Dope interview from the top dogs at Amplifier! Big shapeshifter fan and waiting to buy the new album! Tried to preview the tracks on iTunes, but 30secs is much more less than a snippet! Cop it and catch them in the summer!
Nick Robinson from Shapeshifter takes some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about the band and their latest long player, System Is A Vampire.
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What got you into electronic music and specifically drum n bass?
We were all into jungle and Drum and Bass when we first got together, but we were musicians more then we were DJ's, so we decided to try and play it all live- especially after hearing how well Redford could play classic D&B and jungle Breaks on his drums. Once we started we found by doing it all live you get the sound way bigger than if you were playing a record. I think a few people really buzzed out when they heard us... a couple of old 70s synth keyboards and some drums being smashed hard, we ended up with a big sound.
I can't explain what actually got me into dance music, I guess it was the mystery of what was happening in England- the jungle movement- in the 90s... there is a DJ in Christchurch by the Name of D'erb he had a show on student radio every Saturday, I think, and it was love at first listen. Jungle to me was like a beautiful combination of all the good parts of different genres- to create its own genre with an acidy twist. They were new stories of urban existence, music with attitude
Drum n Bass and other bass heavy electronic music genres seem to have struck a chord with kiwis - why do you think this is?
Kiwis are bought up with a diet of reggae and dub, it's just what we've been listening to since the beginning of the 80s. When Drum and Bass came along it went through the roof...
The Support for D&B is amazing. But I actually think it's the same everywhere in the world when it comes to some form of bass heavy electronic music- that's what people are listening to these days, kiwis are no different to ravers around the world.
Have any of Shapeshifter's members played in other bands? If so what one(s).
Yea Myself and Redford were original members of Verse 2 which featured Ladi 6, Parkes, and Scribe but we left the band to move to Melbourne with Shapeshifter...
Myself, Sam and P Digsss have a side project called The Peacekeepers, a release is coming soon.
Devin is the man behind the veil of Pacific Heights.
P digsss also had his metal days on roar of doom with bands like 'Police Lucifer' and 'Naked Milkmen'.
Sambora is an old Mettler too,he formed legendary Christchurch outfit 'Sulu'
Name your top five NZ musicians/producers:
Brent Parkes
Mu
The Sunshine Sound System
P Money
Eru Dangerspeil
Evan Short
That's too hard I missed too many, fives not enough
You've always utilised instruments in your sound, rather than relying on computers and non traditional instruments alone to create the music - was this a conscious decision?
Yes definitely we're a band so we like to play instruments- some people might say its easier just to do the sequenced thing, laptops etc, pushing play on a CD and having your drummer play along, just to make sure everything is perfect. This is really common in a lot of "live" acts these days. But I think we'd find doing that too hard, we need to have a lot of freedom to change songs and jam things out, and its good to be able to speed up and slow down tempos. I think people can relate to guitars and saxophones, there's no faking its right there in front of you, mistakes and all.
What is the most obscure/odd instrument used by Shapeshifter?
Probably the Cuica (Wikipedia - The Cuica ) which is a Brazilian percussion instrument.. its quite a prominent feature in the song 'Earth' off our last studio album 'Soulstice'. It's a song about the Preservation of Planet Earth and we dedicated it to the late Steve Irwin.
You've used a number of different singers on your songs over the years - have you done so on this album to?
This time we wrote all except one of the tunes with P digsss, so he sings on all of them except one tune 'Tokyo' - thats an instrumental.
We do enlist the services of long time collaborator and friend MC Kp from he Sunshine Soundsystem for 'Fire' which is a track we've jammed live for a while now, and Digsss and Kp wrote that together so he's the only vocal guest this time round.
We would have loved to have done a track with Karoline (Ladi 6) again, as we have done on our past releases, but all the songs were written already, and Ladi has been subsequently touring pretty heavily off the back of her and Parks' amazing album 'Time is not Much'. I just love that album so much.
Who would you most like to collaborate with if you could?
Wow, the list could go on and on- I'd love to do a track with Jill Scott- to hear her and digsss and what they'd come up with.
Would love to collaborate with various hip hop producers like Madlib, Oh no, that experimental Stones throw crowd. I think to get real crazy it would be awesome for shapeshifter to do something with 'Muse' or 'Tool' or closer to home 'Shihad'.
The band's been together almost ten years now. In that time what do you feel is the biggest change in the music scene in NZ?
I don't really know it seems similar to what it always was... I cant think of any major changes to the New Zealand Music Scene.
I guess 10 years ago the power of the 'Major record label ' was kinda on its last legs. I remember we were 'in negotiations' with EMI or Virgin for the release of our first album Realtime. But the Guy was being a power tripping dick and we thought... this guy thinks he's a record mogul in L.A or something, yet we're just a nobody band whose probably going to sell no more than 1000 records, making him and everyone fuck all money. So we turned to KOG transmissions who were just a young bunch of good guys, keen to help.
We ended up with twice the money we would have got from EMI (which still wasn't much!!) Although we split with KOG to form our own label 'Truetone', KOG went on to dominate with KOG sub label 'Dirty' breaking away to release the likes of Conchord Dawn, Scribe, P Money, Pitch Black, Tiki Taane.
What do you feel is the biggest change Shapeshifter has experienced in that time?
We seem to be ever evolving; always pushing changes so that everything stays fresh... the biggest change would have to be when P Digsss moved from Guest MC to permanent member in about 2004. We'd always been jamming, but once he joined for good we could really build on musical ideas we'd just touched on in the past.
It gave us the chance to start playing more songs, and a chance to just be better generally. Digsss always had such a deep understanding of us as a band. He listens to the music we play, and then comes up with something and we all drop our jaws and say holy F**k that's exactly what I imagined! We're on the same page...no wonder I guess- living out of each other's pockets for most of the year.
In 2006 we acquired a new manager - Becs Caughey, that was a big change. She's awesome. Remember this- never run a company if you're a sporadic artist/musician... its quite hard.
What about in Shapeshifter, have the years changed how you operate as a band?
Not really, its still the same set up... I read somewhere a description of us- 3 pasty geeks on keyboards, a metal drummer and a charismatic singer. That's still the same ole recipe.
Pick a sound, turn it up as loud as possible; away you go that's shapeshifter. But we do have a roady or 2 now, and regular crew of amazing lighting and visualists, so it's a bit easier then it was in the old days. And I think we sleep a tiny bit more these days- we never used to sleep much.
Are their plans to tour the album once it's released?
Yeah. Because we're releasing it just before summer we're doing our Album release tour stretched right through summer, starting with the Christchurch Town Hall on 25th October and then doing a string of Gigs until February...
Check for dates on http://www.shapeshifter.co.nz/
What about your international fans - will you be taking the band and album offshore?
Yes we're currently planning to go back to Europe in July, we have a good crew over there working on things, so we'll release the album there just before the summer, then hit it.
Nothing like an Amsterdam summer, this will be our 5th time, and it gets more fun every time!
How have you found playing outside of NZ - is their a lot of ex pats at your shows?
In London there is a lot of ex pats, but elsewhere there are usually mostly locals. We try and veer off the path a bit, its good fun to play to a pub when there's a bunch of locals who don't know too much about us, they've never heard us so we really experiment and feel more relaxed to get crazy.
Some places we've been to enough now to have developed a strong fan base, which is cool.
Where is your favourite place to play?
I love playing in Cork, Ireland. They're beautiful people, trouble, but in a good way!
Of course there's anywhere in New Zealand and Australia for that matter. Perth is up there, but really saying anywhere in particular is too hard, the smallest crowd we have had in a long time was in Birmingham on the last tour, and that was epic by the end of it. It's too hard to decide
How would you describe the new album - is it a continuation of your previous albums or is this one distinctly different?
"The System is a Vampire" I think is a continuation from Soulstice in many ways, its themes are similar, we still have the same passions for the same styles of music as we did then.
We still crave the analogue synth sounds, the lushness, the heavy bass, the heavy soul. These things are all prominent in the Music but our style of production has changed- how we concentrated on capturing our band in the studio, something I don't think we ever really managed to do before.
This time round I can hear and feel the essence of what it feels like to be in a room jamming together, that tension seems to hang in the air, and I love that so much about this album.
What is your career highlight to date?
There have been so many career highlights I've forgotten most of them!
A big moment of satisfaction was after Soulstice... the making of that album was so much fun but they were hard times. Sam, Digsss and I all slept in the studio for 6 months, living off about $40 a week if we were lucky. (thanks Ritchie for your seafood stash!)
When that was released we won Best Album, Best Song(Bring Change), and Best live Act with the BNET music awards which was such a good feeling to know something we worked hard on was being enjoyed by people. Which is the Aim of the game.
The BNETS meant more to us than our Tuis because they were publicly voted by our fans- rather than being decided by a bunch of v.i.p's with black skivvies at a drunken Auckland dinner.
More Recently "The System Is a Vampire" debuted at No.1 on the album charts our first No.1 I think?\
What are your plans for summer - any festivals you think we should be going to and if so will Shapeshifter be playing there?
Yea we have a little travelling circus this Summer, cruising around the favourite summer spots of Aotearoa- Shapeshifter with support from Tiki Taane, Sunshine Sound System featuring the Downtown Brown, Killa Puha and Switch, The Fabulous J-Star all the way from the UK, If your close come and check it out... check out www.shapeshifterlive.com for full details..
26th Dec - Mangawhai
27th Dec - Mangawhai
28th Dec - Riwaka
29th Dec - Lake Hawea
31st Dec - Coromandel Gold (sold out)
2nd Jan - Mt Maunganui
3rd Jan - Waihi
Any plans you can share with us for the band next year?
Next Year we will no doubt gather the arsenal and head off shore - just follow the summer. But we really want to do a winter tour in NZ which is something we haven't done for too long so hopefully this winter.
Thanks for your time, is there anything else you'd like to mention?
Yea check out the new releases coming on Truetone in 2010, from J Dubs and Pacific Heights, The PeaceKeepers, and check www.shapeshifterlive.com for details
Churr!
Nick Robinson (Synths, Keys, MPC, bass)
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