We had the privilege of chatting with Auckland-based alternative artist Zaidoon Nasir, the man behind WHO SHOT SCOTT, an incredibly talented performer playing at this year’s CubaDupa…
How would you describe your music?
The music is my own personal soul expression. Weird, intuitive thoughts that have come from the deep, dark parts of my soul essentially. Instrumentally as well as lyrically.
What are your main influences?
I am really influenced by stuff I listened to growing up. So like, stuff that feels nostalgic to me. I find myself when I am creating and writing music, a lot of the decisions that feel good instinctually are the ones that have this sense of nostalgia or almost child-like wonder. So, while I’m not actually going out of my way to look for influences and referencing songs necessarily, it is happening naturally. I’m guessing a lot of alt rock from the early 90s, punk, hip-hop, alt hip-hop, all of that meshed into my personal expression.
What are you listening to at the moment?
For the last day I have been listening to this song, I swear I have listened to it like twenty times now, ‘Princess Going Digital’ by Amaarae. It’s like an RnB, more like Dancehall sort of song, which I never usually listen to.
Any releases in the works?
Oh yeah, we got music coming out very soon, international and local. A few more singles and an EP this year. There will definitely be some new music to play at CubaDupa.
What do you do other than make music?
I’m such a boring dude, all I do is just listen to music, make music. I guess I watch a lot of films, it’s my secondary love if you can call it that. Sometimes it feels like it’s the primary love in my life. But yeah, cinema, film music, just sort of occupies all the space in my brain. And then other than that, I feel like I’m eating and exercising, doing everything in my life just to maintain this body so that I can continue to consume and create. I’m at a stage in my life of all-in devotion to the arts.
What kind of films are you into?
I’m notorious for the rewatch. When I like something, I watch it a million times. But generally the films I gravitate towards are Stanley Kubrick films, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese’s new film was really good. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in the cinema recently, that was very cool.
Have you spent much time in Wellington?
I have been to Wellington a few times but this will be my first time playing there. We did an Australia and New Zealand tour last year, but funnily enough Wellington was the one main city that we didn’t go to so this feels super overdue. At the same time it feels right that it’s at CubaDupa. I’ve seen that we have a pretty good set time, so it’s going to be a good debut into the Wellington experience.
How do you go about collaborating?
I love to collaborate, for me I want it to be as natural and fluid as possible. I’ll often do sessions with artists and feel it out for a few before making a final decision of whether I can devote all of myself to it. I have been blessed to have met some really cool artists here in Auckland. My process is really not so much about where they are at in their career whether I work with them or not, it’s more like if I feel that there’s like a genuine chemistry there. That we are both sort of pushing and extending ourselves to create something larger than us and that there’s no egos in the room. But yeah that’s the only criteria I have, I try to keep it as open as possible. It has to feel right though.
If you could work with anybody, who would it be?
Are we talking ‘of all time’ here? I mean, I would love to work with Rick Rubin one day, I read into his philosophies a lot. Other than that, these days I love Tame Impala, Blur, Gorillaz, I’ve been really into King Krule lately. It would be an honour to work with any of them.
Have you had any inspiring moments with music recently?
Yeah, last year I was on tour in Brisbane, and it was the first time in my life where it felt like the whole crowd knew the lyrics to one of my songs, and they were singing it back to me. I was thinking about it this morning actually, how surreal it is that you write something in your bedroom or whatever, and it’s an experience I have only had once but it must be crazy for real big artists. It was really cool, kind of like an ego death. It felt like the song wasn’t my possession, it was more like a thing, an entity and we were all sort of sharing it in that moment. As opposed to it being my song and me performing it, it felt like the crowd had taken ownership as well. Which is really interesting, I’m definitely not used to it at all.
Be sure to check out Zaidoon and his music here: https://linktr.ee/whoshotscott
Interviewer: Destin Finn