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.
