As a chronically late individual, I found myself instantly at home speaking to someone who appreciates the romance of inefficiency.
Reminiscing on toll booths and rejecting imaginary systems that are taken as reality, Nourished by Time walked me through their newest reflection of this moment, The Passionate Ones. The new full-length dropped Aug. 22, earning the coveted title of “Best New Music” from Pitchfork. Accolades aside, Baltimore’s Marcus Brown made it clear they only compete against themself. They consider every release their “big one,” as it's the most genuine to their current experience.
Given the nature of Nourished by Time and the concept behind The Passionate Ones, things got philosophical fairly immediately. What started with “I like your hat” quickly shifted to a conversation about musical surrealism as a form of protest.
At this stage, surrealist audio quality is built subconsciously into the DNA of Nourished by Time, while simultaneously serving as a response to the environment the music is being produced within. For someone who “loves being stupid even more” than they “love being silly,” Brown acknowledged that to affect change, they prioritize substance over the absurd.
There's a throughline of love and human emotion within the album that serves as a counterargument to the detached, dystopian nature of the year 2025. I asked Brown if the future of community lies within the hands of hopeless romantics. Their response was more direct, “I don’t wanna lose the tolls.”
It's not the money they miss paying, but the physical process of a task — similar to purchasing a song for their iPod shuffle with an iTunes gift card as a kid. They want to protect a time when “technology and romance coexisted.”
It's as if there's a heightened nostalgia to childhood tradition due to the lack of human interference in modern practice. That lack of human interference leads to a lack of community. It's this loss that Nourished by Time aims to solve through their music.
Digging into the title of their album, Brown explained that The Passionate Ones are “anyone with a dream.” They count themselves among that group, having gone through the back and forth of naming a dream and trying to chase it. For Brown, it was the experience of going to Berklee, living a pseudo-reality with esteemed professors and peers, then returning home and being asked to resume an old routine.
The path was disorienting, unsettling and, at times, counterintuitive. Luckily, Nourished by Time has broken down what they’ve learned for all of our sakes. Brown will be in our city for the very first time (so, please, act normal) when they bring The Passionate Ones to Milwaukee’s Vivarium on Sept. 25.
Nourished by Time interview highlights
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
On surrealism and their 24-hour live stream to promote the album:
That was my way of engaging in absurdism but also creating community. It was really fun. We were teaching. We had Aaron Mate, he's a socialist journalist or leftist journalist — I don't know how he identifies. We had a bunch of independent label people come in. We had a palm reader come in. I did a songwriting lesson kind of thing.
I am really inspired by surrealism, but I think at the end of the day it should have some kind of substance. I do love being silly, I really do love being silly, and I probably love being stupid even more than I love being silly. But, at the end of the day, if we never get serious and if we never have some kind of base, we're useless, you know?
On love as an antidote to late-stage capitalism:
I don't wanna lose the tolls. You know, when you're driving to a city, I don't want everything to just be ePass. I'm not saying I don't love technology. When I was younger, I grew up with technology, too. We grew up with iPods and all that stuff. I saw a time where technology and romance coexisted.
When I listened to music, I had a little iPod Shuffle that you would stick into the computer. You would have to buy a gift card for $15, $30 or $50. They were all in these weird increments. I was like, “What if I just want $5 of music?” Now you gotta go to the store and buy a little gift card or ask for a gift card for your birthday and, like, scratch off the back and type the code in.
All that was our version of going to the record store, there was still this romance that was involved. You still had a physical thing … it was still this community thing. That's more of what I'm protecting.
I love the process. I'm not on dating apps anymore. I was on Tinder and Hinge, but I watched the dehumanization. We were both just dehumanizing each other and both just picking out the parts of each other that we liked and didn't like. I was on them for most of my 20s. I just crave more genuine connections.
I don't know if that's gonna save anything. I think courage is really going to. We are all so afraid to say anything or to sacrifice something. Even me, like I really wanna take my stuff off Spotify. I don't really know if I can do it right now. We're working on other solutions to protest Israel with my music and stuff like that.
It's hard to protest because I can think of 12 protests right now that could ruin my career. I don't know if that's the smartest thing to do right now, but at the same time I'm like, “Something needs to happen.” I don't know if just talking about Palestine in a song is gonna do it. That's where I struggle.
I do think it is love at the end of the day that's why we're here. All this stuff is just literally not real. … Really the only thing that is real is love — and we need food. Sleep, right? And water. But love is all of those things. We naturally seek it out as humans. So it's just a lot of the imaginary stuff that is holding us down.
On live sampling “Paid In Full” by Eric B. & Rakim:
Oh that's deep. That's cool. Who knew that? It’s actually from the “Paid in Full” remix, a 7-minute remix. … It's my first time using samples in my actual music on The Passionate Ones. I think I really wanted to pay homage to hip-hop. … I just love how you choose your sample, and it kind of tells you something about that person, you know?
I like it kind of being like a dog whistle almost. Like, “Oh, someone knows ‘Paid In Full.’ That's cool. That's a cultured individual.” It is all just ways to communicate. Music is just a language. If you've ever tried to learn a language, you know how much music is a language.
On if love is worth insanity:
MB: Oh yeah, always. You don't deserve to be in love if you're not willing to go insane, to be heartbroken. Every time, you should go into it fully if you're going to do the love experience. 'Cause if you're not, you're just gonna cheat yourself or you're gonna cheat the other person.
That's way easier said than done, you know? It's hard. I mean, it's the same with that other lyric, “I need a love that leaves a scar.” I'd rather have a love that I can remember than to have something that I forget. … I'm not of the belief that every experience on this Earth has to be positive for me. There's beauty in the reality of things.
Carolann: Right. The good stuff would not feel as good if you didn't have the bad stuff and vice versa. It's part of the experience.
MB: Light's gotta be on to be off.
