10 minutes
AT THE budding age of 18, Shane Kennedy is smoothly starting his ascent in the electronic music scene.
His star is shining, as seen from his work with other artistes both locally and abroad.
The musician, who goes by the stage name Karazey, explained that his journey into his world – everything between EDM and Future Bass – began at the age of 12.
Growing up listening to music online, particularly Martin Garrix’s track Forbidden Voices, Shane was driven to go with the rhythm and craft soundscapes of his own.
The self-taught artiste spoke to theSun about his love for music, and what listeners can look forward to in the genres that he has made his playground.
What spurred you to get into making EDM?
“I think it was the idea that I start with a blank canvas and I can paint any picture I want. That’s an artist thing, that also applies to a musician, I believe.
“Like you start with an empty project, where you don’t have any sounds, any ideas, and you don’t know what it is, but then you start piecing the puzzle together. You get a set of chords, chord progression, the melody and then you begin writing vocals. It becomes a bigger picture.”
Was it hard learning how to do it?
“Yeah, it was quite hard. When I began, I reached out to a lot of artistes on Instagram and texted them like: ‘Yo, can you teach me?’ Being young, I thought they would reply. None of them replied, because they are all big names and have millions of followers.
“From there, I took to YouTube and learned [as much as I could]. The hardest thing was I had no prior musical knowledge, like I did not know how to play instruments. So everything that I learned, like music theory and mastering, was from scratch.”
How do you collaborate with other artistes?
“Each collaboration is very different. Some of the songs, like Through My Mind, was written on a Zoom call. Esty (from the band Once Upon A Time There Was A Sausage Named Bob) reached out to me, and she was like: ‘I want to work on a song’. As we were on the Zoom call, she sent me a vocal demo, and I filled the track.
“The song No Man’s Land with Aishia (singer-songwriter) saw us sitting down during a call, and we wrote it from start to finish. There is stuff like this.
“I have had collaborations where I did not even need to be on the call with the artiste. Like for my recent one with Reya Lun (musical artiste-songwriter), I was unable to be on a call with her because we’re in two different time zones.
“I select people to collaborate with (based on) ... I guess mostly it’s just listening to their music and just vibing with it. Like when I speak to them, there has to be an energy they give off.
“If the energy is good, the music is going to be good as well.”
How do you balance your time as a student and a musician?
“Right now, I’m studying at Kolej Matrikulasi Kelantan. I started a few weeks ago. My classes are from 8am to 4pm, and every two hours, I’ll have an hour’s break. During those breaks, I’ll try my best to finish all the work that I have, to make sure I don’t have anything to do in the evening.
“Some days, I might not be inspired to make music, because I’m tired. I guess what I do is I treat it like a professional job, where I have to show up on a daily basis and try to make something.”
Would you be doing live performances when movement restrictions are lifted?
“That would be a dream come true. It would be surreal. How everything is going is very crazy, because people are listening to my music. When I first started uploading to Spotify, it had like ten streams, and I was happy with that because it was just for my friends.
“When the first song blew up, it went from 10 streams to 10 thousand streams out of nowhere.”
What is your upcoming release?
“My next release is Get It Right with Reya Lun. I’m excited to put this out, because the song is special to me.
