Stick To Your Naut – The More Weird and Wonderful, The Better

A real moofest favourite for you next and one of the loveliest guys you will ever meet. Having honed his craft in other bands and under different aliases Naut has arrived:

Who are you?

Jordan Riding in the streets, Naut in the sheets.

What inspired you to make music?

Since the age of around 15 I found myself inclined to try and record my guitar playing into my computer, albeit with very lo-fi results. This led to me playing around with my first recording software ‘Cubase’ as well as a portable 8-track recorder, layering drum loops and bass lines over crudely recorded guitar and then uploading these monstrosities to Myspace back as far as 2006. Eventually when I was in college studying music, I noticed a couple of my peers making beats and soundscapes on a program called ‘Reason’, which pretty much blew my head off at the time with the seemingly limitless possibilities. This resonated as something I really wanted to do and eventually I acquired a midi keyboard and my own copy of the software and started creating electronic music, ultimately learning how to fuse my guitar work with the sounds I conjured up on the computer. I’ve spent the last few years doing just that and now here I am.

How has your music evolved since you first began playing music?

I’ve gone from being a kid creating low-budget haphazard music collages on a busted old PC to actually having the equipment to realise and record the sounds in my head. I spent a few years creating and uploading tracks to Myspace and Soundcloud, making albums & EPs and crafting my sound to become something that I’d feel comfortable sticking a proper name on, eventually I ended up putting quite a lot of music out as ‘Legohair’, even achieving moderate radio airplay on the BBC and other internet radio stations.

In late 2013 I was contacted out of the blue by Sunbird Records who really enjoyed the music I was putting out, luckily this happened concurrently with me being in the middle of writing what would be my debut album and after signing to Sunbird and changing my name to ‘Naut’ in order for a fresh start, I released my debut album ‘X Marks The Spot’ last March and ended up playing live for the first time. Quite a number of live gigs followed including Darwen Live and of course Moofest 2015, which was a personal highlight. I spent the rest of the year working on new material and testing it at live shows to see how it went down.

I promised myself I wouldn’t return with any more new music unless it was a huge step above my previous work, and it has taken me over a year (and countless tracks and ideas) to end up with the collection of songs that will form my forthcoming new EP. I like to think that spending most nights sitting in my boxers until the early hours of the morning trying to find the right snare sound or chord sequence has paid off in the long run and hopefully people will agree when they hear the new material that the sound has evolved and improved quite a bit! I’ve got a handful of gigs lined up to promote the EP but the heavy hitters are going to be Moofest and then Beatherder the following week. It’s going to be a hell of a good run!

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

2 cups of coffee.

What’s your favourite breakfast cereal?

Cinnamon Grahams.

What’s the worst job you ever had?

I can’t say I’ve ever really hated a job I’ve had. Of course I’d like to be making some kind of living from music, but in this day and age it’s very much impossible unless you’re churning out landfill for the Radio 1 masses.

What would you do if you were invisible for a day?

Be just as existent to most females.

What’s your favourite ride at the fair?

The ride home.

Have you ever milked a cow?

Never knowingly.

What’s your favourite cheese?

Primus – Sailing the Seas of Cheese.

What’s your favourite sandwich?

Sainsbury’s Chicken Triple.

Did you have a nickname at school?

Dig Bick.

Have you ever written a fan letter?

I still occasionally send messages to producers that I admire and respect via Soundcloud and Facebook to show some appreciation, never hear back though! The last noticeable correspondence I got was a tweet from DJ Erol Alkan after I threw him one of my CDs last Beatherder. Needless to say he never signed me to his label…

What’s your most disgusting habit?

Forgetting to cut fingernails/toenails for too long.

If you were a domestic appliance what would it be?

A Harry Hoover – Henry Hoover’s green variant.

What’s your favourite word?

I spent more time trying to answer this question than any other question in the list, and still can’t think of a favourite word.

Can you think of a good poem about moofest?

Everyone should go to Moofest
9th & 10th July
Once you see the lineup
You’ll understand why
The acts are very eclectic
Their mascot is a cow
There’s food and drink and lots to do
So get a ticket now.

Tell us a joke?

The amount of royalties I received from Spotify streams last year.

What advice do you have for people who want to make music?

Believe in yourself and stick with it no matter what.
If you aren’t in it for the love of it, you probably shouldn’t be in it.
Never let anybody tell you what your music should sound like. Stick to your guns – the more weird and wonderful the better.
There’s not so much money left in music if you aren’t pandering to the mainstream, but there is an audience out there for absolutely everything, you just have to find that audience.

How can the moofesters get hold of your music?

Soundcloud – www.soundcloud.com/nautuk

Facebook – www.facebook.com/nautmusic

Twitter – www.twitter.com/nautmusicuk

Sunbird Records – http://www.sunbirdrecords.co.uk/naut/

My album ‘X Marks The Spot’ is available on iTunes & Spotify, as well as Amazon and other digital outlets. The new EP is forthcoming on Sunbird Records and will be released within the next couple of months. Follow me on Facebook for all the latest updates regarding the EP and live shows.

Any last words?

Make sure you check out as many acts as possible this year at Moofest as it’s a hell of a lineup. I’ll be playing on the Sunbird Records stage and the show will be a special one just for Moofest, so come and have a listen! I am very much looking forward to the festival – thanks for having me!

So that was Naut, well and truly under selling himself. Naut is also playing at this years Beatherder in The Perfume garden the weekend after moofest and will also be DJ’ing at the Moofest Silent Disco on 9th July. Naut appears on the Sunbird Records stage on 9th July 2016, to buy tickets click here.