Artist Profile: Teether
Teether, the Melbourne-raised and London-based rapper and producer, has been leaning into the extremities of his sound with definite intention from the time he was a teenager, and, in doing so, has discovered a niche that bridges the grimy, boundary-pushing qualities of metal and punk with the wobbling atmosphere of psychedelically-leaning hip-hop. With his newest project Yearn IV, he has discovered, in many ways, a culmination of this venture: a testament to his dynamic, rough-around-the-edges sound.
As a child, Teether knew, undeniably, that he wanted to make music. His mother had a wide taste that spanned various deep cuts across the 1990s, including Sade, US3, and Buckshot LeFonque, and, combined with his father’s love for Bob Marley, these sounds enabled Teether to view himself from a young age as someone with a definite interest in music.
In high school, he formed a metal band, styled off of the thrash and death metal he had grown to love as he developed his own taste in music, and began writing songs and performing gigs with the group: a series of experiences that enabled him to develop into a fuller and more capable musician.
Yet, when the group eventually fizzled out after multiple years together, Teether had a realization. He wanted to learn to make music on his own: to execute his own vision directly. He began making hip-hop beats, learning to sample and finding, quickly, that the genre he was exploring contained many of the same elements he had grown to love in music as a whole, just in different manifestations.
“I think something that I really crave in music is extremes… I just can't really do sh*t that sits in the middle somewhere. I think rap as well… you can kind of feel it in your chest. The only difference is the sounds that you're using, but other than that, I think it's very low-end driven, very repetition based, very heavy, and the lyrics kind of are at the center of it.”
Yet, as Teether gained more and more experience producing, he couldn’t find anyone to rap over his beats locally; he, therefore, took it upon himself to finalize his vision. Coupled with his smooth, off-kilter delivery, his instrumentals took on a new life, formulating an idiosyncratic sonic experience that morphed and transformed with the needs of each individual track.
Now, eleven projects later, Teether has grown exponentially, finding a home in the rough and un-polished qualities of his sonic ventures.
“I'm a big believer [that] shit shouldn't sound too polished. I always want to make this sh*t in my room, and I think mixes should be based on your gut… And I think, if you were to listen to it for the first time, you might think that I'm not doing it right, or I'm not trying to do it this way. But this is just the way it sounds… It's not necessarily supposed to exist like this, where we're from and in that context, but neither was anything else that I think is worthwhile. I think I just really want to keep that energy like, who gives a f*ck if people like it?”
With Yearn IV, a collaborative effort with Australian producer Kuya Neil, completed, and a number of solo projects in the works, Teether continues to push his sound forward, finding in each track a representation of the extremities that his own ears crave.
