A: Around the time the Vices EP released, I was exploring new music, influences and sounds trying to find something that worked for me. I wanted to make a project different than my previous music, which was almost exclusively instrumental lo-fi music. I had been working on music with my vocals on it for years before that but I never released anything officially until I was absolutely confident with the sound I was going for.
I self taught myself everything I know to this day, and during production of Vilify I had to ramp up the rate at which I learned because I was trying to improve from my last work as much as possible. This project was a lot of trial, error and experimentation. I got a whole bunch of new synthesizers, drums and all sorts of sounds that I had to learn how to use.
I wanted to “shuffle” the structure of a normal song and flip it on it’s head. I let the music play itself rather than worrying about song structure. If you can make something sound good to the listener, song structure, key and other conventions doesn’t matter nearly as much.
Lyrically, I took heavy inspiration from my personal life with themes of mental illness and relationship problems. Those personal experiences fueled the emotion and anguish on the record. The story of a damaged mind trying to get up, repair itself and push forward despite all odds. I can’t really describe it any further. I like to let the music speak for itself.
Listen to Nostau, Vilify
Q: What are your biggest musical influences?
A: Originally, I entered music under the name Simpliciti and was producing EDM and ambient music. I’ve always loved making chord progressions and I often put in my old ambient music, inspired by artists like Alicks and Joji/Pink Guy. I tried my best to imitate that sound while putting my own touches and emotions into it.
This sound continues to be a big inspiration in Vilify, while blended with hip hop and rock. When I first started writing Vilify I was inspired by the modern electronic production of Kanye West on projects like TLOP and Ye. Over the time I produced the record, I listened to many other artists in the hip-hop, electronic, rock, pop and R&B genres. I actually have an entire playlist on my Spotify artist page with the many songs and artists that influenced this project. Some notable artists include Childish Gambino, Kid Cudi, RAM era Daft Punk and Frank Ocean.
Q: What got you started making music?
A:Around 2015 I was starting to consume a lot more music. While I knew I wasn’t a very good singer and didn’t have much rhythm, the emotional and personal aspects drew me to music and lyric writing. I remember before I started, one of my friends showed me a couple of his beats he made and I was impressed. I was so captivated in how easy it was to make good quality music, given enough hard work and dedication.That upcoming Christmas, I got gifted a copy of FL Studio as well as some basic equipment. At that point, I told myself I was committed to it and had to keep working since it was such a big purchase relative to my situation. I originally used a Blue Yeti microphone leftover from a few old YouTube commentary channels I made to record all of my music. I finally had to upgrade earlier this year to a Rode NT1A and Scarlett 2i2. I used to listen to Eminem and Childish Gambino a lot and I eventually got into writing rhymes and experimenting with hip-hop songs a couple years into making music.
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