Listening to Nate Mercereau's music feels like staring down a kaleidoscope. The songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist surveys the fractured borders between sounds, celebrating the beautiful moments where they collide. And when he’s not making his own music, he’s looking at the world of pop through his prismatic perspective—he’s produced or played on records by Leon Bridges, Jay-Z, Lizzo, and The Weeknd, just to name a few.
Moreover, Mercereau has learned that no matter what sounds he’s working with he needs to lean in close, to focus on the details. “When you keep zooming in on something, it can get more detailed,” says the Los Angeles-based artist. His new album, SUNDAYS, embodies that as he dives headlong into a mystical, rich vein of sonic worlds, each song more intricate, intimate and expansive than the last.
SUNDAYS developed out of what Mercereau calls “spontaneous composition”—weekly inter-dimensional delves via live-streamed performance. The sets were built in fluid collaboration with a series of sound-scapes and percussive improvisations from Carlos Niño, a forward-thinking producer, instrumentalist, and staple of L.A.’s experimental scene. Due to its open beginnings, SUNDAYS is both free of form and packed with complexity —at any given moment it can feel airy, serene, or fiercely passionate. The ten tracks aren't traditionally structured songs. They’re human, emotional, and alive.
SUNDAYS began less as an album and more as a space to process the world. Over the course of 2020, Mercereau began a weekly Sunday livestream series. Niño would send a long-form improvisation before the set, then Mercereau would play and create with it in real-time, creating a palpable sense of live interaction. As Mercereau explains, “In those first sessions there were so many moments where it felt like psychic communication happening between us, even though we made many of our parts at different times, as if the music was being written together in the moment.” The weekly sessions lasted from April to December. By the end, Mercereau knew he had the beginnings of an album on his hands, and began magnifying, highlighting, editing and sculpting it into shape.