A Chat with No Lonesome (23.05.23)
Drawing an intense and intimate vibe to their genre-fluid melodies, folk-inspired musician No Lonesome reaches out to audiences with a provoking thread of silvery sound. We speak with No Lonesome about their album Flowers Recomposing, life lessons and much more.
OSR: What does music mean to you?
No Lonesome: I guess to me, music is the art form that punches through the muck the quickest. Maybe it’s because sound can be so abstract that makes it infinitely interpretable for me.
OSR: What inspired you to become a musician?
No Lonesome: I don’t think that there was a specific inspiration. I just started playing music at a young age. And if you call that becoming a musician, that makes sense. But it feels the same to me as starting to cook or love. Music is something that is just sorta woven into the fabric of my shit. There are times that music feels divine and there are times it feels less deep. Either way, I do it because it’s just a part of my life. And perhaps I’m also trying to scratch into that sacred feeling when I can.
OSR: What can you tell us about your album Flowers Recomposing?
No Lonesome: To me, Flowers Recomposing is really an EP. But streaming services have labelled it to be an album because of the number of tracks. It has the cohesion of an album, but it’s too brief to be an album to me. Maybe it’s the musical equivalent of a novella? I had a lot of fun locking these songs into a specific flow and interconnectivity. The tunes incorporate both tape and digital recording strategies. The idea was to have something of an interplay between clarity and degradation.
OSR: Did you face any challenges when recording the album?
No Lonesome: The album was all DIY, so that definitely has its limitations. But this recording style also allowed for some greater exploration and risks that I don’t think I would have taken otherwise. But most of the challenges came from self-doubt and allowing myself to tie a bow on things.
OSR: What do you find more difficult: melody or lyrics?
No Lonesome: Both melody and lyrics have a strange alchemy when writing a tune. It’s something of a balance making them make sense together, in my experience.
OSR: What do you think makes your music unique?
No Lonesome: I don’t know! Maybe because I made it! And like other parts of me, it can be cool and also so dumb in unique combinations.
OSR: What is the most recent life lesson you have learned?
No Lonesome: Oh damn, I feel like I’m constantly bombarded with life lessons. Right now I’m really into quiet confidence– not needing to prove myself, but allowing whatever I am to come through naturally.
OSR: What advice do you have for new artists?
No Lonesome: Find a way to put away the ego, be dumb as shit as often as possible, don’t take it too seriously, and take it seriously. Hold all these things at once. Happy juggling!
OSR: Do you have future plans as No Lonesome?
No Lonesome: So many. There’s music on the back burner. I want to expand the amount of musicians that work on No Lonesome. And I really want to create more of a folk collective/community with No Lonesome.
Many thanks to No Lonesome for speaking with us! For more from No Lonesome check out his Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
