Posted by Christian Randell on September 17 2015

All Good Records chatted with Ahh Ooh, Detroit native and founder of Hebinomichi about everything from visual art, USB pistol holders and doing shows "in the wild". The guitar-wielding producer has an impressive catalog of jams and his recently released Inamorata EP has been universally well received. Be sure to check out the full project below, check out Ahh Ooh's SoundCloud and Twitter pages and read the full interview below!

Ahh Ooh - Inamorata EP

How did Hebinomichi become a thing?

Ahh Ooh: It started with myself and Ross (SteLouse). We’ve been best friends for a few years and I mean, we talk every day about ya know…chuckles… I wanna say “The War of Art” cause I’m reading that right now… that’s a book he talked my way into. And yea we talk day in and day out talking about what we’re doing, where we’re coming from, sharing tunes back and forth and we kinda realized we both wanted to be a part of something bigger. We wanted to make our own lane. We wanted to be able to have our own sound and kinda procure something that would have more immediate reach and be a lot more fun instantly by including more people. Ya know we’re not gonna create a boy band so we might as well crew up and find some rad people to work with.

Any hobbies outside music?

AO: I’m really into visual art and design. I do a lot of the design… actually most all of the front facing design for [Hebinomichi]. I really love the union between visual and auditory arts. So we wanted to pull something together for people to release music under an umbrella but it doesn’t fit in with other labels and it's not stuffy like a label and it’s not filled with tons of red tape and slow weirdness. We just wanna have fun with it; that’s the whole thing.

Take us into making an Ahh Ooh track.

AO: Ya know, just go between feeling really confident and like hating everything every other hour and yea it’s really just surfing the waves of excitement and misery until I realize its done. Nah, actually man, Ahh Ooh stuff is a blast to make because I write with my guitar and with my hands primarily first and foremost.

Alot of what i love about making music is the kinetic interaction between heart and hands and what comes out of you and channeling that into something that’s tangible yaknow that has a feeling to it. And that’s one of the things that I feel that I’ve done ok on the this project [Innamorata EP] is transmitting a feeling, like a distinct feeling or a distinct vibe and its different for everyone when they pick it up but its important for me that it comes from my hands.

So the process is that I either have my guitar or i’m on my Teenage Engineering op-1; it’s a little synthesizer. I can’t speak high enough praises about that thing. I write about 5 beats a day on the op-1 and they’re just like loops yaknow like 30 seconds to a minute. I write about 5 of those a day and I’ll get into something a bit more serious and kinda evolve these things but it all kinetic and it’s really important to me that I play the takes in. I nudge things around here and there but I really try and grab as much live as I can. I believe in the cadence of transmitting a feeling and communicating something. So that’s about it, it starts with the guitar and ends with me agonizing over the tone of it.

Were you born in Detroit?

AO: Yupp I’m in the Detroit metro area. Everything I do is out here. I do travel a bit and I think that’s really important. Born & Raised.

The Detroit scene has so much depth to it, it’s awesome to see how many high level artists have come out of there.

AO: It’s an interesting place man. I’m actually working on some tunes with Muzzy Bearr right now and he’s from here, and I’m flying out to Denver in the morning to go see their Red Rocks Show tomorrow. And that’s exciting ya know to see people I respect and Muzz man, we’ve known each other for a minute and I started this production class for people who wanted to learn.

Detroit’s an interesting place because everyone is so far separated. There’s no mass transit there’s no hub or epicenter for music there’s no cliques or crews, everyone is very much their own island with their friends. So when I started producing a few years back, I didn’t have anyone to learn from and not everyone was producing like there are tutorials all over the place now.

Anything you’d like to plug/promote? The Innamorata EP seemed to be incredibly well received.

AO: Right now I’m working on a ton of demos and I’m working on another body of work to follow that up. We’re working on Hebinomichi Vol. 3, we’re working on another top secret EP with a vocalist and a lot of the producers in the crew and then also building an interactive space where we can hang out as a crew online and also have anyone of our friends; I say friends over fans all the time and I just wanna attract a bunch for people who are on the same brainwave to come hang out with us and i just wanna be able to hang out in that space and create a thing.