Interview with emotive talent nu Caress

Image credit: @svenjapetersenphotography

You might be thinking, who is nu Caress? The independent singer, songwriter, and producer is a multitalented musician who embodies the essence of intimacy in his languid work. Creating the single ‘Can’t Get Enough of You’, out under Stereofox Records, the creator layered delicate harmonies over his gruff yet comforting voice, taking his time to introduce them into the mix. The result is a patient progression that holds listeners close enough to feel its warmth.

Stream / Download: nu Caress – ‘Can’t Get Enough of You’

In the name of raw expression, nu Caress provides us with insight, describing what music means to him, “For me, music is all about delivering feeling in the purest form – if that means just acoustic guitar and vocals or a minute-long song, then so be it as long as it feels right to you.”

Sum up your year so far in two words.

Flourishing and chill.

Tell us more about how your latest/upcoming release was conceptualised?

The song kind of emerged out of this sample I accidentally created by playing around with a phone recording of me noodling around and guitar and singing. It totally set this cosy bedroom vibe. Then I just started building around that and just went with the flow without taking care of any production/arrangement or songwriting guidelines, but just did what felt good to me. I wrote the lyrics around the phrase “Can’t Get Enough Of You”, which I always come back to in the song – this was kind of the concept for the lyrical structure referring to the feeling, which always came back to me in that period of time and was kind of haunting me a lot. I wanted to keep the song very simple in terms of production elements in order to stay in this intimate, bedroomy feel as well as give every single element its space to shine.

Describe a typical day in your studio space.

Since my studio space is my bedroom, there’re no clear borders, nor a typical day. But most of my days I’ll be waking up, having a coffee & start the day with the usual discord, e-mail & social media stuff (probs to discord here – great app & also very good for managing all the music-related stuff). When it comes to making music, I tend to work on ongoing projects in the morning with more of a productive work mentality. The free creative processes like noodling/jamming around, trying out some new ideas, etc., would mainly happen in the afternoons or evenings. In the end, you can never tell though when an idea comes to your mind or the feeling of wanting to create something new hits. In general, I like to keep my days flexible & filled with a few breaks as well as other activities and not getting absorbed totally to keep my mind fresh. But we all know those days when you just will get absorbed and can’t help yourself spending the whole day working on a song without thinking of anything else.

What are the most important pieces of equipment for you?

Microphone, Sampler & Headphones and of course my computer:

Microphone–I love to record almost anything and sample it, the more random the better the sample can be in my opinion and obviously since I’m a vocalist I record a lot of vocals.

Sampler–since I come from a sample-based hip hop background, I love to use this technique of sampling to integrate into any kind of music, because it’s this certain unique vibe you hardly get when directly recording, which will make the whole record kind of unique as well.

Headphones–I’m just trusting my headphones more than my monitors, so I would always mix on headphones.

Do you have a favourite memory of your career so far that you will take with you forever?

Actually, it still is my first live show as “nu Caress”. At that point in time, I hadn’t released any music yet, but I had those few songs and ideas and kind of didn’t feel ready at all to even perform any of it live, but then a friend who’s doing events was asking and kind of pushing me to do a live show at their venue celebration. So I put a band together, we kind of didn’t know what was gonna happen, but in the end it was a super crowded evening with a super sweet lineup and the response of the crowd was just mind-blowing and so lovely and motivating at the same time. This was really special for me–playing my own stuff for people for the first time and getting such an overwhelming reaction!

Who is your musical guilty pleasure?

In general, really cheesy R&B. If I had to choose it would be Musiq Soulchild, probably. But in the end, I’m very open about everything I listen to.

What can we expect from you in the near future?

There’s going to be a few live shows, which I’m very hyped about because one will be in THE venue of my hometown Innsbruck and the other one will be in Munich, the first real show outside of Austria. Other than that there will be an EP coming out very soon via Stereofox Records of my alter ego “Claptu”, where my vocals as “nu Caress” are also featured. For me, this is a very special project, because it combines lo-fi beats with vocals in a very sketch-based way and at least I haven’t heard much stuff that sounds like this.