Name: Joseph Shabason
Nationality: Canadian
Occupation: Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, mixing engineer, saxophonist
Current release: Joseph Shabason's Welcome To Hell is out October 20th 2023 via Western Vinyl.
Recommendations: The album: Count Basie Live At Newport; The Book: The Kindly Ones

If you enjoyed this Joseph Shabason interview and would like to keep up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.

For a deep dive into Joseph's work as a session musician for Destroyer, or The War on Drugs, go here.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

If I really love the music my whole body tingles … but generally speaking I listen to music either walking or running or in the car. I don’t see anything but I find myself thinking a lot about what’s going on and how they got the sounds that they did. It kinda engages a hyper critical part of my mind.

I think that’s why I initially got into ambient music … it was the first genre of music that my mind let me to listen to without always being so critical. It was able to just be wallpaper and I loved it for that.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

My very first steps in music were taking recorder lessons at the age of 5. I had an old German teacher with terrible breath who would constantly teach me how to breathe properly by blowing her musty breath in my face. That smell is seared on to my brain.

Not sure how I would rate the gains I made thorough that experience … but I am grateful to have started learning music at a young age.

I do think that being an artist can be learned. I had to learn how to be an artist. When I was younger, I aspired to be the leader of a wedding band and teach music lessons and my only measure of success was financial stability. My parents are the children of Jewish immigrants, and they approached all things from a very practical and pragmatic standpoint … even a career in music.

I don’t think I really even started thinking about approaching music from an artistic standpoint until I was much older. My calculous was always just doing whatever I had to in order to make a living. Once I started playing in bands and watching those artists make music I started to learn from them and the way the approached a career in music.

I think my mindset started to shift and so did the way I approached being an artist. TBH I don’t even think I considered what I did “art” until I was in my 30s. That feels fucked but it’s true.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Music was the same to me then as it is now for the most part. I was playing in punk and emo bands and learning how to play jazz and for the most part music was a creative outlet and also a deep source of community and learning. The shows we set up and the community of bands and music fans we were always around were so important to my young self. Truly formative.

As an adult, music does the same things for me that it did back when I was a kid: It allows me to be part of a wonderful community and a gives me a constant creative outlet that feels challenging and fulfilling and fun.

Now I have to make a living off of music so my priorities have changed slightly …. but at its core music still fulfils the same role in my life that it did when I was younger.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Compulsion. If I don’t create music I go crazy. I have wild ADHD and making music and learning how to engineer and mix really calms that down. When I don’t have my musical routine in my life I feel pretty listless. Most of the time creating music is not at all romantic or inspired … it just comes from constantly doing it and being present when something cool or interesting happens.

I also have young children so from 10-4:30 every day I get to go to the studio and be an individual that is separate from being a parent. I really can’t tell you how much I cherish that time to myself and how it allows me to be a better parent. When I didn’t have that separation during Covid I lost my mind …

So yeah, creativity for me just comes from constantly being around and listening to music and instruments and building that time to work and experiment into my daily routine.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you describe the sound you're looking for?

I think that ideally I try and approach my own albums from that standpoint … but I can also get lost in the minutia of being too hyper critical of my own playing. With other players I can be really great at zooming out and seeing how their contributions fit into the larger picture of a record.

With my own playing I feel like every single note I play sounds like dogshit so a lot of the time I can’t see the woods from the trees. I’m getting better at being gentler on myself but it’s hard.

As far as an overall sound that I am looking for goes, I think I just wanna make something that feels different and interesting that I haven’t heard before. There isn’t one thing that I am after other than a record being something that I would want to listen to.

Are you acting out certain roles or parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? If not, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I am hopelessly unable to act. I can’t be anything but myself. I have tried and failed many times. This is true for actual acting as well as musical acting. Being something other than myself always feels disingenuous and weird. I love so many musicians who occupy an assumed role or narrative for their albums but it’s just not something I can do.

My approach to music is basically: “I wanna make something that me and my friends would think is cool”. That’s it. If my friends like my music than I am good. When I’m writing a song I will often think to myself “ What would Thom do here” or “would “Kieran like this beat”.

Sometimes it’s actually a bit destructive because I am holding myself to an impossibly high standard that those people wouldn’t even hold me to … but generally speaking it has served me well.

Music is a language, but like any language, it can lead to misunderstandings. In which way has your own work – or perhaps the work of artists you like or admire - been misunderstood? How do you deal with this?

I can only speak for myself … but I truly love musical misunderstandings. I love someone getting it wrong and thinking my music is about something completely different than what it’s actually about. All of those fucked up misunderstandings mean that my records will mean totally different things to different listeners and even if they get it “wrong” it will still be right to them.

Nothing feels more boring than a clearly defined narrative that has no room for misinterpretation or misunderstanding.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness as things become more professionalised and how do you still draw surprises from equipment, instruments, approaches and formats you may be very familiar with?  

Always collaborate!!!! Force yourself out of your comfort zones and the results will be amazing. If you are working with musicians who you love and who push and challenge you, the sense of playfulness and discovery will always be there.

Same goes for instruments … If you can’t play and you don’t have some you can call on to play it, try and learn it yourself. Your fucked up version of a take might be so much more interesting than someone doing it who is proficient on the instrument. It also might suck … but it’s cool that you tried.

Generally speaking tho, I would be nothing without my musical collaborators.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Good question! I think the most moving experiences I have had with non-musical sound have been the way that using those sounds in music completely transforms the way a song can feel. You are instantly brought to a physical or emotional place that frames the song in a way that never would have been possible without that non-musical recording.

TBH I wouldn’t describe them as musical at all because there is no musical intent behind what is happening …. but the way that they can be transformed into something musical is one of the great joys of making music that involves field recordings or interviews.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in numbers, from waveforms via recommendation algorithms up to deciphering the code of hit songs. What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

Fuck, this comment is way beyond my paygrade. I interact with music in such a completely different way so I don’t feel qualified to answer it.

I think what will happen with music because of how it’s being quantified is both exciting and terrifying and I am very anxious to see how it all turns out.

But what can and can’t be captured by numbers is a mystery to me. In 50 years I think this world will be so vastly different and technology will be exponentially more powerful and who the fuck knows what wild shit will be possible because of the quantification of music.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I try and make music in a way that feels sustainable and joyful and playful. That is also how I try and live my life.

I really only care about jokes and friends and family and having fun and I want to engage with those things for as long as humanly possible. I am not angsty or tortured by the music I make. I just wanna make music with my buds and laugh while we do it and make fun of ourselves and then all go eat food and drink together. It all feels very wholistic.

I think we can definitely learn lessons about life by trying to understand music on a deeper level. Not because music necessarily provides the answers but because in trying to understand it forces you to really think about something in a deep way. Whatever conclusions you come to will change you in some way.

It’s forcing you to try and empathise with someone’s experience for the length of a song and in doing that I think it will change you. Sometimes immediately and other times very slowly.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold from your point of view? What role do headphones play for you in this regard?

I think that because I work in the studio so much making records and scoring that I very much value silence. There are a lot of times when the last thing on earth that I want to hear is more music.

That said, I very much value my mornings at the gym or on a run when I get to put on my Bluetooth headphones and actively listen to new music. I have a thread with my friends where we all recommend new songs and albums to each other and I just dig into those records and listen very actively and write to them about what I think of the records.

So yeah, it’s a balancing act for sure but generally I am surrounded by sound and music most of the day and I am grateful that that’s my reality.  

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Making a great cup of coffee is like being a plumber. You are essentially a trades person. There is a lot of creativity and thought and skill put into those professions … but performing a song or making a record is far more collaborative and intricate. It’s also so much less precise.

The beauty in music comes from the idiosyncrasies of each player and how they interact with each other … which to me feels very different than something mundane.

That said, music can become mundane and wrote when you tour the same set for months and months without much variation and these days I try my hardest to not get into those situations because it feels really creatively stifling.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values which don't appear to have any emotional connotation. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a seemingly counterintuitive way – and what, do you think, is happening here?

I can’t say that I do … the songs that make me feel that way are usually doing what they are intended to do. So it’s nothing out of the usual

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I would like pop music and the music industry to prioritize bands that take risks. I feel like there has been a general move towards musical homogeny and it bums me out.

No part of me is disparaging of pop music … but I do long for the days where weird-ass bands like Talk Talk and Steely Dan get major label deals and major label support.