Interviews | COCO'S OCD

Brooklyn

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Jerry Paper’s music is soothing in a disturbing way, you could feel the sinister undercurrents beneath the seemingly blue sweet surface. Every time i listen to it i can’t help being thrown into another place in time/time in place, making the listening experience a very atmospheric and cinematic one: A teenage lazy mall hangout in a Tokyo suburb, where Eriko says: “I’d like to visit Amsterdam someday,”I’m sure I’ll feel a sense of nostalgia there,” and then she takes her boyfriend to the Wild Monkeys Love hotel where she was conceived 17 years earlier.

The following is by the talented Lucas W. Nathan, the man behind Jerry Paper:

I am Lucas, the host body for the entity Jerry Paper. Jerry jumps in when I am recording or performing and leaves when I stop. We have been releasing music under various names since 2010. As a younger Lucas, I had dreams of becoming a writer of novels and short stories but after a couple of years became very frustrated with the limits of words. My interest in direct, complex, extra-linguistic experience (mystical experience, the pantheon of irrational feelings, etc.) seemed to mesh better with the broader semantic tools available to musicians so I changed my tune. As I discovered the timbrel flexibility (and equally enticing limitations) of programmable synthesizers, and became more and more comfortable with my deep love of pop music, I knew that I had found the right language for my creative compulsion.

I’ve put out a few tapes under Jerry’s name, in order of release:

Vol. I – An initial statement, kind of like my “first words.” Quite literally the result of realizing I was making music quite different from my previous Zonotope™ project (also a collaboration with Jerry).

International Man of Misery – An effort made to make fun of myself while in quite a dark place in Real Life. I was trying to tap into the most irrational thoughts one has during depression and to broadcast them, to try to make people who felt as lonely as me feel a little less lonely. Thank Jah I don’t feel this way anymore!

Fuzzy Logic – Actually recorded before International Man of Misery, although released afterwards. I dunno, don’t have much to say about this one, just listen maybe?

Patient Sounds is about to release my first vinyl record, Jerry Paper Feels Emotions, like in a few weeks or something? I don’t really know the projected timeline but hopefully some people will write about it somewhere so it will more easily reach those who might enjoy it whenever it does come out. Most of the album was written after quite an intense break up, the bubble that burst my depression. I think it’s quite an honest record, but I can never be quite sure.

I’m working on a concept album. I think it sounds quite different from the other work under Jerry’s name. The working title has the word Chameleon in it. That’s all I’ll say for now. Presumably you will hear it, and feel it as another vinyl release, this summer if all goes according to plan.

I am currently very much in love with a girl named Grace, so when asked to “tell a specific thing [I] like in girls” I suppose the most accurate response would be that I really like it when a girl is made up of Grace-molecules and Grace-ideas.