page_title: Jerry Paper
section_title: Musical style and philosophies
hierarchical_section_title: Jerry Paper / Musical style and philosophies
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of composer Henry Cowell as a young man (ca. 1916–19) Source: Sonoloco Record Reviews
context_page_description: Lucas Nathan, better known by their stage name Jerry Paper, is an American songwriter and producer who has been releasing music since 2009. Their first projects were Zonotope™ and the noise music project Diane Kensington Devotional Band. They began performing under the alias Jerry Paper in 2012, releasing their latest album, Abracadabra via Stones Throw Records in 2020.
context_section_description: During their teen years living in Los Angeles, Nathan visited several Scientology and Mormon centers. It was during this time that they got into direct experience, the idea that language cannot clearly state what someone gains via sensory perception. This, as well as their love for the "ritual" of religion, would later become the basis of how they develop their music: "Musical sounds act as symbols, but they carry information that can bypass linguistic processing. That was my main focus. I wanted to investigate that freaky idea." They explained that "instead of trying to explain mystical experience," they "try to create a context and a vocabulary that maybe gets at [a philosophy] slightly more."
  Nathan is into the idea of fuzzy logic, or what goes on between the binary numbers of zero and one. Their Diane Kensington project and the title track of the Jerry Paper album Fuzzy Logic are based on the concept. As they opined, "Binaries are a very helpful way to deal with things. They’re a pretty good tool when it comes to categorizing the world and figuring things out. But it’s not actually how the world works." Another primary purpose for Nathan making music is to keep "put[ting] [them]self in uncomfortable situations."
  
  Nathan's reason for producing and performing music under alter egos like Jerry Paper is that they help them figure out more about their actual self: 
  I feel like having the alter ego allows me to be even more of myself, whereas I feel like Lucas Nathan, who I am in everyday life, changes based on the scenario and who I’m talking to. I have to be polite, I have to be a normal member of society. But with Jerry, he’s not real, he can be anything.
  Nathan stated in an interview with The Editorial Magazine that they feel machines are just as human as actual human beings due to having "a lot of quirks." This translates into Nathan's musical style, which Bloom described as "genre-less" but compared to Daft Punk in that it combines the "coldness of technology with the foolproof warmth of human music." Nathan explains that musically,  their works play around with the limitations of pop music. This limitation aspect of their works was inspired by the piano-only works of Henry Cowell: "He has that piece, "The Banshee," where he’s scraping his finger nails on the piano strings. Fucking incredible. He used the piano in a different way." This is why, until Toon Time Raw!, they didn't use MIDI software because they would've otherwise "ha[d] a huge amount of choices."
caption: The works of Henry Cowell (pictured) inspired Nathan to play with the limitations of pop music.
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