HOCKINSON — There’s a famously frightening, “horrorcore” hip-hop duo that gets a lot of marketing mileage out of wearing scary clown masks.
That’s not Nomad. This duo’s masks may be slightly alarming, but they’re not meant to freak you out. They only aim to hide the players’ faces so the whole experience is a bit like theater — foregrounding not the musicians but their characters, stories and strange musical moods.
For example, there’s this multi-part construction called “Beware The Woods.” It’s a fractured fairy tale about a village terrorized by a savage monster — who turns out to be a lonely boy in need of a little love. The villagers could save themselves, if they could only find it in their hearts to embrace the beast who isn’t really a beast:
“When you’ve lost the path / and don’t know where to go / search for the cursed boy / because he’s your only hope,” the lyrics go.
No grinding guitars in the soundtrack to this story. Nomad is a complex but quiet little outfit; “Beware The Woods” features 21-year-old singer and lyricist Dane Leong on ukulele and overdubbed harmonies, and 20-year-old Luke Plummer on clarinet, percussion and keyboards that mimic everything from vibraphone to tuba.
“It’s really interesting, taking these sounds out of their normal categories and seeing what we can do with them,” Leong said.
Leong, a graduate of Rogue Community College in Medford, Ore., said he messed around with drums and other instruments before falling in love with the ukulele, courtesy of his Hawaiian father. Plummer, a graduate of Union High School in Vancouver, grew up in a musical household where he dabbled in mandolin, guitar, piano and percussion; he also put in some serious study of music theory and the clarinet.
The pair met while working at The Olive Garden. Plummer said he’s got a history of meeting musicians behind the scenes at restaurants. “I’m always asking everyone if they play an instrument,” he said. “Always looking to jam.”
Not even a year ago, Leong arrived in Plummer’s basement jam room in east county. The chemistry was immediate. “I listened to his sound and I knew his voice was original,” Plummer said. “Radio would love to hear something like that.”
It got even more original as Plummer and Leong started building a surprising sound — delicate, detailed, a little dreamy, a little mournful — blending electronic loops and patterns with their clarinet, ukulele, percussion and vocals.
“The soft sound is what really sounded right,” said Plummer. “We developed that.” Whenever they tried adding other musicians, the sound got heavier but not especially tastier. They decided to stay a duo.
“When executed well, two people can be pretty impressive,” Plummer said. “There are some other two-piece bands out there. You’d be amazed at how much sound they’re able to pump out.”
The duo settled on the name Nomad, Leong said, because they plan to travel from style to style without ever settling down. Leong loves “so many different genres,” he said, including the sensitive “alt-folk” you often hear accompanied by ukuleles these days; Plummer said he’s into the big, symphonic, progressive rock and jazz sounds of a generation — or two — ago, like Yes and Weather Report.
Big gig
They may be Nomad, but they haven’t traveled too far, just yet. Their home base is Plummer’s basement, where they’ve made a handful of careful recordings and uploaded them to www.soundcloud.com/nomadjournal.
But they did spot a Craigslist notice about a contest for young musicians called Sound Off at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture — a battle of Pacific Northwest bands whose members are 21 and under. Nomad almost shrugged it off. But they wound up entering four finished sound files, just before the deadline.
It was a total shock to learn that Nomad had been chosen as one of 12 semifinalists — out of more than 200 entries. “They said they liked our creativity and the different instruments,” said Leong. “They never heard anything like it before.”
Nomad was invited to perform during the Feb. 24 playoffs at the museum in Seattle. It was literally their first gig, and it was in front of a large, intimidating audience of industry insiders and judges.
It frankly didn’t go so great, Nomad confessed, with their live rhythms veering away from their electronic beats and digital loops. Everything got a little out of synch, they said. Lesson learned: coordinating electronics and live performance is complicated.
But that’s no reason not to play live. Nomad is eager to iron out the glitches, rise from the basement and play in front of people, they said.
“Gigging is great,” said Plummer. “And I’m turning 21 soon, so there are a lot more places we’ll be able to play.”
