Track By Track: Nuage – Neida

Enter Nuage's world of mystery and you'll soon find yourself becoming ever-so-slightly detached from reality. Though that might sound a tad disconcerting at first, surely living in this realm of intrigue and fantasy is considerably more fun than being trapped behind a desk inside a cube inside a towering building all day? To help you escape from your daily routine you can have listen to Nuage's brand new Neida LP, out now on Project: Mooncircle, in full right here as he guides you through the album one track at a time;

Nulla

Colours: The colour of this track is blue gradational gray, the color of a mountain stream, turbulent water.

Season: I wrote this track in the spring, in April. Then I finally began to feel the first warmth. I'd been waiting for this time after a long gray St. Petersburg winter and I think changes associated with the change of seasons are felt in the track. Main cyclical percussive synth and sharp reverb elements remind me of a mountain stream, flow and time when the world wakes up, it's something magical.

Inspiration: I couldn’t do anything with it for a while and I was nervous, thinking I couldn't make it. Finally, I was lucky to make this sound which reminds me of drops, resulting in new space for ideas. The track is complex but the main idea is traced here very precisely. Like all tracks from the EP –  ‘Nulla’ is inspired by nature, the harmony, the mythology associated with natural phenomena.

Setting: I don’t remember how the idea came about but I remember the impression of the basic pick – I could not stop listening to it. In the end, from the first idea it was just a voice and a few bass bits remaining. I would like to look at the river listening to this track – I wonder if it would coincide with a picture?

Haunting

Colours:  The colours of this track are gray and white – this is a transparent track. It reminds me of cold air, weightless and chilling.

Season: It was the dead of winter. February is very cold weather here in St. Petersburg. We were returning from a walk along the canal, and we were very cold and I finally made the track afterwards.

Inspiration: I clearly imagined the mountains: I used a vocal sample which is talking about them. When I came up with the title of the track, I would also link it with nature – but only long names came to mind and they did not suit me. And then my friend remarked about this track: it doesn't say  "mountains”, it says "haunting", and indeed the recurrence of this phrase was then spinning in my head all day.

Setting: I imagine long mountain passes, with a backpack, all these travellers, a blizzard – a sort of video on the Discovery Channel.

Spring Ghosts

Colour: Green, blue, and light blue colours. Paintings of the awakening of nature.

Season: The song describes the spring – something that is in the air when everyone wakes up from sleep.

Inspiration: Once in a museum in Helsinki, I saw a picture depicting nymphs in a forest. I would like to create not only a connection with nature and an atmosphere of magic, as if to portray these invisible spirits of the forest. The track was written in April; you'veprobably guessed it. 😉

Setting: At the beginning of the track I used percussion reminiscent of flapping wings and came up with different effects that can somehow draw a mystical natural picture. Then I sent the track to a friend and she gave me exactly the same idea and even mentioned the wings. I believe that the illustration succeeds. Perhaps this track doesn’t have to be somewhere near the forest in the spring to feel the magic.

Best Mistake

Colour: This track is dark blue, gray and the colour of the sea.

Season: I also wrote it in the winter but was inspired by a different image in my head. It reminds me of the sea, not warm, but cold. Despite the fact that it is clearly a love theme, the theme of nature is easily noticeable.

Inspiration: As in most of the tracks I used samples of folk guitar riffs and synthesizers, especially in the second part. There is something mythical and the rhythm breaks down, it's like the cold weather changes.

Setting: Somehow this track reminds me of a ship ride, the movement of the day, lighthouses, gray skies and waves. The sea is restless.

Neida

Colour: The main track of the album. Colours are aqua, yellow (sunlight), blue.

Season: Despite the fact that the track is written in the winter – I would associate it with late summer.

Inspiration: The track passes the mythical side of the record. I was inspired by Bradbury stories while writing the album. After I read one of the stories, the main theme of the album was born. The spirit of the sea, facing a woman, but invisible to the human eye, weightless. Sea, especially the northern, seems quiet at first glance, but this calm is deceptive, it conceals something chilling, mystical, something that can subjugate, fascinate. NEIDA – the spirit of the North Sea. According to the legend, the boy cannot resist the siren call of the mysterious; he embarks on a journey in order to come to the ocean to meet it.

Setting: I think it is worth trying to go ashore to the cold sea and play the track.

Overflow

Colours: Dark colours – dark gray, white, dark blue and the color of the stones, dark brown.

Season: This is also a winter track – I remember how I got tired of waiting for the spring at this time. This track is the darkest of all. It reminds me of a northern summer, cold and rainy, but it has its own attraction. Of all tracks, this one is most of all about nature.

Inspiration: I've imagined the far northern lighthouses, deserted areas and the waves lapping on the shore. I sampled vocal pieces from northern ethnic songs, used sampled strings of the harp and played live so it's a very emotional and slow track. I think that all of the EP is like space for stories, sometimes mythical, sometimes realistic, sometimes calm and sometimes frightening.

Setting: I think it is good to listen to it at home during the night, for some reason. Despite these slightly gloomy associations, music does not convey the feeling of cold, it soothes.

Erased

Colour: Brown, dark green – the colours of the forest.

Season: This is the first track ever written for EP. I guess I wrote it in the fall or late summer.

Inspiration: It is the most emotional of all the tracks from the EP. It sounds like a dark forest or like it suddenly starts to rain. You can trace folk and ethnic themes in the track, probably the voice, although this sample is not from folk.

Setting: I remember a trip to Finland in July when we listened to it in a certain way. Since then I always associate it with that time.

If I found

Colours: Blue, the colour of sand, water.

Season: This track is more about the summer; I sampled wave sounds to clearly convey a sense of space.

Inspiration: I wanted to write one more light, balanced soundscape. It was placed at the end of the EP, to characterise the fact that after all – the sea is more of a friend than an enemy.

Setting: I'd just closed my eyes and listened to the sound of waves and would put this track in the background.

Neida is out now via Project: Mooncircle.