Producer, Local Rappers Meet In The Cloud, Create Street Smart Beats
One evening last winter as Newtown High School graduate and aspiring rapper Mason West — a/k/a Stirling DuBois — was sitting in his dorm room at the University of Vermont surfing Soundcloud looking for inspiration and possible collaborators, he discovered not one, but two protégés right back here at his own alma mater.
Enter two current NHS seniors: rapper Chris Daly and producer Zach Aumueller.
“I saw Chris and Zach were both mutual fans of a group called Solar,” West recalled. “Then I heard some of the beats Zach was creating and thought they were sweet, so I got in touch.”
That rhythmic attraction resulted in West’s first project, called The Complex EP — executive produced by his newfound creative co-pilot Aumueller.
“Before I worked with Zach, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I sort of lacked focus,” West admitted. “Zach made a huge difference in my delivery. He really helped me define a style that was a good fit for the lyrics, and he helped me understand the kind of work I needed to do to get my material heard.”
Thanks to that project, West says he now has a “small but buzzing fan base and am beginning to book [live] shows of my own.”
Over the past decade, West said his musical tastes drifted toward the hard-rhyming urban sound of rap and hip-hop.
“I was following independent hip-hop artists, and thought that I might want to be a rapper,” West said. “But I knew I was trying to break into a field that is not exactly dominated by Caucasian performers.”
Aumueller was in a similar position, producing beats and electronic patterns with nobody knocking down his door to feature those musical creations as part of a larger project.
“When you create these beats, you really need more than one person to be successful,” Aumueller said.
While he was working with West, Aumueller was also helping fellow NHS senior Daly put his rhymes to music.
“Chris is a little different because he and Zach work together through the entire creative process,” West said. And as he began developing a relationship with Daly, West learned the local senior had a broad a range of exposure to urban music as he did.
“Besides rap, I like contemporary punk — it still influences what I do from an energy level,” West said. “But as I got to know Chris, I started listening to some of the groups that influenced him — he really turned me on to bands like A Tribe Called Quest.”
Demo Due Soon
Now the three are collaborating on West’s planned 12-song demo, which has already yielded several releases sampled on his Stirling DuBois SoundCloud site.
“Our ultimate plan is to generate a project together,” West said. “I’m pretty far along on my new project, Newsubject, but I’m featuring Chris on at least one song so far called ‘Beautiful Juvenile.’”
Aumueller said while the three creative individuals continue to produce output independently, they have struck up an informal partnership that serves and supports their solo and collaborative work.
“We don’t make all of our songs together but when we do collaborate, it works because we’re all coming from the same place,” Aumueller said.
“It’s basically a new movement we’re creating,” West added, “creating a kind of music that is mostly outside our wheelhouse.”
Aumueller said having West to bounce ideas off of is valuable.
“When you play demos to your friends in high school, you’re getting feedback from friends, but it’s not as helpful from a creative standpoint as what I’m getting from Mason, artist to artist,” Aumueller said. “Sometimes we’re afraid people like this first single with Chris because they know us. The trick is getting people to listen who don’t know us.”
Daly said he is sometimes anxious to put out new material for his friends to hear, but he is learning to pace himself by working with Aumueller and West.
“We want everyone to hear it, but it’s more important to put out a quality product, even if it takes a little longer to work on it,” Daly said.
“Chris has a different kind of voice that’s challenging to find the right mix for,” Aumueller said.
Prepping For Gigs
Up at school in Burlington, Vt., West hangs with a classmate who is interested in the business side of music, and who is working as an ad-hoc manager helping him secure bookings. And while West is taking things slowly, he feels he has something to offer in the rhymes inspired almost exclusively by real life situations and relationships.
“Everything I try to create is real,” West said. “My mom passed away when I was younger and I spent a lot of time dealing with her absence. So music for me is part of filling that hole missing in my life.”
Another West/DuBois song, “Day Drink” was directly inspired from his more recent experiences in a college fraternity.
“It’s the culmination of what goes on in that scene including one particular encounter that felt magical when we were both under the influence, but not so much after,” West said.
Daly finds himself influenced by early hip-hop, and he tends to craft his songs focusing on the relationship between syllables, alliteration and rhymes.
“I treat the words very precisely. Songwriting is a very methodical process for me,” Daly said. “Slick Rick got me into writing, but newer artists like MF DOOM are huge influences as far as how I write my lyrics.”
“I’m more new age and Chris is more old school,” West said. “I can’t do that stuff he does.”
Aumueller says he creates beats and music tapping pop influences, while Daly provides complex word patterns and technical rapping skills he has developed.
“I love hip-hop and I just want to play a part in bringing that style to new audiences,” Daly said. “I don’t try to make it therapeutic, but I feel good when it’s happening. When so many kids aren’t doing anything, I get a real sense of satisfaction and purpose in the creation of art.”
The trio may not be ready to look at themselves as a 21st Century alternative to the Beastie Boys, but imagining what they are capable of when the three Newtown rappers get into the same studio at the same time is a tantalizing musical prospect that could develop significant traction in 2015.
Follow Mason West/Stirling DuBois at:
Facebook.com/StirlingDuBois; Twitter.com/StiRdubois; Soundcloud.com/stirling_musik; and Youtube.com/StirlingMusik.
View Chrs Daly’s Zach Aumueller-produced “Drastic Measures” official video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHCeUETZ2Gw