Music
Latitude Unknown: Pop with a Bossa Nova Twist by Nate Schumann
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cover art by typfy art
pencer Nessel, a Jackson native relation to the pandemic and to other who describes himself as a mustruggles they may be facing, such as sic fanboy, has known he secretly making life changes, for example. wanted to perform himself ever Working remotely from each other, since he started attending the live shows Burke and Nessel each recorded porof his schoolmate Andrew Burke’s pop tions of their contributions at home. band, The DaVincis, during his junior The latter recorded his vocals at a New year at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. Orleans-based studio with the help of “Going to see live music back then a friend and fellow musician, Matthew was so impactful for me. I definitely fell Sefarian, who leads his own band, Matt in love with music more by going to see Surfin’ and Friends. them play live,” Nessel says. “The (song-creation) process in “I was 16 and didn’t have any rovolved a lot of us sending voice memos mantic interests, so seeing music was back-and-forth to each other to get the pretty much the coolest thing I could ideas off the ground,” Nessel says. do with my time.” Nessel accredits the support he has Nessel and Burke connected received from his friends as instrumenthrough mutual friends and further tal to the album’s release. bonded through music. “This EP was, in many ways, a Both graduated from St. Andrew’s, dream-come-true for me in being able the former in 2008 and the latter in to release music. It’s definitely the prod2010, and enrolled in Millsaps College. uct of a lot of friendship,” he says. “I Nessel graduated with a bachelor’s dewas very insecure as a young musician, gree in English, and Burke transferred [but] having someone like Andrew to Haverford College in Pennsylvania, believe in me enough to work with me where he earned a bachelor’s degree in really helped me keep going. … It really music. Burke is presently working togave me the courage to create.” Indie-pop band Latitude Unknown, which Jackson natives Spencer Nessel and ward a master’s degree in music from Listen to Latitude Unknown on SpoAndrew Burke formed in March 2020, released a self-titled album on Sept. 4. John Hopkins University. tify, YouTube, iTunes and other music The onset of COVID-19 and the streaming services. subsequent quarantines provided the free time that led Nessel, who began playing guitar in college, to send an instrumental recording to Burke. As someone who works in freelance music composition and production, Burke then used his skills in sound editing and mixing to transform the recording into a produced track, “Pez De Spencer.” Banking off the momentum of their first collaboration, the twosome decided to solidify as a music group in March, adopting the name Latitude Unknown. Their indie-pop band largely takes inspiration from the bossa nova style of music, with influences from Brazilian jazz, electronic and pop. “Latitude Unknown is really a project born out of the pandemic in a lot of ways. Both of us (were quarantining), and we really needed an outlet for our creative energies,” Nessel says. In the six months since forming, Latitude Unknown has developed a self-titled, six-track EP, which released on Sept. 4. Burke produced the music for the tracks, while he and Nessel wrote the songs together. New Orleans artist TYPFY Art (typfy.com) created the cover art for the album. The EP explores themes of anxiety. A lot of the lyrical work, Nessel says, came from conversations he For the album, Spencer Nessel provides vocals as has had with others since the band formed—both in In addition to vocals, Andrew Burke plays keyboard,
September 16 - 29, 2020 • jfp.ms
courtesy Andrew Burke
courtesy Spencer Nessel
18 well as guitar and ukulele instrumentals.
bass and other instruments for the album.
