TOM SCOTT FROM @PEACE INTERVIEW

Tom Scott is an emcee and member of @Peace (pron. At Peace), a 5-piece crew from Auckland who specialise in a unique form of left-field and down-tempo hip hop. They’re part of the Young Gifted and Broke collective of artists and musicians, carving a solid niche in their native New Zealand. All the while taking their tagline, “Artists too broke to pay the rent but too proud to sell their shit”, very seriously.

The rest of 2013 will see Tom and the crew move to Melbourne to take on the Australian scene, finish their upcoming album and continue to promote their recent EP “Girl Songs”.

How are you?
Yeah, good. Just got home, long day writing.

Writing @Peace stuff?
Yeah, writing the @Peace album, basically. We’ve always had an album coming out, it’s about half-way finished. The last release, “Girl Songs”, was supposed to just be an EP, but a lot of people thought it was an album. We’re about 50% done writing wise, we’ve been out for trips to the middle of nowhere about three times this year, spending about a month each time and we’re going for another month soon. The album’s all about quantum physics and crazy shit like that.

Some pretty deep themes.
Yeah, it’s like if Steven Hawking wrote rhymes.

Are you a big science reader?
I’m a mad science head, but it’s not like I read journals.

I think that’s almost a better way to be, reading on an amateur level. People like Carl Sagan.
Yeah defintely, and Bill Bryson. The people that put it into simple terms.

I guess that’s a good starting point because you guys are pretty abstract, but is that how you would describe yourself overall?
I hope so, man. But it’s dangerous to start calling hip-hop ‘experimental hip-hop’ or ‘abstract hip-hop’ or ‘underground hip-hop’ because that’s how it gets a bad name, people only call the shit on the radio ‘hip-hop’. So I just like to call it just ‘hip-hop’.

But yeah, that is definitely the aim. I think that’s really the aim of every artist though to look at things abstractly instead of plain and simply.

What were your personal influences that made you want to start emceeing?
Ever since I was a kid, I was raised on hip-hop. When I was 10 I got “Doggystyle” for my birthday from my Dad, my Mum gave me the Kriss Kross album when I was 7, but I thought it was from Santa. I always loved music, my old man was a bass player.

Is he a big hip-hop fan?
He’s a big funk fan, and jazz fan. He showed me Atomic Dog when I first heard Snoop, like “This is where the OG came from”. He showed me George Clinton when I was 10, “what the hell’s this, Dad? Who the hell is Gil Scott?”

So you’re coming up with both sides of the coin – you’re getting the rhymes and also the samples. Does that education have an impact on your beat selection?
Yeah that was my education on music. I guess he was probably my biggest influence, because I didn’t even know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I was good at music because he was good at music.

I think when I listen to music, and I know they say talking about music is like dancing about architecture, but it’s mainly a feel. Maybe that sounds stupid, but if it doesn’t feel right then it won’t provoke any emotive response from me. I’m just trying to find something that triggers an emotion, triggers a thought process, and usually to me it’s nothing technical. It’s not about the rhythm, it’s not about the notes or the chord structure or the progression. It’s just something emotive.

Do you all share similar influences, or do you have different backgrounds and tastes that you bring together?
Chris is a mad jazz head – his son was conceived to the song “The Creator Has a Master Plan” by Pharoah Sanders. Dicky is the same, he went to jazz school, plays sax and shit. He’s more into spiritual jazz. Me and Lui are pretty much hip-hop and R&B heads.

What R&B inspires you?
I guess you could call D’angelo the king of modern R&B. From there, Raphael Saadiq, Musiq Soulchild, at the moment people like Frank Ocean, even The Weeknd. Everything man, even Onra. Anything that’s got funk, it’s all a new a breed of funk and soul.

Has there been anything released so far this year that’s inspired you particularly?
I’m not too sure what’s been released this year, but people like Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, that whole circuit. There’s a rapper called Zeroh, he’s totally unheard of but he’s amazing. Of course Andre 3000, every guest verse of his just blows my mind. Even a group called Shabazz Palaces.

I wanted to bring them up, because I definitely hear the influence there. Right from the opening, on the track “Bar Stool Balancing Act 1”.
That track is just a straight Thelonius Monk sample, just a loop of the song “My Dear”. We wanted it to sound like that was what was playing in the background. Most of what we do is sampled – to me, sampling has been happening since Gospel music was sampling traditional African music; since Jazz was sampling Gospel music; back then people were just playing standards in a new way. Covering classic songs is the same, it wasn’t until you had the technology to take a whole bass line or a whole drum loop that things would change. You didn’t need to get someone to replay the whole thing, people have been sampling forever though. We don’t have to try and recreate some Max Roach part, or whatever. There’s nothing new under the sun.

There is a difference between sampling and paying homage to just straight stealing. It’s a fine line.

Are there many artists like you guys in Auckland at the moment?
Yeah our whole group is called Young Gifted and Broke, there’s mad talent in Auckland at the moment. My dude MeloDownz represents the crew Third Eye, who are ill. Obviously Truant, a group called Side Steps Quintet, a dude called Johnny Rescue are all worth checking. I’m moving to Melbourne in June, but one of the reasons I don’t want to leave is because I feel like we’re all strengthening each other and challenging each other right now. There’s not as much food here to eat, so we all fight harder for it. We’re all hungrier for it.

Is the move to Melbourne for any particular reason?
I just came to Melbourne and fell in love with the city, basically. I think it’s an obvious progression for us, the next step. Like, the first thing we got to eat when we were last there was this amazing food just bought off the side of the road. You can see the passion that people put into things there, I feel like they’re interested in the smaller things in life. Like a tag down an alleyway, or a piece of shit Chinese joint where the cooks are passionate about food. It doesn’t feel like a business-minded city, every cliché people think it is, it’s allowed to be that. It’s a creative hub.

Even Sydney is dope, we found a badass record store in Erskineville, Revolve Records. That guy was onto it. And outside there was Chet Faker, just chilling.

What’s your definition of Grindin’?
Twenty-four hours a day, man. Your mind never getting off your grind, you wake up in the morning and you want to carry on where you left off. Take it to the next level, that’s my definition. Basically what I did today!

Interview by Alexander Tulett