Navin Kala

This Q&A is an edited version of the conversation Mystery Circles artist Good Sunset had for his new podcast Slow Fade.

GS: Looking at farm life you share online, it’s astonishing from a city dweller's point of view: it seems like you’ve been building everything by hand your whole life, up to and including your Fender Rhodes! How did you wind up there?

NK: We came out here before COVID. We used to live in Sao Paulo, but it was getting too expensive. We were Googling for the best places to live in Brazil, and one of the places was this one. I spent like two years non-stop watching do-it-yourself videos on YouTube about farming, about building, all kinds of things, just saving links, photos, videos. And now it feels like I've been doing this my whole life.

Did you have any connection to farm life before moving there?

No, none. I think it's inside of every one of us, this type of life. It's like you're discovering yourself. But I have friends that tried, and they left after one year. It's tough because there's always something to fix. You need to get used to power cuts. The closest doctor or hospital is an hour and a half from here. Shopping is also complicated. So you just learn to take it easy. When we get people to visit us, everybody comes with this romantic idea, but soon they realize it's not all romantic.

You think you're there for the long haul?

I can’t go back to the city. No way. I cannot even drink water from anywhere else now, because everything tastes like chlorine. All those little details—the fruit, the eggs, all these little things that were completely irrelevant before. It looks like I'm an asshole sometimes: “Those eggs, they look like shit! Oh, this papaya tastes like shit!” But it's true. As a kid, I remember my grandmother complaining about the tomatoes. “Those tomatoes taste like nothing.” I was like, “What do you mean? It's a tomato!” And now I know what she meant.

Everything you're describing seems to express itself in your music, from the quality and feel of it to the combination of instruments that you've built or rebuilt. Everything feels handmade and alive and connected to everything that's right outside the studio door.

Oh, thanks, man. That's nice to hear. I don't know any other way to do it. I guess it's because I started my farm life almost at the same time I was getting started with electronic music. I was discovering how to work with wood at the same time I was buying my first synth. I guess at some point I was merging both things without really noticing.

I always find an excuse to integrate building with the music: building a small stand, doing wood cheeks for things that don't need cheeks at all. In the end, it's like a small mantra. You just try to get into the zone. Some people get there collecting butterflies. Some people get there cooking. And some people get there watching Netflix. But yeah, it's kind of electro-rural.

I’ve been fascinated following your evolution album to album, but I'm curious about your sense of it.

I studied classical music when I was a kid. I quit when I was about 16 years old, like every teenager. I played in bands, but I was never into electronic music. Then suddenly, my entry gate to this world was Stranger Things. I was listening to this intro arpeggio, I went to YouTube, I learned about these two guys, and I was amazed. And I thought: Okay, let's try. My first synth was a Korg Monologue. Because my tools were quite limited, my first album was completely electronic. And slowly I’ve been discovering new instruments and new ways of expressing myself.

I think my evolution is quite linked with the tools I'm using. I buy a new instrument and I want to justify that I bought it. And each time I finish an album, I do a makeover of the studio, because I don't want to get too familiar with it. “Okay, here’s my Rhodes, here's my Space Echo…” Everything gets too automatic. And with Spinoza, I'm learning to integrate more noises and new instruments that I’ve built.

Tell me a bit about your relationship to the online music world right now. You're living in what seems like isolation, but your musical journey has been very connected with the online world.

If my wife is traveling, I can easily spend a week without seeing another human being. I have the dogs, the chickens, birds, monkeys, snakes, so it's kind of busy here. But Instagram is the window that helps me to relate with other humans, because otherwise, it would be quite lonely here.

It's also like a logbook. Each time I think I have something, I make a post, and I know that this idea is there. Otherwise I’ll forget it. Most of the time when I make an album, I take the references from Instagram—it’s all recorded there. It's quite an important tool for me.

You are one of so many artists I know who are doing absolutely staggering work, but it’s the blessing and the curse of this moment: a lot of the gatekeepers are gone, and these incredible things are being made in places they couldn't be made before. But the other side of it is that things just get lost in this giant digital flood. How do you deal with that?

You know, I consider myself lucky, because I went through this historical transition as a child. I know what it is to have an analog life without the internet, and now I know what it is to have this sort of life. In the end, it's about an emotional connection, right? I remember being 12 years old, going out to buy the vinyl, listening again and again to Pink Floyd, or Cream, or Genesis, or some Frank Zappa…you got to feel like the coolest kid in the neighborhood because you were listening to Zappa! But right now, there’s just so much content. A huge percentage of the content of Spotify is AI, right? How do you develop an emotional link with that type of music? I guess some people do, but it’s complicated.

The most important thing here is: Are you having fun? Are you doing it because you want to do it? Can you live without music from one day to the other? If the answer is no, you're going to be fine, because just sitting in front of the piano, your life sublimates into something else. Then you can get into the question of how you pay the bills. It's not enough to enjoy what you do if you cannot pay your bills. I’m lucky out here. I can have a decent life and devote myself to the chickens and the music.

Let's talk about the philosopher Spinoza a bit. I'm very curious about what he means to you and why you named the album after him.

His work is basically one book, The Ethics. It's not an easy book. He had no connection with Buddhism, but everything he says is closely related with it. He's linking nature and God in a very special way. Back then, everything was separated: you had the world, you had humans, then on top was always God. But for Spinoza, it's just one single thing, what he called the substance. It's a pantheistic way of seeing the world. Very close to nature. And one thing that he always talks about is liberation through understanding. That was something that really touched me. That’s why I called the album Spinoza, because of the way he links nature, spirituality, and God, which is one single thing for him.

And for you too?

Yeah. Since I was a child. When I read Spinoza for the first time, I think I was 16, 18—that age when you start reading hardcore philosophers and mix it with a little bit of Bukowski, when you read and go: Shit, I always thought that! And suddenly, you feel like you're not alone in the universe.

Tell me about the decision to record Spinoza in mono.

Actually, it wasn’t a decision—it’s a problem I have. I've been deaf in one ear since I was 6 years old. I did try making my first and second albums in stereo, but I’m faking it. Then I read that Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys also had this issue, that for a while they were recording everything in mono, and I said: Okay.

What was your experience like working with Mystery Circles?

You know, I was super interested in the lineup that he had right from the beginning. Mystery Circles’ Bandcamp page [LINK] was my initial playlist when I first came in contact with ambient and electronic music. I've been growing as a musician along with the Mystery Circles catalog.

With the new album out, have you done the studio rebuild? Are you making things difficult for yourself again, preparing for a next project?

I am redoing the studio—I’m fighting with cables right now. Each time I finish an album, it's like I can close that part of my life. I can breathe, relax, and start again. So now I'm in this moment. I really don’t know the direction I'm going to take next. It’s strongly emotional for me: I don't play if I don't feel like playing. You wait until that energetic flow of creativity comes, and when it comes, you really need to be in the studio.

It's quite delicate, creativity. First, you need to master your tools. If you get this rush of creativity, and you don't have the tools, you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the skills, that's a problem. That's why I like to practice. It’s like Picasso said: inspiration needs to find you working.

Do you ever go back to classical repertoire?

Oh, yeah. The way I warm up is sitting in front of the piano. Before I was playing more jazz and blues, but right now, I'm just with Bach. I'm obsessed. I love it. Everything in music is in Bach. He was in contact with God—that's for sure. Imagine Bach with Instagram! Sometimes he would walk like two days to a church to play a concert. God, he had like 15 kids! He was writing nonstop and playing nonstop—without email, without Instagram, without a telephone, without anything. And I’m playing his music 300 years later. Think of all this music on Spotify right now. Who’s going to listen to this music 300 years from now?