Not many producers admit to being to being too shy to play their own music live. Especially those of the musical calibre of Reggie ‘Ta-Ku’ Matthews, who is releasing a unique blend of future soul beat-tapes and EPs out of Perth that get global recognition, as well as collaborating with the likes of Melbourne vocalist Chet Faker, among many others. Whilst his latest EP ‘Late-NYC’ takes inspiration from New York and slow laptops, his music has a distinctly mellow hip-hop meets dusty soul record sound. He speaks to ACCLAIM about the online world of music, Dilla-esque beats and how Australia’s beat scene is growing.

For our readers that don’t know, could you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

I go by the artist name of Ta-Ku. I’m a beat maker and a producer. I’ve been making beats for about five years now, based out of Perth, Australia. My music is pretty much hip-hop, but electronic based, and more instrumental.

You recently released Late NYC, judging by the title it was inspired by your trip to NYC…?

I basically went to New York to visit friends, but had a few gigs and radio spots lined up, and I’m also working with a label out in LA called HW&W Records. So while I was there I created the EP as lead up to the LP launch. It’s actually supposed to be called ‘late-n-cy’, because I created it solely on my laptop which is really slow, but no one really got it and just calls it ‘Late-NYC’ – the play on words didn’t really catch on.

(laughs) Oh, I get it now, I thought it was weird how it was all one word –

Yeah, you’re supposed to switch the letters around. No one got it!

Obviously NYC has a lot more going on than Perth, but your beats often have a laid-back, mellow tempo, but do you think that is influenced at all by being specifically Australian?

I think the vibe is influenced by Perth and living in Australia. I’m also Maori and Filipino, which are pretty laid back cultures too. So I think that’s part of my personality, I guess. Being chilled. Perth is pretty slow.

Is there much of a scene for your music in Perth?

For beats, not really. But it’s growing I hope. There’s a few cats out here that are making pretty good stuff, Melbourne and Sydney have a stronger beat-culture. But we’re getting there. Australia as a whole, I think, is growing with regards to smaller scenes for music.

One of your tracks Mahal features Melbourne’s Chet Faker – how did that come about?

Me and Chet met on the internet, actually, on Soundcloud. So we’d been fans of each other’s music for a while. I sent him a track just before I left for New York and he sent it back to me while I was over there. I was really excited when I heard it – he’d done an incredible job. We’ve actually got an EP coming up, that we’re releasing on an Australian label, of work together.

You’ve released a lot of your music online for free, is the intention ‘just getting it out there’ -?

I’ve always been a strong believer in online music culture. I feel like Australia has no real presence when it comes to online music. It can be overshadowed by louder English and American producers. People here can be a bit foreign to the whole ‘blog’ thing – where you can hunt for music that’s never going to get radio play – and there’s just so many websites and blogs where you can actually find music that you’ll love and download for free. Being a big listener as well as a maker of music means I enjoy doing that. There’s just so much out there, you just have to look. And I wouldn’t want people to have to buy my music unless they really enjoyed it. I find that releasing music for free helps our particular scene to grow.

Is that how you got your start?

I mean that’s how I made all of my contacts, through following blogs and writing to music labels. My first release actually wasn’t even on Soundcloud, it was a physical release – it sounds strange now – it didn’t have much hype about it at all, and when I got back from Red Bull it went online and it got a bit more notice. But everyone is online anyway, it’s the just the mentality that the music industry has, and you have to be where everyone already is.

You have just been featured on Do the Dilla – a tribute collection for the late J Dilla along side Mr. Dibiase and Elaquent, and also an official Dilla Foundation tribute mix with the likes of Flying Lotus and Oddisee, how did those come about?

Well, I basically got hit up for tracks for the people that were creating them. The first, Do the Dilla, was a compilation that’s run by Feelin’ Music, put together by a guy named Chief out in Switzerland. He’s a good online friend – we’ve never met – (laughs) – but we’re close ‘internet’ friends. He asked me to put forward a track, which I was more than happy to do. The second one, A Tribute to James Dewitt Yancey, I was approached by DJ House Shoes, after he’d heard the 50 Days of Dilla I’d been working on, on my Soundcloud and asked if I’d do a track for that too.

How did you create the song with Dilla in mind?

That’s the thing, I get a lot of hate from people when I put tracks on a Dilla tribute that doesn’t actually sound like something he would have recorded. But that’s not the point of tributes really, he’s inspired me to make music, so whatever the song, it doesn’t have to be Dilla-esq, or what he would have released, but something inspired by him. I liked to put my own twist on my tracks, no matter what.

I noticed a Twitter you posted about Australia not really supporting its beat scenes… do you have anything to say about that?

I guess it’s just with Australian hip-hop, I can’t say I’m a fan of it, I mean I expect a lot, the guys work really hard on it, and the quality of it is really great, but there’s no real recognition or awareness of the beats behind the music. I think it’s not so much that Australians aren’t knowing about the scene, but not embracing the production or the producer behind the singer or the rapper. I don’t know what it is about Australia – I think we’ll get there. I mean, places like LA, New York, Glasgow – those are the hubs for electronic beat scenes. I’m sure you can see there’s a huge difference between those places and Melbourne, even. I guess Melbourne is picking up, which is great. I’ve seen magazines down there that have even started talking about it, the collectives that are coming out of there are great.

It seems that it can sometimes be limiting to call yourself an ‘Australian producer’ – it’s funny that that has come about.

And a lot of people, artists and fans, are surprised when you say you’re from Australia.  I don’t know why people have that mentality, I mean there are so many talented artists and producers that live here, but they’re just not heard of as much as the musicians in the hubs, like LA. I’d like to see a real push for it – I hate to see people that aren’t getting their music out there.

I mean obviously with artists like yourself, and Jonti who was just signed on Stonesthrow, and it seems like if the more established artists like yourselves, get more recognition in the global beat scene then there’ll be more chance of the smaller producers being heard.

Exactly. There are people in Australia that are doing amazing, incredible things. There’s a guy out in New Zealand who I think, has music on par with people like Flying Lotus and Tokimonsta, but because he’s geographically challenged, and people don’t know much about the New Zealand music scene, he’s limited in that. Which is a shame, really. It’s no one’s fault, either. It’s just the way that new musical advances unravel. I’m sure it will catch up. (laughs) I just hope I’m not dead by then.

With New Zealand though, it seems they seem to get behind their music more.

Yeah, that’s another thing I’ve noticed too. But I think it’s the lifestyle and culture there, the music they were listening to growing up. With the electronic beat scene, it all comes from dub, reggae and soul and motown music, and that’s a lot more prevalent there, than here in Australia. I don’t know if I’m sounding racist (laughs) but I think there’s a lot of kiwis and brown people – I mean, all my cousins back there love the beat scene, because it’s so closely connected to, and a natural progression of what we were growing up with as kids.

Who were the NZ artists you mentioned before?

There’s quite a few – Christoph El Truento, in particular makes really sophisticated beat music.

And you’ve collaborated a lot with international artists, but who would be a dream collab?

I’m a big fan of soul music, and neo-soul, so I would love to work with Eric Roberson and Dwele. The collaborations they worked on with people like DJ Mitsu, I would love to make.

After the release of your latest EPs and the tribute, what’s next for Ta-Ku beats?

There’s the 50 Days for Dilla coming out on wax, through a label in LA. There’s two volumes to be released – there’s one in June. I also have an LP coming out, called Scarlette in August, I think. And the EP with Chet Faker, but I’m not sure when that will be, but I’m sure stations like Triple J will get behind it.

Do you have any tours coming up?

That’s the thing with me; I’m not really a ‘show’ guy. I have to turn down quite a few. I get really bad stage fright.

You prefer making beats in the studio?

I get really nervous when I’m on stage, and things go wrong. Horribly wrong. The last DJ gig I did, nothing would work, and when it did… it wasn’t good at all.

Do you think you’ll work on that or –

Uh, (laughs) nah. I’d like to, I mean, there’s word of Miles Bonny coming to Australia, and I’ve always wanted to do a Miles Bonny/Ta-Ku mini-Australian tour, but if I was to do that, I’d have to get my act together and stop being such a girl. But if that were to happen, it would be at the end of the year, so I have a little bit of time.

For Ta-Ku’s latest releases visit ta-ku.me