Image Cred: Akram Hamdan
TUSH return with Heavy Weather Remixes, a new revision of their 2025 EP featuring Ian Pooley, Afrique Like Me, Pursuit Grooves, and Olive T. The project gives the original material a wider club frame, with Pooley reworking “Push” through his deep, dubby house language, Afrique Like Me reshaping “The Fit” through Afro-tech rhythm, and Olive T and Pursuit Grooves bringing their own angles to “Like a Rock.”
That remix format fits the way TUSH talk about music in this interview. Jamie Kidd and Kamilah Apong approach creativity through curiosity, live performance, community, recording practice, and active listening. Their answers do not treat music as a fixed lane. They talk about limitations, counter-culture, weirdness, hardware, full albums, sweaty rooms, and the value of letting songs reveal what they want to become.
The result is a conversation that connects directly to Heavy Weather Remixes.
TUSH’s original work already pulled from house, disco, live instrumentation, and electronic hardware, and this remix package extends that language through collaborators with their own histories and methods. Below, Kidd and Apong reflect on what keeps them curious and connected as music continues to move between art, profession, and community.
Interview With TUSH
What’s exciting you in music right now that might have surprised an earlier version of you?
Jamie Kidd: A return to hardware and recording experimentation. Artists embracing limitations, similar to electronic music’s formative years (knowing limitations foster creativity); less genre rigidity and conformity, and those moving beyond nostalgia. I’ve come to realize that when creating, to let the song reveal what it wants to become, let what serves the song guide decisions instead of ego or habit, and not be concerned if it doesn’t fit a certain style.
Kamilah Apong: I may be biased, but I feel a sense of individuality, weirdness, and general counter-currents are rising in music. Wherever this is a main culture or sentiment, there is a counter to it. The wealthy/the ruling class are loud right now, and I feel a counter culture rising in opposition to that. I was more nihilistic when I was younger.
What practices help you stay curious as your career evolves?
Kamilah: releasing myself from believing that “music careers” or “careers” are something that I need to desire.
Jamie: listening to a wide variety of genres and artists, both on record and in live performances. As I’ve gotten older and moved from being a musician to producer, to DJ, to recording engineer and educator, the deeper the understanding, the more the curiosity grows into each process and how they serve the overall idea.
The composition itself, the performance of the song, and the instrumentation, sound, and aesthetic choices all make up how we interpret the music as listeners, and it’s fascinating to hear the separation and think abstractly about these processes.
When was the last time you were on the dancefloor simply as a listener, and what did you take from that experience?
Jamie: The past year, I’ve spent a lot of dancefloor time at Standard Time here in Toronto. Theo Parrish, Special Request, and Nobu sets (who I had the pleasure to open for) come to mind as highlights, and reminders that memorable sets move around – peaks, valleys, left turns, and surprises! And of course, the awesome Cinthie, in February. I brought her one of our limited TUSH 7” vinyls, and a few minutes later, she played Push II off that record right there in her set. It was a lovely moment.
Kamilah: A night in Montréal where I had two contrasting experiences: a live rock band (Metric) in a large venue in the first part of the night, and then a DJ set at a speakeasy late night. Two very different dance floors, two very different venues: the large venue, I felt like a spectator in a corporate building (it was renamed after a phone company in Canada). The show sounded great, but the atmosphere felt more: they play, I watch. The speakeasy was intimate and sweaty, and I felt like an active participant in the night. The DJ plays, I respond, and there is a synergy in shifting who holds the power in the space.
Have any emerging artists recently reignited something in you?
Kamilah: I know everyone is talking about Angine de Poitrine right now, but it goes back to my thought about the rising counter cultures: we’re going weird and microtonal!
Jamie: In a bleak industry, it’s been satisfying to see Angine de Poitrine’s weirdness go viral. Tight musicianship and odd time signatures that you can groove to will always hook me in (echoes of my youth as a Primus fan don’t hurt either).
How do you maintain your connection to the craft as it moves from passion to profession?
Kamliah: similar to what I said earlier – interrogating the terms professional and artist and the relationship between the two. For me, what that looks like practically is spending my time working in or creating community-based arts spaces, and remembering that art always existed before the institution, is so much bigger than any institution.
Jamie: It’s important to remind yourself why you are making music and your intentions behind it. If it’s not to express yourself and your human experience, to connect with other humans, or if it is only a vehicle for something or someone else to profit from, perhaps that should be examined. Once a week, I try to set some time to just listen to a full album – and I mean just listen. To actively listen, not while doing other activities.
Usually, one I have never listened to, or one I haven’t listened to in full in several years. To allow yourself to be a listener again – not to analyze, dissect, or compare can help reignite that sense of wonder. Music is magic.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
