Diving into the Depths of Introspection: A conversation with NX1 on their latest album
This post was written by The Forgotten
NX1, the Barcelona-based artistic duo, Surit and Samot, have been carving their unique niche in the electronic music scene since their inception in 2011. With a distinctive blend of classic techno and contemporary sound design, they’ve become global sensations in the club circuit. Their live performances seamlessly fuse disparate styles into raw, emotive rhythms, while also addressing modern challenges. Join us as we delve into the sonic world of NX1 in this exclusive interview.
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your new album, especially the concept behind the doctrine-like title that encourages introspection?
After the many years we’ve been doing music, we wanted to build something different. We’ve never done an album until date, and we wanted to do something more personal and intimate, which basically is reflected on the first record, to scape from what we’ve usually done. We get inspiration of everything in live, but we’ve also get most of the productions we’ve done for it.
The title of the album, and also every single track title, invites the listeners to challenge themselves to know them even better doing an introspection, where you normally can find several answers of anything you want to know about yourself
Your new album features a wide range of musical styles, from industrial-techno to electronic and drone. How did you approach blending these diverse styles to create a cohesive journey for the listeners?
The idea was to combine different kinds of music we like but with a guideline, and mostly we wanted to create something that could be listened from the begging to the end with a clear evolution, where each track has its own sense in this order. As you have rightly said, to create a cohesive journey to the listeners was one our main goals, and we’ve to add that we’re very happy with the result.
Could you share some insights into your creative process when producing the tracks for this album? How did you and your partner, Samot and Surit, collaborate to bring your vision to life?
We use to make several recordings of synths and drum machines, but also with microphone recording metals, wood sticks or any other thing we think that could be useful. Most of the voices are also from us or from a close friend which we recorded and then processed.
About the collaboration to bring our vision to life is quite simple for us. After many years together, not only all this NX1 project past years, but also much before, our idea is quite similar. We know each other very good and it’s very easy and natural to work together with the same feeling.
The past decade has been quite prolific for your duo. How has your musical journey evolved over this time, and how does your new album reflect that evolution?
Yes, if we look back we’re very proud that we’ve released so many music in very good labels. Obviously we’ve had an evolution, periods where we were more close to “purist” techno and some others we’ve been more noisy, but we believe that we’ve always been recognizable by our own style where we liked to mix them both. Even our second release ever was already pretty break and raw, with some industrial percussions, so our main idea has been always the same.
For us the album is our best work technically speaking and in therms of sound so far, so here is another point where this evolution is reflected.
With the release of your new album, what kind of emotional or intellectual journey do you hope your listeners will experience as they engage with your music?
The first record is more mental and low bpm music “Seed Core” or “Based In Lies” and the second is dance-floor oriented as you could see on “Eternal Being” or “Denial Of Objective Reality”. Even this, all the music has hypnotic components, and as we mentioned before, also referred in the title, we’d like to challenge the listeners to introspect themselves while experiencing our album, and that’s both, an emotional and intellectual exercise.
You worked on a new mix for us. Can you tell us more about this mix, and how it ties into the themes and styles explored in your latest album?
We basically played a club music mix, what we can perfectly play in a club performance. We played some of our music, but also some tracks from the album, so that’s how it ties in to the album style.
Looking ahead, what can your fans expect from NX1 in terms of future projects and creative endeavors? Do you have any exciting plans or collaborations on the horizon?
We’re focused in to keep evolving the album live set while finishing some new EPs that will be announced soon. We’re also working in the NX1 Black 03, a project that makes us particularly excited. We’ve also some very interesting collaborations for the next year but we can’t tell much more at the moment.