Spanish artist NIN3S talks to us about his new AV show, following your passion, and letting art speak for itself.
In numerology, the number nine symbolizes the completion of old cycles, wisdom, and meaningful living—an apt name for the new alias of Manuel García Guerra, formerly known as Uner.
Manuel’s life as Uner was a successful one. In 2009, he debuted on Solomun’s Diynamic imprint with ‘Raw Sweat’. The four-track EP gained significant traction on its release with two of its tracks landing on RA’s ‘Top Charted Tracks’ list. From there, he settled in Ibiza where he became a resident for the seminal party ANTS, as well as hosting his own event in Pacha, and playing at pretty much every major club on the island.
Despite his success, Manu always had a broader creative vision, looking ever forward to a time when he could express himself more freely. During our conversation, NIN3S gave the impression that he, above all else, loves to express himself. He told me about his interests in film, orchestral music, and using light to get the most from certain spaces. We also talked about his disappointment with the industry, its pressures, and how it began to stifle his creativity. Above all else, his enthusiasm was endearing to see.
It’s always been about creating new experiences for Manu. Even as Uner, it wasn’t uncommon to see him incorporate live bands to play alongside his DJ sets just to add something different. Now as NIN3S, he aims to use sound, space, and light to provide a more immersive and holistic experience. This time he has a team of his own, and no agents trying to advise him what’s best for his, and their, bank balances, irrespective of his long-term artistic goals.
For his latest project, he has recently launched a brand-new live show. The show, titled ‘The Beginning’, is an audio-visual presentation of his recently released double album. Broken up into two parts; ‘Beginning’ and ‘Beginning’ (The Revisions), the records explore two sides of NIN3S’ artistic identity. Part 1 demonstrates his talent as a classically trained pianist and contains eight minimalistic piano compositions, whilst Part 2 acts as its counterpart, fusing his electronic influences into each of the original pieces.
An exploration into darkness and light, The Beginning is a visual accompaniment to Part 2 in which dazzling light structures expand on the dark, emotional, and break-infused tones of the album. In some ways, it could be said that this theme between light and dark is a reflection of NIN3S’s career. The dark is an industry which promotes wealth and fame over creative endeavour, the light is the artist’s passions, freeing themselves from the shackles of greed and censorship and exploding into the world exactly how they were meant to be.
What were your inspirations at the time with Uner, how has that progressed into this new alias?
Well, I initially came from a classical background – I’m a pianist. I fell in love with electronic music in ‘82 with some records from Jean-Michel Jarre. From there I started to make my own music. I did some stuff with other aliases and different perspectives of music, and then I became Uner in 2009. The plan was always to develop a music career that would lead to what I’m doing now.
I always wanted to play live shows with lots of production, so Uner was really a bridge between working as a software developer and my life in music. I used Uner as a way to play shows, stay in touch with the industry, and learn from it.
After a while though, the whole thing became really intense because of how much I was playing. I struggled a lot, but I’m glad I did it because it laid the foundations for what I’m doing now.
In 2014, I did a little live show playing a couple of tracks alongside some other musicians. I think that was the beginning of the main idea of NIN3S. I knew that was the way I wanted to play electronic music. Of course, I’m going to keep playing DJ sets, but back then I always thought about what I was going to do in the future when I’m older and don’t want to play shows every weekend.
I wanted to return to my background, composing and playing the piano on the stage with different synthesizers. Conceptually, I was trying to develop a form of music that can merge between the classical and electronic worlds. I spent a lot of time working on that idea. Then in 2019, five months before COVID, I decided to step away from DJing. All my friends at the time thought I was crazy, and then five months later, everybody was like ‘Did you know that something was coming?’. I guess that was the whole progression from one thing to the other.
What are your motivations now that NIN3S has materialised?
Well, the motivation with NIN3S is to develop an artistic alias that doesn’t solely focus on music. With NIN3S the physical person is not important. That’s why I’m playing in between the lights and the shadows. All the lights on my show are in front of me and closer to the audience. I want to use NIN3S as a vehicle for me to develop whatever I want in terms of art. I’m working on movie production, music, and some artistic development for installations. It’s a multidisciplinary approach.
I’m also working on developing a clothing brand. It’s not merch, but a proper clothing brand. Everything is related to art, street art, the underground – something different. Of course, music is the most important because it’s my background – I’ve been engaged with it since I was a child – but I wanted to dip into some other art forms and try something different.
Can you tell me about your creative process? Your projects seem like they have a lot of layers. Where do you start?
Most of the time it begins as a conversation with my team. We started to develop this current show around two years ago. I told my stage designer what I wanted to do, and he thought I was crazy, but he was also excited by the idea. That’s why I like working with these people – they are also insane.
Initially, it started as something small and then over time it just kept getting bigger. At this point, we need at least a stage 10 meters wide and seven/eight meters tall just to fit everything on.
We love playing with ideas, especially crazy ones, and then we look to see if there is something we can develop. There are a lot of people that I need to work with for the structures, programming, engineering, etc., and the NIN3S project is completely self-funded, so doing these things out of your own pocket can be a lot, but it’s also quite freeing. We don’t have any external parties telling us what we can and can’t do. We have done everything together; it’s been a beautiful journey.
Working with others can be a double-edged sword sometimes. It’s good that you have found people to work with who understand you and embrace those crazy ideas.
In the last two or three years as Uner, I felt like I was losing control of my career. There were a lot of people involved that were making decisions and it felt like my voice was quieter. I remember feeling like I was losing the main idea I had as an artist. I had many people working with me because I needed the help, but I couldn’t shake this empty feeling. It was cool that I was playing everywhere and making money, but I was losing the essence.
From the beginning, this project has been about independence. I don’t want the essence of the project to be tampered with. I want to wake up every morning knowing that I’m doing 100% what I want to do, and not what I’m told or advised to.
Of course, the team is always growing, and new people are coming in and out, but want to try to keep that balance and maintain control because I don’t want to lose that feeling again.
It’s a tough position to be in as an artist in this industry because at that level there are so many people that rely on your success.
Yeah, and sometimes you feel guilty, you know? You might not want to play at a certain place, or you might want to stay home and rest, but you know there are a lot of people who are relying on you, so you do it. It’s only one time so you’re like, okay, let’s do it! And then there’s another time, then another. Next thing you know two or three years have flown by and you start to feel like you are not you anymore.
What is your approach to the audio-visual element of your show?
The first and most important thing for me when creating the show was the focus on light and darkness. I feel that for some time now there have been a lot of people working on AV shows who are only focused on visuals. I wanted to do something different. Something that involved the audience more, and not just have them look at a screen. I wanted to do everything with lights.
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to remove myself from the visual part of the show, hidden behind the lights, so we decided that I would play from inside this 9-meter LED structure. The LEDs are designed to follow every sound and movement of the music and interact completely with it. After we got the initial idea for the cube, we spent almost a year trying to figure out how to do that.
We kept on asking ourselves; how can we build a structure that is going to be so huge, but can be easily assembled when we are travelling? We ended up designing a structure that you can connect like Lego. All the cables are inside the LED tubes so building it is easy, you just clip them together. These LEDs are being fed to a rack that’s controlled by my laptop and information is going in and out with timecodes. For the rest of the lighting, we have five big laser machines and four columns of Gemini’s robots. There’s a lot!
When we started, the programming time was insane because you had to think about everything. We designed every single part of the installation, even down to the colours. If we wanted a certain type of green or orange, we designed it instead of using pre-arranged colour palettes. Everything was done from scratch.
I’m lucky because I have a really good guy working with me, Alvaro, who is the main technician. He controls everything with this huge mixer. When we play a big show, I’m travelling with 12 guys to put everything together. In four hours, the stage is done and ready to play. We can fit the entire thing into two flight cases which weigh a total of 150 Kilograms, I think. It’s really impressive.
Due to the nature of the design, we can change the shape of the structure. We can even put in different sides by separating the stage. It’s completely modular. That’s why we took our time with the design, we wanted the freedom of a flexible system.
What idea comes first, the music or the visual?
Well, that’s changed a lot from when we started. When I was working on the first two albums, the main idea was that we worked around the music, but then I started working on the third album and the show simultaneously. It was then that something clicked in my mind, and I started thinking more about the connection between the two and about the power to build this intensity with the lights. Now, whenever I make music, I think about the show and how the movement of the sound will interact with the lights.
Let’s talk about the album and AV show as a whole. What can people expect?
I want to bring people into the show as much as possible instead of having them stand there and watch it like you would a traditional concert. The whole show has been designed as an immersive experience with the lights going around the audience.
The album is based on Genesis from the bible, it’s about creation. I want people to feel involved in this beautifully creative event and to observe it all happening around them. Because of this, I worked hard to create an album that you can interact with on an emotional level. One that can tell you a story, and allows you to feel every element.
I love that concept of immersion. It’s one of the reasons why I love clubs with DJ booths in the middle of the dance floor.
I’ve played in venues like that, just having the people dancing on my back. It’s like you’re playing to the whole world. Nowadays DJ events are more like concerts. That is why I wanted to create something different with this project. I wanted people to really experience the music.
There are two different experiences with electronic music now. One is the VIP experience, with the people in the DJ booth that you can only enter if you know someone, and another is with the people in the crowd watching. That’s not the main reason for the electronic music. Electronic music is a community, not separation between VIPs and quote-on-quote ‘normal humans’.
That’s why the NIN3S show is designed the way it is. It’s also why we choose to play in theatres as the theatre is a black box. When you close the doors, everything is dark. You can feel the emptiness and the darkness, then when the show starts, the lights just hit you. Because no lights are coming from anywhere else, even a small beam of light can have an impact.
What’s next for NIN3S?
I don’t know. One of the ideas for NIN3S was to release one album every year. I’m already working on the next one. Other than that, I plan to keep on developing the live show. We are already thinking about what else we can do because we want to keep the shows different. If someone comes to my show next week and then returns a month or so later, I don’t want them to experience the same thing.
The interesting thing about these shows is that the small changes you make can have a large effect. If I make mistakes or changes when playing the piano, the score is now different, or if we use repeating patterns with the lights, they will feel different because of the reflections and intensity. If we change the colours or the shape of the installation, the show will look and feel totally different. For the last track, I’m bringing a 40-voice choir to sing with me. It’s about doing something different; this is why we will continue to develop it.
This new album is going to be more dance-oriented, but I have something on my bucket list that I would like to do too which is write a score with a full orchestra. I’m pretty lucky because I’m working with the director of a Symphonic Orchestra, and we are developing another project together. I think this is the next step for NIN3S.
