Q&A: The Nature Poetry of Guitar Center Pedal Enthusiasts Turned Ambient Folk Duo Nolune
PRODUCED BY GRETA CREATIVE, THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR “TANGERINE” — was my first introduction to Nolune. A mutual friend had been involved in the video making, and through that I heard the duo's music at a video release party. It truly stopped me in my tracks. The beautiful, inviting, and melancholic elements of the song resonated immediately, and I wanted to know more.
Hailing from Thousand Oaks, California, Nolyn Ducich is entirely self taught when it comes to music. Ducich would listen to her favorite artists and imitate them. Having trained as a dancer for years, Ducich felt that she was “missing some form of articulation that [she] wanted to put out into the world,” which led her to the world of making music.
The other half of Nolune, Daniel Bermudez, is a San Fernando Valley boy through and through. Having been something of a guitar hero prodigy, he was gifted a drum set and lessons that sent him down his musical path as a drummer. Bermudez also learned a great deal of production and sound recording from his brother, Trent. He now co-owns Structurally Sound Studios, which is based in Hollywood.
Nolune is a collaboration between two friends who had the happy accident of having met each other at Guitar Center as perfect strangers. Having been reintroduced by Bermudez’s partner, the duo were able to collaborate on some truly gorgeous nature-inspired, down-to-earth music.
Read below to learn more about the duo, their inspirations, and how nature plays into their work.
LUNA: When did you guys start working together on Nolune?
DUCICH: I started this project in 2019, and it was just a SoundCloud account. The name just came from me not wanting to use my real name, and then I met Dan in the summer.
BERMUDEZ: If you wanted to put it on a timeline … At least from my perspective, June-ish 2020 was us meeting; us first starting to talk music. December 2020 is when we finally released something. And then the duo thing officially sort of set into place October 2021.
DUCICH: Yeah, that's a year of us making music together. For me to then be like, “Oh, this is a hella collaboration.”
LUNA: Is there any additional meeting to your name?
DUCICH: I've wanted to use my name in some aspects — my name is Nolyn. It just kind of came from that and my infatuation with the moon … the French word for moon. And they kind of just merge together.
LUNA: Who inspires you, musically, for this project specifically?
DUCICH: Production-wise, it's a band called Hippo Campus. And Sylvan Esso — just sonically, their stuff was always … what I want to achieve. And then in terms of songwriting itself it’s something I have developed on my own, listening to a bunch of different stuff but thinking about what I like in a very selfish way.
BERMUDEZ: So this is a question that I always kind of have trouble sort of coming to a perfect response. Especially for Nolune it was really interesting because, while I really enjoy this sort of music, it wasn't really something I ever made on my own. With this particular project, it was kind of like me taking my musical foundations — knowing what to do recording wise, knowing what to do with different instruments — and sort of stripping away as much of like the “Oh, I want to sound like this, I want to sound like this,” and sort of hearing Nolyn’s music and being like, “Okay, what can I do to make this better?”
LUNA: Tell me more how you guys know each other.
BERMUDEZ: Funny, quick story about that is that I used to work at Guitar Center in Westlake Village, and apparently I didn't know this because I kind of tuned out when I was working most of the time, but I helped Nolyn. I sold her a pedal — a guitar pedal that I was going to use a few months later but … we technically met then. I don't remember it at all. The quick story [of] the actual meeting was Maria, my partner, was like, “I'm working with Nolyn, a friend of mine.” And, you know, they're working together on a tune on a song for this collaboration EP that some folks were doing over the summer. I came home from work that particular day and the two of them had just finished … they were totally done. They’re like, “Alright, Daniel, put on the headphones. Let us know what you think.” I put on the headphones — there were no speakers, no anything. It was just me isolated in there. And immediately I was taken aback, like, “Whoa, this is really good.” Not that I didn't expect it to be good but it was very much like [my] eyes were opened, jaw dropped, like, “Holy heck, this is going to be so insane.” I mean, that's my perspective. Nolyn, what’s yours?
DUCICH: One, that is very sweet. Yeah, I remember meeting Dan at Guitar Center. I mean, like, obviously, I didn't know that. I was like, “Oh, kind man, sold me a pedal.” Yeah, I remember the moment that you walked into Maria's room, and I was like, “I know that man. He sold me a pedal.” I feel like we hit it off. And we talked about pedals. And then you listened to the stuff, and you liked it. You said, “Oh, you should check out my band's stuff, we're on Spotify.” And in the back of my mind I had this horrible thought where I'm like, “You know, a Thousand Oak's band. It's gonna sound like it was recorded out of a very not-good closet.” And then I was just taken aback by the production quality of it all. Then I texted Dan a couple months later to be like, “Hey, you want to work on some music?”
LUNA: Can you guys tell me a bit about your dynamic working together?
DUCICH: I write all the songs by myself and then I bring them to Dan. I play them, and then Dan's like, “Sick.” And then we start to work.
BERMUDEZ: Nolyn will play something. It'll be like, “Alright, cool. Let's think about it for a little bit.” And at that point I usually grab an instrument — whatever it may be — and we sort of travel around honestly and just see what really fits the song. Nolyn does pretty much all of the writing and a lot of the producer stuff. For a while, I was the “producer,” but, honestly, Nolyn had very specific artistic ideas. I would try stuff and a lot of times it wouldn't work out. And then eventually over time I was like, “Oh, shoot, I should really try to hone into these ideas,” because they always grew on me. You know, “We’ll try this out.” And then, “Damn, she was right, that was better than what I had in mind.” It's really a cool dynamic — really easygoing. Communicative for sure.
DUCICH: I feel like the true thing that makes us Nolune and gives us our sound is just having a foundation of a song and then going back and listening to it and adding really specific details and cutting up and splicing and putting things in different places. It's kind of just musical surgery. I do have a lot of producer-y ideas. But Dan executes them immediately. He’s so intuitive — he knows what I'm talking about. And he executes it even better than I could have articulated it.
BERMUDEZ: There wasn’t quite a language barrier between us at first, but it was kind of just, like, Nolyn would say something, I'd be like, “How do I even go about that?” and really thinking on it. Over time, it’s to the point now where whenever we're in a collaborative or music making environment, it's … back and forth. She can say some nonsense to me and I can say some nonsense to her. And it's just like … we both understand what it means.
LUNA: There's a lot of nature in your song titles and your lyricism. Could you speak to that a bit?
DUCICH: I feel like the bottom line of it all [is] just that I really, really like nature. I just hike a lot. I just love the outdoors. A lot of the people and poets that I look up to, I think that they’re writing feelings into nature, and it kind of personifies it in a way. And I think that there's something really powerful about that. I guess it's easy to hook into because it's something that we all know: feelings in nature. It’s like this old, I don't know, almost cliche thing to do as a writer of poetry or songwriting or something, but people like it, so I just kept doing it.
LUNA: You wake up on a Sunday morning and it is just a perfect day. Your favorite breakfast food is cooking. What song do you want to listen to?
BERMUDEZ: I’m gonna very sneakily open my Apple Music right now.
DUCICH: I think I’ve got mine. “If Blue Could Be Happiness” by Florist. Just real good chill, ambient music. No pressure Dan.
BERMUDEZ: There’s this jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. He made a record called Largo, and the first track off that record, “When it Rains,” is probably the most peaceful, serene, but still that little bit of sadness … It's like, Sunday morning; everything is beautiful. I kind of want that little tiny bit of slightly overcast. That's a beautiful day to me. So I guess I would want to pair it with some music that's slightly overcast but still beautiful.
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