Stephen Hamm has been a key member of the Vancouver arts and music scene for over 30 years. He is currently focusing on a solo project titled, “Stephen Hamm: Theremin Man,” which features the unique sounds of the theremin, an unusual electronic musical instrument. Stephen has played in various Vancouver bands over the decades, including Slow, Canned Hamm, and Nardwuar and the Evaporators.
Hamm has played on numerous important Vancouver music recordings. In 1985, Zulu Records released Slow’s EP Against the Glass. This album has been cited by many as the Pacific Northwest recording that kicked off the grunge movement. The lead single and video “Have Not Been the Same” was a hit on Much Music, Canada’s video music channel and influenced many young musicians, from the East Coast rock band Sloan to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.
In the early 1980’s Slow became known as one of the wildest and brilliantly out of control bands to come out of Vancouver. Their over the top live performances became the talk of the town. The band peaked with a performance at Vancouver’s world’s fair, Expo ’86. The band performed to a sold out crowd but in a drunken frenzy lashed out at the local government who over saw the fair and after many fowl mouth comments from the band Officials decided to pull the plug cutting the performance short which lead to members of the band to expose themselves on stage and the audience to riot. The incident brought the band immediate international attention. The next day London’s Daily Mirror ran the story and Billboard Magazine ran an article entitled ‘Full Moon Over Expo!’ Afterwards the band embarked on their only Canadian tour playing with bands like Soul Asylum and Green River (whose members went on to form Pearl Jam and Mudhoney). The band broke up in late 1986.
Stephen spent most of the 1990s touring Canada and the States with Tankhog and Jungle. In the early 2000s, he recorded and toured Canada with BMI recording artists Copyright. He also performed alongside Robert Dayton throughout Canada, the US, and Australia with his musical comedy duo, Canned Hamm. Canned Hamm recorded their debut CD “Karazma” in 2001 and performed with the American comedy duo Tim and Eric, stand-up comedian Neil Hamburger (Gregg Turkington), Peaches and the Vancouver indie rock band the New Pornographers.
For the past ten years Stephen has been the bass player in the notorious Vancouver music personality Nardwuar the Human Serviette’s band, the Evaporators. He has written and recorded three albums with the Evaporators for Mint Records. The Evaporators have played the South by Southwest Music Festival many years in a row and have toured with acts like Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand and American singer Andrew W.K.
In 2011 Stephen began work on an ambitious project with long time collaborator Bruce Wilson called Sunday Morning. Their debut album based around stories written by Wilson garnered critical acclaim and the few live performances by the band were met with great enthusiasm
In recent years, Stephen has shifted his focus to mastering the theremin, a unique early electronic musical instrument that is played not by touch but by interacting with the electromagnetic fields around two antennae. This esoteric instrument has placed Stephen in a unique niche in which to showcase his musical mastery. Stephen has studied under the tutelage of German theremin virtuoso Carolina Eyck and New York–based thereminist Dorit Chrysler, two of the foremost experts in the world of theremin. Stephen’s current solo project is based around theremin and synthesizer and is an electro-musical journey into new abstract dimensions of sound. In 2019 Hamm released his debut CD ‘Stephen Hamm Theremin Man’ to critical acclaim. In 2019 and early 2020, Hamm toured extensively throughout BC, Washington, and California in support of the album. In order to continue to make music throughout the pandemic, Stephen has shifted his focus to online performance by hosting weekly live-streamed theremin meditations and playing at local live-streamed events.