Gab Strum is a soft spoken, slightly goofy, but very nice 17-year-old year 12 student. Like a lot of teenagers who aren’t on the football team he’s a little awkward, but in the way that means he’ll be very desirable at university. On the weekend, when his dad is convinced he’s finished his school work, he’s also Japanese Wallpaper. One of Australia’s most interesting, and immediately lauded electronic artists. With over 12 thousand Facebook fans and 15 thousand Soundcloud followers, you get the sense his mates don’t quite metabolise how much the community has embraced him. But it doesn’t bother Gab. All he wants is to control the music at the next high school house party.
Hey Gab, how’re you going balancing school with your up-and-coming music career?
It’s alright. I feel like if I didn’t have all of this music stuff going on it would be really unbearable. But it’s just a really nice distraction to focus on.
Are your parents on you to make you focus?
Yeah, always. Especially my Dad, he’s very like, “school first, then everything else afterwards.” But that’s cool. I think I need someone to be on me like that. If I didn’t have my parents or school saying, “you’ve got to do this stuff” I’d be doing music all the time. Which I’d love, but you know, I’ve got to do Year 12.
It’s weird because everyone is probably theorising what they want to do in the future, but you can see clearly what next year will look like.
Everyone’s pretty scared about how their grades are and getting into uni and stuff. I still want to do a uni degree in something, I’m not really sure. But if all else fails-not if all else fails-but ideally I want to be doing music full time.
Do your mates get what you do on the weekends?
Some people at school think I’m a DJ and are like, “Why aren’t you playing at Stereosonic?” But that’s alright. I guess most of the people my age aren’t really into the music I’m into. Maybe one day they’ll be like, “Oh maybe he wasn’t that big nerd for like 13 years”.
Do people always ask you to DJ their parties?
I’m usually the one to be like, “can I put some music on, let me show you this sick thing that I’ve found”. But I don’t do it anymore because everyone is annoyed by it.
Obviously your age is the first thing people focus on, do you think when you are 21 or 25 it will change the way people listen to your music? They’re listening to a boy wonder at the moment.
Sometimes I get scared by that. I definitely think my earliest demos that got attention online a few years ago, if I was 19 or 20 no one would have paid any attention. From that perspective I’m lucky there was something that made people want to listen and talk about it.
I remember at the start I made a few demos and put them up on Soundcloud to show my friends and then didn’t log in for another six to eight months and there were a whole lot of messages and notifications and stuff. Maybe that’s not the best way to start a music career.
Do you think your music is different because you don’t have this experience of going out to bars or clubs and hearing other DJs play?
I think so. That whole making music to make people dance stuff seems pretty foreign to me because I’ve never been in that situation. Now I’ve been doing some shows it gets boring watching people stand there just listening. It started me thinking about maybe changing things up for future releases. Not making a dance record, but guys like Washed Out and Caribou have a really good mix between an album you can sit and listen to and also translates.
Is your Wallpaper persona part of the music you make for school, or is that like a totally separate project?
Not at all, it’s a jazz trio. It’s weird, I feel like the reverse is happening, the more time I spend practicing my instruments, working on my musicality away from the computer, that translates into my writing. There’s this Melbourne band called I’lls that I really like, those guys are jazz musicians that now all hate jazz and never ever play it. I feel like the more I learn about different styles of music and practice, it all translates into writing and playing regardless of the style.
Credits
Text Wendy Syfret
Image via abc.net.au