Featured Artist of the Month - Phatchance

Group Name: Phatchance

Members: Chance Dylan Waters

BOTA: When and why did you first start writing music, and have you always called your self Phatchance?

I guess before I started 'writing' music I was pretty into the freestyle and battle elements of the whole thing, I'd think up lines but I don't think I ever committed anything to paper until the later years of high-school, even then it was more of a hobby for me and my style of writing was very different to the tip I'm on now. Phatchance was definitely my first pseudonym though, prior to that I just went by my real name, which is Chance.

BOPA: Your latest body of work, Inkstains (Acoustic) saw you preform live with a band and a whole new approach to your music. Why did you decide to take you music in the that direction?

We'd performed with a few band members here and there on our tours before, we like to generally take at least a bass player and a guitarist with us wherever we go, but this was the first time we'd ditched the backing music entirely and gone for a full band line up. I guess it came about because both myself and Coptic were interested in doing something a little different and a little more musically challenging and we were already working fairly closely with our friend Jon Reichardt, whose quite the multi-instrumentalist, so the opportunity kind of presented itself. I've got a huge penchant for acoustic and folk music and I thought it'd be interesting to try and pull some of those sounds into local hip-hop, as I don't believe it's been done in that fashion before. It was a really rewarding experience and probably the most fun I've ever had putting together a musical project, it was also nice to give some of the b-sides from Inkstains a proper revamp and let them see the light of day, particularly a few of my favourite tracks which were never very 'singley' on the original album. 

BOTA: As and independent artist, what do you wish to achieve through your music or what is your biggest goal in your music career?

I think the elephant in the room is that all independent musicians would like to be able to live off of their music, which is obviously one of my long term aims, but I guess I have more esoteric goals than that which are probably more important to me when you boil it down. I really love the idea of leaving a mark on the world in some fashion, I feel like lyrics are one of the best ways to really touch somebody and create change in the world around you, I think in Australia particularly we're actually pretty receptive to personal song writing if we're given the opportunity, but it can be very hard to break the radio and media circuit with those types of songs, that's probably very high on my list of priorities, managing to achieve success without compromising the core messages in my music.

BOTA: How would you best describe your music?

My tag-line is 'Emotive, Independent, Australian Hip-Hop' which probably captures it pretty well, I guess I'm a mish-mash of influences but I definitely fall on the alternative/emotive side of the spectrum, I think I'm one of the few hip-hop artists in the country who uses a lot of harmony work in my tracks and my favourite songs are usually the type of introspective tracks that get thrown onto albums as a b-side or a book end, I think something magical happens when you manage to do those tracks right and make them a corner stone of the album.

BOTA: Are there any future works and performances planned/in progress?

I'm knee deep in writing my second album 'Infinity' - we're currently polishing up a few of the best songs and trying to work out who we want featuring. Most of the production side of it's done and at this point it's just trying to take our time to make sure we get everything right. I'm also finishing up the writing and recording of a free mixtape I'm dropping in December called 'Approaching Infinity' and I have a few video clips and collaborations in the works, including some songs with Mind over Matter, Johnny Utah, Cool Poindexter , One Above & Mr Hill.

BOTA: Your recently released a remix of Gotye’s 'Somebody That I Use To Know'. What is it about this song that made you remix it?

The second I heard the track I resonated with it heavily, in my opinion Gotye is one of the most talented, professional and approachable artists in the Australian music scene. I've been pretty obsessed with his work for a long time, I'd say 'Hearts A Mess' is probably one of my favourite Australian tracks fullstop, so when I heard STIUTK I knew pretty much straight away I wanted to approach him about remixing it. He was kind enough to send me the parts, I contacted One Above and asked him if he'd like to remix the song for me and we worked on it together solidly for a week or so till we had something we were both happy with.


Phatchance_Gotye_Somebody That I Used To Know (Hip Hop Remix) Remixed by One Above by phatchance

BOTA: You are apart of a independant movement, I Forget Sorry? Who makes up this crew and what is IFS all about?

'I Forget, Sorry!' is comprised of myself, Johnny Utah, Coptic Soldier and Mind Over Matter, as well as the solo projects of Smiles Again, who is half of Mind Over Matter. Basically we're a group of close friends and like minded musicians who wanted to try and maintain our independence and work closely together, 'I Forget, Sorry!' is kind of like an alternative approach to the record label model of music, we help each other out with everything and cross pollinate our music as much as possible and basically focus on finding ways to engage with our listeners and keep each other passionate about the work we're doing.