Producer and multi-instrumentalist Callum Mower, aka Serebii, has been collecting credits for his work alongside other artists, including young jazzer Arjuna Oakes, but new single Really You is just him. NZ On Air Music rated the song’s mellow retro vibes and added it to their NewTracks compilation this July.
Kia ora my name is Callum Joshua Mower. I am a 27-year-old born in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland. I’m an artist, producer and multi-instrumentalist.
I studied at a polytechnic called MAINZ just after high school which was an incredible introduction to our music industry in Aotearoa. Some of the tutors included people such as Chip Matthews, Frank Booker, Angus McNaughton, John Quigley and so on.
For the last three years, I have been releasing music with Arjuna Oakes as duo Arjuna Oakes & Serebii. I have previously been a part of a band called The Shambles, a Dunedin party band from 2017-2019.
As a child, I had hip hop and jazz dancing lessons, clarinet and guitar lessons too. My mother has always sung and played in a duo with her best friend Haromi, my aunty taught me drums as a child and was very active in the music scene, and my grandpa is a big band horn player and guitarist who lives and breathes jazz and classical music. I hated all the lessons as a kid! I found music again at 15 and haven’t stopped.
If anything my songwriting has become closer to how I started writing as a teenager, based on emotional experiences with simple chord progressions.
In 2019, I decided to start sharing my music but my birth name didn’t quite roll off the tongue, I created the portmanteau Serebii, inspired by the Japanese concept of komorebi 木漏れ日 which encapsulates sunlight leaking through trees, and the word ‘serenity’, which together captured the essence of what I was trying to create.
A highlight for me was opening for Allen Stone at the Opera House in Wellington with Arjuna Oakes. The crowd was full of love, excitement and energy.
Really You is cheeky and grooves well, it also has a nice message, and like very few of my album tracks it has my voice on it!
I wanted to make something cheeky and mesmeric. From memory I was looking for a little drama, something I could sink my teeth into creatively so I instigated a quarrel, and I lost. I then locked myself in my room (my old bedroom studio in Seatoun, Wellington), until I had a refrain with substance. I guess Really You is about impulsive behaviour and journey with navigating integrity.
I like the first 30 seconds of the track the most. It has a gently kind’a brewing to it.
Everyone will take away something different from this track although I would hope listeners can close their eyes and have a wee dance with themselves.
I suppose it’s a balance of what you want your listeners to hear first and whether or not it would give you a good angle for pitching.
My team includes my wonderful manager Mukuka Musowa from Creative Pwele Management, and the LA-based record label Innovative Leisure.
I am currently writing and recording a second solo album in my home studio in Titirangi. I am very excited about this body of work too!
