Early in the warm days of May, a tall thin kid came into the Indie Music Paper office with a grin on his face, and a head full of wacky stories from his travels performing hip hop music. That kid was underground Toronto artist Damir, an energetic vibrant guy who thinks nothing of impromptu performances where ever it feels right. He fondly recalls the time he was listening to a gospel choir sing in a church when he brought along his portable piano. He was in the church the next morning, and asked the people there whether they wanted to hear one of his songs. They agreed, and he performed just for them “Don’t Let That Get You Down”, the debut track on his latest album Bad Ass beats. It’s a dreamy tune with an atmospheric electronic sound, including lyrics such as “I stopped speeding in the fast lane, I take it slow now I have more respect. I started thinking seeing feeling things are gonna get better.” Of course, the audience loved it. And it resulted in one of Damir’s favorite live performance, in which he and Errol Trench, a pastoral from a local gospel church performed live on stage. I asked Errol Trench if he wanted to come to a hip-hop party and sing, I told him about the scene and told him that some people drink up, some people dope up, but I look up, Errol agreed. When we both got up on stage at the show, we caught people off guard and everyone heard us and it was great!”

At the interview Damir feels so energetic today that he ends up reciting some of his lyrics in front of me, moving around the office and blowing off some steam. Later on he recites more lyrics, but this time on top of the chairs… Clearly, this guy with the impish smile and ruffled blonde hair aims to please any audience in front of him. And the audience obviously appreciates it, if we take a look at his answering machine messages? Yes, the sixth track of the Bad Ass Beats, simply called “The Message”, is composed completely of messages from people taken from his answering machine, and some of them obviously praise Damir for his awesome music making. A more recent success would be his song “Business” (also taken from bad Ass beats) making the top of the hit list at new music Canada.

Don’t think that damir hasn’t worked hard to be a success, though. He’s traveled extensively, from Victoria to Montreal, from Paris to Houston, Texas. Actually, his travels to Paris inadvertently led to a spontaneous performance at Montreal’s Dorval airport. After making lots of friends in Paris, he returned home. Then he went to the airport in Quebec and stopped passengers heading on planes to France to ask them if they could mail his letters to his friends: “They were asking me” what do you do?” and I told them I was a musician, and so they asked me to do something.” That something turned into a full-blown performance in miniature in the corridors of Dorval Airport, complete with break dancing in front of one of the police officers. This guy was just clapping at me and saying ‘bon, bon'” and I was dancing.

Later on, I got a tape of it because someone taped it on their camera.” Damir then goes to a computer, logs onto his web page at www.damirworld.com and shows me some fuzzy stills taken from that Montreal video of him. All throughout the interview, he is energetic, happy and a pleasure to be around. His stories left me laughing, his words kept me thinking, and I can only say afterwards that he’s made a convert out of me!

By: Christine @ Indie-Music Magazine

c_vasilevski@hotmail.com