Su Shaw - Being brave and making honest music

A musician formerly known as Panda Su but now releases her music under SHHE. We cover her musical career so far and why she decided it was time to move on from the Panda Su persona. Su hasn’t done many interviews in the past so I feel privileged that she agreed to come on the podcast. It’s clear that there has been a change in mindset and outlook from Panda Su to SHHE. Su is much more open to collaboration and has a lot more confidence in her own work. Creating what she feels right rather than being self-conscious of other’s opinions. The music scene in Dundee inevitably comes up and Su expresses a need for mid-sized venues. Like The West Port Bar and Dog House, Dundee has lost places for artists to progress from small open mics before they try to play to hundreds of people. It comes back to the common theme of the access and use of space within the city. How do we get the landlords and landowners on board to understand the need and help create these venues? I had to ask where the panda in Panda Su came from and we get to talking about where the faceprint originated and what that meant for her career. Su recognises that it was a great differentiator in the early days but it became a bit of an unescapable gimmick. This was one of the driving factors to move away from the Panda Su persona. We talk about Su’s new single Eyes Shut and the video created in West Ward Works in collaboration with some of the dancers from Scottish Dance Theatre. West Ward is a phenomenal space that we will hopefully see transformed as part of the Tay Cities deal, with the potential to host gigs amongst a whole host of other things. The old print works aren’t what you’d think of as a traditionally good acoustic space. Su talks about why that’s the reason she fell in love with it during her Pecha Kucha performance. The video filmed there was funded by the Dundee Dundee Musician’s Award which is now open again for applications. Dundee Musician’s Award - http://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/culture/music-development-dundee/dundee-musicians-award Artist/designer open call - wasteofspace.org Fence Records - http://www.fencerecords.com/ Scottish Dance Theatre - https://www.scottishdancetheatre.com/ EYES SHUT video - https://youtu.be/oVRs7hLzNPw Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shhemusic/ Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/shhemusic Twitter - https://twitter.com/shhemusic