Avantdale Bowling Club's Tom Scott

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Tom Scott is a rapper from New Zealand's underground hip-hop scene. He's been rapping for over a decade now. He grew up in Auckland – the biggest city in a very small country. In 2018, Tom released an amazing, beautiful album under the name Avantdale Bowling Club. On the record, he reflects on his roots. His childhood. The friendships he's lost. The places he's been. His family. It's an intimate hip hop record with jazz instrumentation. Tom recently released Trees, a follow up to the self-titled debut album. We're taking a moment to revisit our conversation with Tom from 2019. Tom explains what it's like to write an album that brings back somber memories, and why he felt it was important to use original jazz songs, rather than jazz samples.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:21.5	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. If you've listened to the show for a while, you know this
0:25.6	already, but every guest we have here has made something that I personally care about
0:31.4	and admire. Sometimes they're people you've heard about, sometimes not. My next guest probably
0:37.0	falls into the latter category. So here we are. He's a guy from New Zealand. His name
0:42.2	is Tom Scott. He's in his 30s. He lives in Auckland. He has a kid. He's been working
0:47.8	in hip-hop for a little over a decade. He's one of the most important figures in New Zealand
0:54.0	hip-hop, but financially that doesn't mean all that much. In 2019, when I interviewed
0:59.8	Tom, he just put out an album under the name Aventail Bowling Club. And it was, if I am
1:05.7	honest, spectacular. It's a hip-hop record with
1:35.6	jazz instrumentations. And that's real jazz, not just loops from jazz records. It's pushing
1:41.5	forward into the territory that Kendrick Lamar staked out with to Pimpa Butterfly. It's
1:46.1	also a personal album. He named it after the suburb of Auckland where he grew up. It's
1:51.0	where he lives now, too. Scott wraps about his childhood, the places he's been, the people
1:55.8	he doesn't see anymore, his family. It's one of my favorite records from that year,
2:00.1	and I was excited to hear recently that he has followed it up with another Aventail Bowling
2:03.8	Club album. Trees took Tom four years to make. He even made a test pressing on it, printed
2:11.0	it the vinyl plant and everything before scrapping it, and then going back to the drawing board.
2:16.6	It's more stripped down than the debut album, just is captivating now. Before we get into
2:21.5	the interview, let's hear a song from Aventail Bowling Club and their album Trees. This is
2:26.4	28.
2:48.6	If I'm deepened and now sitting on a mountain through the free years in the south
	...

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