Words by David C. Obenour
Sound conveys emotion. On face value, it’s a simple concept that we all understand and participate in. We embody it through the many ways we express ourselves. The tone of a voice. The force and reaction for a movement. Snapped fingers. Clapped hands. Shut doors. Sounds are communicated and interpreted in how we seek to understand and share. How we live in our emotions. Hide them. Struggle. Fight. Acquiesce.
On Bye Bye Bird, Nina Garcia explores expression and conveyance through the sounds she can carve from a guitar. Stripping her mediums down to instrument, amp, and pedal, additional focus and intentionality is shifted to movements as sounds captured through the recording of an electromagnetic microphone. To describe what your hearing as noise acknowledges the medium, but to stop there would be to willfully refuse to enter into conversation.
Off Shelf: What made you choose to release Bye Bye Bird under your name? Do you see this as a departure from the work you’ve done as Mariachi?
Nina Garcia: For me, it is not a statement to change the name of the solo [work]. I’ve played since 2015 and at this time I preferred to have an alias. For this LP, as it is quite personal, I felt more comfortable to sign it with my own name. I don’t see it like a departure or a rupture, just a tiny letter change.
OS: The title and opening track, Bye Bye Bird feels as if it welcomes listeners into the album. Can you talk about why you choose it as the opener and how you feel it sets the mood for what proceeds it?
NG: Bye Bye Bird is the first track I composed at the end of 2023 and I worked on it a lot and circled around it before fixing it for recording in July of ’24. It’s the track that launched the work on the record and my reflection on the place of melody and sound materials. I like the fact that it starts off very softly but gradually twists and turns, ending up on a rather heavy, deep suspension. It sums up a lot of the record for me and heralds both the emotional changes and the obstinacy that will follow. I very quickly wanted it to be the first track on the album, so that people’s ears would be fresh to hear it, and that it would have a specific place. It could almost be a kind of incipit.
OS: I was really struck by the range of sounds and emotion you cover on Bye Bye Bird – but it never feels overwhelming as a listener. I have to imagine that sequencing is a crucial consideration when presenting an album like this – can you talk about your process and thinking here?
NG: Absolutely, in my opinion Bye Bye Bird is an album that calls up a multitude of emotions and you go from one to another, sometimes quite brutally. Life can be like that and the idea isn’t to make a patchwork out of it – far from it – but rather to accept and face up to this rollercoaster of whole and sometimes contradictory feelings that we can go through. I wrote all the songs during a period of loss, and I think that’s one of the paths the album suggests.
Musically speaking, I’ve always tried to aim for sobriety in the composition of the elements, to focus on the details, the micro-changes, with that age-old idea of “the more the less”. But it’s relative, it is not minimalism music.
OS: I love how there’s these moments in the album where the melody is easier to grasp – listening as I write, “Harsh hopping” is just such a beautiful moment – and I think that’s in part because of its context. How do you approach the prominence of melody for a song?
NG: It’s quite funny because for me melody is a great novelty, just a step away from being subversive! Up until now I’ve made very little use of tonal elements in my music, because they didn’t appeal to me, and – as I’m not classically trained, I don’t navigate that easily. But more and more I like to create short melodies, almost naive, very stripped down. Where you get more of an idea of the melody than the melody itself. I find that very powerful, poetically speaking. I like to bury these melodies under layers of noise and let them bubble up as best they can. They bring a tension and beauty from another world.
They also allow you to play with the codes of tonal music and echo common references, which is very interesting.
OS: In the age of streaming, a lot has been discussed about the meaning and place of “an album” as opposed to single songs. Working on them in isolation, were you struck at how any of them changed when put within the context of the finished album?
NG: I don’t really think in those terms, I let myself be guided by my creative desires. If I’d wanted to make an album with a single 40-minute track, I would have done it. Especially as Stephen O’Malley – the director of Ideologic Organ – gave me complete freedom.
Working on this record was a mix between working on each track separately and modifying them while thinking about the overall shape of the record. Generally speaking, I always think of records as pieces, made up of several parts. This is especially true of Bye Bye Bird, which has a form of non-verbal narration; the tracks illuminate each other and complement each other. That’s also why sequencing is not just sequencing but mainly a compositional tool. Of course, some tracks I wrote just disappeared during the process because they didn’t have any sense within the whole piece.
OS: Spending so much time recording and refining for the album, were there songs – or particular parts of songs – that you found yourself continuing to work on? A sound that you chased after longer to get where you wanted it?
NG: I’ve been playing these songs live since February, so they continue to evolve. I don’t rework them as such, but they evolve when I’m in contact with the audience and when I feel like it. I was actually quite surprised the first time I listened to the record again to remember how I’d played such-and-such a track a year ago. But live performance is an object in itself that has to stay alive, so it has to be flexible and not completely set in stone. I love playing the songs live, sharing them in that way, but they mustn’t be locked up in a jar of formaldehyde, they must continue to vibrate and resonate in the present. To do that, you have to accept that they mutate a little each evening. This also allows me to be as sincere as possible when I play, and to maintain a certain tension within myself.
OS: Are the considerations you have for sequencing an album different from those you have when putting together a live set?
NG: It’s about sharing a collective moment. It’s a back-and-forth between musicians and audience. I always pay attention to the context: the sound of the venue, the reception of the audience, the general energy, the place and meaning that my sounds take in this setting. I always leave room for improvisation and flexibility, so that I can react to what seems right in the moment. Of course, this is a far cry from the free improvisation that I also practice, but it’s a practice that nourishes me a lot and I pay the same attention at every moment in both cases.
OS: Can you talk about your inspiration in using an electromagnetic microphone as part of your instrumentation for Bye Bye Bird? What new did that add to the dynamics of the music for you?
NG: This little device had been on the table for a while, and it took a lot of work, but this album allowed me to give it a full place. I play it on all the tracks except the last one. It’s both a continuation of my previous work and takes me completely elsewhere. It forces me to concentrate on the micro-movements of my right hand; the slightest tremor, the slightest oscillation, the slightest deviation has an impact on the sound.
That’s what I like about it, it creates a tenfold tension and fragility. It’s a balancing act with sound that can be thrilling. It allows me to have several layers of sound at the same time, always without a looper or any other effect.
It’s also via this device that I started to play more melodies, it led me to play tunes but to amplify only part of them in an almost hazardous way according to the movements of my hand. That launched me.
OS: What still inspires you about exploring sound and emotion through the guitar? Are there things you find that can still surprise you?
NG: Yes, I have the feeling that I still have a lot to do with the guitar, and I’m still excited about researching this instrument. I’m not a conceptual artist, so I think while I play, I let myself go and that’s what guides me. At the moment it’s all the work around these deconstructed melodies in opposition to all the noise I can build that appeals to me and moves me, and I intend to keep digging in there for a while.