 |
The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city's electronic and hip hop scene really is. |
Undoubtedly one of Vancouver’s biggest (legal) exports these days is young musical talent. Having played together in various projects for years, Panther and the Supafly are part of this crop of new sounds being harvested in Canada’s music scene. Comprised of a five person crew, the multi-dimensional group brings a unique style of hip-hop to the table, with emcee Josh ‘Panther’ Matumona flowing effortlessly over richly constructed beats.
We had a chance to sit down with them before their recent show at Fortune Sound Club to talk about the band, their influences, creative process, and what the future has in store.
Photo: Joel Levy
So you guys are obviously not a traditional hip-hop group. You have the full band with vocals. How does that affect your creation process regarding making your music?
Josh: Well 3 of us are actively producing beats for the group. So usually one of us will produce a track then I’ll write some lyrics to it, then after that we’ll decide if we want to play it with the band or not. Other recordings that come from other beats will just stay at production, or like one of us will bring a riff to band practice and then we’ll build a song off that. And then maybe I’ll have to go home and write something to it, or I’ll come with lyrics and a main idea to it and we’ll go from there.
Nate: Its definitely a lot different with a band compared to a beat because theres a different energy as soon as there’s a band there. Theres drum fills you would never have in a beat so it completely has a new energy. More freedom to change things around on the fly and (the process) is just more free.
Is it more of a challenge that you all have to be present in the creation of your music compared to a producer who makes beats at home and sends them off?
It’s definitely a little more challenge but it forces us to really filter out what we don’t really want in the music. Generally speaking it s more of a consensus. Its dope.
What was it like at Live at Squamish green couch sessions?
It was fun, it was interesting, sunny day quick setup and happened really fast but we had a lot of fun doing it.
You have a new album coming out soon. Tell us a bit about the focus of the album and what it embodies.
This new album is called cloud city. Originally it was going to be another EP, but we’d been working on a lot of stuff on a more production standpoint so its’ gonna be more beats and rhymes to show the electronic side a little more of the band. So its all beats, no band . It comes from the three of us myself, Astro, and Dave Pimental
Any collaborations on the album that we can mention?
A good friend of mine from Raw Focus his names’ Tyone he goes by KPAC of the raw focus crew. He’s on one of the tracks, and the others are yet to be announced, but we’ve recently connected with some people who are some strong possibilities
How does it feel to be here at fortune and play at such a notable venue for the hip-hop scene in Vancouver?
Well we worked hard and we’ve done what we needed to do. A lot of the reason that we had been kinda slept on, is that we didn’t have a record out. We released our first EP on December 15th 2011, so that generated a lot of buzz for us and had people realize we’re kinda on the map now.
We love fortune, fortune’s dope, great sound. It’s a total pleasure to play here.
How did you link up initially? Explain the genesis a bit.
Josh:We’re all instrument players and have all been playing in bands since very early on. I started playing guitar when I was 12 years old.
Leon: I started when I was 13, I’d been playing with Dave since I was in grade 9, met nate a little later when we both went to the VCC school of music. I already knew about him, but Re-met up and we started another band. So me dave and nate played in a different band, Josh was playing guitar with our manager Tamir in hats off gentlemen back in the day, an emotive hardcore band. Josh started rapping, and then we all heard josh was getting more serious about it and then one day he said ‘you guys, lets try this with a band’. I had always wanted to play in a hip-hop band but never knew the right people nor knew a rapper.
Josh: Its true, we had all been in the band circuit so I feel like usually as a rapper, you rap on beats for such a long time that eventually your dream is to have a band. So since I Personally did the whole process backwards, I had been playing in bands before, so it was a lot easier to find musicians cuz I was already friends with a lot of crazy musicians.
And Vancouver’s tiny, everyone knows everyone in the music scenes
So we started practicing and realized it wasn’t hard to work together nothing was clashing. A bit later on we realized we were missing something and that was Dave. We needed the electronic element in Dave, bringing synths and sampling to the group
What are your plans for the near future? Do you want to tour , or are you trying to build an audience in other parts of the country?
Josh: We want to record a few songs that we’re playing tonight for our next EP, after cloud city. Then definitely headed to montreal. We’ve decided that montreal has better scene, none of us really want to live in Toronto, so we decided it’s better to be close by than actually in it.
Leon: Starting in August we’re gonna tour out across Canada and try to just do our own tours kinda thing and get there in September: live there, play there, and try to make a name for ourselves in a new city.
What influences would you cite for this project? Hip-hop or otherwise?
Nate: Robert Glasper was a big influence, hes a jazz piano player who has incorporated hip-hop into his jazz and It’s just life changing. Ever since I heard it I wanted to make our band sound like that: more jazzy based hip-hop. I guess the Roots is a big thing because we’ve always known them as the band.
Leon: Chris Daddy Dave, who plays with Glasper is one of the greatest hip-hop drummers of all time. Unquantized, crazy grooves are just impossible. He has been hugely influencial to us for sure.
Nate: Its hard because we don’t know that may hip-hop bands to be honest. This is kind of an experiment to see what will happen. But We all have very different influences.
Josh: Lately I’ve been listening to lots of busta rhymes. But, as an emcee I remember one of my biggest influences is slim kidd 3 from pharcyde. The way he raps is like he’s singing the whole time, so like I would hear a lot of harder rap that was a lot more monotone and I didn’t really find it appealing at the time. So something where it feels like its’ got more soul and life if theres different notes in what your saying based on what your rapping.
Photo: Joel Levy
For non hip-hop influences, I would say the singer from incubus was a huge influence for me. Just His voice and the way it was so smooth and he can hit any note he feels like with a confidence that isn’t ever awkward. Incubus never really sounds the same ever. None of their songs none of their albums you can say ‘that sounds like Incubus’ because they’ve always had really different sounds for each of their records.
Its good to be a chameleon. When I was in school I learned that there were some cats back in the day doing classical music composition, and there were guys who could mimic anybody. Whatever style they wanted to do, they could murder it, and I’ve always wanted to be that kind of artist. Not so much mimic people, because everybody’s got their own style, and as an emcee you’ve got to have your own style. if you’re copying somebody its gonna come out in your music, and you’re wack. But in terms of genres and elements meltin them together, if you listen to a lot of music, you get those influences, and you make music that’s revolutionary, that’s different.
Leon: Honestly I listen to every style of music ever in existence probably so its hard to narrow down. When I actually consider our band, very few artists come to mind because I don’t know that many hip-hop bands. But I have a lot of influences that pertain specifically to my sound: Radiohead is obviously one of my favourite bands of all time, MEW is in my opinion one of my greatest bands of all time. The list goes on and on. Pat Metheny is probably my favourite guitarist of all time. A lot of people say he sounds like the 80s I think he’s the only one who made the 80s sound good
Why Vancouver?
Josh: Its beautiful. It’s a really inspirational place to make music. We were already dropped here, we were all born here. But we’ve stayed here for so log because its so beautiful for sure.
Your next chance to see them play is at Hip-Hop Karaoke on Monday February 13th at Fortune Sound Club where they will be playing instrumentals for performers. A truly unique musical experience, dont miss it!
