Name: Nana Ioseliani aka nana.ios
Nationality: Georgian
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer
Current release: nana.ios's The Way of Joy is out now.
Recommendations:
Books
A.H. Maslow - Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences - It is one of those books that is better to read and get your own impressions, as it shakes our core beliefs about religions, values, and life-styles.
M. Scott Peck, M.D - The Road Less Traveled - I got this book as a present from my sister, and it was just right on time for me. Hope it finds the right readers too.

Paintings
Salvador Dali - The Elephants - I’ve been absorbed by Dali’s work since early teenagehood and The Elephants use to be one of my favorites.
Andrea Mikyska - I’ve been quite fascinated by her works. I am still new to 3D art but her art is beyond time, and quite rich in the expression!

Music
Animal Collective - Golden Gal - I’m quite new at this point to Panda and AC, but exploring them has been a great joy! and Golden Gal is one of the best pop songs I’ve listened to.
Tame Impala - Posthumous Forgiveness - I could always come back to this piece and learn something new. The whole album is the journey to be explored.

If you enjoyed this nana.ios  interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

A bit of everything. It depends on what I’m listening to, each piece of music is a journey, another experience, that lets you imprint your personal story to it. Some compositions put me in a unique state of mind, where I get visuals, feelings, and sensations in my body, sometimes it sparks creative ideas or helps me to process and integrate new parts in me.

Most of the time my eyes are opened, as I don’t always have the luxury of time to close my eyes and fully dive into it. However when I do it’s absolutely wonderful!

I recorded some (to me) incredible pieces of music when I had almost no idea what I was doing. What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

The only way to explore the unknown is through experiencing it. When I began my musical journey, I had very little idea of what I was doing. But, my curiosity and desire to explore were enough to drive me forward. I used to even avoid youtube tutorials because I wanted to overcome the obstacles myself.

Nowadays it’s more balanced, I watch if I need, but mostly I continue to follow the same pattern, allowing each experience to guide me without being blinded by knowledge.

Maintaining an element of naivete is a crucial aspect of my project, letting myself be raw, and even cringe a bit, not knowing what will be the outcome, that is when I know I’m tapping into new territories and getting out of my comfort zone.

It is not always pleasant and can be quite frustrating, but the knowledge I gather is priceless.

It is generally believed that we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between 13-16. Tell me what music meant to you at that age, please – and how its impact has changed since then.

Hmm, that’s quite interesting! I always had a hard time sticking to one genre I guess. During 13-16, I used to listen to a lot of Radiohead, Blonde Redhead, Massive Attack, Sigur Rós, Led Zeppelin, MGMT, Archive, I Monster, Placebo and etc. But when I was getting 16th I deleted up to 500 songs from my phone and only kept Vivaldi’s - Four Seasons and Radiohead’s "Creep".

For some reason, it even cringes me out to tell this story, but also it reminds me how big of an impact it had on me. Listening to Vivaldi for a year every day was a never-ending exploration, a range of emotions it would evoke in me I can’t name. I can only experience by listening to it again, and I do -  there are periods in my life when I go back to classical music to find peace in complex sound forms.

I guess music was the only truly authentic way by that time to express your emotions, integrate them and learn about the world around you.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and how do you think has working with them shaped your perspective on music?

If I can choose one instrument for the rest of my life I would choose the piano. Even though I don’t have one now, it is the reason I kept thinking about music creation throughout my life. While growing up we had one at home and I would always find time to sit down and play, without even knowing how to play.

But nowadays I’m as simple as it gets. I work mainly with MIDI keyboards, and Ableton Push, which is connected to Ableton. This is more than enough for me to explore. It gives me the possibility to experience a wide range of sounds and learn about structures. If not for this set up, I don’t know where I would be, to be honest. It has everything I need and I have no other excuse but to create.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I like to think that each action we take in our life has a chain of reactions that impacts people around us. Music is the perfect medium of art for me to create an intentional chain of reactions that hopefully will bring people into a state of joy and aliveness.

Sound is so immaterial you can’t touch, or smell it, it is only an internal experience that makes you relate, and reconnect to it. Every single time I work with sound I never feel lazy, it’s alive, it’s a continuous process that keeps me going, that lets me explore the universe in this form and way.

Hmm. What motivates children to explore? Nothing but wonder and curiosity. Inspiration and motivation are always around, it is never the same and never the one thing. Usually, most of the time it is a mixture of various internal and external stimuli, processes, and experiences.

Paul Simon has been quoted as claiming that “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Truth! The overall sound is what takes you into the unique dream that a composition offers and then you can explore details like lyrics, song structure, or some elements of it.

Defining my personal sound was hardest in the beginning, but now I feel like I became more aware of the directions I’ve been taking. I blend dream pop, and synth pop mainly with other genres. Sometimes it has rnb or bubblegum pop vibes, sometimes it is dark, theatrical, and sometimes quite uplifting, sassy, and exciting.

Lately, I’ve got into glitch and psychedelic pop territories, which is quite exciting, can’t wait to share!

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to forces of nature. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Birds and ocean, any water sound. These are the most influential sounds to me.

I use a lot of high-pitched sounds, like high-pitched bells, marimba, piano, or recording of my voice which I glitch out. They remind me a lot of how birds are singing.

Ocean sound is the base of everything I feel like, it’s like your breath, which you never listen to, it is the breath of the earth. And water? The water is amazing, all the blip-blop sounds or waterfall sound is the clearest noise I ever heard. Quite sensational!

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

When it comes to writing songs, I like to stick to short compositions, even though I try to make them long. The longest I get is 5:40 min. The shorter it is the more direct and clear it becomes.

I find that simple or complex compositions are both attractive to me, as writing something simple requires the complexity of the process, which in the end creates the illusion of a simple song.

Regarding pitch, I tend to be drawn towards higher notes, both vocal and instrumental, which evoke feelings of joy, excitement, and sudden peace. However, it is naked without lower notes, without them I don’t have a feeling of grounding, which is crucial for me to create a sense of harmony.

Overall, my personal preferences tend to vary when it comes to extremes in music, as I am continually exploring and experimenting with different sounds, pitches, and compositions.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads of ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

Verse/chorus structures are the usual way I approach writing songs. I’m naturally drawn to this structure and I honestly enjoy it quite a lot! I still experiment to change sometimes, it varies from song to song.

I think sound and general creation are already complex enough that as long as I enjoy, I like to stick to the things that work for me. At the end of the day, there are infinite ways to create and one can easily get lost in them.

Science and art have certain overlaps and similarities. Do you you think "objectivity" has a place in art and do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

In the beginning, I thought that making music was about me expressing something personal. But the more I do it, the more I understand that the subjectivity of creation is only a stepping stone. That as a creator you are a vessel to shape ideas into different forms. While subjectivity is essential, great art balances it with objectivity.

Sometimes, I feel like art and science are two sides of the same coin. Both of them require a high level of intuition and commitment to the process, which leads to certain results. The uses of scientific insights in music-making is just one tool among many one can use. When I mix or master my songs I try to hear them more objectively, what emotion I would like to evoke, how sound can be delivered to the listener, how specific notes can travel from A to B and etc.

Unfortunately, we are living in a binary world, but the universe isn’t as simple and plain as black and white. It is an interconnected, complex mechanism, it is whole and perfect in its own sense, but our mind perceives it as binary. Art, religion, and science have more in common than we want to acknowledge.

Seeing, smelling, touching, tasting – which of these sense impressions have the strongest points of contact with your hearing/listening experience?

Seeing and touching. Often when I create or listen to music I feel the frequencies in my body, skin, and heart, it is quite detailed. Visualization is also a big part of the perceiving sound to me, it is the way I make sense of it.

Does the way you make music reflect on the way you live your life? And vice versa, can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Absolutely! The creation and consumption of music can significantly influence our life.

At an early stage of my sound journey, I asked myself the same question. It is important to reflect on the motivations and intentions behind the music we create, as it will not only impact our personal growth or regression but also the impact we have on our audience. If you approach music with discipline, focus, and a willingness to experiment and take risks, these qualities can also translate to your approach to life, and give inspiration to your audience.

Music is one of the most powerful tools to shape and reflect the way we live our lives, and understanding it on a deeper level can offer valuable insights and knowledge.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Mundane tasks do involve a certain level of creation, commitment, and discipline. But they lack a sense of wonder and curiosity to me, a sense that it serves a greater purpose than my survival on this earth.

Music, on the other hand, gives me chance to unite, become whole, share joy, happiness, and love, give a sense of wonder, and let people experience dreaminess, a magical part of existence that we often forget while doing those mundane tasks. It is the way for me to cherish the souls, uplift and let people experience their own heaven even for a bit.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Conversely, many popular love songs leave me cold. Do you have similar paradoxical examples - and why, do you think, is the same piece of music capable of conjuring such vastly different responses in different listeners?

I guess, we all search for certain experiences, emotions, stories, and characters that a piece of music or the artist delivers. I feel that sound is a piece of information and everyone needs a certain type of information that adjust to their ways of understanding.

There are some songs I would never be able to relate to, as they might not evoke emotions I unconsciously need to experience. However, I think there’s an audience for everything, and that’s the giggle and great paradox of the universe.

What I consider to be not my type of music might bring great happiness and a sense of wholeness to someone else’s life.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I love making wishes! I would love to stay true to the process of creation and maintain authenticity as I grow and gather more knowledge. I would love to explore new territories, make more experiments, take risks and let the kid inside me enjoy the process.

Soundwise it is hard to say, as I like to keep it surprising even for me, let’s see where it takes me!