A Show of Hands with KENSHO

A lot of names get mentioned on Producer'sVoice...one day, someone needs to draw a huge police style string thumbtack corkboard thing connecting everyone. The reason I say this is, because producers are sneaky, and open minded. Producers that carry the correct mindset will collaborate, and gravitate, toward the best of the best. KENSHO does, KENSHO is a music maker who is expanding the expectation of his listeners every time they put on their headphones. From dark to dreamy, dreamy to dense, from dense to sparse and minimal, it's there. KENSHO builds and breaks the audience with suspense and calculated change among well spiced digital production. He's worked with some of the best of the best. Here's what he said in our interview:

What’s the most rewarding part of the music for you? Why do you do it?

       It would probably be all the people & connections i’ve made thru music. So many dope individuals that i never thought i would meet or let alone consider my friends.

Who are your strongest supporters?

         My closest circle of friends, no doubt. They have helped me in so many ways, giving me endless rides to shows, letting me borrow equipment that i need, or just pushing me to go further when i’m at my worst. I have no idea where i would be without them.

How does your process begin?

       

Light an incense, dim the lights, & try to grasp whatever inspiration i’m feeling at the time

How do you know what critiques to ignore and which to embrace?

        I try my best to keep an open mind when it comes to criticism, because i’m always trying to better myself. So there isn’t really any bad criticism to me.

So you like your day job? What has been your favorite find? 

    

 I love my day job, but it’s like any other day job. I would’ve quit a long time ago if it weren’t for all the cool vintage that i find.

My favorite find would probably have to be those vintage anime tees I found. Like bruh, you just cannot find those all at once like that anywhere.

How do you decide on samples? Are they cleared?

         

Movie soundtracks or anime OST’s are usually what I dig through. They’re not really cleared, but most of the time i alter the sample so much you couldn’t really recognize it after. 

So artists ask you for specific type beats or do you just give them only what you decide?

      

 Sometimes they ask for a specific vibe, but for the most part I just send a pack and they can choose between the ones I send. Or they’ll hear something off my story and ask for that one hahaha.

How long have you been doing this? 

         

Ever since Senior year, so almost 6 years i believe.

Who were the first people you collaborated with?

      

My LSP brothers of course. That’s who i started this music shit with.

What can we expect from Kensho in the future? 

      

Clothes, movies, and more projects hopefully.

Do you have issues with other artists using that name? What’s the best way to hear your music? 

Not really, but there’s this Japanese account on IG with that handle that i want. If y’all want to report his account feel free! @kensho

Any shows on the way? 

     

We got something in the works, so stay tuned!

freshtwofresh, not frozen.

Fresh represents those good days off one's dayjob, a chance to get away from music's absurd ups and downs, and fame's ever haunting presence that seems to snuff out pioneers and creators. freshtwofresh to me appears as a music/production sponge that is continuously soaking in knowledge, culture, weed, and maybe a little bit of hot cheeto dust, and in return wringing out amazing tracks, beats, and content for all of us to enjoy. He's got this intangible charisma and built in humor, while also injecting flavor and clever musical ad libs and edits that are very hard to find anywhere else. Fresh has a fresh outlook on today's music creation and how he is shaping his sound, here's what he said in response to my questions:

Can you explain the story behind your name?
I had just started learning how to use FL Studio and made some really dumb songs while I was high as fuck (skip to 18:50 in this mix to hear them! https://fresh2fresh.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-shit ). It was pretty much the first music I actually "completed". Because the songs were so silly and dumb, I tried to come up with the dumbest possible name. So that's the story behind fresh2fresh. I've always been pretty bad at naming things, but I'm getting better now. People take it seriously and think it's cool but I actually went through a phase of really regretting the name because to me it had always just been this thing I made up really fast to be extremely dumb. And it's a pain the ass to have an all-lowercase name. People always wanna capitalize it in ways that make it look even worse. Don't even get me started on spotify restrictions. Once I got into social media a little more I started spelling it freshtwofresh and I think that's a little more aesthetically pleasing but either way is technically correct.



How long have you been making music?
I had a really cool music teacher when I was a kid who would arrange the kids into rock/punk bands and have us learn songs and jam together. We could switch off instruments whenever we want. Problem was, whether it was that or middle school band class, I refused to practice with a metronome or play along to a recording so to this day I cannot play anything in-time. I sorta kept playing guitar just as a thing to occupy my hands with when I was bored. Then around 2013-14 I started getting really into rap music. I fumbled around trying to figure out what to learn/do and eventually settled on making beats. I've always been into computers so the skills translated naturally. Eventually I learned how to record vocals with a lot of help from the other V@PEBOI in my autotune-crooning side project V@PEBOI SYNDICATE. I kept slowly improving the process and now I do a lot of work engineering/mixing other people's vocals for their own projects. So to answer your question, I'd put it around 6 years.


Do you have goals within music?

Yeah, to get heady for a moment, my goal is usually to generate a personal feeling of excitement or deeper conceptual interest in what I'm making. I'm almost always motivated by my own experience rather than where it may or may not go after I put it out. It's a pretty broad thing. It could be that I hear some sort of production style/technique that really stands out and holds my attention and go "woah thats fucken tite" and I want to explore it and see if I can pull it off. Or it could be trying to make something that's weird in an interesting or funny way to entertain myself. If I can sit down and make something where each step of the process naturally prompts more ideas, that's the best. Everything going smoothly and never getting stuck because you don't feel that positive reaction you want when you hear it. Also, there have been times I've done vocals on songs over the years and that's always an exercise in trying to create something that I won't hate later on. When I'm writing words I'm a lot harder on myself and I always try to create a balance of sounding cool, being original/clever, not over-doing it, and hopefully sneaking in a few legitimately emo things without being cringey. I have about a 20% success rate on that lol, so I mainly stick to production.

On another level, I also hope to use music as a way to make friends and build personal relationships, and I love doing shows so it would be great to be able to play live on a regular basis.




Do you get annoyed when people ask you to describe your music? How do you respond to them?

Not really. I just say, "I make beats and if you wanna hear them, here's a sticker."

You and CATXSCAN were running a live DJ webcam type thing, how did that begin?Actually I started that with my friend @slashcalislash. He made up the name 18/f/cali a long time ago and we kinda treated it as a fake label and eventually started doing this live DJ stream with different guest DJs that was also a podcast. Most of the episodes are still up on youtube (with some songs removed for copyright violations). It never did numbers but we had a good time. At one point we promised to smash an XBOX 360 Kinect on stream if we got 10 concurrent viewers. We did not achieve that goal. I think that really drove people away. It's on hiatus for now. BUT: near the end, 18/f/cali released a compilation tape with 4 new V@PEBOI SYNDICATE songs and a bunch of remixes and stuff we worked on and I'm really proud of it! Please check it out!!! (https://soundcloud.com/18-f-cali/sets/18fcali-the-mixtape)


There's a video of Ed Sheeran listening to one of your songs (I think it was a CATXSCAN song with one of your beats) in his studio, the look he gave was priceless.... gotta hear the story behind that clip.Pretty crazy right? That's not my beat, it's by jeraymakeswaves, but I recorded/mixed CATXSCAN's vocals on that one and put the song together. We got the chance to work at a modest pro studio in Hollywood once. The guy who owned it owed CATXSCAN a LOT of money. Ed Sheeran, being the man of the people he is, was booked for studio time at this hole-in-the-wall place after us and we might have been going a little late. He reluctantly agreed to sit down and listen to the song before we got out of there. I guess he wasn't too impressed by the autotune falsetto, but hey I still think he's a cool guy. For some dumb reason, CATXSCAN thinks he can't release the song now just because one world-famous superstar didn't approve. I heartily disagree.



What do you think about the PDX music scene?I live in Eugene, but I go up there sometimes when there's something cool to get involved with. I've never really felt fully "included" in any particular music "scene". I'm not opposed, but it seems like sometimes the people organizing stuff don't think I'd fit in because I perform with a DJ controller. At least that's my guess. Maybe I just don't have enough "buzz" or I'm not close enough with the right people socially. It's unfortunate, because I'd love to open for any band, rapper, or DJ show, as long as I can afford the travel.



Excited about any of your upcoming music releases?

I actually don't have anything lined up at the moment. I put out a tape called "make light" a few months ago that I put a lot of time into and made sure it was as good as possible. So I want to take that same approach with whatever's next. It might be a tape of phonk beats or it could be more sample-based hip-hop type shit. Definitely gonna be dusty tho.



What do you enjoy about music the most?
I like how every aspect of it is this little infinite world where you can create whatever you want and so can everyone else and you can continue to be surprised and interested. I love how even if someone's a small-time amateur rapper, they do it because they love it, and act like they have a full-blown career. But most of all, I just like being entertained. I enjoy original ideas and I love it when the absurdity of a song makes me laugh, even if it's meant to be serious.



Would you rather have 100k fans or $100k?

Well I gotta say I've always been pretty broke and I hate working so if I had $100k I could probably invest it wisely and live worry-free for the rest of my life, which means more to me than any music career. At the same time, if the 100k fans could provide me with enough resources to live comfortably, I'd be happy.



What's your favorite meal of the day, what do you eat?

I'm really fucking bad at eating. Most of the day these days I have no appetite (and NO, it's NOT the weed! stop saying that!). It sucks because I'm miserable when I don't eat. Real catch-22 shit. I do like a good smoothie though, and I'm a big fan of Subway. BRING BACK THE $5 FOOTLONG YOU IDIOTS!! For some reason Subway always ignores my requests for a sponsorship.



Does insomnia affect your music?Not really. I stay up really late and that's when I'm most comfortable. When I don't sleep enough it's because I wake up too early and that sucks for trying to use my brain that day. But truly being unable to sleep is usually caused by some way bigger issue, and I don't even think about music at those times.



Where can we get FRESHTWOFRESH merch and music?

At the moment I have one small hoodie left. You can DM me for it. I just got a new run of stickers, and they are SICK! I will give them out for free if you see me in-person, or you can send me a small donation and I'll mail you a few. So yeah just hit me up.




My music is available mainly on soundcloud and bandcamp. Soundcloud has a lot of random one-off tracks and collabs as well as a few solid beat tapes/projects. And bandcamp (my favorite platform!) has the full catalog of all my tapes nicely organized and available as pay-what-you-want downloads (pro tip: enter $0 to get it for free). A bunch of my shit is on youtube too. Fuck spotify, it's really dumb and I hate that everyone uses it. It's a long story.

Any message for your people?

Hey guys, remember, its OKAY to make BAD music! Someone's gotta make the bad music, so stop worrying about it! If your music is bad, you can turn it into a positive thing and make it entertaining and/or funny by not taking yourself too seriously. And in the long run, as long as you keep it light-hearted and don't think you're some major flexer cool kid on the block, accepting and even enjoying making bad music will benefit your mental health and creative process.

FOR ALL THE FRESH INGREDIENTS:
https://soundcloud.com/freshtwofresh
https://fresh2fresh.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWPWzqAUAh6r_iJF33gTpdA