Since bursting onto the scene with his debut EP a few years ago. Chasm is a name that has remained in the minds of hip hop heads chasing something different. While many choose classic US samples along with funk and soul snippets, Chasm is a big fan of reggae and all its sub genres. As he says himself, when asked what his new Beyond The Beat Tape release means to him (both figuratively and literally), it’s all about taking the beats further.

“No more free beats, no more slinging beat CDs to different people, but instead focusing and putting together a collection of my stuff and making my own full-length album. Trying to take things to the next level.”

And this approach was best illustrated on the album from Astronomy Class, a group that sees Chasm linking up with Sir Robbo on the beats. With a new home on Australia’s largest independent label Obese Records, Chasm has hit the studio armed with an array of ideas and guests. The end result is a Australian hip hop album that should appeal to a wide range of hip hop fans, from those who enjoy The Herd through to Pegz. ITM spoke to chasm as he prepares to embark on a national tour.

Three releases in a very short period of time – for the music industry anyway. How did you keep the passion and creativity constantly flowing? What inspires you on a day to day basis to make music and dig for samples?

I just love it. It’s like meditation is for other people, I can just hit the studio and I don’t have to think about anything else, I can just zone out. I’m mainly inspired by just listening to lots of music from all different genres and gathering ideas. Also if I hear a certain way a producer has chopped a sample or flipped certain parts of a track I’ll get psyched to jump on the mp and start chopping!

Your last album as part of Astronomy Class was unique in the influences it took in from dub, reggae, dancehall etc. Did you consider it a risk to release it into the Australian hip hop scene so fixated on a ‘certain’ sound? How did you find it to be received overall?

We’ve been really happy with the overall way the album was received, touring off the back of it we’ve met a lot of people that are down and have showed us love so its all good and hopefully when the next album drops it will just keep growing. We didn’t really think too much about making a heavily reggae influenced hip hop record and what the heads would think of it, we were just hooking up and making tracks together and we all love reggae music so we’re gonna be sampling from that.

Some of that vibe carries through onto the new album, particularly the track with Diafrix. Is it a style you still find yourself loving and wanting to create? How did you hook up with the Diafrix boys?

Yeah I still love that sound and now I have a specific outlet for it with Astronomy Class it gives me the opportunity to do different sounding stuff with my solo albums and other projects. I can’t remember when I first met the Diafrix boys, but I’ve known them for a few years now and I did a remix for their EP that came out last year. When I made this beat I thought of them straight away.

You also seem quite at ease chopping and changing the pace of the record from track to track. Is this to avoid staleness in your production or is more so a showcase of your diversified love for genres?

I definitely didn’t want the album to be all 90bpm the whole way, or all smoked out tracks or whatever, I wanted to keep it interesting and have beats with different feels and tempos but at the same time keep some kind of common thread or sound through it so it still worked as a whole album.

As a Sydney producer with strong connections with the Elefant Traks camp, how did you come to end up on Obese? Is this a move looking to expand your audience beyond the Triple J heads to the wider hip hop community perhaps?

I really wanted to hook up with a label that could give my music the push it needed and allow me to just focus on making the beats and not have to deal with the other side of the whole game as much. I released my first Chasm EP through Awakenings, but the label side of things there folded so I needed a home man! Obese seemed most suitable to me for the kind of record I made, I hit them up, they were down and its been a dope hook up, they’ve been really supportive.

When writing tracks that the likes of Ozi Battla and Urthboy were to guest on, did you have them in mind as you wrote the track or was it just something they heard and had to get down on? Was the process any different when working with people who were new to you like Pegz and Muph?

With both Ozi and Urthy from memory I gave them a few different options and whatever they were feeling most they jumped on, both took a little time before they found the one they wanted. Actually with Ozi, two of the three tracks he raps on are pretty much Astronomy Class collabos so he had no choice, he had to get on that shit!
With the tracks featuring Pegz and Muph it was more like I had the definite beats in mind that I wanted to get them on first before I hit them up.

What is going on in the way of a live tour to support this album? How are you going to play live, equipment, guests, what will be involved in the Chasm live experience?

We’ll be hitting the road in support of the album through April, the live setup is myself on the MPC, 2buck on the turntables and MCs Jeswon & Dialectrix. All three of these guys feature heavily on the album so it’s just gonna be a party with special guests at the Melbourne and Sydney launches too.

Is Chasm actually derived from your name as Mantra lyrically checks it to be?

Yeah, it’s sort of like my initials, Chris Hamer-Smith. The first letter of my first name and the first two letters of each of the last ones.

For a man who clearly loves to make music and also loves to keep it as analogue as possible, what does the digital music age mean to you? Will it affect how you write & produce? Do you foresee a time when you no longer release on vinyl?

Unfortunately I can definitely see a time when I wont be able to afford to release on vinyl because it is already really hard to move vinyl and I think it will just get harder. It sucks because for me that’s the ultimate moment of a release, when you get the vinyl copies back. As far as the digital age goes, I can see the pluses and minuses of it all but I think you definitely have to keep up with it and adapt and be open minded to new ways of working, otherwise you’ll fall off.

Finally what does the future hold for Chasm? What plans will we see unfold? Music will we hear?

The next releases from me you’ll hear will be Dialectrix solo album, I’m producing that, and a new Astronomy Class album.

Chasm’s Beyond The Beat Tape is out now through Obese Records.