Interview with Nautics
By Bailey Blake
Photo by Emely Truong
While having the privilege to go to college so close to New York City, I've used a part of that time to take the opportunity to dive into the music scene. So many quintessential acts have come out of The Big Apple like Talking Heads, Jay-Z, and The Strokes just to name a few. That just goes to show how special New York City is when it comes to producing incredible artists.
During one late night over the summer, I was bored and looking for some new artists I could check out. I then stumbled across a band called Nautics on Instagram. Based on what I was seeing on their feed, they looked like a fun band to see live, so I decided to give them a listen.
I was not disappointed.
As I hit the shuffle button on their discography, their song Post Madonna had begun to play. I loved it immediately.
There’s a retro feel to the song. It’s incredibly groovy, and the lead singer Kenzo Repola’s vocals complimented the instrumentals so well. It was a perfect first impression.
Soon after, I had the pleasure of hopping on a call with the talented members Kenzo, Van Cameron, and Levitt Yaffe. With their unique blend of indie rock and dream pop, Nautics is working hard to make their dreams a reality.
When the call started, Cameron was in the middle of making spaghetti. To assure that he wouldn’t have to wait too long to dig into his meal, I wanted to jump right into the questions.
PLEASER: I just want to know a little bit about how you guys met and just how you guys came together and started the band.
VAN CAMERON: I met Levitt a long, long time ago. We were friends in preschool, but the band started when we were 16. I met Kenzo in high school and we just were like, “hey, we wanna make music and be in a band” Kenzo can talk more about that. But we just talked about it and we said , “yeah, let's, let's fucking do it. That would be cool to be like a band.”
KENZO REPOLA: Yeah. Van and I were in class together. Not that the story is so mystical or anything, but basically I had seen some of my friends play at Webster Hall at the old Marlon at the time. I don't think that exists anymore. I had no interest in being in a band, I did music a little bit but not a lot. I saw them play and it was like an explosion went off in my mind. I knew the band had already done some music with Levitt and there were some other people that he knew in a band or doing music together. hen I think I just grabbed Van in class one day and said, “we have to do this, I want to do this so badly.”
Van's been a gateway person into music for me as well. I think a lot of my musical tastes started when I was 16. I don't think I had a lot of bands or music that I listened to truthfully other than like, maybe what my dad played in the car. But that journey started in high school.
VC: And then Kitt also went to high school with us, but it wasn't until like years later, he kind of came up to us and we started talking about music. I think that might’ve been four years ago. He said he’d love to produce for us, then basically we let him produce a few of our albums and we worked together. Things worked out in such a way where we asked him if he wanted to play guitar for us. So yeah, he joined and then that's how we came to our current lineup.
KR: Yeah, Kitt was always in the ethos. Always there as a friend or a musical contemporary. He helped write some songs. Now I would say he’s official. It’s been a year so he is very much an official member of the band.
PLEASER: Amazing. So you guys all grew up in New York City?
KR: Yeah, we're all born and raised in New York. Three of us are from Manhattan. Kitt, I believe, was born in Brooklyn, Prospect Park.
PLEASER: How did growing up here impact your interest in music?
KR: For me, a lot of it was about band culture and getting to perform. That was my interest, being a performer, doing shows, meeting people. NYC made it very accessible even as a young person. There are still outlets. There's a really great venue called 72 that was on 72 Warren Street at the time. Basically you could be 14 or 13 and play shows for other kids that were your age. I think once you were like a senior in high school, you couldn't play there anymore. I think something like that wouldn't exist in such a structured way with older people who were like managing it and ticketing it. It was as close to a legitimate venue or like a practice of what it would end up being to play at Mercury Lounge and Webster Hall. It was like a baby steps version of that, which maybe some people don't have that opportunity at such a young age elsewhere.
VC: I think Kenzo’s spot on. It's kind of weird when you talk to bands from out of town 'cause they're like, oh, we played garage shows and house shows and stuff. That exists in New York, but when you're 16, that really doesn't. We didn't know anybody that would let us play a house show or a basement show. So it's like really cool straight off the bat you're playing these big-ish venues. It's really exciting and that's not to mention that we're surrounded by very, very good musicians and music and people who come here to be musicians. I think it's really an amazing environment to just be a musician.
PLEASER: How'd you find that venue?
LY: Through doing band programs that we were just a part of individually and collectively, we had other friends who had found it. And then through Facebook someone probably posted a picture of the venue. hen we saw a flyer and we were like, “oh, we wanna do that”
KR: I remember when we first emailed 72 and we'd never played a show at all at that point. We were like 16 and we were like “no one's gonna let us play. We have no idea what we're doing But then we got an email back saying we were gonna be on the bill for the next show. It was as if someone told us we were playing Madison Square Garden.
Photo by Emely Truong
PLEASER: What are some of your biggest influences right now? Or even from when you guys started?
LY: It changes. It definitely changes throughout, I wanna say, each time we work on a new project we're all coming at it from just music we're listening to at that time. Definitely like post pop punk revival type stuff, then there's always the indie alternative, rock vibe and psychedelic rock. At some point I can list the genres I'm thinking of just based on the songs that we've created in lieu of being inspired by other artists.
VC: Me and Ken have been talking about Bloc Party for the past three months.
KR: I think things shift constantly and we try to add new stuff, but like Bloc Party is a big thing that I think was a past influence when we were young and we're kind of revisiting it in a more adult way with our identity that we've cultivated over the years. We're not obviously trying to copy Block Party, but I think of course we’re very inspired by their structure and how they perform sonically.
VC: And I mean, everybody loves to talk about the indie sleaze revival, I think Bloc Party is one of the bands from it. I love the entire genre of post-punk music and obviously we love The Strokes and Interpol. But Bloc Party were one of those bands that I feel like when we look back on them, they aren't talked about as much. And when we were discovering that music, It just was super inspirational 'cause it felt like they were hitting at the next level at the time. We also love Oasis and Blur. Ken and I will send each other photos of Oasis and Blur and just go “literally us” all day.
PLEASER: Since you mentioned Blur and Oasis, which one do you prefer?
KR: Oh, that's a dangerous question. I think there's a right diplomatic answer. Maybe it’s Blur.
LY: I’m gonna say Blur.
KR: Blur is a better band. But Oasis might have written some of the most clean songs.
VC: They have two perfect albums, Blur doesn’t. But overall, I think it’s Blur.
KR: They just have a cool vibe as a group that I think we relate to more.
VC: Now that I say it, I know I said Oasis had better albums, but I think Parklife by Blur might be my favorite album ever.
PLEASER: Really?
VC: I love that album. Levitt and I saw them in 2015 and Courtney Barnett opened for them at Madison Square Garden. I just remember that so vividly.
PLEASER: I'm sure that you've been asked this question like so many times before, but where'd your band name come from?
KR: When we initially started there was no name. So we had our first practice and there was nothing. We had a group chat and just kept throwing random names in. I remember walking past billboards and being like, what about Sprite? But Nautics sounded really cool, like it could be old or could be from the future. It was a name that sort of just popped up and we didn’t argue about it. I wouldn’t say it was as romantic as we all agreed but we were all just like fine let's do it. For years we have been constantly trying to rebrand and change the name if we could, but then we would have a show coming up and we just couldn’t. I personally love it now. It sounds like a name a million people should have.
PLEASER: I mean, I like the clean one word, bands like Oasis, Blur, you know, so it works.
KR: Thank you.
PLEASER: Now I gotta ask you some questions about your new single, “Granted”, I listened to it on the way here. It's really, really awesome.
KR: Well, Van wrote the initial chord structure and brought it to the group, I believe. We were in this new mindset of keeping our sound and our production in a context that represents us in a focused way. Like, this is what we are and this is what we can provide as a band and it was sort of like a distillation of that effort. Van can talk more about the writing structure and chord structure but we wanted something a little more Oasis-like, a little more rock and roll, and just going back to form something a little more simple, and realizing that not overcomplicating things and just like having cool chords and like cool lyrics is fine and that can be just as interesting as something that's like hyper complex.
VC: I guess Oasis is gonna be the theme of this interview, but yeah we were listening to a lot of The Bends by Radiohead, and then Cigarettes and Alcohol by Oasis. We were just like, “what, like what does it take to make a song that, in its own way, sounds cool on its own?” Not necessarily something that you can just play and jam out to. We just wanted to make something that was like, “what do we sound like as a band?” As opposed to a complicated mess. Even within recording, we had to take steps backwards to say, “no, let's keep this, how we would play it as a band?” “How would we sing this?” There was a lot of debate amongst the solo of the song and keeping it like raw versus overdubbing. In the end, Kitt played this amazing solo and we were able to put it in the song. And it's pretty true to just Kitt playing it. it's kind of incredible and to me, it really makes the song.
KR: Kitt’s not here to blush at this comment but he’s an incredible musician. We’re lucky to have him on the team.
PLEASER: How has the response of the song been so far?
KR: I mean, people have been listening. It seems to be good. We'd love people to keep listening of course. I mean, it just got released in the context of the conversation. I think we'll see how the next week goes.
VC: I think we don't know how good a song is until we play it live in front of friends and fans.
KR: Yeah. I think there's an energy that live music and doing shows has that you can't really replicate on a recorded track, but I don't know. We certainly tried.
LY: I would add one thing that I think brings value to Granted as a whole is we'd like practiced it a few times before we threw it in the set, which was well before we recorded it. And so I think having the energy along with knowing each part inside and out and just playing it over and over again, made it easier to record ideally.
PLEASER: So do you keep in mind whether or not like a song is gonna sound good live or not when you're writing it and producing it?
KR: Yeah, especially now. We've gotten to the point where we're trying to do a show every month, if not, little bit more than that. We wanna be a live band that you can come through and have a really good time. There's nothing that we love more than singing and performing to people. Like, it's literally like the best thing and it's not about the attention, I mean the attention's great but it's about this community and you're all in the same space working together. Hopefully you can see us play live.
PLEASER: I would love to.
KR: I hope you can. I think you'll have fun. We're trying to get better at capturing that on a recorded track. I think that's where we're headed is like figuring out how to, maybe it's not exactly the same, but to get the feeling of, you being room and me screaming in your face and us both screaming at each other and you're smiling and having a great time. That's what we're aiming towards.
PLEASER: How many shows have you played? What are some of your favorites?
KR: We're at a point where people will tell me I played a show and I'll be like, I had no idea. But I think the biggest one was the first one. I’ve literally never felt so nervous for anything in my entire life. I think we played to maybe five people and it was literally the other band.
LY: I can think of three shows. We played a show at Johns Hopkins. It was just an amazing experience and I realized that if the opportunity came, I would love to tour with my fellow gentleman. That's number one. Number two, we played at Marist College in a basement. And that was a very fun show. It's just a lot of like, people surrounding us and vibing up and down. And then outside there was an old lady with a knife threatening to stab people. So the whole vibe.
KR: Rock and roll. Rock and roll baby.
LY: And then we played Webster Hall when we were like 16 or 17.
KR: Yeah, we played the Marlin. It made us spoiled brats because that was the biggest show we played so we were just like why couldn’t we play Madison Square Garden? Which is the ultimate goal. Give us a year, we’ll be on that stage. That’s the plan.
PLEASER: I’ll be there. Just say when.
KR: I’ll get you the best VIP tickets ever. Hold me to it.
LY: Opening for Oasis and Blur.
PLEASER: To begin wrapping things up, what are some things you guys do in your free time when you’re not making music?
LY: I’m an author as well. I write YA fantasy novels.
VC: My life is consumed by music and listening to music. I occasionally like taking film photos and printing them. That is something I enjoy.
KR: I like painting.I do like a kind of illustrative surrealist stuff.
VC: Kenzo’s very good. He did a lot of our early albums cover art.
PLEASER: Are there any musicians you guys would be interested in collaborating with in the future?
KR: We're so bad at working with people.
VC: Yeah, we’re terrible.
KR: I feel like anyone I would say would be a nightmare to work with.
VC: Bjork.
KR: That would be a nightmare because I would just feel uncomfortable the whole time. I'd be like, you do whatever you want.
VC: I know I'd like to collaborate with... I don't know. I feel like whoever we collaborate with, I mean, I'm not gonna name names, but someone would ruin the relationship we have with them. I feel like no matter how big they were, we'd just be unable as a group to schedule anything And then everyone would be saying “wow, they hate us.” And honestly, I don't even think we're difficult to work with. Someone was telling us that being in a band is like being in your own universe. I think that's very much true. it's like you have this weird microcosm of how you create amongst yourselves.
PLEASER: So overall, what do you think is like next for you guys? Do you have, if you can say this, do you have an album in the works and what are some of your goals for next year?
LY: I think I'll say one thing that I know I hope will happen is a video for “Granted”. I think that's the next thing in the pipeline. And releasing music.
VC: Yeah, hopefully a lot more shows.
Photo by Emely Truong
Experience the latest music from Nautics - "Granted" and their brand new track "Sunday." Stream both of these amazing singles now and show them some love @official__nautics on Instagram!
