Canadian born artist SHMU (aka Sam Chown) today lives in Austin, TX, where he is part of the local music scene. Apart from his solo career, he is also drummer and vocalist of the experimental keys/drum duo ZORCH. The music on his solo release Discipline/Communication is a mix of experimental pop, funk, shoegaze, indie and psychedelic rock.
Excellent production, great vocals and great songs! Recommended listening!
"... here are some things about me as an artist and the album in general:
It took about 2 to 3 years to record, write, engineer, mix, and master. I basically did everything myself with no assistance except for the stem mastering and mastering which I did with my buddy JP. (...) Doing everything yourself in the moment is pretty intense. So, for example when I would be recording my drums, I'd hit the record button in one room of my apartment, enter the other room in which my drums were set up, shut the door, put on the headphones, sit down and then play and hope to God that that take was going to be the one, because if it wasn't, I would have to do the whole process over again. So basically I was my own tracking engineer while I recorded every part. - In terms of what I was going for musically, I wanted to do a few things. I wanted to make some sort of modern wall of sound/face melting shoegaze album, with tracks like "Shadowgames" "Turpentine" and "Fester" (influences: My Bloody Valentine, basically it all goes back to them, Smashing Pumpkins) I also wanted to explore meshing shoegaze with glitch and electro (influences: Ulrich Schnauss, The Field, Burial, Daft Punk, Justice, The Books), that comes out in "Crazy #107" "&hearts" and "Heads Will Fall." The other two main genres I was going for were psychedelic folk rock (influences: CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Beck, America's first album) "Impressions" "Happiness" and "Tangeable" and then a sort of minamilist approach to pop-rock that was fully realized by bands like Talking Heads (and modern bands like Animal Collective, Panda Bear & Deerhunter). That kind of style comes out on "House of Stares" "Backwoods" and "Pool Party (Place 4 Us)" Everything else floats somewhere in between those main musical mediums of expressions. - For "Heads will Fall" I sampled this band from Toronto called Pursuit of Happiness. I'm from Toronto, so I grew up listening to their stuff. I sampled two of their songs off their album "Love Junk" which is about 20 years old now. I heard the lead singer is a producer of some rock n roll reality tv show. But anyway, I remember listening to that record and being like "i can totally glitch this bitch up!" I've sent it to him and he says he digs it which is cool. This track is definitely the most controversial in terms of some people fucking hate it and some people love it, there doesn't seem to be much in between. For "&hearts" which is track 11 on the record, I sampled myself. I have a huge library/vault of jams and abandoned tracks, and I figured why not recycle them into something different and interesting to my ears. For "Backwoods" I sampled this teacher I had at Berklee who did classes in breathing and movement exercises, basically a hippie-dippie class. I was the only student in his class to buy his cd, and then he died the next year. I sampled his voice as the so-called "lead vocal" for the track to honor his love and passion for humanity and music. (...) Shmu is my given hebrew name, its hebrew for samuel, so some people call me sam, others call me shmu, I'm fine being referred to either one. that's how I got my so-called pseudonym for this project. - The album is called Discipline/Communication so the theme of the album is about honing in on a sound and chiseling it out of the rock it came from, which is the discipline part and then communicating it properly so that people can emotionally connect with it. - This project has existed basically since the release of my first album under the name Shmu, it's called Compendium (...)"
(info from email; more info in the zip-file)
IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR, PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTIST!
You may purchase a high quality wavs download via SHMU's Myspace site.
4 song EP by Chicago band called TROPICAL PILLS.
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