Seeking in Tongues
Nahum Reyes—aka Ages the Poet—goes DIY and bilingual for his new EP.
By Thomas Crone
While he's also a member of the band Lord Vox, Nahum Reyes says that his new six-song EP, Seeker, was a highly-personal album, and his release strategy was geared to simply sending the half-dozen songs into the world. And so it was born, at 2:22 pm on Feb. 22, 2022.
Under his recording moniker of Ages the Poet, Reyes says that "I opted for the less-formal route of releasing this. I debated this, and was thinking of building up anticipation, releasing it one single here, one single there. Although this is exciting work to me, I didn't want to deal with any of that. It gives me anxiety to build up hype about something, so I opted for the less-traditional route. I released it out of nowhere; my friends didn't even know, it just dropped. It was kind of relieving to do that. I've done the promotional work [in the past], and it can take out the magic."
What Reyes has served up as Ages the Poet is an impressive batch of six songs, sung in both English and Spanish; a native of Mexico City, the Salt Lake City resident moved to the U.S. at age 15. They're built up from scrips and scraps of cuts that have been hiding out in various forms on computers and recording gear, some dating back a dozen years. Saying that "some were more developed than others," Reyes began to get serious about the project at the same time that he was learning personal audio-recording tools.
"I would say the most-comfortable parts were recording the melodies, the key and the harmony voices," he says. "It's kind of easy for me to come up with melodies. The challenging part for me is the mixing, the production, the technical side of things. I am by no means an engineer or producer, but after a while I found that this level (of production) works. I was just learning and experimenting, really. I did it all in Garageband. With my other group, I've gone into really good studios, done the traditional approach to a musical project. I threw all that out the window. This is very DIY."
For Seeker, Reyes not only scratched an itch, releasing tracks that were hanging around his to-do list, he also created a really unique package of tracks. Some of it is dancey and electronic, some of it is melancholic. The mixing of English and Spanish lyrics adds a unique component. While it's got a mix of styles, it's not suffering from some major lack of cohesion, either. It's just a cool blend of ideas, put together in a sequence that's "a very personal journey.
"I included both English and Spanish songs with a really deep meaning, to me," Reyes says. "What's been interesting is that everyone I've spoken to has pointed out a different song that's their favorite. I thought 'Dreams' would be a bit more popular, being in a post-punk kind of vein. But to be honest, the feedback has been all over the place."
As for an ideal outcome, Reyes says it "would be to be heard in faraway places. I want my audience to be on the internet, not just in real life. The connectivity of the internet and social media allows that. Obviously, I'll be a name to represent Salt Lake City. The local music scene is starting to open up for diversity and minority acts and I want to fly that flag, wave that flag for the local scene. I have so many friends here, and my heart's with them."
Seeker is available for both purchase and streaming at Bandcamp via Ages the Poet.
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