INTERVIEW QUESTION 1
It all started with me finding any inanimate object to bang on while singing all the various parts that I would hear in my head - I would be in this zone for hours, inventing these imaginary albums live on the spot, with lyrics, music, drum parts and all.. I'd also make the album art out of construction (or really any kind of) paper as the vinyl case or tape/cd cases and make up all these make believe artists and bands that existed in a universe of my own making - Eventually I recorded my first actual record with a shitty lil casio and me singing over it into a tape recorder at 5.
This led to an unstoppable urge to record nonstop, generating around 200 tapes // recordings from ages 5 to 17. You can look up some of my early stuff on youtube, just check out ‘FBI by Lil Shmu’, where I’m wearing a hideous 90s sweater with hideous 90s wallpaper behind me.
Between the ages of 9-13, I was in a grunge/punk/garage rock band as the drummer/singer alongside my cousins. We were called Nuclear Puke & our best album (in my opinion) was called Satan's Zit. I still have it on tape with the original track listing. Gonna re-issue some of that stuff soon.
Fast forward to moving to the States from Toronto, Canada to attend Berklee, where I started an experimental synth/drums duo called Zorch. We moved to Austin, TX and organically built a following from ground up there; Austin ended up being the perfect place for us to situate ourselves as a band, as the audiences were open minded and hungry for something fresh & different. During that time, we threw some wild SXSW parties, one of which was at a college Co-op whose capacity was probably at around 75 people, however it was stuffed with somewhere in the ballpark of 400 people at any given time, with such acts as Grimes & Andrew WK headlining, for free mind you! The buzz we created in in Texas eventually led to us getting a record deal with LA based label Sargent House in 2012. The other member of the duo quickly lost interest in making music, and it fizzled out.
In 2018, I joined LA based band Vinyl Williams as the live drummer & my first show with them was at Desert Daze, our slot being right after one of my favorite bands of all time, MBV - which was both frightening & life affirming at the same time. Vinyl Williams had (& still would be with or without met) been my favorite modern and current band, so getting to be a part of that has been a wild and beautiful experience. In early 2019, I finally made the permanent move to LA & have been making music here ever since, so I was really only in LA for a year before COVID hit.
Throughout all these years I was generating loads of solo material, under my moniker Shmu - which has been a project (since 2007) and can be best characterized as consistently changing and morphing. I never stay still.
Although most people think of me or know me firstly as a drummer, I've always been just as passionate about composition, production and songwriting. My next record, The Universe Is Inside My Body, coming out on Orange Milk Records on Feb 19, showcases my passion for composition, as it is my first record without the use of drums or vocals (& there is only ~some~ guitar but very few live elements).
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INTERVIEW QUESTION 2
I'm a prolific musical artist from Canada, mostly known for being a wildman caveman like drummer - Sounds cheesy, but I more-so fancy myself as a channeler of otherworldly realms, inputting the spirit through the lens of my expression - I'm just in tune with a different wavelength BRO! lol - i hate talking about myself, it always sounds so corny. Anyway, fuck normal society maaaaaaan. But truly, where is the separation in existence between outside and inside forces - who is really making thes decisions we make in art?` The grey area that exists between freewill and predetermination is something I like thinking about and exploring in my music.
Throughout the years, my live setup has always evolved and changed (throughout various solo and full band iterations. It took a lot of years performing live and tweaking the setup and sound to get to what I've currently landed on, which is utilizing drum sensors. The sensory percussion drum sensors are made by Sunhouse, which allow me to generate, trigger & manipulate a vast array of electronic sounds, samples and synths based on my individual drumming style and expression, converting my performance into a composition live & with no overdubs or backing tracks. I'm going to start a live stream channel soon where I do in the moment improvisations with drumming, looping, automating, with and without drum sensors, alongside improvised and automated visual 3d mapping.
what makes Shmu what it is. Every time i work on a project, my goal is to approach what I do differently each time, whether it be the production, composition, style or aesthetic. I want to explore every facet of what I’m artistically capable of and go as deep as possible into each direction explored, before moving on to the next iteration of what Shmu can be.
I'm most proud of my new record 'The Universe Is Inside My Body'.
While constructing 'TUIIMB', I naturally gravitated towards an approach that emphasized the tangential relationship between sound design and synesthesia, painting a fun & playful user-friendly experience throughout. An immersive mish mash of colors, temperatures, climates, shapes, and/or specific visual images, such as a drum set of all splashy sounds instead of a traditional electronic or acoustic drum kit, replacing binary black and white sound dots with ocean blue ones instead.
Speaking more broadly, the album showcases a range of post-modern explorations or deconstructions of sonic environments such as water & amusement parks, fast pace cityscapes, to more abstract almost video game like environments like 2 & 3D scrolling through landscapes such as candy castles, hedge zones, ice castles, laser zones, etc
Can organic sounding music be influenced by and contain non-organic elements such as some algorithmic based generative sound, within the composition?
I wanted the track titles to further illustrate this evolution (from homosapien to the future race of AI integrated superhumans) as well as to supplement the overall multi & hyper modal sensory experience of the music.
This is the first album I've made without the use of either of my 2 principle instruments, drums & vocals. I wanted to see what I could do without those elements, before adding them back into future music. I also wanted to explore many different approaches to the harmonic content, finding lines and shades that exist between harmony and dissonance.
I've always loved emojis which is why all the track titles have emojis- they help me express abstract emotions and humor/lightheartedness, that words alone sometimes fail to convey - All of the songs together patchwork a universe, each track its own planet - and that universe is inside of me and i am inside the universe - an infinite echo-ing effect.