Tracking down Shoeb Ahmad (Spartak)

Achievements are often measured in relative terms – what seems like a major accomplishment to one person can be viewed as a very minor victory to another, and what one person can do in one field is often not the same as what another can…

No observer could begrudge Shoeb Ahmad the success he regularly brings out in his endeavours – label head for hellosQuare records, musician in collaborative improvisational outfit Spartak with Evan Dorrian, solo recordist in his own right, show organizer, tour promoter, collaborator, designer, PR envoy and every other supporting task imaginable relating to these roles. Not only this, but to also excel in all these is another accomplishment in itself.

Long an avid proponent of experimental and fringe music in his home town of Canberra, Ahmad is now recognized as not only shining a light on the often ignored Australian capital’s musical output, but elevating its recognition to the point where it is considered in the same league as Sydney or Melbourne. See the recent New Weird Australia compilation, The Sound Of Young Canberra for further evidence of this.

Literally just offstage from supporting muscular minimalist art rockers My Disco at a midweek show in his home town of Canberra, Shoeb stopped to briefly elaborate on his plans for Spartak and hellosQuare, amongst other things.

Shoeb, seriously, where do you get the time?

I wish I knew where all the time goes after the fact every time. It’s been a fairly hectic year in 2010 but its felt good and certainly worth it. Tiring work – yes, but always looking forward to the next thing!

Your label hellosQuare is known for its consistency and frequency of output – how much effort goes into the day-to-day running of the label now?

One of the things that has been different this year as opposed to previous years is that I’ve been able to spend more time working solely on the label’s output, be it scheduling releases, organizing promo or running shows, because I made a conscious decision to cut down my time on a normal 9-5 job and it’s been really liberating to have the time to think clearly about the direction I might want to take with the sound or just being able to look at the nuts and bolts of the operation. As I mentioned, it’s fairly time consuming but I’d have to say if you are able to get into a routine, then chances are that you’ll be on top of things fairly comfortably.

Is there a particular element you look for when releasing artists?

My approach has always been fan first as a listener before thinking about other concerns. Of course, I’m into a fairly diverse range of music but there is a common ground between all the artists we work with, even if it’s just the fact we might have a feedback heavy rock band sitting next to a sound artist who uses sine waves. We’ve been working with a few local bands of late, mainly because they have gotten me excited about what is happening in Canberra again and they’re just good people but also, we’ve taken on other projects for 2011 with artists that we have admired for a long time and are keen on joining the hellosQuare family too.

What has been the most successful of the hellosQuare releases? Has one in particular surprised you with its reception, or the way in which it went out into the world?

It’s hard to say what success really is for us. As a small label, our aim is really to recoup our investment on each release so we can then reinvest that money into the next project and all the releases are such labours of love that it is very hard to look at them as individual articles. Something like the first Spartak album featured a lot of promotion and tour, which meant we had a good amount of people coming to see the performances around Australia and being able to have people appreciate what’s going on from perhaps just hearing our music over the radio feel great. I guess a recent occurrence of surprise was seeing a post on Kele Okereke’s (of Bloc Party fame) blog that featured a link to a now deleted video for the second track off the recent Ghost Of 29 Megacycles album!

What takes the most time – organizing shows, the label, or Spartak?

It’s perhaps one and the same as it all happens at the same time or at least the time put aside to look after such matters. It helps that I do enjoy organizing shows and tours (even if I don’t like the stress that happens in the week leading up an event or a tour) but it’s a time consuming thing for sure. At the moment, I’m currently booking a tour for Spartak in Japan and in the throes of writing an updated bio that isn’t two years old now!

Spartak’s most recent release “Verona” was recorded in two days – do you and Evan prefer improvised work, or just to work quickly?

It’s hard to say if we prefer to improvise or not but definitely, the idea of no structure has always been a boon to Spartak music for sure. ‘Verona’ was a great vibe as we got to just knock it out in the middle of nowhere and in hindsight, the lack of any ideas came through well in the end, even if we were apprehensive in the weeks following on. Perhaps that time to reflect on the material led us to make the decisions like invite Joseph McKee from Snowman and Lucrecia Perez to lend their voices to a couple of the pieces (‘Sleepwalker’ and ‘Second-Half Clouded’) as well as do some digital reconstructions/reworkings to some of the non-album pieces for the EP ‘No Signal’.

Given the diversity and breadth of your material, do you have to tailor your sets when playing with different bands, or in different environments? Is there a conscious effort to play to the room, or do you just play what you feel like?

The room does definitely dictate the way we sound along with being able to hear how we sound like through the speakers or foldback if are ever so lucky. We really do like playing intimate spaces like small cafes or gallery spaces with attentive audiences rather then large venues though of course playing alongside a band like My Disco in a large venue helps because of the nature of their music too. Sometimes the vibe of the shows and the other bands might get us more inclined to be noisier rather then delicate and pristine but it’s all impulse and we could sound like anything depending on the day.

Is it hard for Australian acts to co-ordinate the European tours I saw mentioned on your blog? What needs to happen for that to occur?

I can only assume it gets easier the more well known you get – the real battle is getting your name out of this country and known overseas. In regards to Spartak, I had always looked to get our recordings over to Europe just for the sheer fact that it would mean that people would be able to hear and know what we were about from the get go and with ‘Verona’, we’ve been able to do that while get the record over to Japan and Stateside too. A major factor with Australian music being so localized is that to get overseas is just a serious investment and you need to weigh up that fact with say your family life etc, etc.

I understand Spartak are moving towards a new recording soon with a semblance of a new direction? What can you tell us about the new material?

It’s not so much a direction for Spartak itself as a change in creative processes that begun before Evan’s move to the UK for most of 2010. We have collected a whole heap of songs that had been worked on via emails etc and that has seen us programming rhythms and basslines while working on electronic melodies too. The first fruits of these sounds actually turn up as a remix for Inch-time on his ‘Floating World Remixes’ disc but we have put together a new four member outfit called ‘Savages’, which sees Evan moving to keyboard/electronics as well as percussion as well as picking up John Wilton on the drum kit and Matt Lustri on guitar/bass. We are currently rehearsing a lot of the aforementioned songs for upcoming shows in 2011 as well as releasing a single sometime in the new year too.

“Verona” is available at Low Point HERE and the hellosQuare catalogue can be found HERE

Of the many acts on the label, the Pollen Trio are certainly deserving of investigation. A full review of their stellar “230509” is in the pipeline, as is a profile of the Trio themselves.

- Interview by Alex Gibson for Fluid Radio

www.hellosquare.wordpress.com
www.myspace.com/spartakmusic
www.myspace.com/shoebahmad