Your new record Silhouettes is phenomenal! How did it come together?
We sat round the radio with tin hats and flashlights waiting for the next hit to transmit...
Any stories behind the songs?
It was a time after Deadly Vipers disintegrated, Moonwalks were touring Europe, and snow lay heavy on the ground. Ava was lost in a palace made of glass, tinkering away at The Machine. Before this moment, there were no lyrics until an amplifier started to speak, “You must be, the machine...”
You recently had a record release show at Outer Limits. How was that?
Someone almost died...
Who are some of your biggest musical inspirations?
Eddy Murphy, The Ruttles, Leningrad Cowboys
What do you think is special Detroit’s music scene?
Ain’t no place like home...there’s a lot happening right now, tons of bands that are each doing something unique so it’s really cool to be apart of that.
Favorite local bands?
In no particular order...
Dangerous Pleasure, The Henchmen, MRKT, Yezi Boys, Danny D., Mountains and Rainbows, Toeheads, Sproton Layer, The Polish Muslims, Suzi Quatro, DAM, Spaghetti Man, The Stools, Grand Junction
You’re set to embark on a massive tour. What’s headspace are y’all in going into it?
It feels like ya got one foot on land and one foot in the water...
What’s next for Shadow Show?
We just recorded two new songs for a 45 coming out on Hypnotic Bridge ~soon~ and we’ve been writing a lot for the next record before we hit the road! We keep our shadows close behind us...
In our "5 Records from" series we ask musicians to tell us about five of their most influential and personal favorite albums.
Photo: Kyle Lakin
Up next, we caught up with Chloë from Zilched to take us through some gems.
You can check out Zilched's most recent single "The Morning" out on Bandcamp now.
In the meantime, dig these picks!
We Be XUXA by Mika Miko
Mika Miko is basically the coolest band that ever happened. Formed while they were all in (or dropping out of) high school, this record to me just feels like unbridled youth and unashamed fun. Straight up chaotic at times, listen to “Totion” or the intro of “Wild Bore” and try to stay sitting down...
Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
Written during and shortly after the trump election this record is filled with these articulate, manic/depressive, anthems of being fed up. Done so through Sadie Dupuis’ equally impressive(and self-aware) lyricism and guitar work. I bought this record when I first moved to Hamtramck a couple summers ago. Spent lots of time laying on the floor in front of a fan, playing this record on repeat and feeling like I have a lot to learn. Fav tracks: “Lean in when I suffer” or “Sport Death”
My Dreams Dictate My Reality by Soko
Soko gives zero fucks about sounding desperate, or whatever, in the ways we try to act like we’re not. This is definitely an ‘80s etc’ inspired record (produced by Ariel Pink nonetheless) but still feels real and personal. Incredibly fun and hooky but done with a heavy heart. Fav tracks: “Ocean of tears” & “Bad Poetry” and if you’re feeling extra into it, check out any/all of her music videos. Please.
Matriarchy EP by Miss June
Front to back this one’s full-on middle fingers in the air, fuck the haters kind of energy. Perfect for post break-ups and dealing with “haters” of all kinds. Lol. But honestly just great, smart, noisy punk from New Zealand. I’ve seen it described as Le Tigre meets Sonic Youth meets Weezer. Fav track: “Drool”
Is The Is Are by DIIV
I did not like this record when I first heard it in 2016. Lol. It’s been my most consistent palate cleanser/best friend to get inspired by/fall back into since then. It tells a kind of unaware story of one foot in self-discovery and one foot in self-destruction. Dark but sensitive, through post-punk/krautrock/~Nu-gaze~ Truly some of my favorite melodies and tones, both vocally and instrumentally. Fav tracks: “Incarnate Devil” “Valentine” and ofc “Dopamine” & “Dust” because I have no fan-girl shame.
Asphalt Flowers is an up and coming psychedelic blues band from Detroit. Their last release was an excellent live album, Describe The Vibe Volume 1. We caught up with the band to get their view on things and see what they’re cooking up next. Enjoy!
Remove Records: Tell us somethings about yourself and your project.
Asphalt Flowers: We are trying to bring change to people's hearts and minds
What are some of your influences? Nature, humans, dreams, memories, experiences, etc.
What are some of your favorite venues? Tangent gallery, Pyramid Scheme, Outer Limits, Cadieux Cafe
What advice would you give to someone just starting out in music? find yourself
What messages or themes are you trying to convey through your music? Freedom, individualism, love, respect for nature, adherence to spiritual discipline.
What are you working on next? Our next studio album titled “Twenty-First Century Blues”
How do you feel about the future of music/art? Hopeful as there seems to be a ton of talent brewing in our generation
So here I am. Minding my own business. Drunk on a Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday? I don’t know. We had just recorded some new songs. And my Instagram starts yellin’ at me. Joey Molloy. “Hey man! I can’t believe you don’t have a feature on the Remove Blog yet. You wanna do a ‘5 Records From’?” Which is super surreal in that headspace. Who wants to hear what I gotta say? But then again… Who doesn’t love to talk about themselves? Anyways. Here’s five records that I think are most pivotal to what I do.
1. Hi, How Are You? by Daniel Johnston:
I was fifteen. It was about ten o’clock. And the first thing I did when I got home was turn on the computer and look up this dude Daniel Johnston. I was taking guitar lessons from Troy Gregory. And during my lesson that night he starts talkin’ about this guy Daniel Johnston and how he thinks it’d be something I dig. So I looked it up. And after the first track, “Poor You,” I couldn’t pause until it ended. Now this isn’t my favorite Daniel Johnston album. But it was the first video that popped up back in the day, when YouTube was still relevant. And while I’m listening I’m researching him. Find out about how he recorded himself and made his own tapes. And I had this thought. ‘What’s stopping me from writing and recording?’ I had notebooks full of poems and always wanted to make my own music. So why not just fucking do it. The next day I setup in my mom’s garage. Acoustic guitar. A minicassette recorder my grandpa had given me. And all my notebooks. And just start doing it. Pressed like twenty CDs. And hand drew all the album artwork. And that’s what started it all for me. Hearing that album made me realize I didn’t need to wait for an offer or somebody to want to even listen to me. If I wanted to do it I could. On our Bandcamp you can still find all those albums I made in high school that have since evolved into some of our songs. But that was the trigger right there. What I dug most was the rawness though. Daniel wasn’t trying to be a master musician. Or even the most technical songwriter. He just was putting out how he felt. And that’s what I try to do with our music. Just completely expose myself and thoughts onto a tape. Don’t overthink it. Just release pure feelings.
2. Greatest Hits by Half Japanese:
So Daniel Johnston was my introduction to outsider music. From there I discovered Half Japanese. And I loved that shit. I had been playing solo sets for about a year or so. And one of friends, Jordan Teets, was talking to me after the show and suggested I get some drums or something. He was telling me about how he used to play djembe during some friends’ of his sets in high school and he could do it for me too. After a couple shows he gets his tax return and drops it all on a kit on Craigslist in Roseville and teaches himself how to play. And during those first few months we spent a ton of time listening to Half Japanese’s greatest hits. I didn’t necessarily want the aggression that came from punk. But the pure drive to just create music. No matter how we defined that.
3. Songs of Love and Hate by Leonard Cohen:
Leonard Cohen was somebody I refused to listen to for a long period of time. I liked Bob Dylan and Tim Buckley and some singer-songwriters. But I was pretentious in early high school. Had just discovered Nuggets. And I had this idea that music needed an edge in order to be good. Which is why I refused to check out the Strokes for the longest time. But my guitar teacher told me to listen to Songs of Love and Hate. So I checked it out, hoping to despise it. But I couldn’t stop listening to it.
This album is a constant reminder to me that it is ok to feel. It’s ok to be vulnerable. And that even though things might not always be ok, that’s ok. It’s the album I listen to whenever I need motivation to keep on moving. It’s what I put on for reassurance that we can’t control every aspect of life. But we can always keep trying.
4. Zombie Birdhouse by Iggy Pop:
I always dug the Stooges. Name a kid in Detroit that doesn’t think the Stooges FUK. And I had listened to a handful of solo Iggy. Some I’m at the library. Checking out CDs to download onto my iPod. Cause fuck a dollar per song. And I come across Zombie Birdhouse by Iggy Pop. Never heard of it, so I check it out. And I’m left in shock. After every single track. I didn’t find out till years later that Iggy had written it so the label would drop him from contract (and it fucking worked!) But that album gave me a new look on music. You didn’t need lyric structure. You didn’t need verse/chorus or even segmented parts like I had heard in prog rock. This was the album that broke every rule. The album that made me realize there really aren’t rules to music. Or whatever you’re doing for that matter. Just do what you gotta do. Even if that means there are no synthesizers on the record.
5. Hello Cruel World by Tall Dwarfs:
I can’t pinpoint when I first listened to this album. Or how I even found out about it. But I remember clicking the YouTube video and being blown away. It’s as if the Modern Lovers got really into crack and blew all the funds for their record getting high. Super minimal and lo-fi. Frantic. Near schizophrenic. Everytime you think you’ve figured out the sound they force you to swallow a bottle of Robitusin. I don’t know anything else that has come close to the sound of this comp. It’s messy. It’s confusing. It’s all over the place. And most importantly, it proves as long as you’re creating from feeling, the right person will discover it. No matter how many futures or dimensions we pass. You just gotta put yourself out there. Cause somewhere, somebody will find it. And it’ll be exactly what they needed to hear.
John Shaughnessy is hands down one of the most influential musicians and producers in the city. He’s worked on a wide range of project in multiple genres and capacities, but his solo project Quality Cinema is probably the most indicative of his true sound. Quality Cinema just put out the excellent single Street Lines b/w This City Sleeps.
John: I'd like to preface this interview by saying this is my 5th or 6th attempt to answer these questions in an earnest and concise way, please try and forgive any rambling or pretension that may come across in the interview; I always feel weird talking about myself.
My name is John. I'm 26 years old and I grew up on the east coast, I've been playing music since I was 13. Quality Cinema started as a solo project in the summer of 2012 and was mostly just instrumental beats that sounded like Annorak or Kavinsky. Once I started singing over the tracks it kind of changed the whole trajectory of the project, and has been evolving and changing ever since. To me Quality Cinema serves as a solo project and an avenue for me to explore different genres and recording techniques and whatever I'm feeling at the time. The sound and aesthetics are completely non-linear; I try to make each thing I put out create it's own space or "vibe" so to speak. Some times I go all analog, sometimes I do everything in the computer. I think my recent goal is to find the intersection between analog and digital that yields a sound that will best serve each individual project or song.
Remove Records: What are some of your musical influences? What are some non-musical influences?
Musical: Animal Collective, Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, Ariel Pink, Jerry Paper, King Krule, Frank Ocean, Harry Nilsson, Duster, Sufjan Stevens, old Death Cab, old Parquet Courts, old Tame Impala, Tyler the Creator. pre-Maga Kanye, the Beatles (specifically Paul), Carole King, the Band, SZA, I thought the Billie Eilish record was really impressive. There's a Curtis Mayfield live album (Curtis/Live!) that blows my mind every time I listen to it. Bowie, Eno, Patsy Cline, Francois Hardy, yada yada yada.
I think growing up with two sisters and constantly listening to All American Rejects, Good Charlotte, and Christina Aguilera CDs in the car and watching My Chemical Romance and The Killers music videos before school definitely molded my brain in a specific way to be more predisposed to the pop formula, and I think for a while when I first started getting into playing music I was afraid to admit that I really loved some pop stuff because it wasn't very "metal" or whatever. The older I get, the less I care about adhering to an idea of what I should / shouldn't like or be listening to; its all so subjective and contextual anyways. I try to listen to stuff that's reflexive of the mood that I'm in or energy of the group I'm with.
Non-musical: I like to read (Murakami, George Saunders, used to read lots of Vonnegut). Be Here Now by Ram Dass was/is very important to me. Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, Tim & Eric, alt-comedy in general.
My friend Erich is a chef and through him I was exposed to the world of high end cuisine and I think there's a lot that I learned about art in general from that. A well balanced and well constructed dish to me is just as beautiful and inspiring as a great song or movie or painting etc. I think seeing him work expanded my view of what constitutes art and I think that there is a conceptual exchange that can occur between artists working in completely different spaces or mediums (writers, painters, poets, woodworkers, chefs. etc) & you can learn a lot about yourself and your own process by paying attention to the work of others even if they do something completely different than you.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out in art/music?
Do the work, invest in your craft, set realistic goals, don't overcook it, be decisive, avoid comparing yourself to others.
There are no rules and you can and should do whatever you want.
What messages or themes are you trying to convey through your music?
I'd say it depends on the project. I've never aimed to be overtly abstract or have the songs be difficult to understand. Most often it's just me working through really personal issues and trying to extract the qualities of those experiences that are universal and that everyone can relate to.
Can you tell us about the recording process for your new single “Street Lines”?
Last summer I drove to Kalamazoo to buy a Fostex Model 80 (8 track reel to reel) off craigslist. I was coming off of making Sunset Eyes which was an extremely digital/post-production/ridiculous autotune project and I wanted to get my head out of the computer and had finally recovered fully from a surgery that limited my mobility/energy levels. I had worked with cassette multi-trackers before which are magic because everything saturates so much that it kind of naturally just sounds good no matter what you throw into it. I quickly found that the 1/4" format was a lot less forgiving; it takes a little more time and patience to get the right sound out of it. Since getting that machine I started paying a lot more attention to microphone sounds and preamps etc and ended up picking up lot of weird vintage mics that give the music a unique character.
"This City Sleeps" was the first full track I recorded on that machine. We had all of our equipment crammed in the living room of my duplex and would only really be able to play when our upstairs neighbor was gone.
I think I recorded all the instrumentals in one day and went back and did the vocals at a different time. I remember it being really hot and sweaty and I feel like in a weird way that comes across on that recording.
"Street Lines" was done in December and I have since gotten a large practice space, and I think the change in the sound between the two songs is an interesting contrast, the song itself sounds bigger. I started with the synth sequence that runs through the whole track, added bass, then the guitar parts, then vocals last again. The vocals were a challenge on this one for me because I couldn't get it to sit right. I tried a bunch of different things but then settled on a telephone mic through this vocal doubler effect on a digital Mackie mixer.
How did you get involved with the Craig Garwood Group?
I met Craig through Jake Aho of Toeheads.
I went over to his house last summer and figured out we both drive the same model car; a 2002 Volkswagen Golf, both of our Dad's used to be cops, and we both record music at home.
I joined the band a few months later.
What does DIY mean to you?
I feel like I probably covered it in some of the other questions. I think DIY culture is about being decisive about what you want to do and getting it done. Realizing that you don't need to wait for a cosign and don't need approval or even a lot of money to make things happen. It's not glamorous or perfect in any way, which I think is part of the charm.
DIY as a term is also just super amorphous and hard to pin down. I think it varies from person to person, community to community. I've been in DIY spaces that are objectively gross and filled with trash and I've been in others that are so clean and cute it's hard to believe anyone actually gets anything done there. I guess the point is it's very personal and totally inconsistent which is why it's so intriguing. We need both types of places to exist; we need the crusty punk basement house show just as much as we need the intimate Edison-bulb-lit-loft-apartment acoustic sets.
What do you think about the Detroit music scene?
It's cool. There's a lot going on. I feel like there are a lot of different communities that rarely interact. It would be cool to see more of an intersection between the techno/DJ musicians and traditional band scenes, but I guess as a friend once said, one must, "be the change you want to see in the scene."
What are you working on next?
Jake Aho (Toeheads) & I recorded a split over the course of a weekend last month. We should be getting that put out soon. I've also been trying to branch out and serve as a producer for other peoples music and bands which is something I've always been interested in but hadn't had the resources to do until very recently. So if you're in a band or have some things you're looking to record, reach out.
How do you feel about the future of music/art?
Oh jeeze. I don't think I have enough of a knowledge base or experience with Art with a capital A to be offering any sort of educated opinion on it but I will take this opportunity to ramble for a bit.
I will say that the internet/social media/streaming seems like it has fundamentally rewired our brains and how we perceive/consume art and on a bigger level how people relate and interact in general.
There's a lot to unpack there. On the one hand, there's this unprecedented interconnectedness (is that a real word?) that can be extremely fruitful for communication, making friends, community building, booking tours, and being exposed to culture that may not exist wherever one is living. I think when one is living in an urban cultural hub of sorts, it's easy to forget about the places that do not have an artistic community or a reverence for anything like that. I think having the internet and having that instantaneous cultural access probably helps alleviate the potential alienation of artists or aspiring artists living in "the middle of nowhere" so to speak who might have otherwise been totally isolated. The accessibility to create/be exposed to art is unprecedented; anyone with phone or computer can use garageband or get a crack of ableton and start making stuff. The internet has kind of leveled the playing field and severely lowered the barrier of entry into "the Arts" & I think that's beautiful.
On the other hand, there are aspects of the internet and the constant connection that can be extremely negative and can cause a great deal of psychic / existential pain. Every major social media platform (instagram, facebook, twitter) exists for the sole purpose of data collection and selling ad space, which is a trope and cliche but I think it can do a lot of harm to one's sense of self and sense of others. Peoples lives and sense of self via the internet can be highly curated and not really representative of real life. How many followers does this band have? How many likes did my last post get? How many streams and downloads did my last record get? Did anyone repost our set to their instagram story? It puts popularity into a quantifiable metric, which can be toxic. I also think it can put people in this aspirational headspace (like the billionaire mindset shit) that is just so unrealistic that one can constantly feel like they're not doing enough or aren't "sucessful." Their seems to be more emphasis on brand and image than creating something compelling, but what do I know, maybe the whole "personal brand" thing is just a new art form.
Streaming services have completely diminished the value (monetary) of music because it's now essentially free. With that being said I think that creating a physical product like a tape or a record in the internet age is important. It implies real world value; it transforms something abstract into something people can hold onto and interact with. I think the more internetty (real word?) and polished everything gets the more people crave something tangible.
