Norin and Rad started out as a great duo of Bruce Carlson and Nick Sember. Unfortunately, early last year, Bruce decided to pursue other opportunities and Nick is maintaining the Norin & Rad brand while building the Nick Sember name. Late last year, we saw the release of the phenomenal track Forth as an ode to that transition in his life. We had the opportunity to talk with Nick before Norin & Rad’s performance in Seattle for Lucky, held at Wamu Theater. We spoke about what plans there are for the future, the challenges of becoming the sole member of Norin & Rad, and the other interests of Nick Sember, mainly politics.
The current plan for the Norin & Rad sound is to stay true to the trance genre that they came from. But this doesn’t leave out the opportunity to explore new and funky elements of the genre.”It’s not gonna be like the new craze of future house, I’ve been getting into a lot of drum work and I’ve been processing drums differently than before and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it” in the pursuit of adding a little more techno to the style. The goal is to add a little more minimal elements but still staying true to the trance sound. The hope is that the next release will be a two-sided EP, with
Side A being more the Norin & Rad sound and the B side I can do something a little more [techy] and weird, but I don’t really know. I haven’t figured it out yet, but that is probably going to be what you’re going to hear.
As far as the Norin & Rad brand goes, it is still going to be around for quite a while. Right now, people are going to see Norin & Rad and eventually they will become comfortable with the fact that it is just Nick Sember. It’s a smart decision to move forward with Norin & Rad while developing the Nick Sember name. For the time being he will continue to do it as Norin & Rad until “there is a clear cut across where if you go see Nick Sember you’re going to see the new Norin & Rad show.”
When Nick & Bruce split it was sudden, but when it comes to creativity, if someone wants to do something so different from you, “you can’t really hold someone down like that.” All in all, the split was very amicable and the friendship is still there. The only downside is that you don’t have those second set of ears helping to make sure that your mixes are sounding good while you’re DJing and the same goes for when you’re in the studio. Bruce was the main powerhouse in the studio for Norin & Rad, so losing him did have a bit of hit as far as abilities in the production process, but “I was always learning and working with Bruce to the point where when him left I had a pretty fast learning curve.” The added bonus of being in the Anjunabeats family is that he has a lot of people to support him, including Matt Lange, Andrew Bayer, and Sound Prank.
[pullquote]”(He) would love to be more involved with politics, but I would have to give up music completely. I don’t have the resources, the time, or the patience for it quite honestly.”[/pullquote]
Music is the the main focus for Nick Sember, but that hasn’t made him blind to what’s going on around him in the world. A topic that is important to him is the drought in California. It has affected so many people and will affect more in the future. As of right now, it doesn’t seem as bad because it’s cooler currently, however the summer is on its way. People need to be more proactive in preventing this disaster in the future and many rarely acknowledge how serious the situation is. Politics definitely plays into it.
All we can say is that we all completely enjoyed Nick Sembers set at Lucky 2015. He certainly played an aggressively fun and trance-full set. Whatever comes in the future for Norin & Rad, we’re pretty excited for it. Did you Attend Lucky? What did you think of Norin & Rad’s set? Tell us in the comment below!
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