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?
Speaker 2: Yes, I am, how are you good?
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.
Speaker 2: Thank you man, I really appreciate that absolutely.
Speaker 1: So let's clear this up right off the bat. You
how do you say the name?
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.
Speaker 1: But gotcha.
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.
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. It's all live. I
did watch the videos too, and I'm just I'm fascinated
by that.
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. 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.
Speaker 1: Hm, that's incredible. So you've never done anything quite like
this In terms of recording.
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.
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. 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.
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?
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.
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. 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.
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?
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. 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.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, tell us who about working with
DJ Logic on turntables.
Speaker 2: He's the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the best.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker 1: Oh outstanding, outstanding. And you're also the co founder of
Knowledge Records. Is that correct?
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.
Speaker 1: No doubt. And you're in an epicenter of music, right,
I mean you're in New York, is that correct?
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.
You know, take the music where people are hungry to
hear it.
Speaker 1: Right right, which is everywhere.
Speaker 2: So that's everywhere.
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.
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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a cool name. I like it. Loud Apartment.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker 1: Really that's awesome playing.
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.
Speaker 1: That's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do.
Booty Collins, boy, talk about a legend. That's amazing.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Speaker 2: But but but I'll let you go for document document.
Speaker 1: Okay, what anything special we should know about this track
before we play it?
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. It was a joy to work on it.
No no arguing, no stress, just playing music.
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.
Speaker 2: Awesome, I appreciate it. Have a beautiful day, all.
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