Stream Nate Mercereau’s New Album SUNDAYS Now
Watch the “I’ve Got What I Need” video here
“may now contend with 2021 Album of the Year candidate Promises from Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders” -Glide
“A lush soundscape of release, of catharsis, of freedom.” -PopMatters
Press photo by Alyssa Rowatt
Today Nate Mercereau releases his sophomore studio album, SUNDAYS, which is out on his own How So Records, a partnership with Nice Life Recording Company. On the album he is joined by Carlos Niño, Jamire Williams and Josh Johnson. SUNDAYS is about sensitivity. Highlighting and magnifying moments of improvised inspiration. It’s about world creation. The song titles are places to explore emotionally, possible reality accelerators, immersive realizations. SUNDAYS is available to stream / purchase here.
Shortly after completing work on the SUNDAYS album, Mercereau read about how the Golden Gate Bridge was emitting a humming sound due to recent construction. When he heard field recordings of the bridge acting as essentially the largest woodwind instrument in the world, he hatched a plan to record a series of duets with the bridge, resulting in the EP release Duets | Golden Gate Bridge which was surprise released in July, 2021. The release attracted press attention from all over the globe, with feature stories in the SF Chronicle, NPR’s All Things Considered, The Guardian, CBC, Guitar World and tons more.
ALBUM RELEASE SHOW:
10/14 Los Angeles, CA – Outdoor performance presented by Ambient Church (Details coming soon)
Listening to Nate Mercereau’s music feels like staring down a kaleidoscope. The songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist surveys the fractured borders between sounds, and celebrates the beautiful moments where they collide. And when he’s not making his own music, he’s looking at the world of pop through his prismatic perspective—he’s produced or played on records by Jay-Z, Shawn Mendes, Lizzo, and The Weeknd, just to name a few. Moreover, Mercereau has learned that no matter what sounds he’s working with he needs to lean in close, to focus on the details. “When you keep zooming in on something, it keeps getting more detailed,” says the Los Angeles-based artist. “It’s like there’s worlds within that world.” His new album, SUNDAYS, embodies that as he dives headlong into a mystical, rich vein of sonic worlds, each song more intricate and intimate than the last.
SUNDAYS developed out of what Mercereau calls “spontaneous composition”—weekly delves into his psyche via live-streamed performance. The sets were built in fluid collaboration with a series of percussive improvisations dreamt up by Carlos Niño, a forward-thinking producer, instrumentalist, and staple of L.A.’s experimental scene. Due to its open beginnings, SUNDAYS is both free of form and packed with complexity —at any given moment it can feel airy, dusty, serene, or fiercely passionate. The ten tracks don’t seem like traditionally structured songs. They’re human, emotional, and alive. “Everything I’m doing is about getting breath out of my body,” Mercereau says. “It really feels elemental.”
SUNDAYS began less as an album and more as a space to process the world. Over the course of 2020, Mercereau began a weekly Sunday livestream series. “That day of the week is particularly charged for me for many reasons,” he says. “It’s the end of a week, and the beginning of something else, and there’s just always something that happens that day emotionally if I can tune into it.” Niño would send a long-form improvisation before the set, then Mercereau would play and create along with it in real-time, creating a palpable sense of live interaction. As Mercereau explains, “There were so many moments where it felt like borderline psychic communication happening between us, even though we made many of our parts at different times.” The weekly sessions lasted from April to December. By the end, Mercereau knew he had an album on his hands, and began whittling it into a cohesive shape.
How So Records is a partnership with Ricky Reed’s Nice Life Recording Company, a venture Mercereau describes as “a record label for seekers. We are presenting music that is looking for something new, out of its audience and out of its creators. We are bound not by genre, only radical creativity. High level music for high level listening.”
Nate Mercereau
SUNDAYS
(How So / Nice Life)
Release Date: Sept. 24, 2021
Purchase or stream it here
Track List:
1. Shared Reality
2. Start With You
3. Every Moment Is The First And Last
4. Absolute Sensitivity
5. Immersed In The Going
6. I’ve Got What I Need
7. Truly Loving It
8. It’s Happening Again
9. …I’ve Always Been Here
10. Access Point
NATE MERCEREAU LINKS:
Press Assets | Website | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp