A Conversation With NUKULUK

It doesn’t make sense, does it? For a song to feel quiet, surely music is the opposite of quiet. But some moments in NUKULUK’s new EP ‘Disaster Pop’ feel delicate, gentle even. They nestle soundscapes to nest in between sporadic bursts of hip-hop power. Each song drips through each other. It collects in bodies then disperses. Even though the EP finishes on the song ‘Rain’, each track flows into each other like liquid. And it feels like all of the members drink from this liquid, and share it.

They are definitively a collective, with Louis playing drums alongside producing the drums, Mateo plays bass and makes the visuals to accompany the songs. Olivia plays the synth and sampler, adding vocals and producing. Syd does vocals, produces, plays guitar and sampler and makes videos, and Monika does vocals. Together they carve screeches into soundscapes, mangle field recordings of screams into sonic, claim them, turn them upside down and then power them up.

Some of their songs, like ‘Feel So’, feel like an awakening, or a realisation. Syd’s voice laps with the waves of sonic that flow forth and back around them. Monika’s voice cuts through the sonic like an arm through water, trying to swim. Followed by ‘Nu Year’, a song that flows and breaks, in a way that feels like floating over waves on a body of water, staring at the sky.

The synth sounds pauses and repeats like a glitch, unnatural movement, a suspension, feathered in the air. But if this EP is floating, ‘Rain’ drops it to the ground; a song that immediately strikes as nostalgic, studded with field recordings. This feels symbiotic, as pads of the member’s vocals pat like water joining the earth, a group, a ecosystem. A safe little world, NUKULUK are inviting us into a corner of themselves. And this is what NUKULUK is about really, inviting us in.

So, in this conversation Clash talks to Monika and Syd of NUKULUK about this process of creating as a collective, tempting disaster, and recycling and repurposing sounds, making something of what might be discarded…

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NUKULUK seemed to pop out of nowhere with all of this finished stuff that’s just so polished, so how did you form as a collective?

Monika: I had never stepped into a recording studio, I hadn’t really written anything. But Syd had a lot of faith in me from the get go, even when I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself and that I think is what really underscores the collective because I remember, and I don’t think I can ever forget when the only two people really listening to the songs was me and Syd.

And then when Louie came, it was the first time there was an external voice that was actually gassed about the project. And he put a lot of care and affection and saying what he loves, that made a huge difference, that bond of the three of us just was very creative and helped us to finish the songs. When the whole collective formed, and we had made the songs, we were like, right, we have 12 songs, let’s pick five, let’s finish them and let’s put them out. And then we pick the names together, and then we finish the songs. And there they are. And I think that’s why they feel so finished. Because they’re a real labour of love. Lots of layers of doubt, change, people coming in a resurgence of faith.

I want to know a bit more about the relationship of your lyrics to the music. How did they form? Was it you guys that wrote the lyrics? Or did you speak with each other about what you wanted the song to be?

Monika: Syd writes his magic on his own. And, I just find it extremely beautiful. ‘Feel So’ is the core example. I just listened to the melodies and what Syd was saying. I recognised him and I know what he’s trying to say. And then I just felt like I had enough space to just go and be like, okay, what’s my take on this emotion? When I feel this emotion, what do I want to say about it? And that’s our why verses are so different. But they’re very, very deeply connected.

Syd: You really have to believe in the world you’re building or the environment you’re addressing.

It was the start of the pandemic. I had loads of uncertainty. I could see that freelance artists were pretty low down the queue of who the government was gonna make any accommodations for. And I was really frightened. And then to have Monika, almost show the same pain, but from such alternate point of view. It was such an amazing form of communication. Sometimes my voice is kind of like a melancholic observer of a situation. And Monika’s voice can then go into that situation and sort of be inside of it, and kind of confront it. So I’m sad boy far away. And he’s some force driving through in the middle of it.

Are there any themes that keep coming back to your songs? Or are you appreciating them as their own separate worlds.

Syd: In ‘Disaster Pop’, to me there is kind of this idea of youthful naivety of being like, do I want disaster? Or do I not want disaster? Do I want to have emotional extremity? Do I want to feel loads and loads of stuff? And get hurt and be vulnerable? And for that for that year of that EP, for me, I was always like, I want to feel everything and got fucked up by funnily enough, I think I’m coming to the end of that now.

I think a lot of the songs have big explosions of emotional intensity. They kind of savour them like, Oh, I’m a bit hurt by looking at the world or I’m a bit hurt by my interpersonal relationships. And can we celebrate that? Can we turn that into an uptempo beat? Can we jump around to that in a weird electronical way?

It feels really big to me. I really liked the concept of sincerity and not having too many walls up. And so with a lot of my writing and I think with Monika’s voice especially, the way it has this ability to not have a break, I think it’s so unique. It comes across like a really big. aggressive, contemporary route. But there’s a delicacy to the big emotions, like in the vocal performance, which really feels very real to me.

Monika: I’m also quite a confrontational person, I think by nature, or should I say by old nurture? I feel attacked quite a lot. When I’m just even making music. There’s loads of things that I’m fighting back. All of the songs that I write almost have this target that I’m trying to destroy, and I’m like, you’re hurting me, you’re hurting me.

And I’m trying to fight against that, obviously, I try and then weave in terms of songwriting some subtleties about this, more on the specific target that I’m aiming at. I’m trying to build some more positive things rather than like, ‘fuck you’. Because obviously, I wouldn’t be working with Syd, if I didn’t think there was something really special and really true about celebrating vulnerability, processing emotion in something that’s a bit bigger than just rage, a bit bigger than just anger or sadness, because I think the songs are a little bit bigger than that.

It’s really precious because it’s a period in our lives. And we will never feel that way again. And next period will also be very unique. So it’s really nice to be able to preserve and document, how it felt, and why you were making certain things and why it felt amazing to make those things. And at the end of the day, like, we combine sounds, and we want them to sound nice, that’s the guiding thread.

Syd: I’d say the only other theme I’d probably like to point out is more of a sonic theme, I guess. The sonic question of what analog and digital mean, today, we all find super interesting.

We all try and incorporate these fusions of synthesis, acoustic instrumentation and field recording, sometimes resampling things to such an extent we don’t know whether it’s more analog or more digital, and you find this weird space in between. We all find that so exciting, and it’s a major perk of having multiple producers in the group that we can explore these things together.

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NUKULUK’s new EP ‘Disaster Pop’ is out now.

Words: Georgie Brooke
Photo Credit: Daniel Adhami

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