Q&A: Gabriel “Nuchi” Marinuchi From Mustard Service on Writing Their Newest Single “Alolé”
LIVELY, ENTHUSIASTIC, AND EASILY IDENTIFIABLE — the zesty and undeniably alluring sound of Mustard Service returns with their third studio LP, Variety Pack. The native Miami zest-pop band explores different genres of music, including funk, alternative pop, indie rock, surf, jazz, and bossa nova, on their newest record. The talented quintet first graced Miami’s indie-alternative music scene in 2015 and has since kept the groovy tunes going within the recording realm as well as live music spaces.
Regarded as incredible live performers and musicians, Mustard Service — composed of Marco Rivero (lead vocals, guitar), Gabriel “Nuchi” Marinuchi (guitar), Augusto “Tuto” Di Catarina (bass, vocals), Leo “Big Guy” Cattani (keys), and Adam Rhodes (drums) — offers sets that leave audiences hypnotized with their incredible energy. You indeed get your socks rocked right off.
If you’ve ever listened to bands like The Symposium, The Slaps, Innerwave, and benches, you’ll fall in love with Mustard Service’s effervescent sound akin to psych-rock. Luna had the pleasure of interviewing Mustard Service’s guitar player, Gabriel “Nuchi” Marinuchi, on their upcoming single, “Aloé,” which Nuchi wrote.
Currently, Nuchi teaches guitar aside from his work with the band, and is trained in classical guitar. It’s clear that music revolves around a lot of different aspects of his life.
We went back to the beginning of Mustard Service’s story, discussing the band’s inception, Miami’s alternative music scene, the perfect beach setup, musical inspirations, and the production process of the band’s upcoming record. Read below to step into the zesty world of Mustard Service.
LUNA: I've read some background on you guys, but I would like to hear from you what the origin story of Mustard Service is. Have you always guys been Miami locals, or have you been from somewhere else?
NUCHI: Yeah, Mustard Service was born and raised in Miami. It's the meeting of five friends. So Marco [singer], Tudo [bass player], and I have been friends since we were about 13/14 — something like that. I've personally known the bass player since he was born. Our moms are friends. The three friends grew up and went to high school together, and then our singer, Marco, met Leo [the keyboard player], and Leo went to high school with Adam [drummer]. The band got together from there.
LUNA: For one of your guys' most popular songs, what parts of “Taking Up Space” do you think garnered the popularity and virality it did? Do you think it was the timing or song structure?
NUCHI: [It’s a] shame Marco isn’t here because he's the one who wrote it, but I think both of those things have to do with the song’s popularity. “Taking Up Space” [is] zest pop — Marco wrote it in late 2015, and it was released in 2017. That's really a 2015 song, and I think it sounds pretty mid-2010s. So I think the timing is there. I think the chorus helps — at least, I like the chorus from that song. Marco said from beginning to end, it just kind of came. It was one of the first songs he wrote.
LUNA: That’s awesome. For anyone who hasn't heard of Mustard Service before, how would you describe your band in three words?
NUCHI: I’ll use two: We call our music zest pop.
LUNA: And how would you describe zest pop?
NUCHI: We’re from Miami, and we're all from Latin backgrounds, and I think we consider that part of the zest: cool. Pop music can mean a lot of things, but we like many different eras of pop. I think [it’s] a mix of zest and our penchant for pop.
LUNA: What other artists do you admire in the Miami alternative music scene?
NUCHI: Man, there's a lot. We grew up playing a lot with a band called Folktale San Pedro. They still perform a little bit. We played a lot of shows with them, especially in 2016, before we even released the album. I really like Frog Show Mercy. Real Live Animals is great — he's a good friend of ours. I hope I don't miss any, but yeah… ilikebloo, as well. Better Than This, Cannibal Kids… Yeah, there’s a lot. The sounds are all over the place, because you'll have alternative rock, emo, and funk.
To me, it all falls under the alternative genre. It's pretty varied. There isn’t a unified sound. I remember we played in Arizona one time and everyone was like, “Yeah, we all have that desert sound,” for the local scene in Phoenix or in Tucson. I don’t think we have that for Miami. Sonically, we're not too unified.
LUNA: This might be a slightly off-topic question, but when I was looking you guys up and I read your Spotify bio, it was saying how you guys love to take short walks on the beach and sit down. You also state that you don't like standing and graciously ask your audience to please not make you stand. Do you think there's a perfect beach setup in order to reach the peak of comfort?
NUCHI: To reach the peak of comfort… definitely. Having an umbrella is important. I think a comfortable recliner beach chair would be good. To me, it's more about how nice the beach is. I don’t really care about the setup. As long as I have shade from the harshest sun and a comfortable chair. A cup holder would be nice.
LUNA: You need the bev. You need the cold bev with you.
NUCHI: Yes. But more than that, the nicer the beach, the better. All I need is an umbrella and chair at that point.
LUNA: Is there a particular beach that you really love going to?
NUCHI: Two of the guys grew up on Miami Beach: Leo and Adam. Maybe they have a fondness for Miami Beach. I grew up in southwest Miami, Dade County. We have some nice beaches here, like Fort Lauderdale Beach and Hollywood Beach. Marco's been to Hawaii, so I'll say Maui first. Maui shits on everything else. Since I’m speaking for the band, I’ll say Maui.
LUNA: Sweet. Moving back on topic, I remember reading that speaking about “Alolé,” per your quote, “The song’s about nothing.” When I was listening to the single, I thought the whistling and swinging rhythm was very intuitive of how the song is super laidback and carefree. I was wondering what your favorite lyric was that you wrote for the single.
NUCHI: I like the first line, “Dos, cuatro vueltas de manzana,” because it was the first thing that came out of that song. I'm surprised that song even made the album because it’s a silly rock song. It's an obvious B-side. So I'm happy that everyone wanted it to be on the album. It wasn’t made as a joke, but it was made as a “Yay! I got to use Marco’s recording equipment by myself!”
LUNA: Toward the latter half of the single, there's this really cool guitar riff. I don't want to say it sounds scratchy, but it's very upbeat — blood-pumping, even. How long have you been playing guitar, and what songs feature your favorite guitar riffs of all time?
NUCHI: I've been playing guitar for about 15 years now. I'm 28, so I started when I was 13. I started playing guitar because I like Metallica and Guitar Hero. I love playing Metallica, but I also study classical guitar. I can't play jazz guitar, but I had my jazz phase. I'm really into Latin rock right now, specifically Argentinian rock. I like this artist called Charlie Garcia. He doesn't play guitar, but he would hire these great guitar players to play on his records. I really love classic rock guitar solos, not gonna lie.
I think George Harrison has tasteful lines. George Benson… Great guitar player. That guy is killing it. I don't play anything like him, but I wish I did.
LUNA: Cool! Variety Pack is your third studio LP, which is awesome — big congrats.
NUCHI: Thank you.
LUNA: What have you learned in the writing and production process from the last two LPs that you guys have done and applied to this one?
NUCHI: I think we learned what questions to ask people who know more about us in the studio. For example, the recording engineer. [On] the first record we ever did, our former drummer, Armando Baeza, was the producer and the recording engineer … and he mastered it himself. We learned a lot with him, from learning how to record and then mix. We now knew how to do that. For our second album we were like, “Okay, we know a bit more,” and we produced it ourselves. For our upcoming album, we actually worked with a producer named Jason Kick. He’s a very cool guy. He worked on Mild High Club's Skiptracing, and we love that album. So we had a lot of questions about how they would come up with the Mild High Club’s certain sounds, textures, and plugins. We were a little more knowledgeable about studio jargon this time around. We still don't know much, but we'd be like, “Let's get closer to this kind of sound.” We could say, “We know it's going to be with one of these guitar pedals, and it might be with this synthesizer.”
It’s so nice having a variety to choose from in our band. Sometimes we get along extremely well. Although we're five great friends, I don't think anyone in a friend group of five has the exact same taste in music. We can have our differences about a lot of musical elements and musical inspirations and all that, but we still come to an agreement. So some songs might reflect taste in music that pertains more to the drummer and the keyboard player, or maybe all five of us really like the song. I think we did whatever we wanted, for better or worse. Our third album is called Variety Pack because the songs are all really different. We really did whatever we wanted, and we would vote. Let's say between the five of us, we're like, “Do we like that drum part? Yay and nay, three versus two.” Then it stays cool.
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