Interview #29 - Tenshun

The Untitled Tracklord 

For fans of dirty distorted beats and noise, there are few people out there at the moment making it better than Tenshun. Both as a solo artist and together with his different crews, he's been making sure that there's always interesting and dark music to be heard. So I decided to look him up and ask him some questions. 

First off, would you mind sharing with us a bit about yourself? Who’s Jon and who’s Tenshun?

I'm Jon Calzo from San Diego, California. I make music under the name Tenshun and am part of Creatures, Kilowattz, Skrapez and Dtm.

What made you realize that you wanted to create music, and how old where you at the time? Was there a lot of music around you in your family growing up?

I have always been interested in sound ever since I was small and was really curious to how it was created. My older brother was into hip hop and he introduced me to mixtapes and records.

I remember hearing mixtapes and the DJ would be going off on the scratches and I would be thinking "how the hell did they make that sound?"

Or hearing beats and thinking to myself, "Did they hire a whole orchestra to create those sounds?"

And then later on as I found out about samplers and equipment and how people were actually taking sounds from records and other things and re-flipping them to create something totally different. From there I was hooked! Mike Russel from MRR ADM hooked me up with a Tascam 4 track and I was making beat tapes and looping records with a old Gemini mixer which had a 12 second sampler on it and a beat up turntable.

How would you describe your music and could you briefly tell us about the music-making process?

I would say my style of music is a mix of Turntablism / Noise/ distorted drums, feedback and improvisation.

The core part of my music is usually the drums Or a loop that has some type of pulse to it.

From there I find sounds which fit the mood of the rhythm.

Only a few people seem to be as productive as you when it comes to releasing records. Do you feel a need to have your music as physical objects or how come you like to release records so often?

I feel like music is one of the only things out there keeping me sane in this crazy world. Without it I would probably be getting into trouble.

For me making a album is like creating a limited edition art print which starts from creating the sound to making the album artwork. Each album that gets made is totally different then the next album. For some people the whole process of duplicating the music, drawing the artwork and printing them may seem like a lot of work but I like doing all of it.

I love getting albums that have been hand crafted. It shows that the artist put a lot of time & effort to really create something to present to the world to have.

People might have heard the name Skrapez. but might not necessarily know what lies behind it. Could you perhaps enlighten us all? And please tell us what influences/inspirations you have?

Skrapez is Psychopop and I. We have known each other for quite sometime now. We have always been into the same style of music. I remember back in the days we would always smoke a blunt before we go digging for records. We have always been into hard hitting drums, psychedelic music and jazz and art. So when we got together and jammed out it just clicked and Skrapez was formed. Our first Skrapez show was with Sumach back in the day. We just bum rushed the stage and started killing it on some Sun-Ra steez.

I usually get my inspirations from daily living and whats around me. I try to capture all the good and bad things going on in this world and transfer it into my music.

Or I listen to some of the homies stuff to see what they been working on and get ideas & inspiration.

What do you wish to accomplish with your music?

I just want to inspire people out there to make music and art & to do something positive.

Instead of focusing those negative thoughts on trying to kill someone, you could focus those thoughts and energy into some evil, dark sounding music or art.

What are you up to when you’re not making music? Any other passions besides music?

When I'm not working on music I'm usually out riding my bike trying to do tricks or working my job at the library.

I'm a fan of making guitar pedals, circuit bending and drawing and film.

Any upcoming projects that you like to share with us?

As for projects coming out, I've got a few projects in the works with Son of a Bricklayer, Stuntdouble, Psychopop, Mike Tappen and Deathpera.

Shout outs?

Creatures crew, Skrapez, Kilowattz, drums turntables mpc, San Diego and all the people out there that listen and who I have met.

http://shootyourfuckingheadoff.tumblr.com/
http://tenshun.bigcartel.com/
https://soundcloud.com/10shun-tenshun
http://tenshun.webs.com/