We Spoke To Nosaj Thing

Jason Chung, better known to the world as Nosaj Thing, saw a flyer on D-Styles’ message board that said anyone who shows up with their own equipment can open for the night. He borrowed a friend’s gear, got to the club and opened the night at Shock Value, the precursor to L.A’s now massive Low End Theory. After a few years of playing beats alongside the Low End Theory family (Flying Lotus, Nobody, Raz G and D-Styles) things came full circle for him, as D-Styles - one of the original crew members of The World Famous Beat Junkies - produced the kind of hip-hop he was listening to in the second grade before he understood the lyrics. Keeping his hip-hop roots close, Nosaj Thing is now producing finely tuned electronic beats with the likes of Kid Cudi, Trinidad James and Kendrick Lamar. Now, after his second release, Home, he’s launched his own imprint through his own label Innovative Leisure called Timetable, where he’s crafting with more than just music in mind, by putting live stage holograms into production.

Hey! So how did you start performing in L.A?

Nosaj Thing: When I first started getting into production, one of my goals was to do hip-hop production. I was listening to a lot of Neptunes, Dilla, Timbaland, Dre. Who doesn’t love those producers? As I got older I didn’t really know anyone who was doing that, so I was just getting more and more into experimental and noise music. I was going to this venue in L.A called The Smell. The best thing about it was every time I went there you had no idea what to expect. You would go there and see a noise act just performing with loop pedals on the floor, then see a folk artist and then that would be followed by a punk band. It was like that every week and I just got really inspired by that whole scene. It was more of a DIY scene and that’s how I started performing.

Where did things go from there?

Low End Theory started in 2006. I found out about it from the message board of D-Styles, who was also one of the residents. He’s a scratch DJ, which I used to be really into that, like watching DMC battles. So I started going there and meeting guys like Nobody, Flying Lotus, RazG, Take; and we were just inspiring each other week after week. It was every Wednesday. There was about thirty to forty people there every week. We were just all hyped on it, because it was like a home for the music we were into. Now there’s 700 people plus every week, so much that we can’t even be comfortable there anymore, that’s how it is now.

And how did rappers catch on to your tracks?

I started putting out my music on MySpace. The first MC I worked with was Kid CuDi and he actually hit me up on MySpace in 2007 and wanted to use one of my tracks called “Aquarium” for his mixtape, which ended up on his album. It’s quite a crazy story because he titled his album, Man On The Moon, based on that track. I couldn’t really believe it. It just kind of tripped me out. He was calling me and telling me who he was working with on it. One thing kind of led to another. After that I worked with a few L.A-based MCs who I met through Low End Theory, like Nocando and Busdriver. Then, two years ago, I got contacted by Kendrick Lamar’s management and did a one-off track with him, it was crazy.

Working with Kendrick, how was that?

We got in the studio in Hollywood and I had about twenty beats to play for him. The first track I played he just said, “Stop it right there, that’s the track I need“. I felt, personally, like I had a lot more tracks that would fit his voice, but I guess he had an idea for the record right away. He started writing the hook and then disappeared for about twenty minutes, wrote the verses, we went back-and-forth and recorded the entire song in about two and half hours. No pen, no paper, nothing. Just seeing that process, I learned from it. After that I just wanted to work with more MCs and more vocalists, because you just learn so much from seeing each artist’s individual process.

Your tracks are produced with so many vocal styles, like, who was the voice on your track "Eclipse/Blue"?

Her name's Kazu Makino and she’s in the band Blonde Redhead. They’re definitely one of my top favourite bands. That’s a crazy story in itself; I started working on the instrumental of "Eclipse/Blue" and her voice just popped in my head. My manager contacted her and Kazu called me the next day saying she really loved the song and was relating to what she was going through at the time. Then she sent me a little sketch of her vocals, which she recorded in a stable next to her horse.

How did the rest of that track come together?

A few months later I had a show scheduled in New York and we got to record it at this studio called Electric Lady, which is Jimi Hendrix’s old apartment studio. I was blown away just to be in there. On top of that, she sent it to her good friend Drew Brown, who's also an engineer for Radiohead, so he did all the vocal reverb automations to her voice, which I thought really brought it to life. When I was in London, I got to visit him at the studio where Radiohead records. It was all such a humbling experience going from my small home studio, to the Electric Lady to the studio in London, so that song is really special to me.

Sweet! Moving on, you’ve just launched your own label, right?

The label that I’m on now, called Innovative Leisure, gave me an imprint called Timetable. I’m really excited about it; I put out my first release called The Lie EP. I’m just going to focus on that as well as my solo project and build from there.

So, what are you listening for with those releases?

Everyone is looking for a unique sound, but if it grabs my ears right away I just explore it. So far, that’s what has happened with this guy called Charles Murdoch from Brisbane. I was just blown away. He’s only 21 and every single track I heard on his Soundcloud resonated with me. I’m not only going to put out electronic music, I want to change it up and experiment with different formats and work with different visual artists too.

Will you be working with them for your own shows?

I’ve been working with Daito Manabe. He’s one of the craziest people I know. I think he’s a genius. For the "Eclipse/Blue" video, I sent him the song and he’s very vague in his emails. He just says "Oh, I have idea" and three weeks later he sends me the idea done with all the programming and animation. I was just amazed. He had two versions of it actually. He just sent me a test video for a visual show that we’re working on to tour. And it’s some next level stuff, it looks like some holograms without a screen, I don’t even know how he does it.