Nathan Kay's Album:
"Mantis"

Nathan Kay is a truly brilliant trumpeter, keyboardist and producer who I am honored to call one of my close friends. We both went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and became friends soon after meeting each other in the first several months of school. I remember one day, maybe during freshman or sophomore year, we were hanging out in his dorm room and he showed me the most insane EDM remix of a viral "Screaming Llama" video that he and his friend had made in FL Studio... amidst our laughing, I couldn't help but to be impressed at how ironically amazing the production on the track actually was. Over the years at school I had the honor of going to many of Nathan's shows and seeing him grow as an incredible trumpet performer, improviser, composer and more. We both graduated Eastman and Nathan went on to get his master's degree in music production at Berkley and I stayed at Eastman to get mine in Film and Media Composing/Producing.

In pursuit of my composing and music career, I accepted an invitation to move out to Los Angeles under the mentorship and sponsorship of Jeff Beal (House of Cards composer), where I would end up living at his house for two years. His house became a very special hub for events, jam sessions, artist meet ups, and back yard performances. At one of our first meet ups, one of our mutual friends, had extended an invitation to many of the Eastman graduates who were living out here in California - this is where I was surprised to learn that SO many of my old friends were right here in Los Angeles, including Nathan. Soon after reconnecting, Nathan and I spent many weekends together jamming on our Synthesizers ("Sunday Synth Sessions"), going on hikes, cracking a beer and watching "Nathan for You" or the "Therapy Gecko," grabbing In-n-Out and sharing our music projects with one another.

In the many "hangs" we had together, I learned so much about the kind of person Nathan was, and the incredible amount of work he put into everything he did. Nathan had been working 6am shifts at Starbucks to afford living in LA, and on top of that, he spent his evening attending jam sessions to connect with the local music scene. After months and months of doing this, all of this hard work certainly paid off, because amidst the chaotic schedule, he was hired to go on tour as a trumpeter and keyboardist for the extremely popular Quin XCII. In the little time he had between the US and European tours, he spent all his spare time crafting his music and honing his skills. From all of this producing and with the help of our friend Mario Sulaksana and his label, Ouroboric Records, Nathan's first album "Mantis" was born.

Early in 2024, when Nathan asked me to master the entire album, I immediately told him to send me the tracks! I was so excited to work on this with him. Each individual track, with the exception of the final track, was a collaboration between him and one of his talented singer/songwriter friends in California that he has met over the years. The diversity of different voices and musical styles is a testament to his talent as a producer. As the mastering engineer, this was the main challenge too. I was receiving the tracks as they were finalized in production, and since they were all different in style, we had many conversations about retaining the cohesiveness of the album between the styles and singers. Fortunately, Nathan's persistent mixing and openness to make small adjustments to the mix put me in a perfect position to master all of the tracks as a beautiful flowing story. The final track, "Where Do I Go?," is my favorite, because it's Nathan's own beautiful voice, reflecting on his own story and journey as a musician. He questions the meaning of music creation, of success and the challenge of living up to everyone's high expectations. In the mastering process, we aimed to retain the warmth of soft and gentle acoustic piano and the smoothness of the vocal flowing in and out of each phrase. In the end, we decided that instead of trying to remove any noise from the piano or vocal, we should layer in a sample of the ambient room tone, bringing us even closer to the music than before. Through this process, we achieved the incredible effect of the track sounding like we were hearing it like a live performance, but played for an empty room. A truly full-circle moment tying the lyrics and the production together in perfect harmony.