Nevaris | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: How cool is that. I didn't even want to talk over the end of it. That is so cool. You can really groove to that. The track is called Ninth Sun. That is Nevaras, and or it might be Navarus. Let's see. I think we've got Augustin here with us. Augustin, are you there?

0:13 Speaker 2: Yes, I am, how are you good?

0:15 Speaker 1: Good? Welcome to the show. I'm excited to talk to you because I've been grooving to this. I've been grooving to this four track EP sound session. The whole thing is so good.

0:24 Speaker 2: Thank you man, I really appreciate that absolutely.

0:27 Speaker 1: So let's clear this up right off the bat. You how do you say the name?

0:30 Speaker 2: It's Nevarus. You know, it's an adaptation of my last name on my mother's side, which is Nevadas, which is like a proper Spanish name.

0:38 Speaker 1: But gotcha.

0:38 Speaker 2: I saw it misspelled on a piece of paper once and I needed to It's like my stage name was like Navarus. I just took it. I've had it ever since.

0:46 Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's cool, No, I dig it. I'm really curious about your recording process with this, So for people who are not familiar with you and how you recorded this EP, and I don't know if this is how you record everything, but your I mean, it's live. It's it's studio, it's it's it's like it's it's in studio, but it's also live in the sense that and I don't know how many people do this anymore, but you're all playing live at the same time. So there's no overdubs, there's no you know, it's not you know, one person's recording you know, guitar parts and then somebody else is doing the synth and all this.

1:20 Speaker 1: It's all live. I did watch the videos too, and I'm just I'm fascinated by that.

1:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was all live, no you know, no click track, no headphones. Interestingly, really played Yeah, no headphones, so we had bleed, which kind of you're kind of married to keeping it live at that point because you can't you can't edit it. It's it's so no headphones through amps, we could all hear each other live in the space, and you know, that's hard work for James de la Tacoma, who is the engineer, and Michael Black was filming it. It was something that none of us had tried. Nine people, and it was definitely a sort of an experiment, and once we did it and I took it back, I listened to it.

2:05 Speaker 2: I was like, man, this sounds unlike any of the stuff I've done for years where you overdub and you lose something. For sure.

2:11 Speaker 1: Hm, that's incredible. So you've never done anything quite like this In terms of recording.

2:16 Speaker 2: I never have. No, I've recorded. I've got four records, and then working on the fifth, and then after that I already started on the sixth. All of them were done with some form of live, you know. I never did it like layer by layer. Often it would be like the drum set the base, you know, just like the core group, and then on top of that you're just adding and adding and adding building, Right, That's how I've always done it.

2:42 Speaker 1: Do you think that it's better to well, I mean I assume you think it's better because this is your approach, But do you prefer to get it as live as possible? Or again, in this case, in terms of the EP, this is all done live, like truly live. But do you think it's it's good to get either either do that or get as close to that as possible, because then you capture something that maybe you don't capture if you're doing it the way most bands do it now, where you are just doing one thing at a time and sort of building the track because and part of why I'm curious about this is I know bands that you know, they they're really good live, but then you listen to their studio work and maybe it's not quite capturing the magic or the energy of the band's live performance, and you go, I wish these studio records really kind of captured that.

3:31 Speaker 1: I mean, how do you feel about that? And do you think you lose something if you do it, you know, just one thing at a time.

3:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've always tried, and you know I did. I've done a record since doing sound Session that is very close to being finished, and we did it shortly after sound session. We didn't fully go back to everybody live in the studio, but four of us got together, so Locatronto and drums, Jonathan Maren, Bill Bernard and I got together and put down the whole basis of it. And in general, I do at least rhythm section plus and a lotic instruments, you know, a core live in the studio. I never do. If you go back too far, you're gonna lose all the spirit of it, you know, right right?

4:14 Speaker 1: And can you tell us too about working with Bill Bill Laswell, legendary producer and bassist on this and these songs. I mean he actually co wrote these with you, correct.

4:25 Speaker 2: He did. We so originally were we did an album called Reverberations, which is out there for people to check out if you want, and that we did where he wrote all these amazing bass lines, and then we had a lot of stuff that didn't make it on the record, and we had done two records before that, so I've done three records with Bill playing bass wow, And there was just a lot of material. And so my idea was originally to get in the studio with Bill and everybody and film it and document it. And then Bill's health has you know, he's been dealing with a lot of challenges.

5:00 Speaker 2: He hasn't really back to the studio, and Peter Applebaum, the sax player, suggested Jonathan Marron could come in and he basically learned a lot of Bill's basslines no for note wow, but then he improvised on top of that. So I say, like the first part of every one of these songs is a straight Bill Laswell bassline and then he took it where it needs to go. So there was a lot of Jonathan involved as well.

5:26 Speaker 1: In terms of him coming in and doing that. Did you sort of guide him and say, you know, at least for the start of it, try to do what Bill was doing? Or I mean, how much latitude did you give him, I guess is what I'm really asking. Or did you tell him, you know, go crazy, do what you want and we'll see what happens, or how did you approach that?

5:42 Speaker 2: Yeah? I sent him a bunch of recorded music, and you know, Jonathan Maren is just one of the best bass players I've ever worked with. It's a super talented guy, and he learned everything, and he came with, you know, like an ipaddy and everything kind of ready to go exactly like on the recording, and I was like, don't don't worry about that. None of us are going to play the track accurately. We're going to start. All of this will be out the window within two minutes. But like you know, for Nights on that baseline in the beginning, that's that's Bill's baseline, you know, okay, pretty much, that's that's his baseline.

6:18 Speaker 2: And Bill has a vocabulary, baselines, and you know, he has just all this work that he's created. He's it's so it's very distinctly his composition. But then you know, Jonathan certainly and the rest of the band certainly took it wherever it needed to go in the moment, and everything else I'd say was fully one hundred percent improvos except for the baseline. Really no kidding.

6:38 Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, tell us who about working with DJ Logic on turntables.

6:44 Speaker 2: He's the best.

6:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the best.

6:48 Speaker 2: He's the best. I met him through the great Bernie Warrel many years ago. Yeah, I had the honor of working with Bernie a number of times, which will always be the highlight experience. May he rest in peace. And we did a show and he just brought DJ Logic along to hang out and just and Logic gave me his number on a napkin with the marker He's like, this is dope, man, here's And then after that, for a long time we tried to figure out how to get together, and then once we were in the studio the first time we've been in the studio fair amount, and man, I love that awesome human beings just great person and phenomenal talent obviously.

7:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, clearly and everything. I mean, you know, you sit right in with what you were doing, that's for sure. Oh yeah. So now what's what is the live situation with this project? Are you playing these songs out live? Or will you be? And I'm curious about that.

7:44 Speaker 2: I've been doing I have been doing some shows. I think I have you know, four or five shows coming up this summer. I'm playing different tracks from sort of the full catalog of everything I've ever put out. And you know, there's a sort of iteration of the band that's that's been out there working a little bit, and we do have quite a lot coming up. Yeah, yeah, we're doing it.

8:08 Speaker 1: Oh outstanding, outstanding. And you're also the co founder of Knowledge Records. Is that correct?

8:13 Speaker 2: Yeah? My brother and I started Knowledge Records a long time ago. It it you know, it doesn't do much except just uh, put out stuff that I work on. OK, someday there I'd love to do more. I'd love to figure out how to you know, there's so many talented artists around people that I know that I you know, it's I'd love to find some you know, wealthy billionaire that's like there, just take all this money and make as many records as you want.

8:42 Speaker 1: No doubt. And you're in an epicenter of music, right, I mean you're in New York, is that correct?

8:48 Speaker 2: You know, I'm based out of New York. My wife is working for Penn State University. You know, I'm born and raised in New York. So I'm sort of doing a lot of back and forth on Route eighty right now. Oh nokidding, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, all the musicians are based out of New York. And you know, my family, we still have our apartment in New York where I grew up. But yeah, I've been spending more time outside of the city and I found that people are really there's a really great listener base when you get out of the city, and I'm trying to work with that more.

9:20 Speaker 2: You know, take the music where people are hungry to hear it.

9:24 Speaker 1: Right right, which is everywhere.

9:26 Speaker 2: So that's everywhere.

9:27 Speaker 1: So that's good, you know. And of course, obviously, you know, we live in a time because of the Internet where you can you know, you can reach people anywhere, which is wonderful. Yeah, and tell us about loud. You also have a project called loud Apartment.

9:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the first kind of project name that I had because I never wanted it to be my own name. It's kind of Bill's fault that it ended up being my name again. And he was when he did reverberations. He was like, no, that's a cool name. You know, it's it's like Santana. It's a good reference point. Now you should use that, And I don't know, kind of was like, okay, but I liked I used a loud Apartment for a while, put out three records and did a bunch of playing us loud Apartment. But really it's the same, just project name for whatever I'm working on.

10:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a cool name. I like it. Loud Apartment.

10:15 Speaker 2: Thanks.

10:15 Speaker 1: Cool name. So so Bill's one convince you to use Navarus. I mean he's not wrong. I mean it is a cool name. It is evocative of Santana. I like it. Yeah.

10:27 Speaker 2: He's very involved in all aspects of a project, from the art to the song order. It's really cool. Like it was an absolute honor to work with Bill over the years, and that's one of the things I loved about working with him is it was never just one part of it. He kind of understands how to make a record from start to finish and all the different parts involved.

10:48 Speaker 1: How did that you might have touched on it, forgive me if I'm forgetting, but how did how did that come about? Where you first began working with Bill Laslow Bill Laswell.

10:57 Speaker 2: Through a singer named Garrett Hawk ak Hawkman reggae singer, great singer, most known for Blowback with Tricky, all the reggae stuff on that. But he's he's been out there for a long time and he's one of my best friends. And he was working with Bill, and I got hired to produce the track for one of his records and Bill mixed it and when I got the mill, when I got the mix back, I was like, oh man, this is this is who I need to work with and was very persistent in trying to figure out how to make that happen more consistently.

11:32 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well and apparently you succeeded. So that's that's wonderful, outstanding. So what's what's next for this project? Do you intend to you know, obviously, I mean the Sound Sessions EP is great. Do you uh, is there going to be a follow up to this with the same sort of configuration and approach to doing it.

11:51 Speaker 2: I think so, I think I would like to do it again, maybe the exact same configuration. It's it's fun sometimes to repeat things, you know, identically, same room, be like, hey, let's let's try this one more time. Maybe play a little longer, put something together. In the meantime, I have a record coming out called mind Funk, which has a lot of the same guys. That's almost done and uh yeah, there's some very exciting surprise guests on that then talking about yet one of them is Booty Collins. I'll tell you that.

12:24 Speaker 1: Really that's awesome playing.

12:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's playing bass on two of the tracks. I haven't really announced that yet, but yeah, he's he's going to be on it. So I am very excited to put this out and just I'm just trying to keep moving, man. Yeah, keep it moving.

12:38 Speaker 1: That's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do. Booty Collins, boy, talk about a legend. That's amazing.

12:42 Speaker 2: I know, it was a shock the track came back, and that is fully Bill Aswell's work. You know Bill is uh it's it's really been awesome to know him and you know you in terms of his health struggles. It's it's something you can do. I don't like to be the one to talk about it, but yeah, and read about it. There's go fund these and all you know, ways to support him. And you know, he's he's he's still, he's still you know, finding out how to keep creatively working and you know, keeping things happening.

13:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Well, very good. Well listen, Augustin. We'll let you go in a moment, but let me ask you, well two things. First, let me ask you, where is the best place to go online for people to keep up with everything that you are doing, everything with navars and anything else that you want people to know about. Where should people go online to keep up with you?

13:32 Speaker 2: Navars dot net and E V A R I S dot net that is where everything is. There's definitely music that is not on Spotify, not streaming that is there. Oh, I have four records on there. Uh, and I'm going to be posting all the shows coming up there and yeah that's the spot Oh fantastic.

13:50 Speaker 1: Well that's easy. And the other question is what should we play at the end of our conversation. We played on ninth Sun to open, but I'm thinking so we've got there's document and there's remedy, doub orchestra. Might be a little longest, might be a little might be a little long for for the radio.

14:06 Speaker 2: But but but I'll let you go for document document.

14:10 Speaker 1: Okay, what anything special we should know about this track before we play it?

14:16 Speaker 2: I think that that one was the chance to you know, play some more traditional Afro Cuban rhythms with Angel Rodriguez, the Great Angel Rodriguez on congas, So that was cool. And that's Jojo Cool also playing percussion, who played in Felous Band after Tony Allen. So you know there's some awesome people involved. And uh, there is a go fundme for Jojo because he just had an operation on his heart, so I shout that out. Cool if you look him up, he's playing on it, and uh, really just a great group of people.

14:57 Speaker 2: It was a joy to work on it. No no arguing, no stress, just playing music.

15:01 Speaker 1: It's fantastic and you know the success of it is evident in the end result. So definitely definitely a good group of people you put together for this. Absolutely no, I love it. I love it. The EP is incredible. All right, Augustin, will let you go. We're going to hit that track, but I'm sure we will talk again as you're releasing new music. Sounds like you got a lot coming up, so we'll definitely have you back.

15:21 Speaker 2: Awesome, I appreciate it. Have a beautiful day, all.

15:24 Speaker 1: Right, Augustin Navaras, thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye. All right. That is Augustine Navarus of the project Noavarus. Of course, check out sound session. It's a fantastic for a track EP. We're going to play another song from this right now, and this is called Document