Electronic duo Nymphae talked to us about their immersive banger, Where I’m Going and teaming up with vocalist Andie.
The Blue Mountains music scene is bursting with different genres and incredible talent. This talent includes electronic duo Nymphae (Aidan & Ricardo) and the ever-soulful and jazzy Andie. Their recent collaboration resulted in Where I’m Going, a bass-heavy bop with atmospheric vocals.
We sat down with Nymphae to chat about the track and the duo’s place in the vibrant music scene.
HAPPY: Afternoon Aidan and Ricardo! Where do you find yourselves today?
NYMPHAE: Good Afternoon. We find ourselves sitting in the backyard of our place in Katoomba. This is where you will often find us with a coffee, cigarette, and our laptops.
HAPPY: What is Nymphae? How did this duo come about?
NYMPHAE: Nymphae is the amalgamation of both of our production styles. Originally we started just making beats to send out to some rappers we know but it eventuated into more of an artist project late last year. Had a lot of time to scheme about the future during lockdown and we were both making a lot of music individually so we decided to combine efforts and Nymphae was born properly.
On top of that, the live scene up here for electronic music and rap has been suffering a bit over the past couple years from a lack of venues so we wanted to give people a space to come out to events and see the music live as well. So far we’ve run one show under our events collective Nymphae Takeover which got way crazier than we expected and ended up selling out! We’re currently prepping for the second event on May 1st with another Mountains legend: Leotrix.
HAPPY: Tell us a little about your new single Where I’m Going?
NYMPHAE: Where I’m going was also a product of being restless musicians in lockdown. We hit up our friend Andie to come over to our place for a recording session without too much pre-planning. Ended up choosing the track on the day and playing it back to Andie. The hook came out on the first playback and Andie smashed out the rest of the vocals so quickly it blew our minds. What a dream! It was really cool to see the track come to life.
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HAPPY: The track features solo artist Andie showing off her incredible vocals… how did you convince her to perform a song so different from her usual style?
NYMPHAE: Andie has always been super open to collaborating with other musicians in the mountains so it didn’t take much convincing at all. It was a very chill affair really. Despite having her own style she’s also been working on some other stuff within the realms of the track with a few other artists so it wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar style for her to record to.
HAPPY: Who are some of the influences that inspired the track?
NYMPHAE: A lot of the influence came from Ricardo’s background in Portugal and some of the artists he knows making music over there. This one track from an artist he used to go to school with called Mizzy Miles specifically sounded like it had a reversed piano in it so he flipped some chords on a piano and it came out as the main chord progression from the track. Everything else kind of came out in the production process. Definitely also a bit of influence from some Australian artists like Hermitude and Flume in the choice of synths and vocal textures.
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HAPPY: You’re following the steps of incredible Blue Mountain dance/electronic artists (a.k.a. Hermitude, Leotrix) Is there something in the mountains that bring about such awesome electronic music?
NYMPHAE: I think it’s mostly to do with the community being really supportive up here. There’s a lot of love and collaboration in arts and music and everyone gets into the music live in a way we hadn’t seen anywhere else in Sydney before we moved up here. There’s also just a lot of artists living here so every once in a while someone breaks out and hits the larger scene in a big way.
HAPPY: This is the first single you have released as Nymphae! Congrats. What direction does this song set for the future of the duo?
NYMPHAE: Thank you. This song was like the first step towards the style we’re aiming to develop personally. We have lots of ideas on where we want to take it and each new song we write gets a bit closer to that. Definitely a heavy focus on tracks that pack a punch and get people moving, we want to make the venue shake as much as possible. Also a big focus on collaborating with singers and rappers to put out tracks with some soul and grit to them vocally.
HAPPY: Can we expect any new music in the future?
NYMPHAE: 100%. Currently, we’re working on a remix for a competition that has come together really well over the past couple days. We’re also sitting on a quite a few originals that will be coming out as singles over the next year. It’s very hard to avoid making new music and the real problem is starting new tracks before finishing old ones!
Stream to Where I’m Going here.
