[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ew England electronic music and arts festival Together just wrapped up a week-long run of successful party and pro-tip programming, but the beat goes on tonight as one of the area’s next breakout projects performs live at the Middle East.
And the Central Square club is home turf for Marco Lawrence, the electronic music composer who grew up in Cambridge studying classical music and creating piano and acoustic songs as a teenager. Now, as St. Nothing, Lawrence is experiencing a quick re-boot, first with a crystallization of sound, and more recently, a name change from the already-in-use Hall of Mirrors.
Under that previous moniker, Lawrence released the Begin EP, a 2013 collection of five emotive synth-pop tracks that were crafted in solitary; there’s a bit of early Twin Shadow, Purity Ring, and darker ’90s synth-pop stuff like De/Vision and Cosmicity thrown into the mix, but it’s also the compelling sound of a young musician finding his voice.
As St. Nothing preps to play the Middle East tonight — and as we have tracks like “Keep” and “Sacrifice” already in rotation on Vanya Radio — we briefly chatted with Lawrence on his background, the origins of his project, and most importantly, when he’ll be tempted to leave us for New York.
Michael Marotta: How did St Nothing come about? We thought it was a solo project, but were surprised to see it’s possibly a trio?
Marco Lawrence: St. Nothing started in Fall 2012. For the past couple years before that, I’d been writing acoustic songs on piano. I wanted to experiment with a more full instrumentation, and doing it electronically ended up being the most logical route. I recorded my first EP, called Begin, after about two or three months of being obsessed with learning everything I could about self-producing and home recording.
When I recorded the EP, it was definitely more of a solo project. I don’t find playing live by myself to be very rewarding, though, so I asked my friends Jenna Calabro and Sophia Carreras, who play cello and guitar, respectively, to play with me at shows. It’s gradually become more collaborative over the past year. Currently, Sophia still plays guitar with me and Meredith Nero plays viola.
We noticed most of your music pages are still under the Hall of Mirrors moniker; why the change? Does this feel like a “new” project?
The name change came after a lot of new songs were written at the end of 2013. The project didn’t necessarily feel as “new” around the time I changed it, and it was mainly due to the fact that many things and bands use the name Hall of Mirrors, but it feels new now. I associate Hall of Mirrors with the Begin EP, which I’m proud of, but definitely is a little less together compared to what we’re doing now. Because I’ve learned so much about production, mixing and playing live in the past year, we play updated versions of the songs from Begin at shows that I think sound much better than the recordings. That definitely makes it feel “newer.”
St Nothing is self-described as “nocturnal bedroom pop,” which is pretty fitting. How does that intimate sound translate to a live setting?
In some ways, I’m still figuring out how it translates and how I want it to translate. I think right now it’s a mix — the live strings and reverby guitar help to bring out the more intimate side of the songs, and the heavier guitar parts help keep it dancier.
Some of the songs seem to be built around certain electronic loops; when songwriting, do you start with a loop and build out, or do you layer those sounds on other compositions?
It varies. “Keep” was started with the main loop and entirely built on top of it. My friend Kira Bornemann and I made that loop together using a loop pedal. We passed the microphone back and forth, singing little bits until it turned into what it sounds like on the song. I usually start other songs with short instrumentals.
Will you promise to never move to New York? (Just kidding… kinda)
A lot of people have come up to me after shows and been like, “you know, you’d have a great reception for this in New York.” It’s been a little challenging, doing electro-pop in Boston, because I know very few people here who do it, and I’ve only met a few over the past year. Many of my first shows were with folk bands. But I love it here in Boston — I’m originally from Cambridge and I made a conscious effort to stay here for school. I don’t see myself leaving any time soon.
ILLEGALLY BLIND PRESENTS ST. NOTHING + RICK BERLIN WITH THE NICKEL & DIME BAND + OYINDA + CULT FLORESCENT :: Monday, May 19 @ the Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA :: 7 p.m., 18-plus, $10 :: Advance tickets :: Facebook event
