Name: Nickolas Mohanna
Nationality: American  
Occupation: Artist, composer
Current release: Nickolas Mohanna's new album Speaker Rotations is out via AKP.

If you enjoyed this Nickolas Mohanna interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on bandcamp.  



When it comes to experiencing the sensation of “energy” as a listener, which albums, performances, and artists come to mind?
 
There are so many that it’s hard to name them all, and each experience is different.

Like when I’m thinking of memory as container of the energy of the moment—like that album that transports you back into a different time in your life—any or all the performances that I saw when I felt like something completely new was happening. These were the DIY spaces and basements, full of sweat, free, and the imagination of energy was the energy!

This, right now, with Alan Bishop, Maurice Louca, & Sam Shalabi is sending me those thoughts:
 


There can be many different kinds of energy in art – soft, harsh, healing, aggressive, uplifting and many more. Which do you tend to feel drawn to most?
 
All of the above!

I’m drawn to an intensity in art when everything overlaps and something cuts right through the middle – but I think the practice of art making is the energy, and its form changes with the seasons or within the political or social climate of our days. The writing is on the wall.



I have had a hard time explaining that listening to death metal calms me down. When you listen to a song with a particular energy, does it tend to fill you with the same energy – or are there “paradoxical” effects?
 
I still find silence to be a dynamic state, when it’s used to hold all kinds of feelings. Silence can be so many things - anger, fear, disgust, sorrow, tranquility.

Yes, there’s that outlet for sounds or music and how we want to zoom into those feelings.

In as far as it plays a role for the music you like listening to or making, what role do words and the voice of a vocalist play for the transmission of energy?
 
Some of my past work used sampled choral arrangements – stacked together and looped over.

Though, the voice can be so sacred that I’m very careful in even using it all. This:
 


When it comes to experiencing the sensation of “energy” as a creator, how would you describe the physical sensation of experiencing this energy? [Where do you feel it, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or a build-up of tension etc …]

The creative process is such a mysterious experience that it’s difficult for me to express it in words—or should I say the idea of intuition, which is at the core of everything I make. This core is part of some abstract connection and only reveals itself when you're dialed into the given frequency.

Most of my pieces are designed in the form of a drawing, and this can be graphic or notational—an attempt to capture an idea with a visual vocabulary that I’ve worked out over the years.

Sometimes the forms extend themselves into other media, which feeds new energy ad infinitum.
 
When it comes to composing / song-writing, are you finding that spontaneity and just a few takes tend to capture energy best? Or does honing a piece bring you closer to that goal?
 
I’ve always used the first thought, best thought principle in making decisions. Though, the trick is whether or not you have to unravel that thought or leave it be.

In the end, it’s the engagement in the thought that matters – once that’s lost, it’s time to start keeping ideas in a drawer somewhere.
 
How much of the energy of your own music, would you say, is already part of the composition, how much of it is the result of the recording process?
 
When you hear or see or feel a work of art – you want to recreate those emotions again but go deeper into the moment and make it your own.

New ideas about the work are already there before going in and we hope some of those ideas can develop into a flower or a storm or a nothing at all and maybe it will change or maybe it won’t or shouldn’t.

This is the energy.
 
For your current album Speaker Rotations, what kind of energy were you looking for?

That memory again.

Most of these tracks were sketches from live iterations that were never fully explored. I wanted to revisit them in a controlled way but still leave them up to chance.

How do you capture the energy you want in the studio?

It’s all completely relative to my engagement in the work – the studio can be the instrument or the studio can be the art itself.

And these moments are all about trying to document those burning fires that get started in the process.

What role do factors like volume, effects like distortion, amplification, and production in general for in terms of creating the energy you want?

I think these are critical aspects of creating a physicality in sound and to develop a world that the listener can fall into.

Amplification and volume can make for a very profound experience but these ingredients are used more in a live situation and the room determines how far I can go with any of it.

This is a good room: 



In terms of energy, what changes when you're performing live on stage, with an audience present, compared to the recording stage?

It’s so much more in a live room—there is collective consciousness that transcends everything bad in this world and is carried through the universe and back!

How does the presence of the audience and your interaction with it change the energy of the music and how would you describe the creative interaction with listeners during a gig?

They should always exist together as it gives the music an unlimited aspect to an otherness that can’t happen without an audience. People are able to share an experience where nothing needs to be said and at the same time you can’t be silent either.

This kind of transmission of thought completes such creative interactions.

What kind of feedback have you received from listeners or concert audiences in terms of the experience that your music and/or performances have had on them?

To receive any feedback good or bad is a beautiful thing! Some people are taken to another place and this is what I want!

Would you say that you prefer to stay in control to be able to shape the energy or do you surrender to it and allow the music to take over? Who, ultimately has control during a live performance?

I think I touched on this earlier but there’s only so much control one can take and then it’s really not available.

Things flow through from another place and it’s an ability to quickly examine this stream of sonic consciousness before the fruit that’s produced is eaten by the worms.

Such flow in something like the track "Yeh Come t'be" is this:



The energy that music is able to generate can sometimes be overwhelming. How, do you think, can artists make use of this energy to bring about change in the world?

Energy as a collective force for change, when communities come together to fight for injustice, greed, and the fascist billionaire control of our lives.

Music needs to stay independent and untethered by this disgusting machine that’s operated by the egomaniacal creatures of the world. Humanity changes in a flash with technology, and we are losing each other, these creative communities, and the truth because of the glut of screens in our faces.

We have serious problems in the United States with all of this right now, and politicians are not standing up for the common good of the people—or have they ever? We’ve seen music movements change everything, and let’s make another one now!