Interview #167 — Nathaniel Lau

by Jamie Marina Lau

Nathaniel Lau, also known as Lau Shek Wah and CHEF CHUNG is a rapper, producer, and painter from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

He released his album BETWEEN THE LILLIES this February. Over email correspondence, Nathaniel spoke with Jamie about process, creating as a form of curation, and making music during quarantine.

It’s probably been our longest period of not seeing each other, in the last year. I feel like every time we’ve caught up between when you moved out of our parents’ house at the beginning of lockdown and since I’ve moved out in the last few months, you’ve been constantly creating and evolving your sound. You produced your unreleased EP, BALANCE in a week coming out of the four-month hard lockdown, but worked on your album BETWEEN THE LILLIES throughout quarantine. What do you think has changed most in the way you’ve approached your process in the previous year?

For sure. In hindsight, it feels like last year unfolded in a blur. It felt like whatever it was that we were doing before or during that time, was going to be the last time it would feel normal. In creating BETWEEN THE LILLIES, I had this subconscious, default mentality of if this is going to be my last chance to create music in this world that exists as we know it, as dramatic as it sounds, I may as well not hold back and not be afraid to express myself in the most honest way I can.

The state of the outside world, globally and locally was making me feel like time as a construct was becoming less and less important in the setting of a stage 4 lockdown—so my creative process was naturally adapting to this idea that I need to create my own realm of ideas and imagination as a kind of documentation or archive for my experience of the end of the world hahah. That feeling, for the most part, stuck with me, but that scary, exhilarating thought of things never being the same again started to dissipate and I came back down to earth around October, when I started producing and recording BALANCE.

I can hear that, the encompassing of everything you absorb simultaneously while in a bubble—it really comes across in BETWEEN THE LILLIES. The sounds in the album creates a sort of alien effect. When I was listening to it, it felt like I was being re-introduced to an entire universe of specific media intake, in a non-specific time. The way you've curated the samples, the textures of your production, the way the lyricism moves through different versions of self. It feels like you're showing us what's in your peripheral rather than what you choose to look at.

I'm wondering in your process, when you sample, take voice memos, write, merging them into production, do you know what you're looking for or what you're going to write? Or is it more a state of flow?

It's definitely a combination of both. Sometimes I know the kind of attitude or direction I want to employ with samples, so I search up on youtube the most random combination of words that I imagine would result in the perfect video to sample. Or I could record my own naturally occurring samples off of voice memos. It really is an automatic, in the moment kind of thing that I can't force, similar to my raps, and in that way it is a matter of peripheral vision over central. My writing on BETWEEN THE LILLIES was all very much a state of flow, and it still is, but maybe a bit more organised now. Sometimes I wonder why or how people listen to what I'm saying in my songs and mess with it, just because a lot of the time they seem far from translated. Even though I know what all my lyrics mean, sometimes I think, wow, this whole song is really gibberish.

But I also like that, because like I was saying, it's the result of a flow state, not holding back, not going back to change or tamper with what already came out naturally. That being said, I do know exactly what I am trying to communicate most of the time. It's just a matter of, am I going to stay on that one point that my process began with? Or am I going to get sidetracked by the third line and talk about whatever, or talk about nothing in particular? I can definitely say that the significance of the writing in BETWEEN THE LILLIES, to me, lies in the storytelling. Not so much the lyrics themselves, but more the sounds as a whole, the sounds I make with the syllables in the words, the drums and the samples creating one big intertwined soundscape.

Yeah, I think its captivating to listen to because of the mix of grounded-ness or earthliness and spirituality that you play with in your storytelling. Even in your paintings I feel like the way surrealism, light and texture work together create that effect. We often talk about our experiences with our spirituality and how this feeds into a sort of flow-state and trust. How do you think your experiences with it has fed into your subject matter and process directly?

I definitely think the flowing nature of this project comes from a place of new discovery, spiritually and mentally, even physically. Just like many others, I haven't been able to find a comfortable resting place in terms of the way I see and process our world in this point in time. So in other words, I haven't stopped learning and developing my perspective and the ways in which I decide to navigate through life. I feel like the tendency to direct my art so that it fluctuates—up and down, all over the place—is a result of this, so far, ongoing excitement of exploring everything in every possible way I can. That's why it's been refreshing to start painting again in these last few months, because it's both opposite and equivalent to making music in terms of expression and process.

Flowing was the best word to describe how I began painting again, as I started up the business towards the end of creating the album. I didn't even think twice about what or why I was painting, but I knew I needed to channel whatever energy I had in my body into something other than a microphone or computer. It feels like I let my painting and music build itself up until it became its own world because at the time, I felt like I was entering a new world and I needed to express it and document it in the most suitable way.

In hindsight, it feels like last year unfolded in a blur.

I guess filmmaking would also come into that. We grew up making films together, ever since you were in year 5 (or something? haha) But I feel like the threshold for our separate creative paths, was that time we brought our new camcorder to Hong Kong in 2015, filming mundane scenes, hotel food and family dinners, street scenes, sitting around a TV in our cousin’s apartment — hours of footage we have to look back on now. It says so much about our reconciliation with family and culture visually.

How do you think filmmaking differs from writing/producing, when trying to connect with your past views of yourself and our family’s culture and heritage?

Well like you said, the visual representation of the place our family is from is already another dimension to reconnecting with culture and heritage. Not any better or worse, but in the fact that us filming the street markets or mountains or whatever it was that we had our lens on in Hong Kong, was us letting the environment itself become alive, rather than us trying to create it from what we have experienced having not been born and raised there.

Filmmaking in Hong Kong—even that time I made that unreleased music video for you in 2018— is like giving the people, atmospheres, ambiences and architecture a chance to showcase itself in the rawest form. I love to create music and write about my own perceptions, ideas, experiences and struggles with our connection to our family and culture too, it’s what goes hand in hand with documenting and curating the environment.

That’s why the music video for ‘43’ was important. Mixing footage of me on the streets Melbourne that Jess filmed at the time with footage that we filmed in 2015 was literally the two sides of that reconciliation. I see both filmmaking and music as forms of curation, only filming is more like listening and adapting, and writing is like teaching and discussing.

Yeah, the idea of curation seems really important to you as an artist, in all senses; in the subject matter across all the mediums you explore. I'm interested in how you feel about collaboration, in all forms. In a way, collaboration itself is like a form of curation, curating the artist to the beat or the personality to the tones of paint.

Yeah, I love to think about collaboration as a form of curation. I like thinking about all the different ways a new artist or client can affect my art. The differing tone of voice, accent, subject matter and ways of expressing their ideas over my production always adds another dimension to the sounds; a second opinion or a different perspective. Even just in terms of textures, it's essential for me to balance out the vocal selection, even just regarding my own voice. I get sick of hearing my own voice, as I'm sure a lot of artists would, so I naturally tend to create lengthy breaks, interludes, intros and outros in a long project to make it a smooth listening experience for myself. It's really about just feeling around, trial and error and trusting my gut feeling when it comes to what or who fits and how I should perceive it, or how I want people to perceive the art.

That's how it is for my painting practise too. Getting a first impression, gut feeling or a feeling of just knowing what to do for someone's album art or my own original, without thinking too hard, is always the only way a painting will come out most authentic and honest, and usually those are the ones that tend to sell quick or receive more attention. Those are the ones I really get in the zone for, I forget about food, hydration, toilet breaks, all of that, and I just smash it out in four hours or something like that. It's not exactly ideal or healthy but in terms of the creativity, it's raw and that's kind of similar to how I made BTL, except on a much larger scale. In the grand scheme of things I just somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see/hear and it came into fruition eventually because I didn't hesitate or overthink it.

I love the idea that it's for your own listening experience too, even in collaboration which happens over time. Like the track I got to be part of 'phonecalls2god', you had an original beat I recorded and mixed my vocals to, and then you sent it back a little later mixing it around a different beat. I respect that you honour your own improvisation, it creates a creative challenge, same with having a vast diversity of clients you paint for.

How do you think as you progress as an artist, you'll continue to challenge yourself? It's so strange being an artist, sometimes feeling like you're hitting a wall, then on an extreme high within that stream-of-consciousness state, how do you think you can balance that? How would you advise others?

Exactly, that's why 'phonecalls2god' is one of my favourites on the album—it has so much evolution behind it, the original beat you sang those melodies to was a completely different style, but somehow your vocals suited the flip I did later on so much more. I think I did that because I knew your vocals were up to date, but the beat which I had originally made in late 2019, was not. So it felt right to re-write the song, and blend it in with the rest of the project sonically and stylistically.

BTL was definitely a strange creative high that I exited in November last year, just in time to start recording this smaller EP, BALANCE, coming out later in the year. You could say I calmed down for that project, because that extreme high that I had been on for most of the lockdown had most definitely ended. As a result of that, you can hear me kind of hitting a wall in some sense for BALANCE. But I named it that because to me it's like the necessary postlude for BTL. I see it now as more of an outro to BTL rather than my next complete project - I have more coming after it too, different sounds, different genres. I felt like I was borderline losing my mind for a lot of the year and by the time I started making this smaller EP, I had reached a point where I couldn't channel the chaos and energy into my music in the same whacky, fun way.

It became more about my raps, writing and the intricacies of the music I made. Back to basics, in a way. That is, in a way, my advice to anyone feeling as if they've lost their juice—switch up your priorities and personal goals when it comes to the art you're making. BTL was definitely a state of mind which I eventually had to leave for my own sanity, and even though creating BALANCE felt like a creative block, it really was just me coming back down to earth with a clearer head, and a result, I created a much more simple collection of sounds.

I see both filmmaking and music as forms of curation, only filming is more like listening and adapting, and writing is like teaching and discussing.

That’s such an interesting and healthy way to view that evolution of process, would you say then that you're learning to include methods of self-care in creating on a larger and broader scale rather than just within the day-to-day formula? And speaking of the title of BALANCE, and its representation of its own creative process—could you speak more about the title BETWEEN THE LILIES?

Definitely, self care is the most important thing in general but especially when it comes to intensive creative work. Looking at it from a long term perspective helps me pace myself at a good rhythm, it allows me to think about what room left there is, how much time and space I should allow myself to continue working on one thing. That being said, it's super hard to be able to maintain a perfect, healthy relationship with your art when you're trying to take it seriously. The title BETWEEN THE LILLIES actually references "The Spider's Thread", by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, an old short story from 1918. That's also why it was important to me to release THREAD OF THE SPIDER, my last EP, before this album, hence the title. The meaning of the titles to these projects isn't the meaning of the work though, in the literal sense of representing the story itself through my music—it was more my fascination with it's representation of heaven and hell, and the people in 'hell', which, in the short story, are seen by Buddha through a pond, in between the lillies. I liked the main focus or moral of the story, and at the time of producing this album the world felt more like hell more than anything. Not even in a negative way, but diving deeper into the idea of afterlife, what I imagine to be heaven or utopia is not what humans on earth have created, post colonialism of course. What happens in the story beneath the water reminds me of the chaos created and selfishness driven by the power structures of our world, more than anything. I feel like I focus on the political side of things a lot more directly in TOS, which is why it felt necessary to name it after the actual spider's thread - the tool used to supposedly lift someone out of hell, and into heaven, out of the pond. BTL focuses more on what it's like underneath - not so much the message I want to communicate as a form of protest, but more so an interpretation or snapshot of life literally between the lillies.

What does it mean for you to be creating then, not only in this significant time, but in the place (Naarm) which you are creating from—within the community and society around you?

Creating, to me, is therapeutic and naturally one of the only things that can bring meaning or purpose on a day to day basis. I make music only for myself and try not to cater to anyone's needs but my own when it comes to art. That being said, when I'm making music and I'm putting my heart into a song - I naturally find substance in my anger and passion. Everyday I am reminded of where I am, where I'm from and what's going on with the world, and a lot of it makes me angry, or sad, or both. I try not to get too preachy with it, but like I said, I only do it for myself and I know it would make me uncomfortable to only focus on the topics that I think would be entertaining or culturally relevant. Being on stolen land as a 2nd generation immigrant creates strange foundations for identity and where to feel at home, what to feel entitled to and how to navigate all of that. When you're super young and you first start thinking about colonialism, it's hard not to think about the layers and complexities of your family needing to flee land that was stolen to then settle on another land that was stolen brutally. It wouldn't make sense to me to not include this in my practise, only because I know it's something that has shaped my circumstance and every decision I've made in my life. It's shaped the circumstance of those around me and the indigenous people of this land, here in Australia, and all over the world. Not to mention the hardships and hurt my close friends and family face, experiences and times that I've never known about. It all roots back to the same issue, the same twisted foundations. There’s so much knowledge gained from people I'm close to which I'm forever grateful for. These things are the main reason I do this - it's not about me, but it seeps into my rhymes and I can even express these thoughts and feelings through the soundscapes I create, if that's what my mind is on at the time.

Right, I guess with art-making it's about having that conversation and for that conversation to be less about enforcing a lifestyle/opinion and more about listening, sharing and asking questions in everything you make. I always say that in my own practice, especially in the act of writing, that it's like a mirror to not who you are fixedly, but how much you are learning, and how to confront your own biases and flaws in thinking. I definitely admire artists who are transparent about their growth and questioning, I really admire how you do this on BALANCE. Which artists would you say you're inspired by, and are influenced by?

So true, creating art can bring out sides of yourself you weren't even trying to access, but it ends up being kind of like a cleanse, if you let it. The way I was making music around the time I made the first songs for BALANCE definitely became an emotional purging process. A lot of artists I'm inspired by are never afraid to let themselves be vulnerable like that, but in the least cliche ways possible. Nickelus F does that really well. A lot of artists that I put in my top 10 are proper storytellers. Of course DOOM made a huge influence on me when I first heard Mm.. Food and the rest of his discography. Rest In Peace.

OGs like Dilla and Madlib, both having produced most of the songs I loved as a kid not even knowing who made the beats. Listening to a lot of Thelonious Monk compilations as a kid helped me develop a strange connection to emotion in music, it introduced me to a new appreciation of my surroundings. Getting into jazz music provided me with a new ability to see a different kind of beauty in almost anything in any place when I was around 12-13. You know that because it was both of us hahah. So I guess those were the roots of my ability to look at music differently. Mama's Gun by Eyrkah Badu, Trick Dice by Nickelus F & Shawn Kemp, and a whole bunch of other full length albums like those also changed everything for me when I first listened to them in full. Music that I don't typically make or just artists that do different things, speak different languages and live different lifestyles inspire me too - I respect artists like Mach Hommy, Billy Woods and ELUCID. Youngqueenz and $tupid Young, shoutout my asian rappers. And without a doubt, from our upbringing together, to us starting to make beats together for the first time, growing up with you listening to the music and making the art that we did definitely influenced everything I make and put out today. It's been classic from the start!

What are you reading at the moment? I’ve been lacking on the reading a little bit, been real busy but every now and then I’ll find time to read Thic Nhat Hanh’s Miracle of Mindfulness! I had actually been watching a lot of his talks and videos on his meditation practice/approach to life throughout the course of creating BETWEEN THE LILLIES and definitely had made an influence on my art, and the way I looked at time, space, people and things. Thank you for the Christmas present!

What tabs are open on your browser right now? The gmail tab I was on to open this document, Instagram DMS, Soundcloud and the one tab that has remained and will continue to remain, Attack on Titan on crunchyroll, I’m just finishing season 3. Also YouTube, a video called ‘contro going hard’ found from a long Meek Mill freestyle/Knxwledge binge

How do you practice self-care? Self care can be real hard sometimes, but I think I’ve done a pretty good job at incorporating it into my day to day. I say hard because sometimes you can’t tell the difference between self sabotage and self care. For example, is me ordering Korean fried chicken at 3am at my friends house, being someone who has been trying to eat completely plant based for a while now, self care because I’m treating myself? I guess sometimes it is, sometimes it’s too far. I was practising mediation and allowing myself a lot of time and space to do whatever I wanted when I made this album too, considering I was living out of home. I haven’t been doing that as much recently but I actually went for a run around the area yesterday. Getting back into skating and even going out, being a bit more social, meeting new people. I consider all that self care. Especially because I wasn’t doing either of those at all, to the point where I felt like a bit of a hermit.