Ahead of their upcoming remix for latest single, GARDEN, Oskar Thomas and Scram talk all things creative in their longstanding friendship.
Alt-R&B singer/songwriter, Oskar Thomas, takes his track GARDEN to uncharted heights – teaming up with old friend, Scram, for a remix.
The mates catch up on all things creative, unpacking their music-making process, and how lockdown has seeped into their song-filled morning rituals and breathwork exercises.
OSKAR: So, you get up in the morning and it’s a day of making music. What’s your process like?
SCRAM: Umm, If I’ve got nothing on my plate, I usually like to start by finding a sample. I usually like to just find a starting point, if I don’t have something in my head. I use Splice, so I just type in a word or something and just find a random sample.
It’s almost like exercise in the morning. It’s like my music exercise you know? I’ll just find a little sample and see what I can do with it, see what I can work around it, and it usually comes out with something weird and I find something cool.
When I’m doing this, what I make usually works for a different artist or something. It’s never a Scram track that I’m trying to make, it’s just like exercise.
OSKAR: Yeah, I get you. I do the same thing in my own way. So, let’s say you search something up, you just type in a word, where do you think that word comes from?
SCRAM: I usually wake up wanting to hear something.
OSKAR: Right.
SCRAM: Whether it’s clear or not, there’s something that I want to hear. And whether that’s me putting on an album that I’m thinking of immediately in the morning, or there’s something that I want to hear myself make, I generally wake up with it in my head already.
Sometimes I wake up and I just want to make a hip hop beat, I just want to make a real boom bap type of beat with fat breaks on it. So, it’s just really how I’m feeling, and it sets my mood for the rest of the day, I guess.
OSKAR: I’m in a similar place actually dude. But I’ve just been trying to make stuff that I really like. Like before I make something, and get stuck into the idea and attached to it, I put myself aside and think “what do I really like hearing at the moment?” as opposed to “what do I like making?’ or “what do I want to attach to myself”.
SCRAM: Exactly, what am I vibing? What am I listening to right now?
OSKAR: Exactly man. So, I was listening to your stuff on Spotify the other day, and it’s Jungle/Drum n’ Bass- with your own flavour of course.
I think on the album, Rapture, (unreleased) you haven’t gone away from that sound completely but you’ve gone in other directions to my ears. What do you think sparked that?
SCRAM: To me, everything I was writing was sounding the same. Pretty much everything that I’ve got up on my Spotify right now was written about two years ago, the latest ones being written about a year and a half ago.
I really spent about half a year just writing anything, doing a bunch of different things and learning what it was that I wanted to hear. For a lot of the earlier releases, I was listening to 90’s music. I really immersed myself in it and so that’s all that was coming out of me at the time.
I really wanted to develop my sound and I actually heard the DjRUM album, Portrait with Firewood, and that album really changed my perspective on electronic music as a whole. Kind of taking it more as a journey than as a collection of club tracks really, cause that’s all I was looking at it as before.
I started bringing my songwriting to it more so than I had been before, without even knowing that I was doing it really. Yeah, I definitely brought a lot of my old writing processes back that I used to use when I was playing guitar and playing instruments more. That definitely came through a lot in the album.
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OSKAR: Yeah, it does man. It’s a lot more song-y.
SCRAM: Definitely, and having you on board as well. Going back to my roots almost. That’s what the album really is, I feel. Going back to my roots with what I’ve learnt.
OSKAR: Interesting. Well, we did make a lot of music together when we just a couple of little kids.
SCRAM: Just a couple of little kids, screaming.
OSKAR: Screaming in my bedroom, terrorising the neighbourhood. We would practice screaming in my bedroom and be really loud, pretty much destroy our voices completely. Then we would go outside, get a couple of guitars, and play folk songs.
SCRAM: And try and sing Matt Corby songs.
OSKAR: That’s pretty much the way it went, hey.
SCRAM: Every time.
OSKAR: So you have this album coming out, and then you have stuff ready for after that that I’ve heard. So, you’re super productive right now.
SCRAM: Yeah, I’m sitting on the most amount of music that I’ve ever sat on, ever.
OSKAR: How many tracks do you have that aren’t out, which you’re ninety-nine per cent sure are going to come out?
SCRAM: So, I can safely say that I have fifteen songs that I know are coming out this year.
OSKAR: That’s crazy, this year?
SCRAM: This year alone. And that’s not even counting the two EPs which are coming out after that. They’re just for fun at the moment.
OSKAR: Damn.
SCRAM: Still working man! I’ve been in lockdown and I’ve been out of work so I’ve just been knuckling down in the studio non-stop, hey.
OSKAR: Yeah, you make them quick hey.
SCRAM: Yeah, I tend to work really quickly and in short bursts. I’ll get a song done in an hour, and I can’t work again for another hour or two. I’ll take a break and then I’ll come back to it.
OSKAR: That’s smart man. That’s a smart way to work.
SCRAM: I kinda learnt that that was how my brain worked with writing music. It comes in really hard and fast, but I burn out quickly, so I needed to adapt to that.
OSKAR: Something I’m trying to streamline in my own process is just having good sounds from the start so I can work quickly. I feel like I have the ideas there, but a lot of the time I’ll be fucking around, making the sounds I’m working with sound good enough to keep inspiring me, but while I’m doing that, I lose the inspiration. So, I can usually start the idea of a song really quickly, but to get a song, like a fully developed song… It’s quick for me to get that done in a week.
SCRAM: Yep. I get you. See, for me, I’ve realised it takes me a long time to develop the song too. I can write songs off the cuff like no one’s business, but they sound shit after a week. That’s what I really started to learn.
That’s what I learnt with my earlier releases, because they were written and released really quickly. That’s why I’ve honestly just been sitting on music since then, because I’ve just learnt that once I’ve written a song, I can develop it over time and really build it into what it needs to be. Over time I hear the things that need to be in the tracks, you know? They come through; you just hear them naturally in your head.
OSKAR: Yeah man, exactly. So, in that first hour that you make it, do you make a verse and a chorus? I know you have different names for the structures, but you have a few sections with a couple of layers, and you just make them without really structuring it? Is that the first part of it?
SCRAM: So, a way that I like to approach it is- I’ll start with a sixteen-bar loop, and I’ll build the beef of the song, the middle of the song. I’ll pretty much bring in all the aspects that I want the song to have. Basically, building the drop. The part of the song that is going to have the most aspects, I kind of build that up first and then I like to branch out either side. Go to the beginning and go to the end, and then over time, I can have it all tie in together a lot nicer.
OSKAR: That’s cool, so you know where you’re going and then you just lead to it.
SCRAM: Yeah, exactly. Then it’s just navigating the past a lot clearer.
OSKAR: I’ve been doing that a lot with writing lyrics, the exact same thing. I got this idea from Sting (from The Police). He says to write the chorus first, then it’s easier to write the first line. But if you start with the first line, writing the second line becomes difficult and you burn yourself out as you go.
So, you start with the chorus- the chorus is like the idea of the song, in a typical way of writing- and the verses tell a story about this concept.
SCRAM: It’s kind of the destination of the song, it’s building the destination first, and then you know where to go.
OSKAR: For sure. So, do you have anything you want to ask me? What’s something you want to know from the deep recesses of my brain?
SCRAM: So, I’ve obviously known you for a bit and I’ve known a lot of the music you’ve been writing for a long time. GARDEN is really something that has so many different inspirations in it, and I wanted to ask you; What sparked you to start mixing and experimenting with genres and inspirations the way you have?
OSKAR: Well, I had the idea that I wanted to start a solo project like a year ago, and I was experimenting with what kind of sound I should make. I was thinking about it a lot based on things I’d already done, So I was like “alright, I’ve played guitar, and sung a certain way” and I was playing into the role I’d already created for myself. GARDEN actually started off as the second half of another song that I wrote.
It was a Drum n Bass style song, which came out of the panic of not being happy with this song that I’d spent like six months working on as my first single, and just feeling like it didn’t represent me. So, with two weeks ‘til I wanted to submit my first single so it could come out on a specific date, I decided I had to just do something that I liked.
It just came out like that. So, it was actually not a decision, it was the opposite of that, it was supernatural. For instance, I wrote those lyrics just because I had put on my to-do list to write some words for this song. I planned to just write them then throw them away, but at least have something on the page. But when I quickly wrote them, they came out and just worked. So really, I think the whole song is the most true to myself, in terms of anything I’ve written so far.
So, there wasn’t a specific thought process that led to me mixing those influences, it was just exactly what I’d been listening to and enjoying. I’d been listening to a lot of music with trap beats in it, so I put a trap beat down. Then it needed something else and I had this cheap acoustic guitar there, so I just put that on the track. It was literally just what I wanted to do in the moment.
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SCRAM: That’s beautiful bro. So, with the other music that you have for your solo project, was that before or after GARDEN?
OSKAR: Before.
SCRAM: Okay, so how do you feel about that music now compared to GARDEN?
OSKAR: Yeah, I don’t know what to do with it man (laughs). I’ve got so much and don’t know what to do with it. You know how it goes when you hit on something new, you don’t want to do your old shit anymore.
SCRAM: Yep, yep (laughs).
OSKAR: I have a years’ worth of songs, and during that time I was writing a good solid demo a week. I don’t mind leaving that behind though. I’ve got such a good process now. I have certain mindfulness and meditation practices that I do at certain points in the process. Before writing lyrics I always meditate, and doing that kind of thing brings me to the place where I can just make something I like, as opposed to overthinking it.
SCRAM: Definitely. I learnt that from you too. I do breathwork before going in the studio now.
OSKAR: Let’s go!
SCRAM: It’s helping me so much, man. So, my next question is, how have you found the drive, or where have you found inspiration during this lockdown? I feel like it’s important to talk about now.
OSKAR: Well, I wasn’t feeling super inspired actually. I’ve been making music but it’s just been for functional purposes. So, I’ll decide in the morning that I’m going to make a trap beat in the evening for instance, or I’m going to have fun with some music for an hour.
Something like that. While I was rolling out GARDEN, I didn’t worry about making anything too substantial. I find that these days, the thing I look for the most is inspiration, but I never wait for it. Less inspires me now. There are some ideas in GARDEN that feel very inspired and high-minded which excite me, but leading up to that song I was writing more about my everyday experience; life, relationships with people, stuff like that.
Now, for some reason that doesn’t excite me. So now, in one way I’ve felt super uninspired but on the other hand, I’ve been working heaps but laying off putting any strong lyrical concepts into it, because that is what I need inspiration for. What about you man? What’s inspiring you at the moment?
SCRAM: Well for me it’s actually a lot of the local musicians, because you know I run GARJ, and I’m constantly talking to a lot of musicians, and a lot of my mates are making a lot of music at the moment. That’s definitely been a big thing that’s been pushing me hard at the moment, just seeing how much my friends are doing, really. It’s been hard not seeing anyone though man, it’s weird.
It’s so hard not to feel like you aren’t doing anything. I’ve personally felt real stagnant during the past couple of months, but then I’ve got to remind myself that I’ve been writing so much music. It’s just that feeling of lockdown that makes you feel like you’re not doing anything.
OSKAR: That’s it. And when you’re writing, you’re getting a little payoff, in that you’re definitely getting ideas out and you feel good about that but in terms of it being validated you don’t feel like you’ve successfully reached the endpoint of any ideas because they haven’t been delivered to anyone.
SCRAM: Exactly, you’re just jamming with them in your room by yourself, and you’re like “This hits!”.
Have a listen to Oskar’s latest track, GARDEN. and check out Scram’s latest wave of work.
