Category Archives: instrumental

words Sven Carlsson / images Ed Gumuchian

Samiyam went from being an online beatsmith operating out of Michigan to sharing a house with Flying Lotus in Los Angeles. Beatnik caught up with the gifted producer ahead of the release of Sam Baker’s Album last month.

Samiyam: Lifesized Stuffed Animal

‘Turtles,’ ‘No Dinner,’ ‘Where Am I?’; going only by the song titles on Samiyam’s debut album, you’d guess that video games, take-away food, and bedroom production still define his existence. And had it not been for MySpace—and a certain Flying Lotus soaking up like-minded talent into his movement like a sponge—you wouldn’t be far off.

“I never did any performances when I was living at home in Michigan,” Sam says about his early days knocking out hip-hop beats. “I was just in the bedroom making a bunch of music. I let some of my friends hear it and one of them convinced me to open a Myspace. That was pretty much [how it got started].”

After a trip to Los Angeles that resulted in Sam joining FlyLo for a show in Amsterdam—Sam’s first ever live performance—he decided to take the founder of Brainfeeder up on his offer to become roommates. A career move, sure, but FlyLo has recalled their first few months living together as dreams of ambitious musical output overcome by video gaming and weed smoking.

But after a few laps around the blogosphere, production credits as one half of FlyamSam (together with his new roommate), and many more live shows—this interview, for instance, took place shortly before Sam’s recent and thumping set at Le Belmont, Montreal—came the release of Sam Baker’s Album.

“A lot of the time I’ll just make shit. But for a while, over the past year or so, I have been making stuff and been conscious of wanting to put it on a record, a full length release,” Sam explains.

July’s release date completed a certain transition for him; going from assembling more or less disoriented beat tapes (which knocked nonetheless, we assure you) to putting together a cohesive lump of material for one specific project.

“The main thing that’s made it more difficult has been just feeling some pressure from people talking about it and wanting to know when the record is coming out. At this stage, my parents aren’t wondering when I’m going back to college, they’re more like, ‘Are you working on your stuff? When’s the record coming out?

“If anything has made my whole process different, it’s just that feeling that people are actually looking at what I’m doing now. Some screening has been added.”

And what does it sound like? Thumping. Bone-shattering boom-bap worthy of only your most expensive subwoofer. Except this isn’t just chopped soul samples, sharp snares, and deep bass; Sam—who forms a part of the electronic/bass music avant garde at Brainfeeder, remember?—has added his signature synths and live instrumentation to the beats. Cushion, the album’s midway-point, is illustrative.

Samiyam: Cushion

“I want to get back to straight-forward hip-hop shit. That’s what brings me here, you know? I wouldn’t be talking to you right now if it wasn’t for all of the amazing hip-hop that I came up listening to through the 1990′s,” says Sam, who cites two of the culture’s most aggressive cats as examples of how he likes his hip-hop.

“MOP. I love those guys… a lot of East coast stuff is my kind of hip-hop. I guess I could relate mostly to their emotion and aggression. I don’t know too much about pulling people out of the driver’s side window of their car and taking their jewelry, or anything like that… but I could relate to the feeling of it.”

Sam’s live show makes two things clear: that he’s come a long way from that first gig in Amsterdam, and that his music, though steeped in forward-looking electronic influences, stems from the grittiest of hip-hop. At Le Belmont, Sam’s 45-minute set gets the whole room jumping and rowdy, as if this isn’t Montreal in 2010, but New York in 1993. His energetic mix, complete with sing-alongs to MOP-punchlines and Sam’s own music, is the best hip-hop show I can remember.

“When I first started making beats it was all samples because I wanted to be DJ Premier. I was obsessed with that kind of hip-hop. I just wanted to find three really dope pieces to chop out, get a heavy-ass kick and a snare; I wanted to make that shit. I guess it’s changed over the years, because the music that I’ve released isn’t exactly like that kind of hip-hop.

“I go back and forth. There’ll be a period where I’ll do nothing but using synths, playing my own keys and making my own chord progressions up. And then for a while I’ll just be on the records chopping shit up. And I’ll sample anything; crazy sounds from a movie or something.

“My favourite snare I ever used was the sound of a zombie having its head smashed. It was from an old Italian horror movie called Zombie. I was using the MPC so I didn’t have an effects board. You put a sound in there and you have a resonance and a low-pass filter. That track was lost on one of my old computers. It was a good, crisp sound.”

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