Shugarboy

Producer and remixer Jeffrey Ingham, a.k.a. Shugarboy, has a voracious appetite for all types of tunes.

“I'm always researching music,” he said. “I'm always going onto blogs and getting into what's hot in other countries.”

The 25-year-old Innisfail resident is classically trained, having achieved Grade Seven in violin from the Royal Conservatory of Music. In his artistic endeavours he loves to balance the worlds of pop and underground.

“I like to keep myself on both sides of the line,” he said. “I don't want to compromise my position ever. It's hard, it's very hard.”

Ingham's musical dedication even got a track he helped produce, Here I Am by Marcus Julian, added to the KRAZE 101.3 playlist in January.

It was encouragement from Rhys Fulber, of Front Line Assembly and Delerium fame, who had attended a show he played with his experimental Latin dance-pop band Tryptich.co, that initially got Ingham thinking about producing. After a 2010 tour of Mexico, when he discovered the other two members of his band wouldn't be allowed back into Canada due to visa issues, he decided to strike out on his own.

Luckily Ingham bumped into Elise Estrada at a release party for her 2010 album Here Kitty Kittee, connecting with her producer Adam Hurstfield, who has produced musicians like Ne-Yo, Ray J and Loverboy. He got to do a remix with the Canadian pop sensation, and although the song itself got shelved during a legal shuffle at the label RockSTAR, it was the key to Ingham landing a job at XOXO Entertainment Corp.

One of his biggest successes to date came when he linked up with Jeff Daniels to release Funk Floor on Polish record label Sick Slaughterhouse. The electro-house collaboration was originally inspired by Fatboy Slim's Rockafella Skank and charted on the influential Beatport rankings. And while industry heavyweights Adam K and Vs Zero spun the track, even more memorable was when Ingham's roommate woke him up to the sounds of his own music playing below where he was living at the time, in Vancouver above the Commodore Ballroom.

The desire to push the boundaries is just part of being an artist, he says.

“I don't want to repeat what other people are doing,” he says. “You're responsible for yourself. You have to be.”

His most powerful release to date is a tribute to his partner Sam Meir, an oilfield worker living in Red Deer who passed away in August from new-onset refractory status epilepticus (NORSE) syndrome. After moving back from Vancouver the two had started going out, even considering marriage.

“He was just getting into modeling and had some interest in New York,” Ingham said. “It was just perfect. It was almost too perfect. It's kinda weird how that happens.”

The song is a progressive trance remix of Nicki Minaj's Young Forever, which he had been listening to over the course of the ordeal.

“I just did this remix to honour the actual emotions of what it was like to be with him,” he said. “I will always remember him as a young beautiful soul.”