T.H.E Interview – Lamalo

Sydney electronic duo Lamalo released their free-flowing, dance-floor inspired single Shiba Inu on Friday 26th November 2021.

Taken from the meme-inspired, decentralized cryptocurrency named after the Japanese hunting dog. Just like its furry namesake, Shiba Inu (the single) is agile, bold and distinctive from its counterparts. Driven by percussion and a prominent baseline, this dance cut is perfect for the afternoon drinks turned club night out.

We caught up with the Lamalo duo to learn more about how “Shiba Inu” came about, and more.

Aditya – Hey Lamalo! Glad to have you for the interview. How’s 2021 been for you so far?

Lamalo – Hey! 2021 has been a real mixed bag for us. We had planned to do a tour right at the beginning of the year which ended up getting canceled due to the ever-changing health guidelines. Then we released ‘Inertia’ as our first release with ONELOVE which was a high point. Then the lockdown happened and we felt like we lost momentum again but we kept producing and we actually saw it as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves in a way. Indie electronic pop out, house-disco in.

Aditya – Your latest tune ‘Shiba Inu’ sounds exuberant! Could you explain the Japanese influence here?

Lamalo – Thank you!! Glad you’re enjoying the track. Mich is half Japanese and actually grew up attending the Japanese schooling system. That means he had all his classes including math, science, history and music all in Japanese. Since he was exposed to Japanese music from a very early age and used to sing traditional folk songs in music class as well as listening to a lot of mainstream Japanese pop music, the influence goes quite deep!

Aditya – What’s your creative process like? How do you both begin producing?

Lamalo – We’d both consider ourselves musicians more so than producers and all of our tracks start with us jamming on the piano, trying to find a chord progression that we’re really feeling. Once we play something cool, we then start finding sounds that we’re vibing with and go from there. For Shiba Inu, we started with the chords but once we wrote that bassline, it all started coming together.

Aditya – Who are your influences? I see that you’re highly influenced by the sounds of electronica & jazz.

Lamalo – Our influences come from all sorts of music and we can never quite nail down where the influences are revealing themselves. As an electronic duo, we’re really influenced by Hermitude. We also draw influence from bands like Dire Straits, composers like Chopin, music legends like Django Reinhardt and electronic music powerhouses like Porter Robinson and Elderbrook. For Shiba Inu, we were really influenced by Dua Lipa’s most recent album.

Aditya – Being a duo, how do you deal with conflict of interests?

Lamalo – We’re both super passionate about our music so naturally, conflicts arise. Having created together over the course of five years now, we’ve learned to accept criticism from one another and try to remove ego from the creative process. I know that Mich is just as committed as I am to creating the best music possible and sometimes that means that my synth line might not fit in a section that I want, just as it might mean that we have to overhaul the structure of a song if it’s not flowing properly. At this point, we try to be pretty objective about our choices and separate them from being either my or his decisions.

Aditya – How’s the music scene in Sydney? Could you brief us through it.

Lamalo – The music scene is wide, varied and yet isolated in a way. We’ve had the pleasure of gigging and creating with a multitude of Sydney-based artists including Little Green, Swaré, ANGE, Midnight Pool Party and even Alex the Astronaut (before she was famous). We’ve played our electronica shows mainly at Oxford Art Factory and a few warehouse parties. It’s not a huge scene at the moment though and we’re always looking for other electronica acts we can perform with.

Aditya – You both are multi-instrumentalists, could you tell us which instruments you play?

Lamalo – I play guitar, keys and the occasional vocals. Michiya plays piano, the majority of the synths, a little bit of oboe and actually sang the vocals on Shiba Inu (both the low ones and the high ones). We both studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and took the classical stuff very seriously until our lives were forever changed by electronic music.

Aditya – Out of curiosity, do you happen to own any Shiba tokens?

Lamalo – We do own some Shiba tokens! In fact to celebrate the release of this track, we’ve been running a competition where one of our listeners will win 982,000 Shiba tokens (worth around $50). We thought it’d be a fun way to tell our fans about the song and also to see how much it rose in value. Literally three days after we bought the Shiba tokens for $50, they were worth $110 but the value has crashed since and they’re worth around $55 now.

Aditya – Do you think vinyl will do a comeback in 2022?

Lamalo – It’s hard to say! Vinyl seems to have been growing over the last couple of years but nothing has been as convenient as music streaming. I hope it does make a comeback as it just feels great to buy something tangible and support artists. I’ve noticed a few more record pressing companies have been popping up, maybe it’s something we should look into! I have promised some of our older fans that I’d burn a couple of CDs for them with all of our tracks to date so I better get on that.

Aditya – Lastly, what are you looking forward to in 2022?

Lamalo – We’re looking forward to getting on more festival lineups (boutique festivals are awesome), putting out more of these house-disco type bangers and also in personal news, I’m getting married! Back to Lamalo news, we’ve got an exciting music video coming up for our next track and we’ve got a concept album we’ve been working on for years that we’re thinking of putting out at some point.

Cheers, Yossi from Lamalo