Conversation With An Artist in Lockdown: Handsome Tiger
Words by Hollie McGowan
The Canadian West Coast bass music scene is no stranger to Vancouver electronic music producer and DJ, Hussein Ahmed, AKA, Handsome Tiger. A familiar name and face now solidified within the local club and festival circuit, his style of mixing fuses sounds of the underground in genres such as halftime, dubstep, grime, rap, and dancehall.
A few months ago, Handsome Tiger was preparing for another busy year ahead with tours coming up for the spring and summer 2020 BC festival season. Yet, when the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, he too had to face the sobering reality that summer of 2020 was about to take a drastically different shape than previously anticipated.
For the second installment of “Conversation With An Artist in Lockdown”, Citrus recently got in touch with Handsome Tiger to chat about the hit experienced by the West Coast bass music community, the pros and cons of self-isolation and the creative process, his most recent release in support of Black Lives Matter, and speculations about what the future may look like for Western Canadian electronic music scenes moving forward.
Citrus: Now that we’ve been living in this pandemic for a while, how are you feeling?
Handsome Tiger: Not too bad. I’m feeling better than I was. It was definitely quite a shock. I was on a trip in the winter in February and then came home from my holiday and then everything just snowballed so fast. It was a lot for everybody including myself coming home from a trip to deal with. But now I’ve just kind of settled in over the past month and a half of just sticking with a routine and keeping busy and getting lots of music done. It was definitely about a month and a half or two months of being like, ‘Oh my god! All the festivals and all my shows are gone!’ And just me, me, me, why is this happening? But now the blow has definitely softened. I guess acceptance is a good term.
C: You know, the last artist who I interviewed for this series also felt he was being whiney. But this is your livelihood and your career. The arts community is definitely one of the worst hit. It’s fair that people would be panicking.
H: Totally. Obviously, the income is a big part of it. Especially when I was coming home from the trip, I had four shows that were out of town that were booked and basically just booked from March all the way until July and August. So I was like, ‘Sick! I’m coming home from my trip and I'm going to have all these gigs planned. I can pay off my trip, get some money, get my art out there.’ That has actually been more of the kicker. The financial part sucks, but I think the part that myself being an artist, and a lot of other people who appreciate music too, it's the social aspect of being able to go out and share your art with people and have those moments together. That’s a big part of it for me, the lackluster. It’s going to be sad this summer, not having that connection. And that gratification, that cathartic experience of working hard all year, creating stuff to share in those moments. But at the same time, it’s propelled me to work even harder to make more stuff to have for the next time that we can do so.
C: Absolutely. A huge part of this is connection. We’re (social) human beings just having a good time and listening to music. But it's also this community that we’ve created that is really strong out here on the West Coast. While we’re on that topic of our local electronic music scene, how do you think things are going to look moving forward?
H: I’m really curious. Are we going to have to forever socially distance? Is that going to become the ‘new norm’? In Germany, one of my friends was telling me that they are having drive-in raves. A party in your car? Is that for real? Maybe that will become a thing. I hope we don’t have to keep socially distancing forever, that would suck. I would assume that on the West Coast we have such a knack for harm reduction and consent culture, I feel like maybe there’ll be even more of a push towards all that kind of stuff. I mean, just the cleanliness aspect and that kind of stuff within the harm reduction, I think that is maybe going to become more of a piece. I guess we’ll see. I hope it doesn’t just stay online forever. I’ve been a fan of the streams and the streaming thing is cool. I’ve done a few and that’s been neat, but I really hope that we can get back to some sort of normal. Maybe festival sizes will have to change? I don't know. I guess we’ll just have to see what pans out.
C: It’s so hard to tell. There’s so many unknowns and in so many different sectors. Speaking of everything temporarily moving online and virtual shows, how has that experience been for you? I’ve seen you play in a few online events that different people have organized. What is that experience playing to a virtual audience like for you?
H: It’s definitely new, different and weird. I did my first one in the beginning of April on my birthday actually. It was part of an online festival that was supposed to be that weekend in real life, and they were raising some funds for the artists which was pretty cool too. It ended up being 4 or 5 hundred people or something like that watching on twitch. I was joking in the chat like, ‘Oh hey! This is sometimes more than we get for local turn-outs for shows!’ And people were laughing and stuff. It’s definitely interesting. I also feel like it's kind of a cathartic experience in that I can see it serves a purpose. At first I was a little bit (skeptical) cause everyone was hoping on it in March when it first started happening. Everyone was live streaming. Then I was like, ‘Wait, no. This is good. I shouldn't be down on it. It’s awesome. It’s keeping people connected.’ People can still share music. There’s still the social aspect with twitch. The first one I did was on my birthday and it was funny to see everyone just taking the piss and having a legit chat room rave thing going on. It felt like I was on MSN chat back in ‘99 or something like that. It’s a neat experience, and I’m appreciative that people have been organizing them and I’m going to continue with it. I don’t foresee myself doing a weekly thing, just maybe try to do them once or twice a month to stay engaged until we can start gathering for shows again. I even see it as (a regular thing to) continue doing it, even if we can do shows. There’s some artists who have really dialed it in, have cool platforms, and are doing it proper. So I think if you’re going to do it, the main thing is making sure you have good audio. It’s been really nice to see friends play and other DJs that you maybe wouldn’t regularly get to see play too.
C: There’s a lot of funny aspects coming out of (livestreaming). Even though the sound and video quality isn’t always that good, it maintains the connection we have with our community and reaches out to the global dance community as well. I’ve now seen different musicians’ and djs’ livingrooms, bedrooms, studios, and kitchens. You get these really interesting little snapshots into peoples’ worlds that you never would have before. It’s a very interesting experience for sure.
H: It can make things a little bit more personable too. When you’re DJing a set in a live show vs doing something chill online for your fanbase or your friends and yourself, if you chose to, you can be a bit more lax and not have to mix as fast. You can be in the chat a bit more, people can be asking about the tracks and you can engage (with them) on that level which is neat. If someone came up to you at a busy show and had to yell at you to get the id of a track you might ignore them. But in the context of a chat room, you’re more quick to be like, ‘Oh, this is this.’ People are just chilling and its different vibes.
C: Has anything about living in isolation changed your creative process?
H: I’ve had more time. I haven’t been working my day job which sucks because I enjoy my day job as well. So, that aspect has given me so much more time for music which is kind of a blessing in disguise. Usually around this time I would be hunkering down and worrying about sets for Bass Coast or Shambhala and kind of more streamlined (in my process). Because all of those (festivals) aren’t happening, I’ve just fully been focusing on just making music. Not as much DJing. I’ve done the odd livestream, like I said, but I’ve really been focusing more on going to the studio everyday for 10 plus hours some days and just trying to create every day. I’ve definitely made almost more music in the last couple months than I have all year which is awesome. It’s (also) been a big thing of acceptance, just like, ‘Ok this stuff isn’t happening.’ It has reaffirmed for me that I want to keep working on my goals. All of this sucks but I’m not going to stop making music just because of this.
C: I guess that makes sense. When you take away the audience, it's kind of like a test. Like, do you really want to do this?
H: It’s also kind of been a saving grace too, to be honest. When I look back on my life, there’s always been moments where things have been trying or hard or difficult. In those times I’ve always anchored even harder to my craft and my art and I feel like it's one of those things that I can rely on for which I’m thankful. I feel like when stuff like this happens, for artists or creatives, you feel that sense of gratitude towards it. I’m grateful that I have (music) as a medium. For me, it puts things into perspective how lucky we are to have art, and have the gift of being able to create something.
C: Have you learned anything about yourself as an artist during the pandemic? Have you had to adjust anything?
H: Definitely relying on income from shows, (This experience) showed me how easily it can be taken away. That helped me to not take things for granted and just appreciate all the opportunities that I get because you never know. It really just kind of made me realize how fragile all of it is in the first place, the industry in general. During this time, I’ve made a couple tracks for a publishing company cause I had an opportunity that came up with that. So (I am) just exploring more of those options and considering that playing live music may not always be as consistent. So definitely learning to adapt would be a big one. Accepting that maybe I can start making music for film and things like that outside of just making music for a dancefloor. Also, time management. It’s definitely something that, though I am getting lots done, maybe I haven’t been the healthiest about it. Just weird schedules and staying up super late and working on music all night with no days, little bad habits like that since I’ve had the freedom of fully making my own schedule, it's been a little bit of a learning curve. It’s just been teaching me to stay on top of my mental health. Making sure I’m getting outside and doing stuff too. Making use of my time properly.
C: I noticed that you recently put out a track and donated the funds to BLM in support of everything that has been happening right now after the murder of George Floyd. Tell us about the track and the funds that you were able to donate because of it.
H: Yeah, the track is a tune I made, but I flipped the KRS-One classic vocal sample from ‘Step Into A World’. I had made it a week or so before the uprising and everything (happening) in the States. It made sense to use the track as a means to collect donations from (the sales of it) to send to Black Lives Matter Vancouver and the NAACP. I’m happy to announce that we raised $200 Canadian on release day which has been donated, and I will continue to donate all the funds from that track to those organizations.
C: That’s awesome. What else are you working on right now that you are excited about? Any future virtual shows coming up?
H: Ya, I also recently had a new track come out on The Place Vancouver population which is a music compilation. This guy from New York started it. Wherever ‘the place’ is, they get artists from that area and somewhere that they can donate the money too. Ya, it's cool, The Place (for the Vancouver region) was for Pacific Wild which is a cool organization. I am also working on some tracks for an Indigenious publishing company. They are called Nagamo and they have a database where composers and artists, once they get commissioned to upload the tracks to it, then Indigenious filmmakers can go to that database and commission tracks from it to use for their films. I finished up a couple tracks for a project for those guys out of Toronto. And moving forward, I have a couple singles planned until we get into the thick of summer. Then I have a full length album that I’ve been working on. I also have a summer mix coming out soon. It’ll come out on my page, but it’ll be through Audio Social which is a new collective which is myself, my girlfriend Ashton, and my good friend Eli. We started right at the new year. New Year’s Eve was actually our first show and then obviously everything hit the fence and we weren’t able to do events anymore. But we’re going to be working towards doing a mix series and a live stream event. Then hopefully when things start kicking up again we’ll be going back to do regular events. So my summer mixes are going to be coming out on that platform, mine will be our first mix for that collective. Ashton’s been working on art for that too, so we’re going to launch that soon, and get that rolling as a new collective. I’ve got my fingers on a lot of projects right now, just trying to keep busy.
C: Makes sense. All that time that you would have spent putting sets together for shows and festivals this summer (you now have for making music in your studio). Good to hear what you have been up to. Thanks for chatting Hussein!
H: Ya, thanks so much Hollie!
Check out Handsome Tiger’s track ‘Step Into a World’ on Bandcamp. All proceeds go to Black Lives Matter Vancouver and the NAACP.