5 Questions for Hamacide: An Electronic Music Inventist Releases His Mighty Little Machine
WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: We could tell you a whole lot of blah blah background about Hamacide, but maybe it’s better if you just read a little and listen a lot.
Hamacide means you no harm
The Williamsburg-based artist aka Yusuke Hama dropped his new digital download album, Mighty Little Machine, this week, and that’s a welcome development for adventurous ears. It’s an existentially experimental blend of sounds with a lot of everything you want more of anyway – perfect beats, searing basses, instant hooks, ouija calls, intergalactic static and much imagination.
Your first listen of Hamacide could very well prove to be a memorable moment – it certainly was for us.
What lured you to Brooklyn?
I was born and raised in Atlanta. My parents are from Japan, so I think I was required to play classical music at an early age. Brooklyn was supposed to be a pit stop before moving to Manhattan — back in the day, living in Bushwick/Williamsburg was actually cheaper than living in the East Village. Imagine THAT. After seven years, I’m still in Brooklyn. I think it worked out well.
You have multiple musical personas, but it seems like you’re concentrating pretty heavily on Hamacide these days…
It takes up most of my free time. I’ve just finished my first record as Hamacide titled Mighty Little Machine that will be available for digital download on July 13th. There are a whole bunch of guest collaborators on it: To name a few there are songs with a folk singer from Michigan, a rapper and R&B singer from Japan, and a singer/songwriter from Chicago who sings in a bizarre fictional language. It’s pretty wild.
Our mutual friend, “Grammy Award-Winner” Matt Shane — he does not make me call him that! — mixed it, and I’m super excited about it. It will be a digital-only release, and it’ll be available for download on July 13th.
I’m also releasing a limited, vinyl-only remix EP of one the songs off of Mighty Little Machine. Remixers will include Prefuse 73, LebLaze, Epstein, and others. A little later, I’ll be releasing a Hamacide remix EP of songs by LEYODE, my previous project. It is actually done, but I just have to get Matt Shane to master it at Masterdisk. He’s a busy man, you know.
Oh YES, we can barely keep up with the guy! The new sounds of Hamacide are a mind-altering substance. How do you put it together?
I mainly work in a tiny room with whatever gear and software I can get to work, and I grab sounds from wherever I can. Everything ends up in Pro Tools where either I or Matt Shane will mix it.
My approach is pretty different from song to song. I guess a lot of it depends on whether I work with a vocalist, and how they’re most comfortable working. Sometimes I start out with a cool sample, a melody, or just a drum beat. Other times, I’ll just compose something on guitar and leave it at that — whatever works.
I thought it was interesting that you double as a live sound rat, doing FOH for bands. How does that sharpen your instincts?
Well, the greatest thing for me is that it puts in perspective how stuff will sound super loud. Since Hamacide is one guy doing a lot of electronic/beat-oriented stuff, I think, “If a DJ plays my songs, will it bump in a live environment?”
If I see a band perform and the crowd is super-hype, no matter what genre of music it is, I think about how I can get my tunes to bring that reaction based solely on what’s coming out of the speakers.
What? I can’t hear you! This darn music is too LOUD!!! Just kidding. So what makes you glad that you settled down in our fair city, instead of moving on?
I think NYC is just as good a place as any to be a musician — I guess it depends on what you’re into. There’s tons of everything in this city, and I’m inspired by all kinds of stuff whether it’s concerts, food, people, or just walking around.
However, I do wonder how nice it would be to live somewhere quiet and beautiful, and to work on music all day without having to worry about quickly going broke. I guess that’s how I imagine Boards of Canada makes music. I feel like time is money, and time seems to fly by in NYC.
— David Weiss