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We open the door and step into La Lumière Collective, a large, open, and bright room surrounded by various film, art, and concert posters. A hollowed-out old tube TV is surrounded by books and records at the back of the room. Sets of red movie theatre seats are off to the side in the middle of the room, and a projector hangs above.
“So, this is it, ” says Jean Néant, as they hang their winter coat—adorned with the classic DOOM video game font. Néant creates experimental and electronic musical collages under the stage name Joni Void. Their latest album, Every Life Is A Light, is also connected to this space, so it makes sense that the album launch (which will not be your typical album launch) will take place here on Saturday, April 12 with Quinton Barnes.
Since 2016, this La Lumière Collective has been a breeding ground for creativity—by day, a shared artist studio and residency space with diverse production resources, and by night, a microcinema that presents local and international artists’ films and other video work. Néant hosted an audiovisual event here with their label/ time capsule platform, Everyday Ago, back in May 2018. During the set, they collaborated with Sonya Stefan, one of the founders of La Lumière Collective, by using a projector with refracted glass to create abstract, psychedelic shapes.
“We didn’t even know each other, but she played like live film loops of 16 mm, while I was working the projector, and it kind of started a longer collaboration. We did the second album, Mise En Abyme, and all of the visual stuff was her.”
Soon after, Néant became a collective member and moved their music gear into the space. At one point, they even lived in the space for a month. “The new album is sort of a time capsule document of my years 2022 to 2023 and really tied to the events I was able to do here post-lockdown in 2022. Even the title is somewhat of a reference.”
Common area at La Lumière Collective
As part of their artistic process, Néant is also a huge film buff (they moved to Montreal from France to study film around 10 years ago), always tying some visual, filmic element to their music through song titles or accompanying videos. The record before this one, Everyday Is A Song, has tracks titled “Present Day Montage” and “Post-Credits Scene,” and the beginning of this latest starts with “Everyday – A Sequel,” essentially continuing this cinematic Joni Void universe. This kind of self-referential cinema style has been with Néant ever since they released their first album, soundtrack for a film that doesn’t exist, back in 2011, under the then alias, johnny_ripper.
Néant is also a documentarian, field recording various sounds that are often turned into samples and used to drive the songs that dabble in downtempo, trip-hop, ambient, drone, and much more. And because this is Joni Void’s most calm and tranquil record to date, with songs never reaching past 100 bpm, the samples: the Montreal metro, cars driving by, sirens, the wind, and indecipherable babblings from people are really prevalent—all in the track “Du Parc (with N NAO).” Néant lists the DIY documentary show How To With John Wilson as a “crucial recent influence.” That show is about Wilson’s self-discovery and his cultural observations, almost mirroring Joni Void’s sample field recording work and musical identity, so the influence makes a ton of sense. They also list Tsai Ming-Liang, who is a Malaysian pioneer of “situational cinema,” as an influence.
“I create music like I would make a documentary. It’s to document, but also in this imperfect way, because I’m using music as a medium,” Néant says. “I’m releasing a record, it’s 45 minutes, and there’s no way I can use all the Walkman recordings I’ve had. The quality is usually awful. Even with the Polaroid camera, it’s this idea of the imperfect picture. It’s very light-sensitive, and there’s a flash that makes everybody aware that I’m taking the picture. So these little slices of life, the documentation that I can integrate into a piece of work give those little moments meaning.”
And sonically, Every Life Is A Light is Joni Void’s most “musical” album. “There are many more instruments, and you can tell what is a guitar or bass line or drums. The others are much more abstract,” Néant says. “The intention was to make a musical record.”
One of the strongest aspects of Every Life Is A Light is the feature musical collaborations, almost a pastiche of Néant’s past artistic collaborators and heroes—in the case of rapper Pink Navel on the track “Story Board.” We have the droney, dub, and minimalist backing vocal flair from N Nao on “Du Parc,” and the Japanese city pop vibe of “Time Zone” from Haco—who is somewhat of a legend in the underground Japanese avant-pop world with her band After Dinner, and happens to now be online friends with Néant.
“I, of course, already knew N NAO because we had collaborated together before on Mise En Abyme and on the Simulateur de rêve lucide tape, but many of these collaborations were shots in the dark,” they say. “Sook-Yin Lee, I had performed a show with, out of lockdown, and we became great friends and it became natural that we needed to do a song together, but she really surprised me by adding drums and bass. I was only expecting vocals and then of course, she did the talking head faces kind of music video with Dylan.”
They continue, “For Pink Navel, I’m a huge fan of Ruby Yacht, which was the rap collective of R.A.P. Ferreira that Pink Navel used to be part of, and they’re actually retired now. Pink Navel, who now goes by Devin Music, did a live stream in 2020, and I watched it here in La Lumière Collective, and I felt like a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons with their music. It just, it just spoke so much to this manic kid energy. So for my track, I shot in the dark and asked them, and they said yes, I was expecting some more manic energy, but they came back with this much more subdued word-play focused energy, and I loved it.”
Joni Void II shot by Quinton Barnes
Another collaboration close to Joni Void’s heart comes from “Joni Sadler Forever,” a tribute song to the late Joni Sadler, who passed in 2021 and was a pillar in the Montreal music community, wearing many hats as the music coordinator of CKUT, working and volunteering with Suoni Per Il Popolo, Pop Montreal, Lux Magna, and was a part of the legendary crew that booked, gathered in and made-famous, Brasserie Beaubien. She also worked at Constellation Records and was a dear friend to Néant. She was also a wicked drummer for the band Lungbutter, and her drumming is featured on the closing song to Every Day Is A Light.
For the show at La Lumière Néant wont actually be performing, but hosting a screening session of some older experimental videos and footage he and friends took of shows in La Lumière and other videos, like a small one of his cat Muffin—who also has a tribute song dedicated to her, and passed away in 2024 at the age of 20 years old.
“I always joked like, even way back around my release, Selfless, that with my music, the point was to make you dance in the cinema and make you watch experimental films in the club,” Néant laughs. “And I did it, I managed with this show. It’s like you get to watch experimental films in the first half with chairs, and then we’re just gonna get rid of the chairs, and you get to dance the Quinton.”
A/V Co-Release Event for Quinton Barnes CODE NOIR & Joni Void Every Life Is A Light
Opening photo shot by Soledad Rosas
