New Orthodox is led by New York state-based multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Merz. The band’s ethos leans heavily into minimalist repetition, sonic experimentation, and lyrical insights that give way to live performances and recordings that utilize space and silence to imitate the human experience.
Nicholas Merz is a Catskills-based pedal steel player and luthier who performs as New Orthodox; Satomi Matsuzaki is the bassist and vocalist of Deerhoof. New Orthodox’s Bull Market on Corn just came out earlier this month via Joyful Noise, so to celebrate, the labelmates caught up about it, and much more.
Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Nicholas Merz: What have you been listening to this week?
Satomi Matsuzaki: I’m in New York now, and I just came back from Japan. I got a mix CD there from my friend, this Japanese folk song compilation. It’s a min’yō collection. It’s interesting, because you play pedal steel — kind of this American folk music instrument — and what I’ve been listening to is min’yō, which is like Japanese regional music with high-pitched women’s voices and a lot of traditional Japanese instruments. It’s kind of where people get together and celebrate once a year, when the rice is [ready for harvest]. It’s so different, your presentation and your voice, but the feeling… You hit the same notes, or something, like appreciating nature and community. [It’s in] good harmony with your music.
Nicholas: What year is the compilation from?
Satomi: It’s all over. You know, in Japan it’s many different prefectures, and he picked all the different regional folk songs from each prefecture, from different eras.
Nicholas: I think in May of this year, I was reading online, it’s going to be 30 years since you arrived in the US from Japan. Is that right?
Satomi: Yeah, that’s right. Because I joined Deerhoof 10 days after my arrival, and we are celebrating 31 years of Deerhoof.
Nicholas: Wow. Can you speak on your time here in terms of the last three decades? What’s that been like for you?
Satomi: It went by so quickly, you know? The first 10 years, I was very busy settling in. I had to work and do the band, I didn’t have time to sleep. Crazy time. But now I have a green card, and things are more my pace. For the past 20 years, I’ve just been doing Deerhoof and no other work. So it’s a good pace for me, because I am a kind of slow paced person.
Nicholas: Did you feel like the pace in America was more chaotic coming over here?
Satomi: Well, no, because I moved to San Francisco, and the California people were quite slow. I feel like they speak slowly… It was just a great pace to start out with. Coming to New York, I feel like I couldn’t understand what people were saying because they are very fast talkers. My California friends talk really slowly, like, “How you dooooing?” [Laughs.]
Nicholas: [Laughs.] Where in Japan are you from?
Satomi: I’m from Tokyo.
Nicholas: What was it like growing up as an artistic person there?
Satomi: Oh, it was very easy, because Tokyo is like New York. There’s so many things going on and all kinds of music. I’d go to the record store every day, and make friends. So I never had any desire to move to another city, because I felt like I had a city life and experience. But I heard there was a really great music community in San Francisco, and I met people from there — Caroliner Rainbow, a band, who actually wrote to me later like, “You should come and stay with us, we’ll take care of you!” I was like, “Really!?” And they literally took care of me after I arrived in San Francisco. They came to pick me up at the airport and I stayed with them, and one of them became my roommate. So I had amazing friends from the beginning. I’d heard a rumor about this community and how it’s not as scary as Tokyo — because the city has thousands of subcultures, so you don’t really connect to everyone. But in San Francisco, every day we hung out with the same friends and would go to the same shows. The friend community was amazing. I really loved living in San Francisco in the 1990s.
Nicholas: Would you say that San Francisco had the most lasting impact on you, in terms of the United States cities?
Satomi: Yeah, I think so, because I am deeply connected with the music scene, and the friends I still consider brothers and sisters. Coming to New York, I feel like I came a little too late to feel like it’s my community. It’s more like Tokyo, a lot of different people coming in and out, and the people don’t stay for a long time.
Nicholas: What made you decide to go to Brooklyn?
Satomi: I actually moved back to Tokyo for two years after San Francisco, because I missed my friends and family. I wanted to reconnect to my own culture after 15 years of staying in San Francisco. Greg [Saunier] and I used to be together, and Greg really loved Tokyo, too, so we lived there for two years. We split and I stayed in Tokyo, but the commute to tour was so crazy. I was like, “This is very tiring…” So I decided to just move to the most convenient city, which was New York.
Nicholas: That makes sense. So, anytime I’ve seen Deerhoof play, from when I was very young to now, I start and end with a smile. Do you feel like you try to communicate that with your music? Do you feel like you try to share joy with your music in that capacity?
Satomi: Yeah, I feel like I’m very natural on stage. I feel like my bandmates are trying to make me laugh, to make you laugh — because we improvise within the music, so they make funny notes or they make mistakes, and it’s just chaotic. So I cannot hold my laughter, because how could things go wrong after 31 years of playing? That’s the fun of it. I think that communicates to the audience, and everybody’s laughing. Things get very weird, but it sounds really cool because of that tension. We are like bread dough or something — you push and pull and think it’s going to break, and then, “Oh, it didn’t break.”
Nicholas: I think that’s such a cool thing about that band, that it balances melody and dissonance. It’s sort of the light and shadow balance. Do you feel like the band is able to balance those ideas?
Satomi: We keep trying. But most times, it’s just uncontrollable. And I think that is beautiful. I like fragility in music. It’s just very intriguing. That’s why I still love going to live shows — it’s different from listening to an album.
Nicholas: Yeah. It’s always very inspiring to see bands or artists taking chances and taking risks and allowing things to kind of [unfold].
Satomi: Yeah. And I felt very connected when I saw your show. It’s a lot of tension, but the string never cuts off, and you’re playing with it. It’s not uncomfortable. The adrenaline goes high and your delivery is so funny. [Laughs.] So I really love to see you live.
Nicholas: Oh, man. I worked at a teen center for many years, and I had an intern that I worked with, and they were so taken with the idea of performance. They weren’t very comfortable on an instrument, but they just so badly wanted to get on stage and perform. At one point, they got up and read poetry one night ,and they just seemed so comfortable on stage. Just even the slightest bit of movement — my interns and I and everybody that was in the audience were so transfixed with this performance. And it was the first time that they had performed. It’s like what you’re talking about, kind of like confidence or holding tension, but then being able to just breathe with everybody. It’s like an exercise or something.
Satomi: I felt that way with your performance. It’s like you’re actually reading the audience, or you are communicating through your performance. That makes the air colorful. [Laughs.] The oxygen becomes like a rainbow. It was amazing.
Nicholas: Thanks, Satomi. A lot of the Deerhoof stuff has always felt very colorful to me. But because there’s references to nature within the music — what is your relationship with nature?
Satomi: I come from Japan, and Japan has earthquakes, right? So people are very superstitious, because we never know when we’ll die, and people are ready to die. Or like a volcano eruption — I feel like people from earthquake zones believe in superstitions — I talked to people in Hawaii, and they feel that way, too. They’re ready for the mountain to get angry and volcano could erupt, because humans have done something bad and natural disasters are a punishment . Most people believe in superstition in Japan. Even though people are not so religious, the Japanese people believe that there’s god in everything — even a pen or your laptop. So the appreciation for being where you are, relating to nature every moment, I grew up with that feeling.
Nicholas: That is so cool.
Satomi: Yeah. Is it different for you?
Nicholas: No, it’s very similar. I grew up in a really small town in Washington state, so I was in the woods a lot as a kid. It’s always had a really big impact on how I think about things. I love animals too, and I think all of these things feel like an extension of everything. Not to be too sentimental or emotional about it, but I do agree that I think that god is in everything. We’re all working together in harmony in a lot of ways.
This is kind of funny, but do you hear a specific note or anything when you’re in nature and away from cities?
Satomi: Yeah. I never really sit down and try to make melodies — I always go out and go for a walk. Anything can be inspiring. In New York, I’ll go by the river and maybe, watch the sunset. How about you?
Nicholas: I don’t know if I’ve ever tried that specifically, but there’s definitely times where if the wind is moving or I’m near a waterway, and you kind of hear intersecting sounds, sometimes it’s sort of like I can hear notes. In a city, too, when you’re hearing somebody drilling, using a jackhammer, and then you hear car horns and the subway going by — it’s almost like a little symphony or something. It’s really beautiful.
Satomi: I’m really curious about your album, and how the whole idea came to be.
Nicholas: Well, we were talking earlier about how you like the chaos and the kind of playful nature of [playing live] — ever since I was younger and playing music, I’ve really found that the things that I appreciate the most in terms of watching and playing music are being vulnerable. But it’s not easy to do that if you’re shy. And when I started writing a lot of this music and thinking about it, I got the pedal steel that I play with — there’s a weird story with that, that involves my dad and that specific pedal steel. When he was younger, in the late ‘70s, he went to Nashville and wanted to buy that specific pedal steel, and didn’t for various reasons. Then, years later, I ended up getting that pedal steel because I told that story to a friend, and they connected me with somebody who was selling that model.
When I started playing it, I was playing a lot of country music and playing as a session musician for people. And then I was writing my own music, but mostly on guitar. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and there were a few nights where I was sort of blue, basically. I was feeling emotional, and I sat down and played the pedal steel, trying to just play and sing. And I was realizing that minimal approach, and just sort of small bends, slow things, made me uncomfortable in a good way. And I felt like that was appropriate. It felt like the most myself that I’ve ever felt with music. Does that make sense?
Satomi: Yeah, yeah.
Nicholas: Then also, I found that I like to try to both prepare as much as I can to perform, but also play tricks on myself — like, I intentionally will change things last minute to almost surprise myself, or throw a wrench in the program, to try and allow space for people to see error or see me. And then we can kind of have a conversation about it. Because I’ve played in bands where you get up and perform and everything’s timed out perfectly and it’s great, but I think there’s something really amazing about error. As somebody who loves music a lot, I love seeing the people and not just seeing them live, but seeing them for who they are, if that makes sense.
Satomi: Yeah. Well, I really need to see your show. I’d like to have a conversation with you on stage!
