers. In my opinion, if you’re not trying to make your own music and you get booked for a show, you have “DJ” in front of your name and us as a producer community, should try inform the listeners the different between DJ’s and producers if they don’t know already.  But anyway,  I was getting really bummed out because I couldn’t seem to find a gig anywhere, but last year november I played my first show playing in support for Vanic.  Every since then, I’ve at least been playing some shows here and there and I’m scheduled to play my first music festival, SummerSet here in August. But that didn’t necessarily push me to continue though, I would without a doubt still kept on making music even if I still wasn’t playing shows because of my passion and how my mind clears when i’m working on music.

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Phuture Collective : We’re about wrapped up here Nuage – thank you for your time, just a couple more questions. Where do you see yourself 3 years from now?

Nuage Knight : Of course! Its was great actually take time and thinking about all these.  And in 3 years when I’m 26, I see myself completely living off music, however that may be.

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Phuture Collective : Name 3 artists who deserve more recognition!

Nuage Knight : Lunar Satin, Blookah, and Slowpoke!

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