Morgan Elizabeth Photography
Audio By Carbonatix
Nick Mauthes isn’t a one-man band; he’s a one-man electric orchestra. He is the writer, programmer, producer and performer of Neo Tokyo Philharmonic, a solo project that vibes on all things synth.
Armed with his laptop, keyboards and keytar, he’ll be bringing his near-future soundscapes to Enigma Bazaar for an Earth Day show on Saturday, April 22, along with Astravert and John Baldwin.
Mauthes calls his nostalgic stylings “Dotcom-era techno-utopian dream wave.” The atmospheric grooves sound like you’re spinning the catchiest ’80s soundtracks on the turntable for an after-school gaming session. You might feel like you just touched down in a 16-bit landscape for a dance-off. “I get compared to Donkey Kong Country soundtracks a lot,” says Mauthes, “which I’m happy about.” He’s been performing live under the name for a little over a year.
Classic electronic scores might be the most noticeable influence in his music. But while Mauthes gives props to such old masters as Vangelis, he asserts that’s only one piece of the puzzle. “I know a lot of synth producers kind of gravitate toward the Blade Runner or the Terminator soundtrack,” he says, noting that there’s nothing wrong with that. “I mean, I love all those old soundtracks. I guess I’m coming from a slightly different place,” he explains. “A lot of the music I listen to is Japanese music from the same time. Techno-pop, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto, that sort of thing.”
The connection between vintage electronic music on either side of the Pacific reflects the otherworldly ethos Mauthes is searching for. “I really like science fiction and cyberpunk,” he says. “I guess part of the reason I got into the ’80s sound and synths is that they automatically sound sci-fi to me. I think they kind of evoke that outer space sound and atmosphere.”
Retro tunes of a certain age transport him to the glittering Neo Tokyo of his imagination, particularly the old video game and anime soundtracks from the ’80s and ’90s. “A lot of them have that sound,” he notes. “Since I grew up in the ’90s, I guess I’m kind of nostalgic for it even though some of that stuff is before my time.”
Mauthes was a bass guitarist before electronic music lured him away from stringed instruments. “Listening to old bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra got me into that sound and I branched off from there,” he explains. “Eventually I kind of got interested in synthesizers…and analog synths. I started doing a little bit of that more as a solo thing, and it kind of just took off.”
He creates his music at home with a compact studio setup, which mostly consists of a laptop and some MIDI keyboards. “I use Reason as my main workspace; I like the synths in there a lot,” he says, as well as “a lot of plug-in emulations of ’80s synthesizers. So I moved pretty much entirely [away] from hardware. I have my little group of sounds that I like, and I make stuff with that palette. I feel like the sound is pretty close. I’ll spend a lot of time improvising on my MIDI keyboard and tweaking sounds until they’re just right.”
As he chased futuristic atmospheres in his studio, Mauthes’s “little bit” of a solo thing morphed into Neo Tokyo Philharmonic in 2015. He’s been releasing albums under that moniker every couple of years or so, but otherwise the music stayed in his apartment until last year: “I actually didn’t start playing live with this project until pretty recently.” Mauthes explains that after years of experimentation and development, the time suddenly seemed to be right. “I felt like my stuff was kind of at that point where I could take it live.”
His first show was at Your Mom’s House in February 2022, opening for Night Drive from Austin. After years of creating in private, he remembers he was “surprisingly not nervous.”
Mauthes has found making music in front of an audience to have its own unique creative atmosphere: “I do like sitting in my studio and playing with different ideas…but at the same time, I like to show things to other people and get their reaction. To me, a live set is a little like putting together a mini album; I try to arrange things in a way that keeps people interested and play with the songs in a way that’s different from the recorded version.”
This weekend’s show is an opportunity to keep exploring his live sound, and Mauthes plans to premiere some unreleased material. He’s ready to take a new audience on a spaced-out journey to Neo Tokyo, and he appreciates everyone who’s come with him this far: “That’s another thing I want to mention: Thank you, everyone who’s out there, who’s listening to me.”
Neo Tokyo Philharmonic, 7 p.m. Saturday, April 22, Enigma Bazaar, 4923 West 38th Avenue.
Tickets are $15.