Shimmering soundscapes from Melbourne.
Since his first release in 2015, Nico Callaghan has quietly built a reputation as one of Australia’s most gifted producers. He’s released most of his music on two highly respected labels—Orange Milk Records and Daisart—and worked with a close-knit crew of talented Melbourne artists that includes Other Joe, Body Clock and Ju Ca.
Despite the collaborative spirit behind some of his releases and close association with Melbourne’s experimental music community, Nico’s work is best suited to solitary listening—as is his Theory Therapy mix. It is patient, slow-building music ideal for headphones. Melodies are cloaked in tendrils of swirling noise, field recordings and tape delay, and it’s been so thoughtfully pieced together that it’s often difficult to tell how many tracks are in play at any given moment.
Everyone is likely to connect with it differently—as Nico rightly points out in our chat—but there’s a sense of calm throughout the mix that feels ubiquitous. It reminds me of those particularly special albums every music fan has, the ones you’ve built a near ritualistic listening habit with that, for one reason or another, provides you with a clearer frame of mind every time you listen. I also couldn’t help notice how Nico’s liner notes to Black Against An Orange Line could easily be applied to his mix: “This is my own take on the give-and-take between the daydream and the chaos[...]locked away in quiet, patient ambient spaces. It's all centred on that moment at the end of the day where the sun dips below into the underworld, and the sky appears so black against the orange band of the horizon. I want to make a pilgrimage, a Haj, to that moment. I want to make music to communicate that space over a grander, longer scale you can slip into and disappear."
How are you today?
I’m good, I just had a filling put in one of my teeth so my face is drooping and I feel so sleepy.
Can you tell us a little bit about the mix? What were you feeling when you made it?
Sure, to be honest I was feeling pretty dreadful when I made the mix, but I seem to have drifted out of that slump quite a bit. I think spending some time immersed in projects like this, ones that take up quite a bit of time and focus can be good for those times. Sometimes it’s just hard to work up the motivation to actually do something, though.
I used to make mixes on the fly, gathering tracks that I felt worked together and feeling it out in the moment. But I found, more often than not, that I wasn’t happy with the resulting mixes. Over the last year or so, I’ve changed my approach quite a bit, and I spend lots of time working at mixes in Logic. I try to treat the tracks as material that can be reshaped and folded over one another over very long transitions, sometimes having three or four tracks playing at the same time – but that’s just for this kind of process. Some of my favourite DJs are those that are very abrupt and immediate with their transitions, which I think takes quite a bit of confidence and assurance. My style is more paranoid and nervous, but each to their own.
Where did you record the mix?
I recorded it at home, in my workspace.
Where would you recommend listening to it?
That’s tricky…myself, I don’t like to be too prescriptive. Perhaps lying on the floor when you’ve just had enough? Or walking along in the autumnal/springtime sunshine when you’re feeling great.
Are there any tracks you’ve used in the mix that are special or significant to you?
For sure, there’s a track in there by mos fet & eustress that I think is really beautiful, it’s part of a compilation put together by cminus that just came out. I’ve been listening to that a lot. There’s also a new track of mine that is coming out sometime soon on another compilation from Music Company.
Theory Therapy mixes are about sharing the music that you personally find therapeutic and restorative. What does that mean for you?
I’m not too sure, to be honest. I’m sure we’ll all take away different things from certain pieces of music, or will find some very evocative and others not at all. There’s bound to be pieces of music that I find offer something, be it clarity or composure, that others find soporific or grim. There’s a track in the mix by Harold Budd from an album of his made with Brian Eno that I find really stunning, but I know from talking to someone else who’s listened that they are less attached to his music, and I’d imagine they wouldn’t draw the same kind of restorative quality from it that I would.
I guess so much of what we take away from listening is as a social act, be it communally or solitarily. Something being shared and played via a recording on the internet is very different to someone showing or performing it to you in-person. Most of my listening to music is on a solitary basis, but it is as part of a community that is split between friendships in my immediate physical geographical location and others in very distant places. A lot of the time, the notion of who or what is making the noise is very abstract, or mixed-up. I feel I have very parasocial relationships with a lot of people who make music, where I develop very deep connections to creative gestures they make while never speaking to or meeting them. It’s not quite language, but it’s something that precedes it, I guess. What I, or any other listener, take away from it may be entirely different to what they intended.
Anyway, I’m rambling now.
Is there a particular album or piece of music that you find yourself returning to for tranquillity?
Definitely, the last track of the mix is taken from Bing & Ruth’s album Tomorrow Was The Golden Age. I think it’s a really remarkable piece of music that I’ve continually listened to since it came out about seven years ago. Like a lot of really wonderful ‘ambient’ music, there is something quite ineffable about its qualities, but I find it really centres and settles me in a way that makes me feel very grateful.
What do you have planned for 2021?
I’m hoping to put out an album of my own solo music sometime this year, as well as some other collaborations I’ve been working away at bit by bit. Other than that, who knows? We’ll see what happens.
Tracklist:
Cliff Martinez – Will She Come Back [Invada]
mos fet, eustress & kara lantrip- hatch [c- & Lillerne]
Abstract Speed – Charminganarmchair [Dear Swirl]
Relmic Statute – The Ziakfand Loop [Cotton Goods]
Tetsu Inoue – Particular Moments [DiN]
Bing & Ruth – Go On [not on label]
Stars Of The Lid – The Evil That Never Arrived [Kranky]
DJ Healer – Losing Touch [planet uterus]
Leif – Untitled [Galdoors]
Hideki Umezawa – Dokkyaku [Edições Cn]
Chihei Hatakeyama – Alchemy [Room40]
Stars Of The Lid – A Lovesong (For Cubs) +, Pts. 2 & 3 [Kranky]
Nico Niquo – The Soul Can Be Quiet For Those Moments [Forthcoming Music Company]
Harold Budd & Brian Eno – Still Return [Virgin]
Bing & Ruth – Postcard From Brilliant Orange [RVNG Intl]