Nathan Shaw left Said the Whale behind for Ekali dreams

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      Six months ago, local electronic music artist Ekali—or Nathan Shaw to his friends—was faced with a tough decision: continue playing bass with Juno Award–winning band Said the Whale, a group gearing up for a new album and accompanying world tour, or quit to pursue his budding career in production. He chose the latter.

      Does he regret it?

      “Not for a second,” Shaw tells the Straight on the line from his Vancouver home. “I’d love to do both projects, but there’s just not enough hours in the day. I was getting tour offers for Asia and Europe, and I’d reached my tipping point. Writing as Ekali is my passion, and I was happy to back myself.

      “Don’t get me wrong,” he continues, “Said the Whale are great. But it’s nice not to have to spend 16 hours a day in a tiny van with the same people for months on end.”

      Shaw’s verdict may have raised a collective groan from Whale fans around the world, but they can rest assured that the choice was far from impulsive. Within a year of taking up producing, Shaw had already been invited to attend the highly prestigious Red Bull Music Academy—an all-expenses-paid trip to Tokyo designed to nurture some of the world’s most talented up-and-coming musicians—and scored two writing credits on Drake’s chart-topping album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. I’ll repeat that. Two writing credits on Drake’s album. On Drake’s album. Drake.

      “I have no idea how it happened,” Shaw says with a laugh. “I wrote a song called ‘Unfaith’, which I uploaded to Soundcloud. About nine months later, I got a random email in my inbox saying ‘Drake has used your song, and he wants to put it out on his record.’ I thought it was a hoax until I actually started negotiating with his lawyers.”

      Now with two years of producing under his belt, Shaw makes it clear that he’s so much more than just a hip-hop producer. Choosing not to recognize genre—“I know less about that than anybody,” he says—Shaw has created a body of work that weaves through a variety of musical styles, tied together by a feeling.

      “Intimate is the one word I would use to sum up my style,” he suggests. “No matter what song I make, whether it’s aggressive or it’s soft, I want to leave a piece of me in that track. I want people to feel that in the music. I don’t want it to be cold and distant, I want it to be warm and close. I’m always aiming for that goal.”

      That’s something the Vancouver native is keen to bring out in his set at Surrey’s FVDED in the Park festival this weekend.

      “I treat this area really carefully,” Shaw says. “This is where I grew up, and it’s a really important market to me. One easy way to ruin it would be to play Vancouver and the cities around it all the time. So I’ve been trying to perform here only once every four months or so and make sure that the emotion really comes across every time I play.

      “After so long on tour, this show is a homecoming for me,” Shaw continues. “I’m looking forward to it so much.”

      Ekali plays at FVDED in the Park at Surrey’s Holland Park on Saturday (July 2).

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