Nate Mercereau Shares SUNDAYS – Live From Elsewhere video via Aquarium Drunkard
Mercereau is also set to play outdoor LA show Oct. 14 presented by Ambient Church
Today Nate Mercereau shares a full concert video, SUNDAYS – Live From Elsewhere via Aquarium Drunkard. The performance, filmed in Topanga Canyon, features Mercereau playing songs from his new album (as well as some newer, unreleased material) with musicians Carlos Niño and Josh Johnson.
Mercereau explains:
“Over the last year Carlos Niño, Josh Johnson and I did a series of outdoor concerts. We simply wanted to make and share music in inspiring + beautiful environments. Playing music outdoors and allowing the environment to be a part of the expression is very meaningful to us, we ended up presenting music all around Southern California. We played in Ojai, Venice, Malibu, and this concert in the hills of Topanga.
The way this trio makes music is exciting, we are bringing our full presence + evolving selves to the situation and creating new music for the moment, every time. There is a lot of trust, risk and vulnerability playing with Carlos and Josh, the ceiling of possibility is endlessly high. The music on SUNDAYS is made in this spirit. We approach improvisation as spontaneous composition, considering emotionally resonant moments of creativity as compositional elements, highlighting and magnifying those moments as the music unfolds. In this set we further explore themes from SUNDAYS, ending with a new composition/improvisation titled “Elsewhere.” Thank you Stephan Ashkenazy and Elsewhere, Topanga for opening your doors to us, and to Travis Lett and Carlos for helping to facilitate this live recording.”
ALBUM RELEASE SHOW:
10/14 Los Angeles, CA @ Sylvan Ampitheater – presented by Ambient Church
text 310-421-0869 for more info.
Shortly after completing work on the SUNDAYS album, Mercereau read about how the Golden Gate Bridge was emitting a humming sound due to recent construction. When he heard field recordings of the bridge acting as essentially the largest woodwind instrument in the world, he hatched a plan to record a series of duets with the bridge, resulting in the EP release Duets | Golden Gate Bridge which was surprise released in July, 2021. The release attracted press attention from all over the globe, with feature stories in the SF Chronicle, NPR’s All Things Considered, The Guardian, CBC, Guitar World and tons more.
Listening to Nate Mercereau’s music feels like staring down a kaleidoscope. The songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist surveys the fractured borders between sounds, and celebrates the beautiful moments where they collide. And when he’s not making his own music, he’s looking at the world of pop through his prismatic perspective—he’s produced or played on records by Jay-Z, Shawn Mendes, Lizzo, and The Weeknd, just to name a few. Moreover, Mercereau has learned that no matter what sounds he’s working with he needs to lean in close, to focus on the details. “When you keep zooming in on something, it keeps getting more detailed,” says the Los Angeles-based artist. “It’s like there’s worlds within that world.” His new album, SUNDAYS, embodies that as he dives headlong into a mystical, rich vein of sonic worlds, each song more intricate and intimate than the last.
SUNDAYS developed out of what Mercereau calls “spontaneous composition”—weekly delves into his psyche via live-streamed performance. The sets were built in fluid collaboration with a series of percussive improvisations dreamt up by Carlos Niño, a forward-thinking producer, instrumentalist, and staple of L.A.’s experimental scene. Due to its open beginnings, SUNDAYS is both free of form and packed with complexity —at any given moment it can feel airy, dusty, serene, or fiercely passionate. The ten tracks don’t seem like traditionally structured songs. They’re human, emotional, and alive. “Everything I’m doing is about getting breath out of my body,” Mercereau says. “It really feels elemental.”
SUNDAYS began less as an album and more as a space to process the world. Over the course of 2020, Mercereau began a weekly Sunday livestream series. “That day of the week is particularly charged for me for many reasons,” he says. “It’s the end of a week, and the beginning of something else, and there’s just always something that happens that day emotionally if I can tune into it.” Niño would send a long-form improvisation before the set, then Mercereau would play and create along with it in real-time, creating a palpable sense of live interaction. As Mercereau explains, “There were so many moments where it felt like borderline psychic communication happening between us, even though we made many of our parts at different times.” The weekly sessions lasted from April to December. By the end, Mercereau knew he had an album on his hands, and began whittling it into a cohesive shape.
How So Records is a partnership with Ricky Reed’s Nice Life Recording Company, a venture Mercereau describes as “a record label for seekers. We are presenting music that is looking for something new, out of its audience and out of its creators. We are bound not by genre, only radical creativity. High level music for high level listening.”
Nate Mercereau
SUNDAYS
(How So / Nice Life)
Release Date: Sept. 24, 2021
Purchase or stream it here
Track List:
1. Shared Reality
2. Start With You
3. Every Moment Is The First And Last
4. Absolute Sensitivity
5. Immersed In The Going
6. I’ve Got What I Need
7. Truly Loving It
8. It’s Happening Again
9. …I’ve Always Been Here
10. Access Point
NATE MERCEREAU LINKS:
Press Assets | Website | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp