I BUILT THE SKY & Jake Howsam Lowe
Pictured: Rohan Stevenson - I BUILT THE SKY
Photo by: Elgin Huang Jiale
5 Minutes Alone with Rohan Stevenson
Written by: Rod Whitfield - Independent | 04 September 2021
Whether you think it’s all a giant hoax, or you believe everything the media tells you about it, or you fall somewhere in between, something that’s undeniable about the Covid-19 pandemic is that it’s been utterly devastating to bands and musicians across the globe. Especially rock and metal musicians, for whom a large percentage of their income is derived from touring, ticket sales, merch sales and so on.
Melbourne instrumental guitar prodigy Rohan Stevenson, whose musical alter-ego is known as I BUILT THE SKY, has some very wise and canny advice for musicians who are struggling right now. “I think the best thing to do,” he says, “I mean, I can’t solve the world’s problems right now, but just try to focus on things you can control, that’s where I try to focus my energy. If I can’t go anywhere, I’ll write something, or work on videos, or work on something else.”
Pictured: Rohan Stevenson - I BUILT THE SKY
Photo by: Sam Tan
It’s a very positive way to look at it, especially for an artist who recently quit his day job to focus on writing and playing music full time, on making a living from his art. Fortunately (or maybe it’s good management rather than good fortune), he has structured his career to minimise its dependence on touring income.
“It totally sucks because it deviates the plan, I was really hoping that 2020 was going to be a year of performing and touring. I had some really cool opportunities lined up, like the Radar Festival. I did manage to scrape in a tour in February, early March, but that was it.
“But it’s actually not the end of the world for someone in my position, because my income is not really from touring, it’s more from music-related streaming, I’ve got my YouTube channel that has income, I’ve got a Patreon page and all that sort of stuff. Touring, especially internationally, is always basically a loss, for now. For a lot of artists, when you work with a label and things, streaming revenue is less. Everyone’s got their own situation, but for a lot of artists it’s the performing part where they get a lot of their income, moreso than the streaming stuff. Whereas mine is the opposite, I’m independent.
“But I understand it’s devastating for so many people.”
A key to pursuing a career in this manner is to continually write and record quality music for release on the streaming platforms, and that’s exactly what Stevenson does. Less than two years after the release of his last album, The Zenith Rise, he returns to the airwaves with an EP of all new music. This time, he has teamed up with another six and seven-string wunderkind, Jake Howsam Lowe, known for his work in THE HELIX NEBULA, PLINI and his own solo career.
Pictured: Jake Howsam Lowe + Rohan Stevenson - I BUILT THE SKY
Photo courtesy of Rohan Stevenson
“I’m definitely feeling good about it,” he says on the upcoming EP. “When you’re in the process of creating, because I’ve gone through that experience, you kind of know too much about it. But it gets to a point when you finish up, you have some time away from it, and you come back and you can listen to it more as a listener, and I think you appreciate it even more then. So I’m feeling very stoked on it and I’m very glad to have been a part of it.
“Everything just came together nicely, with the other guys, Nathan (Bulla, of INTERVALS and AURAS) on drums, Toby (Peterson-Stuart, of THE OMNIFIC) on the bass. Obviously Jake’s got his own style and his own thing going on, and it was really cool to bounce off each other and share riffs and see where we could take them.”
The EP has a highly appropriate title, Coalesce. To ‘coalesce’ means to unite, to blend into one form or one body, and Stevenson is happy to relate to us exactly how the two masterminds of the piece did indeed come together to create Coalesce. “We had a few riffs, individually, floating around, and we would just sort of show each other. We got together on Skype, basically and I’d be like ‘well whatta you got?’, and he’d be like ‘well whatta you got?’, and we’d show each other riffs and ideas and things, and I had, for the first song, which is the title track and first single, I had a few riffs, put together in a certain way. I showed that to Jake, and Jake was like ‘hey, let’s take away this riff and put this riff first and rearrange things.’ And I’m like ‘woah, what are you doing?’ But then, hearing his perspectives, it was like ‘that’s actually really cool if we flip it around like that.’
“Jake’s really good at seeing the potential in things. To have him there to manipulate riffs and change structures and things, is basically the beauty of the release. But we work really well together, it just flowed really nicely. There weren’t too many issues with being stuck, it just flowed.”
The pair have known each other for a long time, and share a strong bond, both of friendship and of the styles of music they play and love, so there was somewhat of a sense of inevitability that they would work together on a project one day.
That day has now arrived, especially with the coming of Covid-19, and the results are absolutely spectacular.
Pictured: Jake Howsam Lowe + Rohan Stevenson - I BUILT THE SKY
Images courtesy of Rohan Stevenson
“We just kind of found each other early on, probably around the time I was releasing my first tracks on YouTube. Jake was doing his own thing with The Helix Nebula. I actually remember someone sending me a Helix Nebula video, and I was like ‘oh wow, that’s crazy!’, and then I found out that he was from Australia and that was even cooler! The community is kind of small in a way, you tend to come across these people and you reach out and form some sort of connection.
“There was a point a few years down the line, when Jake was in Melbourne. He stayed at my house for some reason, and we just started writing stuff together, because what else do you do? (laughs) We just did a little track together from home and just had a bit of fun with it. After that, Jake would hit me up every now and then, saying ‘let’s do something, let’s do and EP or something’, and that was just before the pandemic hit. When it hit, it probably seemed to be a good time. So we just put some time aside and made it happen.”
Pictured: Rohan Stevenson crowd-surfing live
Photo by: Victor Gallego
There are no live dates in support of the EP at the time of writing, for obvious reasons, but keep your eyes here for announcements when things (hopefully) go back to some kind of normal. Also watch this space for our review of the sensational new EP Coalesce.
Coalesce comes out on 17 September 2021