PS: My name is Ria. I make music as Poundshoppe. I'm also a creative computational practitioner, so I do a lot of stuff with coding. A lot of the time, all the different areas are quite interrelated, like music code. I do a bit of writing write sometimes as well.
But what kind of person am I?
I am quite a sick person right now. I'm a person who has just I've been lying around and sleeping a lot, which is really nice and not very usual for me.
KZS: Are you usually quite hyperactive?
PS: I don't know about hyperactive, but I've got a lot of things and projects on the go. Once I try to cater to all those things, that ends up eating into my time for chilling.
KZS: How does it feel when you don't have anything to do?
PS: This time it's been imposed. So, in a way that simplifies it because there's no choice, also because I've been ill as fuck. So I've just been like, "What the fuck is going on?" You know, just watching Iindustry and stuff.
I'm 26, went to uni at 22, and finished last year, so in that periodand I went to uni at 22, and I just finished last year, so I think in that period, there's been a sense of expansion. And I think iIn the months since, my professional life has changed quite a lot. I've been doing a lot of freelance audio work.
So there's been this feeling divergence, of different things picking up, and so sometimes, stopping makes me freak out a bit, cause I'm like, "Oh, my God, I fell off."
KZS: When did you realise that you'd collapse computational practice and music? Is it something that came instinctively to you?
PS: I always did musical stuff, and I was quite interested in the technical side of that process. I played instruments as a kid, but I think I really love to go deep on clicking around. Then, I think through work, I found myself doing some coding, andcoding stuff, and that kinda the two naturally merged. I hated that job.
Then I went to computer science, Following this, I did a computer science course for a while, and then decided, I was like, "I'm going to art school, let's go."
I did creative computing, and thought, I was like, "Okay, that's the right balance.," I think.
KZS: Do you feel like that your practice is something that is well-received in the juncture of internet music and internet art?
PS: To be fair, the scope of our course was quite open.; it's quite interesting aAt Camberwell, they developed two courses around this kind of idea of 'art school coding courses'. It's assumed that you're an exhibiting artist who wants to use computers and code as your medium.
I think I saw myself as much more of a systems builder, somebody who's building the platform, facilitating — or designing the space that facilitates — creativity for other people. I don't think I see it as much as a vehicle for my own self-expression. I don't use that much code in my own music per se, but with my coding practice and the projects I'm involved with., I'm more about interfaces, you know, things for other people.
KZS: What are the things that have come to you unexpectedly?
PS: I run a studio in central London, and I have for a few years — a music studio. So tThat kind of picked up quite a lot. People were asking me to oversee their projects and songs, and, to oversee their songs, to help with mixing, and recording. That wasn't something that I necessarily put myself out there to do. I didn't advertise it that hard. But in the last six to eight months, that's kind of been what's paying me. So that's kind of what happened, this weird surge — that's what I was referring to. I think a lot of freelance work can be quite like that. Just people like asking me to do shit.
KZS: Are you compelled to collaborate? Do you find that to be something resourceful for you?
PS: I've quite a funny relationship to it. When I'm in the studio working on other people's musicand I'm working on other people's music with them, there is collaboration. You'reI think you're having a guess at what their desires are. Does that make sense?
And so identity, in the kind of more formal, artistic collaboration, is a fusion of identities in a way that has happened successfully before.
I did this EP with my friend Cam recently, and that was a real moment of two different approaches, two different perspectives, working each other out.
But I think a lot of the time, the thing that I really do well at is listening, understanding what somebody wants and where they want to be,, where somebody wants to be and facilitating that for them.
I think in the studio or like in any collaborative environment where something's being produced, I think it's helpful to have one person generating and another person shaking their head or nodding, being the filter.
And so I'll let them be discerning. I'll let them be the filter. I'll just throw things at the wall and be the engine in the room.
KZS: You know, there has to be a lot of chemistry to do that kind of stuff. Can you sus that out early on?
PS: No, tTotally, I think for my own stuff, there's a compatibility thing for sure.
I think wWhen working with people, it differentiates a job done from a job that you can feel very proud of and walk away with. That's the relationship that comes through over time.
KZS: You worked with Jawnino, right? The sort of sound that Jawnino has is becoming so emblematic of UK talent right now. I suppose 'It's Cold Out' was maybe more earliery in his career.
PS: Yeah, yeah.
KZS: How did that project come about? And like, what was it like working on something that was sort of entirely new?
PS: So, actually, tthat instrumental started in quite a different context. My friends and I were in a crew — this is another example of me working in units — and it was originally a remix of another person's beat. My friend Oliver, who makes music as Oliver Twist, has a song called 'Ethereal.' And if you go and listen, there's a resemblance. But then I worked on that with my friend Mica [Cold]. We kinda got the basic structure going, and then I finished it up.
The beat was part of our experimental grime thing that we were doing. And tThen I was just posting snippets. Jawnino and I were mutuals. We were kind of in the same milieu; we had friends of friends, and stuff.
He just responded really well to that snippet I posted. And it was quite unceremonious, actually. I just emailed him the beat, and then it came out a few months later.
And then iItt really slowly gained the meaning that it had for people. A lot of people really resonated with it. We were never in the studio together or anything.
KZS: Were you quite involved in the grime scene back then?
PS: That's what started it for me.
That's what took it from what I was saying earlier — going deep, exploring, making sounds, to thinking about songs and composition. Mica heard some stuff and was like, "Can I play this?"
And tThenhen all of a sudden, I had a format. I was given the chance, the option, to comply with a DJ track. Some constraints come with that. You know, tThe intro has to be a regular length, so the DJ isn't surprised when the beat comes in. It has to be long enough so that the DJ can do things with it. That was the beginning for me, for sure.
KZS: Right. How did you start getting into it?
PS: I was already into dubstep. I loved Benga, I loved Digital Mystikz as a young kid. We had it playing in the house, so I gravitated towards it. I was into drum and bass and stuff, but then indie took over.
I'm not sure if we're the same age, but I remember there being a real shift, being 10, 12, and the XX, and the Vamps and Peace and all these bands being something you wanted to be. I was just part of that mass shift, I guess.
I think I heard [JME's] 'That's Not Me' in a Palace Skateboards video, and two months later I shaved my head and was like, 'Yeah, I like grime now' — haha. I think I was 15 or 16.
That's the age when you really start playing with identity and subculture. and stuff.
And I was like, 'Yeahh, this is me.'
KZS: Subculture, especially back then, in London, was way more tribal than it is now. Do you feel like there's been more homogeneity since then? It's mean, it's like almost 10 years since that wave of music really went mainstream.
PS: Yeah, that wave of it for sure. I think it's so interesting that that's how you interpret that.
You know, I'm curious, were you like an indie kid growing up?
KZS: Ha, I listened to a lot of different music growing up. I have two older brothers, one who was really into grime, who would, you know, religiously watch Channel U, and then another brother who was into Midwest emo. Damn, my brothers come from the same place, but they're completely different.
PS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they went down two different paths.
KZS: I feel like I don't know if I see the same for teenagers now. I don't think they have the same, for better or for worse. That feeling of relating to a particular crowd, that belonging. It is a bit homogeneous.
PS: That's so interesting. I kind of interpret that shift that I was describing there as being the 'death of rock' paradigm. The moment I described when Vampire Weekend stopped being as cool.
Then people were into dance music again and into rap and stuff. And that was when, LlLike whene, Rae Sremmurd were coming through, like 'No Type' and stuff. It felt like there was way less emphasis on guitars or, you know, real instruments. That's how I interpret that.
I think there's something to what you're saying. But I also think the writing was on the wall at that time as well. Because I feel like eEven the core-ification that we see now was already at play.
You had Forever 21. If you were pastel goth, if you were grunge, whatever you wanted to be, you were shopping at Forever 21. The homogenisation, the way it sits with me, the way I've passed it out in my head before this conversation, it's as though what we're seeing now is an acknowledgement of how it's all consumption anyway.
Maybe the closest thing to subcultures now is the relationships towards consumption itself, rather than what colour your hair is or something.
KZS: Genres like grime are kind of rooted in a particular locality — specifically in the UK. What do you think about the word 'derivative'? I mean, tThese genres are loaded with such context that we have, for decades, been able to trace back to other roots and evolutions. Looking at the UK's music landscape now, after these shifts we were talking about, do you think that more artists are working towards a derivative of these genres?
PS: Yeah, I think about this a lot, but I don't know if I have anything that original to say about it. There are a lot of nostalgia-bait think-pieces on looking to the future versus looking to the past in music. It's fairly well-served. I think my impulse is to say yes, but I also think that the moment that you write something off is the moment where you fail — and this is true of life as well — as you might be depriving yourself of the opportunity to take something from it, even if you reach the same conclusion. You might think that an aspect is interesting, or its relationship to time.
So, talking about music and culture more specifically, I hate DJ edits. When a DJ is just playing all the songs that you would like. And I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a set where it's Top 40 bangers — time and place, love it.
But if you're gesturing at esotericism or, kind of taste, by making a Baile Funk edit of Nelly Furtado and then mixing it into a Jersey edit of Britney Spears, you're using the songs as vessels.
I could do a really long spiel about this. But the point is, I think that it's very tempting to write these things off.
And sometimes it is just slop. It's okay for it to just be slop. You don't have to force yourself to find some value in it. There might just be something about the way it's being mixed.
It's kinda like how in a dream, the most important thing is not the subject.
It's sometimes what's on the table behind them. Or the shape of the room, or something.
If you're able to un-focus a little bit on the parameters that you would usually use, that's where the real potential for something radical or a new form or something can come out.
You can then exploit it in a way that complies with your mandates of taste or rarefaction or whatever, you know, however you like your flavour.
KZS: Do you think there's a tension between evolving your making and being recognisable?
PS: Yeah, totally. For some reason, whenever I'm judging something from an aesthetic point of view, it's always novelty and originality, which I think is quite modernist, you know, tear up the old world. I think that in itself can become like a weird fetish, you know.
I think my output has been quite — it's one of the reasons I'm called Poundshoppe — like how you go into the pound shop, you don't know what you're gonna get. It's kind of this place where all these things have somehow drifted, kind of like Lidl, whatever they can't sell, or they're trying to get rid of in the factories and shit.
And so, my output's definitely — especially comprehensively, looking at the entire thing — a bit random.
I guess those are just my demons, and I just kinda have to live with them.
I think I'm working on something now that's a bit more…
For example, as a DJ, if you say, "I DJ this, I am a jungle DJ," it's so much easier for you to be interpreted by someone and say, "Okay, I can use you for this," which is so useful, it's so important.
And you can have other shit going on, but if you lead with that, it's really helpful for you and for the person who's trying to work out what to do with you.
So I'm trying to get into that mode a little bit. I'm still compulsive, the thing I'm going for, you can't really articulate anyway. I'm trying to go for some recognisability and consistency.
KZS: Do you think a lot about your audience, or do you think about other people's audiences when you work with them?
PS: Yeah, absolutely. If you're thinking about aesthetics, you're thinking about who it's gonna resonate with. A lot of conversations while working will be, "How does this make you feel?" But also, "What side is this bringing out? Who could?" And with a specific artist, it's not, "oh, let's go do a pop track."
It's more of a game of retention and push and pull. Maybe I'll show you what you might want and then give you something that you're not expecting, so you're confronted with something.
With me personally, it's always gone back to me in my room, enjoying, toying about with sound.
My output over time has been quite formless, 'cause the final form doesn't matter as much as the process of finding sounds and making them and arranging them.
So it's quite weird, it's quite a fraught relationship. And it's obviously always in response to things that I'm hearing and stuff.
KZS: What's your relationship with risk or control?
PS: What a great question. This question kind of made me think about my earlier answer, how it's always about the sounds that I'm making, 'cause I think that's true about the very embryonic stage of like each song.
But also in my career, where I didn't even choose to start releasing or making music public, someone else was like, "Oh, this is cool."
As soon as I was aware of a audience, another component is that, and this is why it works so well: I have one side where it's just sounds and just whatever I'm feeling like in that moment, but with the awareness of audience, another contingent comes in — which is kind of what I am — as I feel quite strong in helping other people because I'm guessing at what they might want.
And so even my output, I put out a string of singles in 2019, 2020, which to me were like pop singles or kinda more audience-/commercially-minded things.
But then it's kinda like minimising risk, you know, every time it's different, I treat each instance as a different process that ends up in a completely different place.
I think right now, I come to a place where I can see the arc, where it's taking me, and say, "This is kind of what I want to say now instead."
A big part of that is relinquishing control and embracing risk, then not putting so much emphasis on any one expression or attempt.
My hope going forward is that it will reach where it needs to reach.
And because I feel quite insured against this, because I've got different things going on, I'm producing funk for Brazilian artists, I'm doing audio work for people, I don't need to put so much weight on any individual thing. That opens things up in quite a nice way.
KZS: There's a timer threatening me, saying two minutes left. We can renew the call if you like.
PS: Yeah, I think so. I'll do that.
KZS: I'll send it to you, alright, okay, in a bit, in a sec.