Interview: Serebii Speaks About New Album 'Nothing Grows Here'

Tāmaki Makaurau producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Callum Mower has been quietly building the Serebii project across a run of records that move fluidly between electronic production, neo-soul and chamber-pop. Now operating independently, Mower's new record Nothing Grows Here was assembled across his home studio and Chapel Studios in Puhoi, with live contributions from drummer Harper Wilson and a rotating cast of collaborators. Interviewer Johnny Smith (Phys Ed / Washwerld Prod.) caught up with Callum ahead of a small run of local release shows – and, it turns out, ten days before he leaves for London...

Serebii
Nothing Grows Here Album Release Tour

Saturday 30th May - Double Whammy, Auckland
Friday 5th June - Vogelmorn Upstairs, Wellington
Saturday 6th June - Space Academy, Christchurch

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Johnny Smith: So Callum – bass, keys, clarinet, drums, percussion, vocals, written, recorded, produced and mixed. You do it all. Where did the love of music start?

Serebii: Oh, that's extremely flattering. I'm not so good on certain things like drums – I'm by no means a session musician at all those things, but I can play them enough to pull off songwriting and recording in this little studio setup. But thank you. For me, it would have started with singing and dancing, and then clarinet. But then it went into guitar from there – strings maybe came after those first three. I loved to dance and sing when I was a kid, and as I got older I got more interested in guitar and bass.

I think dancers make the best music because they know what people want to move to, you know?

Yeah, I sometimes get these videos of dancers, they'll be dancing to my stuff or sending me a proposal to do choreography. It's something I'm quite fascinated in. It's a great art form.

I noticed East Abernathy made the artwork for your 2023 album Inside – he's a friend of mine, and it was a reminder of how small the New Zealand creative scene is. What was working with him like, and what do you enjoy about working creatively in New Zealand?

I love that. East did my first two albums' artwork and working with him is awesome. He's playful and nostalgic and has a really fun process — it can be like digital, but it's quite often rendered through physical things like textured paper and lots of scanning, and he kind of plays with things to get this almost tactile, textured result. I don't know what he does exactly, but I really enjoy his artwork and he always seems to find a way to represent the music and sum it up in a piece of artwork.

It's nice being able to work with people in Auckland and around Aotearoa. I try to collaborate quite a bit, but with friends I find it easier because there's obviously an established connection. Sometimes with this new record I've tried reaching out to DJs and all sorts of people – a lot of people just seem to leave things too long and not reply, and I just don't have the patience. I've not enjoyed that so much recently, but previously in the last few records it's been great.

It feels like everyone in the creative fields is sort of shrinking away from each other in New Zealand at the moment. Your album is poignantly titled Nothing Grows Here – and while I know it's not specifically about people moving overseas, a title can work in multiple ways. Have a lot of your close collaborators left, or wanted to?

Some of my good friends have left and are leaving pretty soon, and it is encouraging. I'm moving to London in 10 days, I think. So I'm actually not far off. I'm gonna miss Aotearoa. I love being able to call this home. It's a privilege to be born here and based here, it's incredible. But it will be nice to go and soak up some stuff overseas.

This is almost like a farewell for you, touring this album in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington over these three dates before you head over.

Yeah, small tour, just a little tour to celebrate, say goodbye for the foreseeable.

That's really special because like you said, we're privileged to call Aotearoa our home and I think your music reflects what's so beautiful about Aotearoa, the natural beauty of it. Your new album sounds very meticulously produced but still organic. What's your approach to making electronics and everything sound organic in your productions?

I had this pretty basic entry-level synth I got a couple of years ago and I was a lot of the time trying to get bird sounds out of it. You can get these bleeps and put lots of reverb on them and kind of get naturey sounds out of a synth, which I thought was kind of ironic.

I guess similar to working with East – that's why we enjoy each other's company – it's just being able to have a space where you can search for little gold nuggets and just play and enjoy yourself. That's one of the benefits of a home studio, the lack of pressure.

And then for the first time I went to a studio in Puhoi called Chapel Studios and recorded with the band I play live with. I tend to do a lot of the work on my own, but in this record there's a lot of live drums from Harper Wilson, and a few tracks with bass from Tom Dennison and Harrison Scholes — and I'm playing on a bunch of them too, with Rory Johns, Francesca Parussini and J.Y (Lee) — so there is collaboration within the live band. That was really special.

I was actually a little shocked. I reached out to some DJs hoping to do a dance remix series, but most of them didn't know how to make music. I just kind of assumed they did, but they're obviously more like selectors.

Yeah, a lot of DJs, not a lot of producers [laughs].

I'm learning that now. I'm actually quite interested in DJing with a sampler and some pedals, syncing things to the sampler as the main controller and still being able to perform but also DJ. I think economically it's the right move at the moment, hence why I'm playing Wellington and Christchurch solo. It's really nice just organising yourself. I'm self-managed, and as much as it's a pleasure working with a band, it's also incredible to just try and do a solo show.

That's maybe the benefit of being able to pick up a lot of different instruments and use them to write your own songs. Your output is pretty prolific over the past six or so years – almost releasing a body of work every year. You find it a little bit easier that way?

Yeah, I do. I find doing most things on my own is just a lot easier, and that's what I've practiced. Most of my skills aren't in a live context, but if I'm able to rehearse a lot on my own or with a band, I have no problem performing and being present and having a good time. But when it comes to being in a recording session and improvising, I'm definitely no jazz student or graduate.

It takes a level of comfortability, finding that chemistry with musicians. It's a niche within a niche to find the people that you really click with and are able to make songs with easily.

Absolutely, yeah. And this record, you kind of touched on it earlier, the title — it definitely hints at that idea of moving and leaving a lot of what's familiar to see some growth. I was making it around the time I decided I wanted to leave New Zealand for a few years, and also my frustrations. I've been doing this for about 10 years or more, building up a project that people respect, but within a system that isn't financially sustainable. That became a tension I was harping on a lot about in the record. Between that and leaving, there was some kind of message in there, but it's all open to interpretation.

I love the last track, 'Gohan'. It's like a semi-delirious, groovy post-album limbo after going through the short tunnel-like passage of 'Big Fleece'. How easily did the tracks fit together? Did you have to record anything new to make things fit?

I didn't set out to make an album this time, you know. For the previous two I wanted to make an album, but for this one I'd actually planned on just releasing a single. This is my first independent release. I'd previously released with a record label [Innovative Leisure] from around 2021 until December last year, and I waited out an exclusivity term, so I couldn't release independently until that was up. I was making singles and prepping to release those from basically Christmas, and when I got to Christmas Day I basically had seven or eight tracks and was like, oh, I should try to work these together.

Like 'Big Fleece' and there's one called 'With Jono'. Those were little sections of unfinished songs I picked up and dug up again, and they were kind of perfect to break up tracks and bridge into another song. That helped.

Around the end of December I was really trying to just tie it off and make it feel cohesive, so there was a lot of massaging. I think 'Gohan' being right on the end of the album, it felt like the only place for it. It's kind of more funky and quite a lot more live, and I struggled to place it anywhere else.

It's always a little tricky. Each song was approached differently so it can be hard to make them feel like they're from the same cloth. But they are all made within a certain chapter, so that's what ties them together. Maybe sonically it was more the challenge.

Before I wrap up – on the second track you use a voice note from your friend Chris Jackson. Are you a bit of a voice note collector?

There's always something. I leave my voicemail to build up quite a bit, and whenever I go through it there's always something that gets recycled. I'm yet to open the full archive. For my live sets I've got a few I'm going to try out in front of the audience and see how that's received.

'Nothing Grows Here' is out today on major streaming platforms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.