Jerry Paper

Lucas Nathan (born August 7, 1990),[1] best known by the stage name Jerry Paper, is an American musician, singer, songwriter and producer.

[5] They learned how to play the Misfits song "London Dungeon" on bass guitar (in eighth grade), made psychedelic folk recordings in their bedroom with Sony Acid, and performed in various bands at school.

[5] They got into several noise and psychedelic acts like Growing and Devendra Banhart in their teen years after being exposed to them via the magazine Arthur, and later got into free jazz and krautrock.

[5] Nathan originally wanted to perform in the "cool band[s]" they saw at school and their summer camps, but they were turned down by all of them due to their "nerdy" look, which influenced them to become a solo artist.

[5] Nathan began producing music in 2009,[1] and their first project was Zonotope™, a four-album "propaganda series" promoting a Southern California-based "alternative spiritual community"[5] named the Temple of Pure Information and Mainframe Devotion.

[6] They also had a noise project named Diane Kensington Devotional Band, which depicts Nathan as the eponymous female who starts a fictional religion based on traveling into the "space between the 1 and the 0" through the ritual of "Trance Channels".

[1] Paper often wears a garland and a silk robe[1] and acts like a "weirdo" who does "whatever the hell [they want]," such as become "romantically involved with a giant chameleon" and dance "like someone who just discovered movement five minutes ago," Koen van Bommel stated.

[9] Nathan explained that they wrote International Man of Misery (2013), "a cartoonish version of depression," as a way to poke fun on the "ridiculously melodramatic thoughts" they went through at the time.

[2] Feels Emotion, released on February 11, 2014,[10] involved Nathan taking on, as Decoder magazine put it, more "ambitious" production techniques than their previous albums such as in sampling, an example being the cat sounds on "Holy Shit.

"[2] The LP also has some tracks where Nathan focused on non-repetitive pop structures instead of the typical verse–chorus form, including "I Feel Emotions," "Unless It’s," "Other Please," and "Heartbreak Module #3.

"[5] As they described making the LP's lead single, "I was just trying to come up with the funniest sounds to go together – like tubular bells, and standup bass, and harpsichord, and then it goes into disco funk.

[15] Faux noticed Nathan's work via the "suggested artists" feature on Spotify, and, as she explained, she "was stuck on [their] music for a good three months, that was all I was listening to, and I would catch myself rapping to [them].

"Your Cocoon" and "Grey Area" debuted on the website Bandcamp as promotional singles for the album, which features Weyes Blood and Charlotte Day Wilson as collaborators.

According to the Stones Throw Records website, the album delves into existential topics pertaining to "the endless human cycle of desire and satisfaction".

[17] In the same year, Nathan also featured on Tyler, the Creator's debut extended play Music Inspired by Illumination & Dr. Seuss' The Grinch on the track "Hot Chocolate".

[2] In terms of live stage performances, Nathan dances in comic yet profound routines and delivers, in a deadpan tone, indifferent aphorisms that are also in the lyrics of their songs.

"[3] A common major theme in Nathan's records is anxieties, how they "feel very immediate and true in the moment but in hindsight often register as products of absurd logic.

"[2] The lyrics of their works represent feelings of hopelessness and concern of where to go in life in the future, which are translated "into a subtly self-aware revision of easy listening," Decoder analyzed.

[2] As Bloom stated, "Though wearing the guise of empathetic AI and employing tools of the Muzak genre such as keyboard saxophone and elevator synths, they manages to make sincere, and more importantly good music that is relatable to humans and algorithms alike.