Name: Zied Meddeb Hamrouni aka Shinigami San
Occupation: Composer, sound artist, producer, visual artist
Nationality: Tunisian
Current release: Zied Meddeb Hamrouni is one of the artists contributing to the new V/A - Place: Tunisia compilation which he co-curated with Azu Tiwaline, to be released on Air Texture March 24th 2023.
Recommendations: Music: Jason Moran - From the dancehall to the battlefield; Book: Isaac Asimov - Foundation

If you enjoyed this Zied Meddeb Hamrouni aka Shinigami San interview and would like to know more about his music, follow him on twitter. He also has a profile page with biographical information.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

It should have been be at around the age of 15 or 16. I started playing guitar, influenced by Grunge, Rock … Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain and others, made a shockwave when I discovered them.

If I were to concentrate that link into one word it would be “energy”. Energy that is transferred through music and music being a kind of portal to access it.

I discovered the existence of that link when listened to free jazz, Coltrane, the New Thing movement (another shockwave) and the different aspects of electronic music that came later in my life (other shockwaves).

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I discovered the music from Autechre, which had one of the biggest impacts / influences on my link to music and sound - alongside Hendrix and Coltrane - I witnessed that my brain was transforming sound into shapes. Not so much colors or proper objects. This is how my brain was «understanding» these sounds: turning them into moving or mutating shapes.

At this moment (around 2000s), I was studying architecture and the link with Autechre's music and shapes was a kind of obvious.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

What was really challenging through the years of making music in Tunisia, was the confrontation between an emerging scene and a political cultural position that considers music as fun and not as serious art. Electronic music wasn’t considered as a serious discipline - due to the lack on knowledge and understanding of the implied huge amount of work. The spaces to express your art were quasi non-existent. No concert halls, no serious clubs, etc …

So basically, and following the jazz history and evolutions, I always believed that if we wanted something to happen in Tunisia, we should do it ourselves. Never wait. Never stop.

It is not easy in this country to move constantly in such a mindset. But it does pay off, especially if you drive with you people who believe in your idea and put all the energy they have and more into making it happen.

By doing this, you break the rule of truth that was well spread socially: «It’s Tunisia, we can’t do this.». We do it, not because it’s easy. We do it because we have to.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I never had, and still do not have, a real sense of identity. I discovered later that it was so deeply implemented in my brain that it I couldn’t see it. I discovered after years of making music that my identity was in the way I listen to music and how my brain understands it. It was already in the reception side.

If I tried to approach it, I would say that the way I (as a North African human who was raised listening to local and arabic music) would hear / listen / understand / interpret totally differently the same piece of music - a techno piece for example - than a European person (a white North European human who was raised listening to christian sacral music for example).

From my point of view, the difference is so huge that for the “same” piece of music we both wouldn’t be listening to the same piece of music. We wouldn’t hear the same sounds. We wouldn’t vibrate to the same rhythm because basically we are not hearing the same thing from the same piece.    

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Music has to take you elsewhere. But this elsewhere has to be understandable for the audience. It’s a door to another universe, that is inside the artist and the music is how he invites people into it.

So basically the artist needs to acknowledge that aspect of his «social function» in order to start to build the door to his universe. It is not something easy, especially when you decipher that and cut the link with the magic in doing music with just the energy of making it.

I also believe in the fundamental role of bass and infra bass frequencies and their link with music. This has been revealed by science but also through every music genre, Dubstep, DnB, Gnawa, Jazz, and so on …

Bass is life, right ?   

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Even if I use that term (perfect) a lot when a piece music is amazingly constructed and balanced, it remains under the influence of my love of music. I don’t believe in perfection or timelessness, nor do I believe in innovation or originality. From my point of view, they are just relative concepts to the culture that created them. I don’t really believe in the «Universality» of music either.

There exist some universal aspects to sound for sure, like the impact of infra sound or high pitched ones - but not the music. It is a totally cultural and cultured phenomenon. For example Jimi Hendrix (who is a kind of divinity in music for me) is a genius, but for an non.educated ear, unaccustomed to listening to the blues, he may sound like noise. The same for Autechre or Frank Zappa or Chopin or whatever.

So the appreciation of music depends on the culture. The impact of sound is more universal.  

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I started with guitar. So it remains the fundamental link to music I’l have. Also I discovered and dived deep into modular synthesis and how to approach music that way and it changed a lot for me.

What was challenging is the necessity of moving between platforms (Reason, Live, Bitwig, VCV, Reactor) and finding out why I would use «that» one for «this process» and how «this» tool is the best to make «that» sound.

Also with modular, I started thinking more in a procedural way or a systematoc view and less in a compositional way. I try more to build a system to create that «kind of door» to the audience, rather than proposing different versions of the same door.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Generally waking up early, checking ideas on some screenplays I’m working on while the coffee gets made. Then morning family time and going to work (teaching) or staying home for reading / listening while taking care of my daughter. And then the end of day and work on some aspect of the course or students assignments.

If I’m on a creative project, the planning starts to be a little more rigid, where I would block more moments for work and research, ideas or execution.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I particularly cherish my piece “Coiledscape”, that was an AudioVisual live performance.

I have always been obsessed with the idea of being able to create electronic music as easily as creating a piece on a guitar while improvising. So the challenge was high for me.

It ended up being based on loops from guitar and rythm sections while always starting from a total empty project, a blank canvas with nothing prerecorded. I added to that a video performance that I played alongside the music. It was, always, totally improvised.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I’m more into the solitary aspect these last years. But there’s an internal call (inner voice) to go to the communal activity. I feel the world needs rock n roll bands again!

Listening is a sharing experience and a solitary discipline.  

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

From my point of view, music is a social response to the world. It configures you relationship to the world and is configured by it. So it is not just an entertaining activity but a whole system of relationships that builds society in itself.

And considering that aspect, this would determine if a particular music will resonate with a society or not. Resonating in the way that it is coherent or not with that society’s issues, conditions, situations, history moments, etc …   

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I use music a lot like the I Ching book.

I I ask a question and the resonance with music will provide a kind of answer. Or if find that a music resonates with a particular question, I try to look at it from that perspective.  

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Music and science have always been linked. I never saw a disconnection between both as music uses more and more scientific facts, truths, findings and science produces knowledge that has to resonate with what music is the expression of. Both are linked to something else that is projected into music and that is analyzed by science.

I don’t really believe in magic, just phenomena that current science can’t as yet explain. Music reaches these levels that extend beyond the capacities of human explanation. It connects more dots than the ones science can «see.»

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. 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?

I think creativity is more in the writing than the performing side for a given piece of music. The more improvisation there is, the more reactivity there is.

There’s a lot of creativity in the daily life activities, even the more repetitive ones, and I feel music creation more and more like a daily-life or mundane activity. In the same way, daily activities need creativity in order to be performed under the stress of constantly changing circumstances.

They're not really different structurally. The difference remains in the social impact of every kind of tasks.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Music, like sound is vibrations on the air. But, what affects us as humans is the psychological / emotional impact that it has on us. How we interpret these vibrations and how they change our brains chemically. And this is driven by our cultural background and societal connection.

From my experience, there’s a kind of universality linked to the spectrum of frequency but not the type, genre, origin of the music in itself. And this is inherently linked to our evolutionary path, growing from monkey beings hunted by ancestral tigers, where the sub frequency is either the growling of the tiger or the rumbling of the earthquake that is coming right after that. In our modern societies we have lost the sensitivity to these frequencies and become more focused on the middle of the spectrum, the voice and we've become more anthropocentric.

When listening to fully charged sub bass musics (old school dubstep, dub music, drum n bass, African music, etc … ) I believe we regain a certain connection to the origins and to the earth / ground as an essential and vital primary aspect of our condition of existence.