Theo Hoarau is the man behind Nasaya, a project he began while attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston that now has him turning heads left and right in the indie electronic scene.
Born and raised on Reunion, a French island in the Indian ocean, Nasaya grew up inspired by the easygoing nature of his homeland. Combining nimble breakbeats, chopped vocal samples, and complex polyrhythms, Nasaya’s style is both sophisticated and mesmerizing.
His latest release, “RÊVES,” which translates to “Dreams” in French, finds him on his own creating lush and textured instrumentals filled with pulsing energy written during a stint in Paris. Now based in Los Angeles, the producer has been hard at work this past year while recently supporting Odesza on their tour this past summer.
In advance of his co-headlining show with Jackson homegrown duo Bivwack on Friday, Feb. 17th at The Mangy Moose in Teton Village, Nasaya joined us in the KHOL studios.
The following interview transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity. This conversation was recorded on Thursday, Feb. 16.
JACK CATLIN/KHOL: On your latest release, “RÊVES,” you said I’ve wanted to release music like this since I started this project. Can you expand on that for us and walk us through the journey of that new EP from start to finish?
NASAYA: So when I started listening to electronic music one of my best friends in high school, he was showing me artists like Bonobo, Deadmau5 etc. And I started to really get into that stuff even years, years before I was making my project. I was really obsessed with Jon Hopkins, Bonobo, Jaime xx, all those beats, more like dreamy electronic music style. And when I started releasing music for my project, all the first songs, I mean, I wasn’t really thinking that much about it. It was just like, “Oh, cool, I like this song. I’ll do this.”
When I went back to Paris and it was COVID, I had a lot of time to think. I was just sitting around all the time and I was like, “Why don’t I do the music that I enjoy the most?” I guess like there was the idea and I always had that in the back of my mind, like, “Oh, one day when I have time and I’ll do what I really like because I knew that this kind of music would take me a lot longer [to make] because there’s no vocals.” It’s weird to arrange, like I didn’t know how to make it. So like when I made it, it was kind of like, “I’m going to learn how to make this music by making this EP,” if that makes sense.’
KHOL: You were supporting Odesza on their gigantic “The Last Goodbye Tour” this past summer. That must have been crazy. What was that experience like and what did you learn from it?
NASAYA: I learned that I should drink more water, haha. I mean, it was amazing. I obviously had never been on a tour of that scale, so it was a lot of tour busses and trucks and things like that. And I think it was almost overwhelming at first. I was just like, [there’s] too many people. And then it didn’t feel, again, like the [Foreign Family Collective] label, like a big tour. I mean, obviously they’re playing venues where there’s like 20,000 people, but everyone was really friendly. It felt like a big and a little stressful vacation.
It definitely made me a little more comfortable on stage. I always really struggled with the idea of performing by myself. I was always super nervous and I’m still nervous, but I guess there’s also so many little problems that I had on stage on these shows that maybe feel like, “All right, anything can happen. It’s not the end of the world.” I think I have more of a good time on stage now, which is weird. I never thought I would get to that point.
Listen above for KHOL’s full conversation with Nasaya.
