Multi-instrumentalist Juan Ariza and singer-songwriter Miette Hope have been musical collaborators since they met at Berklee College of Music. “Nervous” is their whimsical indie-pop debut as The Natural Synthetic – a more intentional continuation of their musical chemistry.
“Nervous” is a product of Miette’s life experiences and Juan’s imaginative production and instrumentations. The duet delves into “being nervous either liking someone so much that you don’t know how to handle yourself or being nervous about telling that person you can’t be with them anymore or not being able to communicate,” says Ariza to EARMILK over the phone. “Nervous” walks the line between playfulness and heartbreak, and that can be a very fine line.
The duo’s first music video had to visualize that sense of drama and nerves surrounding uncertainties and complex emotions. “Music and visuals can be a marriage,” Ariza explains. “It can be a beautiful marriage, sometimes it can be a horrible marriage, but I feel like it can bring new meaning to the song itself. With this one, I feel like it solidified the idea of what we represent as a band.”
The DIY, quarantine-made video for “Nervous” is the band’s first. On a split screen, we see Hope laying in the sand as waves wash up around her face. On the other side, Ariza’s face is bathed in a light projection of water. It is an eloquent dichotomy between natural and synthetic, drenched in moody blue tones.
For Ariza and Hope, “Nervous” is only the beginning. They plan to imitate the album art for “Nervous” throughout their project, selecting different elements of the periodic table to represent each song (for “Nervous” they used nitrogen). They hope to rework their own periodic table for a future album cover. Their next single will have a dancier energy with a blend of Troye Sivan’s dance-pop and Daft Punk’s electronic edge.
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