Shaskee

I talked to Shaskee, a vaporwave producer and the head of label/collective Zero Based Collective. Shaskee produces music in many subgenres under many aliases and with many collaborators both in and out of ZBC, with his most recent release make.sum.happen. coming out in March. In this interview he educates me on the tapemusic subgenre, offers his perspective on running a label and forming a collective, and gives a collection of shoutouts along the way to friends and collaborators across the music scene.

Pool Plants: How did you get your start making music and how did you get your start in the vaporwave scene?

Shaskee: I’ll go with the vaporwave scene first. I originally started checking out or listening to vaporwave when I was younger back in 2014, 2015. That was because stuff like Lisa Frank 420 and a lot of other classic vaporwave songs were getting popular at the time. But it wasn’t until later on, in 2021 or 2022, when I decided to get back into vaporwave because this was when I was getting into music a passion. This was when I first listened to Death’s Dynamic Shroud’s I’ll Try Living Like This. That quickly became one of my favorite vaporwave albums, if not, favorite albums period. Just the experimentation alone, I don’t think at the time I had heard this type of sampling before. It was beautiful, it was depressing but it was also colorful and very fun.

I think around the same time, if not a bit later, was when I started making music, specifically on Bandlab. Bandlab has its limitations but around this time I was just making shitty experimental noise and ambient stuff. It wasn’t too deep but I thought it would be cool to make it because it was less technical and easier for me to make, just experimenting overall. I thought it was cool for the time being and I still think making stuff like that nowadays would be cool. But obviously I’ve changed to something that’s a lot more focused or more technical, if that’s what people would like to call it.

P: What do you mean by more technical?

S: Less free-flowing and more structured, if that’s the word I’m looking for. More structured and less improv-ish stuff going on.

P: You’ve made music in a lot of different genres and vaporwave subgenres. What would you say is your favorite to work in?

S: My favorite, I’ve never thought of that really… I feel like tapemusic, not tape music as in just tape loops or anything but “tapemusic” the instrumental hip-hop subgenre. This has been a very recent one but also something I’ve loved diving into both as a producer and as a listener. The off-the-grid drum patterns and the overall lo-fi sound that a lot of producers in the scene tend to grab onto with the sound design, stuff like that. Even though it’s a very recent thing that I’ve latched onto, I fuck with this sound so heavily. I’ve had the chance to talk to a lot of other people in the scene and they would give their opinions on my sound. But I try my best to go for a unique sound while also aiming for something similar to a lot of other people’s sounds in the scene, if that makes sense. Trying to replicate their sounds but still make it more unique to me.

cont...

P: Isn’t “replicating the sound” just another way of saying “doing the genre”? But of course we always want to find our own individual twist on whatever we’re doing.

S: Of course, of course.

P: Is make.sum.happen. the kind of music we’re talking about, your recent release?

S: Yes, it is.

P: So that leads me to my next question, because I was listening to that one and also quikbatch under the alias masarim, which has a similar sound. So the question here is that you’ve got all these different aliases so how do you decide which albums go under which names? What made quikbatch a masarim album but make.sum.happen. a Shaskee album?

S: masarim and Shaskee were supposed to be the same thing. There’s not anything that’s conceptual or anything that’s made it different. I will say, with quikbatch, I thought I was making tapemusic when I was making that album but it was actually something far off. It was more like taking the aesthetics of tapemusic but it didn’t have 100% of what makes tape music, if that makes sense.

P: I want to dig into that for a second actually. I guess I’m not that familiar with tapemusic as a genre. What were you not hitting with quikbatch that you think you are now hitting with the new album?

S: With quikbatch the drums were very on-the-grid. Not to say that’s necessarily bad, but just mainly on-the-grid and not having a sort of swing to it. With tape music it kind of originated, or was evolved from, the sound of the genre soulhop, which originated from artists like Knxwledge and Ohbliv.

P: I heard Jay Dilla. When I was listening to those off-kilter beats I was thinking Jay Dilla. Maybe I’m showing my age!

S: Jay Dilla and a lot of the artists at that time were essentially the innovators, the people who inspired those in the LA beats scene, in Los Angeles. Like Flying Lotus and just SP-Forums stuff like aNTOJE, for example. I’m still new when it comes to this type of stuff. Not necessarily hip-hop or instrumental hip-hop but this specific scene. Soulhop, tapemusic, the LA beat scene, SP-forums. I am very interested in this sound. Period.

P: That’s a sound that’s pretty familiar to me, at least in its older versions. I’m from Seattle, which is to say the West Coast, so there’s always been a connection to what’s happening in LA. I remember in the 2000s seeing that sound develop and the specific LA scene develop around those sounds. So this is interesting to me because I feel like I often see new names being applied to sounds that I remember from the past. I’m sure a lot of people do know the history but I wonder. Anyways, I’m just enjoying learning about all of this.

S: I just want to say tapemusic is a vaporwave derivative genre. The album that actually inspired the name came from hndacvc and kame, they were the originators. Or at the very least they were the people who made the album “tapemusic” and would inspire a lot of people after that. And I just want to say, to those who are reading this interview, please forgive me if I said anything wrong. Please correct me, as a matter of fact!

P: Me too! For all time, anyone reading this can always correct me. What would you say are your biggest non-vaporwave influences in making music?

S: My biggest non-vaporwave influences, that’s kind of hard to pin down. A lot of the stuff I would make is mainly sample-based. I would say someone like Flying Lotus but in terms of Flying Lotus there hasn’t been a lot of sample-based material from him outside of his albums July Heat and 1983. Both albums came out in 2005 and 2006. That’s a very hard question, if I’m being honest. I feel like it’s mainly people in the tapemusic scene, which is more recent.

P: We did talk a lot about the tapemusic, but some of the other music you’ve made, like your slushwave projects or your more ambient projects. Do you have any particular influences with those?

S: For a lot of my slushwave stuff, the one specific t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 album, 現実を超えて(Genjitsu o koete), or Beyond Reality. That album inspired me to make slushwave, but not as much as my good friend Lover’s Dream. I know he’s been making a lot of moves, not only in the slushwave scene but in vaporwave in general.

4departing4, who now goes by whiteday, has been a very big influence as well. We’ve even had a split together before he changed his name. Still one of my very good friends, same goes for Lover’s Dream. But he has pioneered this style that I don’t think a lot of other people have been working on. He coined it emowave. I kind of think it was a weird name. Not necessarily because of the wave part but more so because that style doesn’t sound the most vaporwave, but he would still consider it vaporwave. But it’s a very interesting style because he would sample emo tracks but put a lot of drums over it. He was doing a sort of tutorial thing in a discord call at some point but he hasn’t continued it since then.

P: What’s an album or two that you were influenced by that sound?

S: I Had Dreams has been not only a favorite of mine but that album alone was something that inspired me to do the split with him. As well as phrases, which is his two hour behemoth. Not his longest album for sure but one of the longer ones.

P: I think that is a good pivot to talk about Zero Based Collective and what you’re doing with that. One thing has really stood out to me, as seen on the first track of make.sum.happen. where you’ve got all these shoutouts from people. It seems like you have a very big community that you’ve helped organize, with friends and I’m sure other people too. So how do you think your work to form Zero Based Collective ties into your larger goals in making music?

S: I feel like to a degree it doesn’t that much. In terms of getting these people, these fellow artists into Zero Based Collective, it was moreso an idea that I had. With Zero Based Collective, I wasn’t necessarily trying to make a label that makes physicals. It was sort of similar to B O G U S // COLLECTIVE where I’m having people do digital releases to see if more people would be down to listen to them. But it’s quickly evolved from that to having a specific group of people who are in this so-called collective part, but still allows anyone outside of said collective to put out any digital release they would have. That’s why we have the Across Soundscapes compilation, for example, where we just allowed anyone, not just everyone from the collective. We’re going to see if we can do yearly comps and make some money for charity.

P: To dig a little more into collective versus label, beyond just focusing on digital releases, what do you think distinguishes what you and your crew are doing that makes it different from a “label?”

S: The main idea is inspired by another collective, which I’m sure Liam mentioned in the interview you did with him and Hydroplaned. Shoutout to The Sleep Dealers. It’s kind of inspired by them where we would just have very talented artists and see if we could have a big collaboration project together, and if it sticks we just continue. I didn’t really put much thought into the stylistic choices, a lot of the people in the collective have way different styles. A lot of people have something that sounds more atmospheric or ambient, other people have more abrasive styles.

I would like to see if people would want to experiment and “get out of their comfort zone” and collaborate with a lot of people in the collective. Let’s say this person does just classic vapor but this person does more ambient vapor or whatever. We could see if these people could meet in the middle and make some sort of big collaborative masterpiece out of it.

P: Of the people that are in the collective, the actual members, how many are people that are personal friends now, or already were before you formed it? Because it seems like you have a pretty tight crew.

S: A lot of the people are just very close friends of mine. Again, these are people who I asked before if they would be down to have an album of theirs on the label. They’d be down and then it was like, “You know what, I’m going to see if people are down to be part of the collective and we can collaborate on something.” Mind you, we haven’t started anything as of yet, mainly because my personal life has been busy. Other people as well. But to answer your question, yeah a lot of these people have been personal friends or friends of friends where I would ask people who I love. Like Liam Smizdik is someone I’ve been talking to for a while. He would go on to ask people that he is familiar with, like Jaiden Macintosh and Catfries or Rooms Without Doors. And I would bring not just him on but people like corpsewax, 4departing4, people like Hydroplaned Into a False Reality! and a lot of other people in the collective.

P: Let’s talk about Liam a little more, because interviewing him was what led me to interview you! He was like, “you should just ask Sammy about that.” What’s your perspective on, not just knowing him as a friend, but wanting to get more help with running the collective and then reaching out to him to take on more of the responsibilities?

S: He seemed the most passionate out of wanting to start this label/collective, in my eyes. Especially when I told him about the change from label to collective. The change only happened because of an IRL friend of mine. He saw what I was posting about me wanting to stop the label after 100 releases or so, but he was like, “Hey you should make this into an actual collective as opposed to just a label!” I told that to Liam and Liam was just ecstatic about it, at least from my point of view. We were talking through text but he seemed very happy about it. Since then, he’s been helping put releases onto the Bandcamp page, especially since I have my own personal stuff. Mainly just work, I can’t really do stuff with the label while I’m away from home, unfortunately.

This isn’t to say that he’s the only one that’s very passionate about it! But he has probably listened to more releases on the label than me. I would love to listen to more stuff on the label but with me and listening to music, I’m very scatterbrained and I tend to check out a lot of other releases everywhere else. There’s a lot of very interesting releases on ZBC as well! Liam is very focused, not only on his work but just period. So when there’s an album that is about to be on ZBC he would just listen to it straight up. To my knowledge, there’s not a single album that he hasn’t listened to, or at least hasn’t had a little experience with. Not to say he’s listened to everything in full, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

But a lot of other people like Jusmix, aka the magician, he’s also someone who knew about this idea. I didn’t necessarily make him a co-owner or anything, not to say that he wouldn’t. I feel like two people running a label should probably be the max, at least in my case. But if at any point in time I feel like I should maybe get another person to help with the label, it would probably be Jusmix on there.

P: So how do you see Zero Based Collective growing in the next year or two?

S: If we’re at all very consistent with it, I could definitely see it growing a bit at least. Even if it doesn’t reach the heights of a lot of other label/collectives. At the very least I could probably collaborate with some people outside of the collective. Again referencing The Sleep Dealers, they would collaborate with people who would be outside of their collective and a plan was to have Zero Based Collective possibly collaborate with Sleep Dealers and see if we could “make something happen” (hey I said the thing!).

But the main plan is just to have people collaborate and people distributing their music, not necessarily having a lot of people listen to it. If they listen to it, then great. I just want to do it for fun, mainly. I love collaborating as much as I hate myself for doing it. Not in the way that I hate collaborating with people. But with someone who’s way better than me in my eyes, it’s like, “oh my gosh how am I supposed to make this any better than it already is?”

P: A lot of what you’re saying you’re doing is the same kind of goals we have with the Children of Vapor. We’ve been growing along personal relationship lines mostly, the people that we’re friends with, and definitely trying to foster a lot of collaboration between members. While also starting to reach outside the group more as well, connecting with other groups. That’s why I really wanted to talk more with you about what does it mean, or what can it mean, to be a collective as opposed to a label. In a world where a lot of new people feel a little closed off from breaking into vaporwave, instead trying to create small communities. Maybe we’re not going to get 100 people listening to an album but all us folks here will listen to it and enjoy it. And what more do you really need?

S: The main thing is as long as it’s out and as long as people listen to it, even if it’s a very little amount. I tend to have six, seven, eight people who listen to my music. But I have multiple friends who love a lot of it and even just one person alone enjoying this shit, that’s all that matters. You putting it out in the world alone, if you choose to do so, or just creating whatever. That’s all that matters to me.

P: Sometimes I start to conceptualize it like it’s a small college town with a bustling live scene. There’s maybe 30 bands but only two have ever played outside of the state. But if you live in this little town this is your life. Everyone knows each other. Sometimes it feels like we’re doing the digital version of that with all these little circles within vaporwave. Like Children of Vapor is this town over here and you guys are a couple towns over and we’re starting to get to know you. That’s how I’ve been thinking about it, this digital re-creation of tiny micro-scenes.

S: You know, besides having people come in and put their releases on ZBC. If at any point in time we want to expand on that we could probably have a sort of fest where people would make their own sets and put them on a channel or have them livestreamed. Kind of inspired by Lua Trilogy’s DJs against Disease.

I definitely commend people like Hydroplaned Into a False Reality! Or other labels and label owners in general. I am someone who’s not able to save money for the life of me, I tend to spend it when I get the chance. It was a plan where I could possibly make cd or tape releases for some of the albums we have on ZBC but then I looked at the prices and talked the Hydroplaned a bit and it was like “ohh I don’t know if I’m able to do this!” But it’s not impossible.

P: Going back to the idea of collective versus label with physical releases, it is a lot of energy to figure out physical releases in particular. So maybe not doing that gives more energy to focus on the digital releases. I feel like there’s a kind of flexibility that makes more sense with a collective and not doing open submissions because it’s not like this business relationship where it’s just “let me see where you fit in the calendar.” These are my friends and I’m excited they made this album and we’re going to drop it when it’s ready.

S: We have a Discord server but we’re just kind of using the server as a hangout space and less of a way to say, “we’re collabing on this, here’s a sneak peek.” It’s just a hangout server. So even if you’re someone who’s not in the know of ZBC, even if you’re someone who doesn’t even care about wanting to know what’s on the label or what we’re doing. It’s just a hangout server. You can just come and fuck around right?

But at the same time I fear that being stagnant with the label, not having releases here and there, is to some degree going to have people judging us. And I feel like another thing with this is we want to have single releases now. We have one single release now from skatexoon, also known as Ant Davieux, which came out before the release of quikbatch on the label. I just personally feel like, with having a schedule or just having to remember when to drop, people wouldn’t really judge if we’re not sticking to the schedule or, “hey where’s the next release on this label, what are you guys doing.” But that’s not to say that we should focus on that, if people are judging us for not releasing. “Judging” for lack of a better term, I should say.

P: I obviously don’t know what’s in people’s heads, but I don’t know if anyone’s judging necessarily. It’s probably more that there’s so much shit all the time it’s easy to, and I know I feel this sometimes as an individual artist which I try not to think about too much. But if some people are releasing multiple albums a month and I’m over here releasing an album every few months or whatever, am I getting lost in the shuffle? You’ve got to try not to worry about that too much. But it’s also real because it’s a busy scene with a lot of releases all the time. So maybe not judging so much as being forgotten? But I don’t think you should worry about that because you’ve got a lot of great releases on here!

S: I think I just tend to overthink. I wouldn’t be surprised if the last few things I’ve been saying have been a complete jumble, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that. But on the topic of having an input, I tend to have a bit of a peer pressure thing. Not necessarily me wanting to release every two weeks or so. It’s more seeing how a lot of other people in the vaporwave scene are dropping this and that and you’re being left behind. And this isn’t to say that people are not focusing on the quality of the work and just mainly focusing on how much works that they have.

P: I definitely wasn’t saying that either.

S: Of course. itachi ツクヨミ, for example, they have been very prolific. Not only that but, when we were VC’ing and they were streaming, they would have so many releases and drafts and I’m just like, “what the fuck?” I don’t want to toot my own horn here but I’m kind of one of the main reasons itachi started producing. I was like, “Hey bro, you gotta start producing yourself. That would be sick as hell right?” It went to the point that I wanted them to pirate FL studio. The pirate link didn’t work and they just bought it and started.

It went to the point where, because of how prolific and consistent they were on this, not only were they getting a lot of releases out but their sound! Compared to what I’ve been doing with slushwave on Hidden Reality, their sound has gotten way better, way smoother, and just have a lot more technical stuff in terms of how they produce compared to me. Where I’m just doing this and that, not really focusing on getting something that’s smoother and not oversaturated, if that makes sense. I definitely commend them for that wholeheartedly. But I’m kind of scatter-brained, I tend to want to dive here and there in terms of sound.

P: Yeah, my person for that is Mary K Ashley. Both in terms of the huge amount of material, I’m sure she has tons of stuff that’s not released yet, but also I think her sound has grown quite a bit. Especially over the last year, and just through practice right? Maybe there’s people who do that without releasing things. But people that have more time or more focus to make music on a regular basis, it’s only natural that you continue to grow and improve your processes, find new sounds and all that.

S: Shoutout Mary!

P: So what’s next for you as an individual musician? Where do you think you’re heading?

S: I tend to not focus on what’s next, I think it’s moreso just me saying I’m interested in doing whatever. Whatever I’m producing at the moment is probably just going to be a single, or something I put in a body of work sometime later. I was planning on doing a record under cleareyes2005. I did release one recently, technically Hydroplaned released it, where we just sampled Wii Sports music.

P: Was that NintendoLife™?

S: Yeah, Nintendolife was when I was using Audacity to produce for the majority of my stuff. But now that I have FL it’s more freeing. But in terms of cleareyes2005 I want to stray away from things that are video game related. Not that I’m going to stop doing video game related stuff, because I can definitely see there being a lot of sample potential in not only just videogames period but a lot of the video games that I’ve grown up with. With my PS2 like Tekken, Virtua Fighter, other non-fighting games in general.

But I do want to make a sample-based record under cleareyes. I do plan on working more with Hidden Reality. As you can see, I’ve been very inconsistent or haven’t been putting out many releases under that alias for quite some time. And I know that itachi is probably side-eying me multiple times saying, “When are you going to release, when are you going to release.?” Ehhh, we’ll see what happens! To answer your question, I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve been focusing on specifically. I think it’s just me, at least outside of Shaskee, I think I’ve just been mainly wanting to do instrumental hip-hop and tapemusic stuff. But I do have plans, I tend to keep notes and whatnot. Just whatever I release is what you’ll get, I guess. That’s it.

P: What more can we ask for? Any other shoutouts?

S: I originally had planned on making a comically large list of shoutouts, but I’m just going to see if I can keep this as brief as possible. Getting the obvious ones out of the way, that being my family. The ones who supported me in real life, my family including my IRLs because they’re also family to me. Shoutout Liam, shoutout Jusmix. We’ve talked consistently for almost, if not over a year because we started VCing very consistently. But I gotta shout out a lot of the other people who joined in on the ride. We’ve got itachi, Mallory aka CAPRYN who hasn’t released much music yet but I’ve been really wanting her to release music! 4departing4, Dynamtic, my two friends Melanie and Rook. They don’t make music, at least Melanie is getting into music. We’ve got Benji, tell me when to stop… Shoutout Gabe aka Graves aka GRAVESWAVE, shoutout shinrei, shoutout skate, shoutout a lot of people in Zero Based Collective, corpsewax. Dynamtic if I haven’t said his name already.

P: You did, he gets two.

S: Departure, Lua Trilogy, a lot of people in the Sleep Dealers, all of them, just shoutout everyone! If anything I’ll just send you a list of people to put in the article.

THE LIST:

My family IRLs Jusmix Liam Smidzik itachi ツクヨミ dj rapture/静けさ whiteday/vintagenails fka 4departing4 Gabe (GRAVES) HYDROPLANED INTO A FALSE REALITY!/jeffrey Dynamtic Shinrei Staku (Jusmix' sister) skatexoon/Ant Davieux Mallory (CAPRYN) June (nekora.) Melanie Rook Lua Trilogy! Departure The Sleep Dealers Center For New Internet Artistry Benji (Cyrix) drruumm/恋人の夢 mousetrapping aerate, corpsewax and the tapemusic scene ZBC Heavensouls and Stickerbush (The Sidepeices) weed420 Guinevere Laurent/秋 (Autumn) Schlmow Tyler (Normal person reviews) Jam/I FEEL THE RADIO WAVES! Tomas MaryOnTheWall Lukas Maebunnie one71 jery JONNY