Weeding Through ‘Nekkuja’ with Marina Herlop

Catalan composer and producer Marina Herlop returned in October with her latest album, Nekkuja, an embodiment of harmonical warmth and texture. While waiting for her previous album Pripyat to be released, Herlop was overwhelmed by the uncertainty of its success and began visualizing herself as a gardener, “pulling out purple weeds from the soil, every bad memory of emotion [she] wanted to expulse being one of the plants.” Rather than sinking into the negativity, Nekkuja is forward-thinking, passionate, and hopeful. 

We caught up with Herlop upon the album’s release to talk about creative processes, the aesthetics of experimental music, and dedicating time to simply making music. 

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PLEASER: From your bio, the idea of pulling out purple weeds from the garden was such a creative representation of expelling negative emotions and really tied into your relationship with nature as a healing space. How did visualizing that metaphorical garden help you escape the uncertainty that you experienced while waiting for the release of your previous album?   

HERLOP: You know when you are not feeling at your best, but you don’t let yourself feel that way because you know that what is going on is not in a category of something really bad or dramatic? It's like, ‘I'm feeling bad, but it's not because anyone died. It's not because I'm sick.’ I feel privileged overall, always, and sometimes this doesn't allow me to let myself feel too sad because it's like, ‘Oh, shut up, nothing bad is going on.’ So, I was feeling a bit bad, but because of these first-world problems, not because of something really bad, and I wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t want to abandon myself to sadness or anger, because when you do that, it can be a vicious cycle. Sometimes when you are sad, but not too sad, it heals quickly, because it’s necessary to have a space to talk about emotions and let them go. But sometimes, if you go too far, you magnify your bad emotions. At least that's what works for me, or I think works. So I started to visualize [the garden], but I think it was the act of getting into work that actually healed me. Not directly––maybe not as in when I started working and I forgot about all my problems––but as the result of the work. By that I mean, all the progress in my career and all the experiences [like] meeting people, having fun with bandmates, being in different places and having a busy lifestyle actually helps a lot.  

P: It's really interesting how you conceptualized the album when you were not in a good mental state, but instead of lingering in that and writing a melancholy album, you've created more of this poppy sound. 

H: Since a few years ago, or maybe five years ago, I’ve been at a point where I’ve strongly decided to direct myself towards light and towards happiness. I find myself rejecting complaints, rejecting bad attitudes, rejecting people that have dark energy. Maybe it's an unconscious or subconscious statement, you know? To make this kind of music was like, I want to test how bright my music can get without getting to be too cheesy, or I want to allow myself maybe to be a bit cheesier and see what happens. The world of experimental music is very related to letting emotions go and sometimes our emotions are a bit dark, and so sometimes the world of experimental music or electronic music has this dark vibe or dark aura, because we allow ourselves to speak the truth. If we have that emotion going on, we just let them go. But I didn't want to circle around this bad emotion. However, I don't associate my music to my emotions that much, or not consciously. I think it’s of course related, but I would say my music is not my own story, or my own manifest, but just some aesthetic. If something's going on inside me, of course that has a repercussion to the music. But it's like a side effect, it's not the main thing.

P: So interesting, because my next question was kind of about that. Your music, and a lot of experimental music, is so visceral. As a listener, you really feel it, almost as if it's touching you when you listen to it. I was wondering if you associated distinct sounds with certain emotions and then worked those in, but it sounds like that’s not the case.  How do you approach deciding where to place each sound? Do you work in parts, or make something first and then see where it fits into the story you’re trying to tell on that album?  

H: For me, what I'm chasing all the time, and this might be too loose or abstract, but what I'm chasing is this feeling of, “Yeah!” Like, when you listen to something, and you go, ‘What's that? I want more of that.’ When you feel awake or excited about something. So what I'm chasing, ultimately, is this. In the micro, it’s this kick, or this piano progression, or this vocal take, and in the macro is the whole song. So what I’m chasing is the fundamental, the foundation. The rest is something that when I'm being asked about, I think about it and then I sort of make a concept and an idea, but [only] because I have been asked. It's not something that I think about when I sit down and make music. I don't even think about anything. I just started working on this chord progression in the piano, and I feel like it works, it feels appealing, and I feel like I connect with this, so let’s go. What are we going to do with this piano progression? We’re going to put this synth sound in it, and then I'm looking for presets, and then ‘oh, yes, I like this one.’ And so it's maybe more primitive or more rudimental… it's more simple, you know? And for the decision of putting nature sounds in this album, [that’s because] I knew it was going to revolve around the idea of the garden. Back in 2021, I knew that there was going to be a live show in 2021 [with] plants onstage. Everything was quite literal. So I thought, why not, you know? Why not be a little bit literal and use the sounds that belong to nature. They’re appealing to the ear and also have an aesthetic purpose.

“The fact that it is a happy song doesn't mean that the process of making it was fun, you know? Because once you enter that dimension of the song and your psyche, it's very mental, it's very abstract. I don’t think of a beach or a forest, my mind thinks about proportions.”

P: Your music is so intuitive, and I feel like it's nice to see music just pour out of somebody. Do you get into the perfectionist phase after editing, or do you really feel like when you've got it, you've got it and a song can just be made and done [as is]? 

H: At the end I get that feeling of ‘okay it's done,’ but the process to get there is quite tortuous. It’s actually quite ironic because––I think it's the second song of the album called “Cosset”–– It's probably the happiest song, but it’s the one that was more of a torture to make. The fact that it is a happy song doesn't mean that the process of making it was fun, you know? Because once you enter that dimension of the song and your psyche, it's very mental, it's very abstract. I don’t think of a beach or a forest, my mind thinks about proportions. It’s very abstract inside when you're making a song. Sometimes it's like the song is requesting something to be made and it's asking for you to do it, but you don’t know what you need to do. And you need to figure it out by giving a lot of listens, by letting it wait for some days, and by trying things and proving those things don't work. So I wouldn't say it's fun because the music ultimately sounds very organic and sort of spontaneous, but the process is not like that at all. It is very constrained, like it puts my mind to the edge. It’s not flowers, it’s hard work. And of course, there's perfectionism, to a degree that sometimes I ask myself if it's healthy for me. At the same time, I think that when you want to get something of which you're proud of, you need to test your limits, and you need to force yourself a bit to be led to the edge. One of the reasons why I make music on my own is that I wouldn't let a person next to me go through what I go through when I make music, because I know that I can go through whatever I think is epic or valid. And no one's going to feel bad except for me. No one's watching, you know, there's no police. There's no judgment. There's no one, so if I want to work on a song until, you know, I break down. I can do it because it's myself. I wouldn't do that to another person. But I think that sometimes you need to explore to what degree you are ready to put yourself through, if that makes sense. Like, maybe I'm very tired of this song and I really want to stop working, but what if I don't stop?

PLEASER: I think a bit of perfectionism can go hand in hand with determination because it gets you to the end goal without giving up on a song.

HERLOP: Yeah, and it can get a bit toxic, you know? It can get dark. But, who said that is not needed? Maybe I prefer to go through a bad time while making an album, and then at the end I am really proud and can enjoy anything that might bring. Maybe I understand that this is how it's meant to be? I think a lot of artists go through that path, and in my mind I associate it like, push yourself to the limit and get a result of which you are proud of. Because I personally don't think I would be proud of something that was very easy to make. I’m requiring something aesthetically  interesting, which means it's sort of complex or challenging. And if it's challenging as a listener, it will be challenging as a music maker. So it means you're trapped. Like you cannot get stuff that you think it's interesting without hard work behind it. But at the same time, I'm asking myself where this is going to leave [me], because in my mind, the process of making music can get so torturous or so dark that my brain doesn't want to do it. I find myself procrastinating so much, because I know when I get there, it's not fun. Or not fun all the time. 

PLEASER:  Do you plan to bring visual aesthetics, such as the garden, back on tour to create more of an immersive sound and visual experience or just focus on the music?

HERLOP: No. To be honest, this year has been very demanding work wise–– in a lot of departments that are not directly related to music. As in, you know, business. And of course touring is related to music because you end up performing on stage, but stuff around it has little to do with music. It requires social skills and it requires some sort of ánima, but that doesn’t relate to music. So I'm very thirsty right now––and I think it's what I have to do in my career––to purely devote myself to music again. And I don't want to make videos, I don’t want to make pictures, I don't want to do anything related to another thing that is not music. I want to sit at the piano and study and I want to practice my vocals and I want to actively listen to new music and I want to do niche music. Like, I want to go specifically to the music department. And yeah, of course I'd love to have a big performance in which there were plants and dancers and everything, but you know, that requires so much energy from my end. If other people did it I would be down, but I know it requires a lot of energy from my side that I’d rather dedicate to music.