Nautics Needs No Label

Made up of Kenzo Repola (vocals/guitar), Van Cameron (bass), Kitt Flamer-Calder (guitar), and Levitt Yaffe (drums), four-piece indie-rock group Nautics is keeping New York City’s underground alive. In an industry that strays far from reality, the four-piece indie rock band is keeping themselves grounded. Really grounded. Like, in basements.

Born from the subterranean big city, Nautics draws on a wide range of local influences to craft tracks that keep the gritty ethos of the glorious New York scene alive.  Today, Nautics dropped their newest track, “knee/touch,” serving as the first glimpse of their upcoming album, due in September. The song is a dreamy soundscape energized by Nautics' signature retro synth, drawing listeners into a vivid world they’re shaping. 

Off The Record sat down with frontman Kenzo Repola to discuss staying untamed, authentic, and making new music. 

Off The Record: You guys formed in high school. How did that happen? 

Kenzo: Van and I are the main collaborators or friends; we had a class together in high school. Van already knew Levitt, our drummer, since childhood. So they had known each other their whole lives, and they'd done music on the side together and did little projects; I don't even know if I would consider any of it a band for them. They were just kind of playing together. 

I met Van in our class. Actually, I met him on the bus for a field trip. We just started talking about Doctor Who and nerdy stuff, and we just became friends, and I think we were about 15 or maybe even younger, maybe even like 14 at that time. We had a couple of years of the same science class, and then we shared a music class with Kitt, who's our lead guitarist, and basically, we all sort of joined forces really quickly. 

As I started to get interested in music, I saw a friend of mine perform at Webster Hall, which you could do at the time when you were 15. I was super blown away by it. So the next day in class, I was just like, we gotta start a band. Do you know anybody? Basically that week we started to form what was to be Nautics. Honest to God, we've never had another name.

Where exactly did the name come from? 

This sounds pretentious, but we're sort of into some of the nerdy stuff with exploration. There were things like “nautical” and “astronaut” being thrown around at that time in the group chat of name ideas. We had thousands of names, honestly, that were variations on names, and we kept arguing. [Nautics] was this clean sound that evoked something to do with exploration and felt very modern. Honest to God, it was just the only one we didn't argue on. 

NYC has a vast lineage of amazing artists. What space does Nautics hold in this scene? How do you fit in and how do you stand out? 

I think you're right that there is a vast landscape of people. Being from here and going through so many different scenes and worlds as we've developed as a band in the last 11 years, we've sort of seen the city change and the different scenes and the different popular people. I've seen bands that were massively popular crumble, and none of the people make music anymore, and they were more successful than we are right now. I've seen that happen so many times. I think the truth is that we exist within our own ecosystem to some extent, and we respect and value the people that are willing to sort of join us for that ride. We're so grateful that that's happened and is continuing to happen. There's a lot of day ones that are still commenting on our stuff from 10 years ago and being like, oh, it's crazy to see how much you've grown. That's super beautiful and awesome. 

But also, I think that as a band who has sort of been through so much and has sort of flowed between all these lines, I see us as explorers in this different world. Not to bring it back to the whole Nautics name, but I think we kind of just have this mercurial resilience to all this stuff, where we're just kind of excited to move and shift through these different landscapes of music and people and are just excited to sort of be part of this vast community as musicians and artists in general. 

As an explorer of the New York music scene, is there one New York band that you are constantly listening to or feeling inspired by? 

Um, us. No, no. [Laughs] I don't know, I think there are so many. If I start naming people, I think I'm just gonna leave out other people. Diplomatically, I will say my advice to anybody is to listen to as many people with 100 monthly listeners as you can and stop freaking out about the people who are way bigger already and just explore new music at the ground. 

I feel like from what I've seen, you guys have very DIY values also. I think that aligns with the value you place on the raw underground live scene. Speaking of which, I read that when it comes to producing your songs, you like to recreate the feeling of being in the room. What exactly does capturing that live energy look like while you're recording, and in what ways can you hear it in your songs?

As much as possible, we try to track as a band. Even if we're not tracking as a band, like doing overdubs or punch-ins, or even if I have to change one line on one song or whatever, we all like to be in together as much as we possibly can. We all like to give input and be a part of every step of the creative process, and it's super collaborative. I think that energy is carried through because there's so much consistency in that performance as we're recording. That's the first thing in a technical sense. But also, I think we've been exploring a lot of production tricks and soundscape elements to our music that I think are just adding a little bit more space to the kind of feeling that you're immersed in the music with us. So you can feel like you're diving into the sound when you're listening, which I think more captures the feeling of being in the room with us without it having to be that everything's tracked live. 

Sometimes even live tracking, I always say, can sound really dull and like it's not live. Even if the whole band is playing it live and everyone's mic'd up, it can sound synthetic. I think I wanted to feel a lot more emotional in every aspect of the song, including the production. 

I also feel like live experience is more than just the sound. It's more about the emotion, like you say. When you go to a live show, there are always these little moments that you remember that aren't necessarily the way that this guitar was played. It's more, remember that crazy sound that they made. 

Music is 30% of it, you know? The other percent is somebody dropping something on stage or somebody crying. That's exciting, and that's the theater of it, and that's the show. So you're absolutely right.

Speaking of emotion, when it comes to your lyrics, I felt like there were consistently raw, vulnerable, and even a little self-deprecating lyrics. There was like a lot of emotion going on, but with upbeat instrumentals. Why, when you're writing, do you choose to pair these lyrics with these more upbeat tones?

I think that's just how we talk in our band or our community. There's this really genuine realness that is cutting through a sort of veil of snarkiness or weird eccentricities. I think that even the way we talk as a band, and how I talk to my friends, is probably a little sarcastic and a little fun, but I think there is a genuine desire for connection in everything that we try to explore and everything that I say. Still, I think just being authentic in it and being as in the moment and raw as possible, a lot of lyrics and even vocal takes recently have come from a place of improvisation, and trying out singing a line, and then keeping that take, and then mixing it together in this sort of collage of words.

As we're approaching our more current discography and the songs that are coming out and are to come out, there's a lot more exploring in the moment, line reads and things that I come up with and things that we come up with as a band. 

I do think that it’s falling into its own category, and I feel like that comes with the more improvisational aspects of it. It definitely feels very collagy; that is a great word for it. 

Speaking of one of your new tracks, your most recently released track, “bum-a-cig,” I thought had a very cool name, given there's a lot of talk about your band being the bridge between DIY, New York gritty scenes, and the modern alternative scene. 

There's a lot of talk?

I have seen this said! With your reaction, do you agree with that description of your band? 

Sure! I mean, I hope that people perceive whatever they want to perceive out of us as long as they're perceiving. I think that [“bumming a cig”] is just a phrase that I hear all the time in music and in nightlife. It's this super needy, vulnerable phrase that just echoes this bigger idea of intimacy, which is a thing that I like to explore in lyrics. I think there's a really deep meaning in the song that came from such a vulnerable place, but that line is a campy expression on that concept of,  I need you. I don't know who I am. I need this vice. I'm addicted to stuff; are you addicted to stuff? Can we please be addicted to stuff together and hold hands and, you know, exchange stuff together? 

Like I was saying before, in the lyrics, I like to be campy. I like to have fun with whatever I'm saying. Especially in any of the less, you know, hooky parts of the song, it is definitely undercurrented by a lot of genuine fear and vulnerability and love and all these things. I don't know if that answered your question.

It did! I want to get a deeper understanding from you because I saw a couple of articles that describe songs like “bum-a-cig” as bridging that gap. From what you’ve told me, it seems like your music is made more with the intention of creating intimacy.

I think you're hitting on a really good thing: trying to figure out a way to explain it, and sometimes I do music because I can't explain my thoughts properly. 

I think there is a line that is entirely vapid with a lot of these sort of buzzword, kitchy kind of things. Very wrapped in plastic, like indie sleaze, DIY- what does that even mean? I think it's that sort of kitchy idea, and then also playing with the idea of, well, what does that mean? How did that lack of intimacy or that wall up actually really mean that you want someone to listen to you and you want someone to hear you and you want to identify with something? And like, a cigarette is just, you know, is the same as an analogy for what jeans you wear or what concert you go to or how you do your hair or anything like that. It's trying to reach out to something and find some sort of icon to identify with.

Totally. With that in mind, I am wanting to talk about the new album that's coming up. What can listeners expect from the album? What was the writing and recording process like? 

What can people expect… hopefully the best album ever! But also, I think we wanted to play around with a lot of different sounds. Conceptually, the album sort of plays with the themes that we've spoken about already, which is the sort of synthetic stuff with a message pushed through it. We split the album into two halves. The first half is us as a rock band, right? And then exploring sort of the gritty, raw idea of, you're in a band, and this is what that means, and sort of the DIY nature of that. It's a lot of live tracking. The second half explores a lot of our pop influences. A lot of the more electronic, nightlife-central things. We were really inspired by a lot of early David Bowie records and the Berlin Trilogy. 

We wanted to explore the contrast between those two sides of us as a band, because we've done it before, but I think this was a lot more intentional, and we were able to go into an album with an intention for the first time. It's our first bigger body of work. I think it also, in both aspects as the sort of live rock album side and the poppy electronic side, there is a huge element of the growth of us as artists on both fronts within this project. For a lot of people, it will be a very new take on what we've already been trying to explore as a band for the last decade, and a much clearer take on how we want to introduce ourselves in a bigger way. 

Expect to cry and expect to play this at a rooftop or a club, as well. 

It'll be a story. It'll be an experience. 

Yeah, yeah. It'll be an experience. It's like a movie. 

Oh, wow. Very, very awesome. I feel like with every new project you guys put out, the production is getting more and more familiar, and the pieces are flowing together more and more. I also wanted to ask, because you guys have a tour coming up. After becoming so comfortable in the New York circuit, what emotions are coming up about traveling to all these different places, playing music, and having all these new live experiences? 

We have played outside of the city before, not on a tour or in any super structured sense, but we have experience traveling, playing, and meeting new people. I think this time around, as we're starting to get more known outside of New York. As we're playing with a band whose music I really like and that's kind of willing to take us on and chaperone us through the experience, that's adding another element of excitement. We're all super excited to meet everyone, and we're so fortunate that people in cities I've never been to are already messaging us and being like, thank God you guys are coming out. Like, you've never been to Texas, and I've been wanting you to come to Texas and stuff like that. That just makes me so excited that we finally get to say hi to everyone and we finally get to show them all the stuff that we've been working on in person. 

That's my favorite thing. I love playing shows; we all love playing shows. I'm really excited to meet everyone, say hi, and make new friends, basically. 

Yeah, totally. And I assume that you guys are planning on playing some of the new songs. What is it going to feel like to finally share those with an audience and play those songs that you've been working on for so long live? 

I'm just excited to have many opportunities in a row to play it and explore the songs in different rooms with different people. I'm a big believer in that, as you get to play for different audiences or different nights in a row, the songs build these new lives of their own. We don't like to be stale as a band, and our music evolves and changes with us within the performance. So I'm just really excited to have a lot of opportunities in a row to kind of fast-track that weird amoeba exploration of the songs. We're rehearsing right now for it, and even in rehearsal, just trying out different tricks than the recorded version of the song is really cool. I'm super excited to see what happens and what mistakes we make! 

Stream Nautics' newest single “knee/touch” out today, and be on the lookout for their debut album this September. Make sure to snag tickets as they support Dogma Society on tour this August.