Neu Neu Mix #006: Southern Shores

For a sound so escapist - an apparent burst of expression and life - you might consider making the kind of music Southern Shores pride themselves on to be an immediate, spontaneous process. But try it for yourself and it soon dawns on you just how insanely methodical you have to be when producing something so subtly precise and all-encompassing.

It’s no surprise then, when Neu checks in on Ben and Jamie from the band on Skype, to hear they’re the kind of guys who work within a strict routine - and this doesn’t just involve music…”We’ve just been exercising and stuff so we’re grimy…,” they tell us as they answer the call. “We have a very intense push-up regime and a sit-up regime and we also have a bit of an aerobic activity sometimes, if we’re feeling up to it. It’s good - you have to get yourself energised physically to get yourself energised mentally.” Once pulses are set back to less intense levels, we end up having a lengthy discussion about the pair’s time in Berlin when Southern Shores began gaining momentum as a project, to the art of sampling and a band’s relationship with the web.

Below the interview you can hear the mix that’s been provided exclusively for Neu. Similar to playing the band’s forthcoming ‘New World’ EP, the experience is all-consuming and deeply emotional. From Chromatics to Frank Ocean to Jessie Ware, every sound that’s defined 2012 gets a nod, with Southern Shores including some of their own exclusive work within the mix.

I was looking on your Facebook page today and you wrote a post about everything that’s coming up, etc. And someone had commented saying “please don’t do an Air France!”
Ben: (laughs) I know, we were just laughing about that.
Jamie: And we’re not, we’re not. You know the EP is coming out. We haven’t even given it out to our friends yet.

Do you feel under pressure from the fans? They really care about you not fading into insignificance!
Ben: For sure. There’s maybe a propensity in this day and age for acts to appear and disappear, with suddenness. It’s hard to make a living, hard to make money doing this. So it’s one of those things that’s an in-and-out occupation. You have enough creative energy to make a burst of music and then it’s hard to sustain. It’s been a challenge for us to sustain it but we don’t feel spent creatively.
Jamie: And I think even nowadays - I was talking to Ben about this earlier - a lot of artists, depending on genre and if they’re internet popular, the amount of music people put out is crazy sometimes. So if you just release an EP a year sometimes people may get a little wanting for more.
Ben: But reading the interview with Air France and the explanation of their split, they said that nothing was ever good enough. They exploded and became so big so fast. Sometimes I feel the weight of expectations can just crush you. That’s what happened to them. I’m sure they have multiple fantastic records but their own bar seems to have been set so high that they called it quits rather than release it to the world. I hope that’ll never happen to us.



I think the internet can do one of two things negative to musicians. You can either have that massive wave of appreciation without being able to follow up your first release with anything substantial, or you can go down the route of releasing several things prolifically. I think both can be quite damaging, so it’s good to have one thing a year, if you can aim for that.
Ben: You need to balance it out. We’ve been working on this record since November so it’s already been finished for a long time for us. It might feel like it’s moving slowly, but for people who were listening to us last summer, it might feel quite recent to them. I have no idea how people take it. We’ve been working on music basically non-stop since ‘Atlantic’ so it doesn’t feel like we’ve had a break.

Do you feel like your support was initially raised online?
Ben: I’d say it was 99% online. We have a good sized fan-base in Halifax, Nova Scotia but we’re living in Toronto now. Nobody knows who the hell we are in Toronto. We’ve played a few shows but it’s a huge uphill battle for us to get known. So for us, the internet is our home, always has been and probably to a certain extent, always will be. Even our live-set is an afterthought to the effort we put in to producing the music, so we live and die by the connections we make digitally.

Do you spend a lot of time on the internet or is it something you try and phase yourself out of when working on your own music?
Jamie: We spent a lot of time on the internet.
Ben: And it may not be time well spent (laughs).
Jamie: We’re just like everyone else. Constantly listening to new music, on twitter and facebook all that stuff.
Ben: It’s a double-edged sword because every day we’re constantly being exposed to new music and I think that’s invigorating but at the same time, the amount you can waste on the internet is quite significant.

I think it’s good to take some time away from it. It can detach you from everything.
Ben: I just came back from a two week vacation back in Halifax and I feel the same way. Being out of your regular environment lets you totally get your head straight, your priorities straight. It brings back the focus that you lose in the daily slog.

Do you travel much yourselves, did you do so before Southern Shores began?
Jamie: We went to Berlin together and before that we were both travelling like crazy.
Ben: I did three trips to Europe three times in two years so I filled myself up with enough beautiful memories to want to start making music. I’d say that was a chief inspiration for the project from my side of things.

Why did you go to Berlin specifically?
Jamie: I was working for a while professionally and I was travelling a lot, but I wanted to travel without that work aspect. So I kinda quit my job and took off. This was at the start of our project and I told Ben about a friend I had in an apartment in Berlin. I wanted to go there and just start travelling randomly from there. We ended up just staying there, in the end.
Ben: At that point in time I think we were just on the cusp of making songs that weren’t awful. We’d never finished a song or made something we were really happy with. But just before we moved, things started falling into place. I think that was the make or break time, when we decided to move. Within the first week we’d started and finished ‘Grand Comore’. And that was just from us living in an apartment, with neither of us working. There would be no Southern Shores if it hadn’t been for those three months.



Did you have a three month window to work within?
Ben: We did, because as Canadians your Visa doesn’t run further than that when travelling in Europe. It was good but we did end up wanting to live there forever. I think I’d be over living in Europe if I could, but it’s hard for us to go over to somewhere like Berlin and live there for a long period of time.
Jamie: That’s at least the case when you’re a musician.
Ben: If you’ve ever been to Toronto it’s quite a fantastic city but the dream is still alive to live over in Europe. Toronto has nothing on Berlin. Toronto’s huge into hip-hop and rock ‘n roll but-
Jamie: As for as electronic music it’s a little different. Crystal Castles are originally from Toronto but groups like that tend to leave. It’s a strange city for young musicians.
Ben: It definitely hasn’t been easy for us to feel like we’re a good fit on a bill. I always feel like we’re a little bit out of place. I don’t know if that’s just the nature of the city. It’d be really nice to have friends making similar music who you can bounce ideas off, but I feel like we’ve always been pretty on our own in that respect.

Do you also feel detached from all the Air France comparisons you receive, going back to that subject?
Ben: You know, I love Air France and I feel like it definitely informed the creation of our music - if not consciously, then subconsciously. Of course those comparisons are going to happen. When any act comes on the scene, people are going to try and find the most relatable act to compare them to. I think that’s fine, but I definitely feel like Southern Shores is always a work in progress; always evolving. I feel like on ‘New World’, the comparisons are going to feel less apt. There’s a certain drive to this new record that separates itself from the melancholic wistfulness of Air France.

There’s one song on the EP - ‘Marazul’ - there’s a sample on there that sounds like a religious chant, so to speak?
Jamie: That’s actually from a Barbershop Quartet version of a song, all chopped up.

It sounds like you’ve stumbled into some kind of cult gathering…
Jamie: That’s kind of like what it is. It’s a Barbershop Quartet thing where they’re working on their bass tones and we chopped it up to make it sound like a mysterious tribal chant.
Ben: For me, when an idea goes from interesting to really compelling is when you imbue it with some sense of mystery. I hope that every song has something that you can’t put your finger on. That song was a great way to start the record. There’s a ritualistic aspect - it taps into something deep inside that one shouldn’t put into words.

I suppose the idea of having tracks that are hard to interpret comes from your method of sampling. You’ve always said that you don’t want to make samples sound conventional or like their original.
Ben: It’s tough. You want to retain the melody and to have some hooks in your samples. But you wanna do it so it’s your own thing. You want to bring these ideas in and filter them through your own aesthetic so it’s a balancing act that’s hard to do.
Jamie: You also don’t wanna remind people of the source material. Because that happens to me all the time when I listen to a great song, and then you hear the sample and then suddenly you’re distracted from just enjoying the song. There’s tons of examples of that.

What do you think of someone like Kanye West who makes samples the focal point of his songs?
Jamie: In hip-hop it’s different because it’s almost like, I don’t know…
Ben: That’s a good question…
Jamie: Kanye and a lot of rap producers that I worshipped growing up, they put samples front and centre. It’s almost promoting the ability to find good samples, before showing off how they can turn a soul sample into a current pop song.
Ben: I guess in an idealistic future of Southern Shores we wouldn’t even have to sample. We’d bring vocalists in and record them. I feel like the sampling is only a means to an end. If you could somehow work with vocalists, have a bank of their recordings. I also feel like the fact that we make music electronically; it’s just a means of accessing a world of sound that can’t be accessed any other way. If you look at an artist like M83, maybe he started off electronically but now I’m sure he has a studio full of oodles of studio music and his music’s even grander because of it. It’d be amazing if somewhere down the line we had the opportunity to work with actual accomplished percussionists. Then the project would take on an entirely different life.

In terms of progressing as an act, what’s your label been like the past year in terms of offering support?
Ben: They’ve been unconditional in their support. This record’s a lot different from the last and I think it’s so crucial to have your label behind you every step of the way. When you’re working through new ideas you need that base of support to feel confident enough to expose it to people. I’m glad that they’ve been along the ride with us 100% of the way.

And you’re doing the mix for us. How’s it come along?
Ben: It’s a mixture of the music we’ve been listening to a lot recently as well as some original productions, ideas we’ve had lying around that’s been stripped down to tie it all together. It’s probably the best mix we’ve made.
Jamie: It’s all very fun. It’s great to include stuff that doesn’t sound like us at all.
Ben: There’s a darker R&B side to this mix which doesn’t have much to do with our music at all but it’s entirely honestly indicative of what we’re listening to. I think that’s maybe more important than trying to find a whole bunch of stuff that sounds like Southern Shores.

Stream the exclusive Neu Mix below - tracklist:
1. Chromatics - The River (Drumless)
2. Elite Gymnastics - h e r e , i n h e a v e n 4 & 5 (CFCF Remix)
3. Passion Pit - Constant Conversations
4. Dawn Richard - Intro (Call To Hearts) / Lone - Spirals
5. Frank Ocean - Thinkin Bout You (Ryan Hemsworth Bootleg)
6. R. Kelly X RL Grime - I’m A Flirt X Amphibian (EXETER Bootleg)
7. Kuhrye-oo - Give In (For The Fame)
8. Lloyd - Jigsaw
9. Erika Spring - Hidden (Jensen Sportag)
10. EXETER - 88 MPH / John Talabot - Last Land
11. Usher - What Happened To U
12. World Tour - Believe
13. AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like It
14. Jessie Ware - Running
15. Miguel - Adorn