cinematic, ambient and neo-classical vibes from an emerging sydney PRODUCER.

Sydney based musician Cassie To, AKA No-kë, provides a melodic journey of electronica featuring a stack of her own original productions. A big thanks to the excellent Eyegaze label for tipping us off to this unique artist.
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Could you tell us a bit about your journey into music? What’s the first thing you heard that you remember really having an impact? I would have started my journey at about age four when I started piano lessons. From then I picked up piano and flute during primary and high school playing in a lot of bands and orchestras (a couple of our own high school indie bands which weren’t great ha ha) and then went on to do a Bachelor of Music in composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. For a little while I thought I might pursue piano performance but decided composition was a better fit for me.

I think the first piece of music that had a real impact on me would have been ‘Ashitaka and San’ by Joe Hisaishi from the movie Princess Mononoke. I grew up watching a lot of Anime and Studio Ghibli films and my dad used to buy us Hisaishi’s sheet music so we could play it at home. I think it was the first time I had listened to something that emotionally had a big impact on me (probably would have been about 10 or 11) and I remember desperately wanting to play his music on the piano because I thought it was so beautiful. I didn’t get to play that particular piece till a bit later as my older brother had already learnt it (we had a weird rule we both couldn’t the same piano pieces) so I learnt another of his pieces, ‘Hana-bi’, which I Performed solo at a school music festival. That was a pretty big moment as I remember people gave me some really great feedback on the performance and how beautiful and emotive they thought the music was (I think someone cried?) which got me thinking - well I didn’t write this piece of music so maybe I should give composition a go.

As Joe Hisaishi was such a big influence on me I’ve always had an interested in writing music for film and TV, so while studying at the Conservatorium I also started to do a little bit of work on short films and with an Australian television music production company called ‘The DA’s Office’. Now I work predominately in music for television and try to keep up composing contemporary classical music/performance music along side the releases under No-kë

When did you first start making music as No-kë and what inspired the project? Funnily enough I recently found some pieces I’d written in 2011 which were a blend of piano, strings and beats but didn’t end up releasing them or doing anything then so I think this project has been brewing for a little while!

I started No-kë in mid 2018 after a friend and colleague suggested I just release some stuff for fun after hearing a couple of sketches I had that had that neoclassical/modern classical x ambient vibe. No-kë came about as I felt

I didn’t quite ‘belong’ in the contemporary classical world that I had spent so much time in during my degree, and having been involved in commercial music I had developed a lot of skills in production that I wasn’t really using outside of ‘work’. So I decided to see what would happen if I blended all the things I learnt in my degree, with the production skills i’d developed writing commercial music and just wrote music that felt really true to me. The name actually comes from my dog (named Princess Mononoke, so Noke for short) as at the time I wanted to release these pieces anonymously as I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with them and whether anyone was actually going to listen to them!

There often tends to be a strong attraction to electronic music for classically trained musicians. Why do you think this is? This is an interesting question! I guess I can only really answer from my own experience but I think electronic music is so attractive as there is just limitless possibilities. I think when you come from a classically trained background (whether it be from learning an instrument or traditional composition) there can be a lot of rigidity, rules and limits to what you can do, particularly if you’re writing purely for acoustic instruments. I think when you start exploring electronic music all of a sudden all these possibilities, sound worlds and colours open up to you and I think it becomes really interesting when you start experimenting and applying techniques and concepts that you’ve learnt from your traditional training into these mediums.

What was the concept behind your mix and what equipment did you use to record? I wanted to create a mix that felt organic and immersive. Hopefully at times it makes you feel like you’re sitting on the beach or in a rainforest! I also wanted to share some of my musical influences in the mix and hopefully you can hear how they’ve influenced my music. In particular I stayed away from anything that had a strong vocal presence and wanted to focus on acoustic instrumentation and atmospheric textures.

I created the mix in logo pro using a lot of stems from my pieces. A couple of the natural sounds, particularly the ones used on Home Mvt I & Mvt II, were recorded on my farm using a simple Zoom H4n.

Who are your biggest musical inspirations? Definitely the work of Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Ludovico Einaudi are all modern classical composers whose works I find really inspiring and have had a bit influence on my work as No-kë.

I also love the work of Ta-ku (something a bit outside of that classical world). Not just as a musician, but as a creator, he’s such an interesting and creative person in so many different mediums and I’ve always really admired his work.

What’s your all time favourite track, album or piece of written music? This is hard to answer and I think changes on the daily! But I think it’s going to be The Princess Mononoke soundtrack, in particular the two pieces ‘The legend of Ashitaka’ and ‘Ashitaka and San’ by Joe Hisaishi. I guess I can’t get past how much of an influence they’ve had on me since a young age and into my career and artistic endeavours!

What’s happening for you at the moment? Any upcoming releases or projects on the boil? Outside of No-kë I’ve got a few projects for television on at the moment and coming up later in the year. I’ve also been working on a large commission for choir and orchestra which (fingers crossed everything goes well and Covid settles) will be premiered early 2022. Ive also got a couple of little collab pieces in the works but no solid timeline on them yet.

I have been working on a new No-kë piece (recording some live strings next week which is super exciting!) which I’m hoping to release either at the end of this year or early next. I’ve been lucky that this year has been busy for me with commercial music, however unfortunately that means I haven’t had a chance to do as much writing as I’d like for No-kë, but I’m super excited about this new piece and am really looking forward to getting it out there soon.

You can check out the full tracklist for No-ke’s mix over at Soundcloud.