Interviews

The British artist Steven Wilson launches his sixth solo album. Another evocation of the glorious past of English pop-rock? Wasn’t Wilson considered the reformer par excellence of progressive rock, with the album Hand. Cannot. Erase (2015)? Wasn’t he the frontman of the neo-prog band Porcupine Tree during the ’90s and 2000s? Wasn’t he directly inspired by the English auteur pop of the ’80s with the album To the Bone (2017)?

Asking the question… is not answering it, at least this time.

Sticking the prog label, or any other, to this singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist is not to know him well, we have to admit. Here we are in 2021, and Wilson has changed again, so let’s set the record straight.

The Future Bites explores human thought in the digital age: fake news, echo chamber, the reign of sorcerer’s apprentices, cyberaddiction, so many other generalized practices in the empire of the clickbait. In addition, the nine songs on the program underline their creator’s assumption of a musical universe dominated by electronic production.

This amply justifies PAN M 360’s virtual interview with Wilson, who was contacted at his English home a few weeks ago.

PAN M 360: Doesn’t this new album represent a big change, compared to your previous projects?

STEVEN WILSON: Absolutely. I’ve been creative over the last few years, but it’s become frustrating in the long run. I never thought I was a progressive rock musician, or some generic musician. But I’ve already recorded in the progressive rock tradition, those records have been successful for me and I’m very proud of that. Maybe that’s the problem, my albums made that way connect with people! (laughs)

PAN M 360: Isn’t it ideal to know the music well, and to find something new with full knowledge of the facts?

STEVEN WILSON: That’s true. But most people seek what is familiar to them, seek to find the path of novelty by looking for what is familiar. I think I was slightly different, I was looking for something unknown. Today, I’m still looking for something that I can’t quite pinpoint where it came from. And I haven’t always lived up to what I preach, some of my music was too close to homage, but I think that with The Future Bites, I’m taking a step towards a world where I’m getting to something unique, my sound palette, my sound world.

PAN M 360: Electronics have always been part of your instrumentation, but this time they’re dominant. How do you justify this choice?

STEVEN WILSON: But you know, I started in the early ’90s with a synth-pop band called No Man, the first band that got me a record deal. So there was a precedent for what I’m doing now. I don’t want to say that I do synth-pop, but what I do is certainly not associated with the classic forms of rock. All these classical elements have disappeared in this album. That doesn’t exclude a sense of travel, a very ambitious narrative approach, very experimental, epic in a way. My allegiance to classic rock or progressive rock is not broken, I could come back to it, but I don’t find any interest in it at the moment. I want contemporary and fresh music that reflects the world we live in today. The electronic world!

PAN M 360: More precisely, what are your interests in electronic music?

STEVEN WILSON: It’s probably one of my favourite kinds of music. I’ve always liked electronic music. It started when I was a child, with Giorgio Moroder. I became a big fan of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the electroacoustic current. I grew up in the ’80s, so I was surrounded by OMD, Depeche Mode, and all these English bands who were into electronic music. I also like ambient, drone, all forms. In the ’90s, I discovered Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, etc. I’m a big fan of electroacoustic music. I also like the neoclassical of Max Richter and Nils Frahm, these artists create a modern hybrid inspired by both classical music and recent trends, especially electronic music. This has always been in my musical DNA. So it makes perfect sense for me to make electronic music, I’m surprised myself that I haven’t done it before! But in a way, I’m going back to one of my first loves in music.

PAN M 360: Instrumental music can constantly evolve, but the textural possibilities of electronics take us elsewhere, indeed. Does that justify your current approach?

STEVEN WILSON: Yes. Rock ’n’ roll was the dominant form of music during the second half of the 20th century, and jazz was the dominant form for the first half. These musics followed their natural cycle and today, I think the guitar-bass-drums form is foreign to many young people. The guitar is certainly no longer at the forefront of the mainstream, it has become what was the jazz trumpet for rock fans, the dominant instrument of another era. Of course, there will always be jazz fans and rock fans, but as far as the mainstream of popular culture is concerned, there is no doubt that electronics dominates. And my music reflects that reality. Without trying to sound one way or another, however, this new proposal remains consistent in my discography.

PAN M 360: The references of The Future Bites are vast, from synth-pop to R&B to krautrock and IDM, all perfectly distinct from the previous cycles.

STEVEN WILSON: Yes, I think my audience will be slightly surprised and enjoy it afterwards, because it’s an integral part of my musical universe. I’ve always aspired to create that musical climate where the idea of genre is irrelevant. In this album, I dare to believe that it is not possible to describe what I do in terms of genres. All you can say is that this is music by Steven Wilson. My early role models were David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Kate Bush, Neil Young, Tom Waits, the kind of artist you can’t describe through a genre of music. All you can say is that they make their music. I don’t compare myself at all to these great artists, but from a philosophical point of view, that’s what I want to do: to create my own musical genre, to allow myself to confront it with my audience. Your fans are with you because they respect your right to do different things. It’s not easy to do that, not to be generic, not to be easily categorized. I hope I’ve become that artist.

PAN M 360: Couldn’t you do something else in the future?

STEVEN WILSON: Absolutely! That being said, this album is not totally different from the others, it’s a progressive evolution of my music. It’s not a complete change, it’s a slightly more direct mode of expression with a more pop sensibility. The guitar is downplayed on this record, it’s played in a more abstract way, in a more sound design way. The instrument in the foreground of this album is the synthesizer. Because this world of sounds in which we live is electronic. The sounds of computer games, cell phones or even doorbells are electronic.

PAN M 360: This time it’s the song that counts. Your music serves the song. In the previous cycle, your excellent musicians, all of them virtuosos, fantastic shredders, etc., have been very good. This time, everything is built around the song.

STEVEN WILSON: Yes, the guitar is more of a sound design element, a textural element. The only guitarist on this record is me, and I don’t have any aspirations to become a shredder. I’m a singer-songwriter who uses the guitar to create sounds for his songs. I’m only interested in using tools to serve the song. So I play guitar and other instruments, bass, all keyboards… I know that some people are legitimately interested in showing what they can accomplish on their instrument, I am personally interested in creating songs and music. So this is my loneliest record for many years, since before the birth of Porcupine Tree.

PAN M 360: Why this more pop sensibility in The Future Bites?

STEVEN WILSON: This album is much more about melody, singing and sound, not really about big solos and musical complexity. I don’t mean to say that there’s no sophistication: it’s hard to create sophisticated pop songs. The fact that this album has more catchphrases, stronger melodies, reflects a stronger chorus presence.

PAN M 360: An album of nine songs – why such brevity?

STEVEN WILSON: I had nearly 25 songs to record but I wasn’t going to exceed 45 minutes. It’s a 42-minute record and I’m very proud of it! Most classical albums are in the 35-45 minute range, the natural attention of the listener can’t be longer than more or less 40 minutes, so… You know, it’s not easy to exclude songs you really like.

PAN M 360: Who are the guest artists?

STEVEN WILSON: They appear here and there, each on a song. Nick Bates plays bass on one, Richard Barbieri plays keyboards on another. There are backing vocals… In my opinion, the main guest is David Kosten, my co-producer. I’m a big fan of his work – Bat for Lashes, Keen, Everything Everything, and so on. We are the same age, we grew up with similar inspiration. David has a great knowledge of music history, but he never works on its reproduction.

He made me realize that some of my previous work could be hidden behind the tribute. To the Bone is a tribute to the experimental pop of the ’80s, Hand.Cannot.Erase. is a tribute to the progressive rock of the ’70s . So David was very effective in keeping me from getting lost in another tribute. It really refreshed me, because I’m easily sucked in, impressed by things that remind me of others I already liked. Instead, David wanted to push me to find something else that was totally mine. And so what I like about The Future Bites is that there are no obvious references. It’s all there, but I don’t think the musical references are simple, and I don’t think they’re a tribute to the past.

PAN M 360: How can you avoid references that are too obvious?

STEVEN WILSON: As we get older, our knowledge of the history of music becomes more solid, we are able to recognize musical references when we listen to new productions. Let’s take the example of Kamasi Washington, the new face of jazz, according to many journalists; I listen to his music, I hear Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, music I already knew. What’s the problem? Are the references too familiar to me? Maybe they are… On the other hand, I listen to Billie Eilish, so young, probably unaware of all these references… which leads her to be incredibly refreshing! In a way, her ignorance of pop music is a great advantage for her.

PAN M 360: How would you translate your new songs on stage? A choir and an army of synthesizers?

STEVEN WILSON: I’m starting to think about it. There will be a band, if not to play the most complex songs in my repertoire. There will be more intimate moments with me and electronic accompaniment. In fact, I will always have a full band, even for the more electronic aspects of the new album. There will also be stronger elements for the visual side of the show, images, movies, lighting, etc. We should start the tour next September if the world situation allows it, of course.

In 2013, Rhye released Woman, an album that heralded a most promising career.  A magnificent countertenor voice, cautious use of digital technologies, inspired melodic proposals, extremely refined pop. We swooned, and here we are seven years later.

Rhye was initially a duo made up of Canada’s Mike Milosh and Denmark’s Robin Hannibal, but the latter abandoned the project before it even took off, due to contractual conflicts for another recording project, the group Quadron.  

Under the pseudonym Rhye, Toronto-born (now in Los Angeles) Mike Milosh has since released the album Blood in 2018 and the EP Spirit in 2019. His film scores, a dancefloor project he plans to do with the world-famous producer Diplo, and the high-flying works he created for Secular Sabbath, an immersive event concept designed with his wife Genevieve Medow Jenkins, are among his several creative projects. 

Now comes the imminent release of Home, under the Rhye banner and on the Last Gang label. Composed in 2019 and 2020, Home was recorded at United Recording Studios and Revival at The Complex (Earth Wind & Fire), and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine). 

This is an excellent opportunity for a chat with Mike Milosh in early 2021.  

PAN M 360: Listening to your new album, it seems obvious that you are not working alone, right?

MIKE MILOSH: I work alone at first, then I surround myself. I’m responsible for all the production, I do most of the composition and writing, then I team up with other musicians to raise the proposal. About 30 musicians take part in my projects, eight of us are on stage during my tours. I constantly have to adjust with this group of colleagues who have families and cannot always be free for long periods. 

PAN M 360: There was a five-year gap between the release of the first album and the second. Since then, 2018, however, three albums have been released. How do you explain the first hiatus, which was much longer than the others?

MIKE MILOSH: I’ve given more than 800 concerts since 2013, I’ve toured a lot. I toured for five years after the first album, but I had contractual problems with the label at the time (Polydor), I had to get out of that contract by touring and reaping the income necessary to achieve my goals and find a new recording contract. It was very complicated to do this, legal fees, etcetera. There was a big black cloud over the Rhye project, it eventually dissipated. So I recorded Blood, then Spirit, a piano-vocal EP, which then led me to the creation of Home. It’s amazing how far I’ve come! I don’t really have any regrets, the past is the past and I’m still making music, which is what I like to do most in life.

PAN M 360: You had a contractual agreement with Universal (Polydor), a major, you’ve finally chosen an independent record deal. What justifies this choice?

MIKE MILOSH: Shooting or recording with a lot of people is expensive. I became a kind of entrepreneur, I had to really think about the expenses and the possible survival of the project. I have to reinvest the profits in the heart of the project and sacrifice any excessive expenses, especially lighting. I assume that my show will be intimate and really dedicated to music. So I see myself in a way that the music industry doesn’t see me, as a singer, director, composer, producer. I also have to vary my projects, which I do with great pleasure. When I compose for the cinema, it’s closer to classical music. I can also do classic rock, I have a more dancefloor project going on with Diplo, I also do the ambient music for Secular Sabbath, a project with my partner Genevieve that welcomes people in an intimate environment where music rubs shoulders with relaxation and gastronomy. I love making music in many forms, I also love photography and painting. I don’t see myself as a celebrity, I’m a relatively well-known musician who has to wear many hats, including the one that allows me to make money to keep going.

PAN M 360: Listening to Home leads to this observation: music recorded in the studio is closer to a performance on stage. How to explain this transition from an electronic production to a production based on instrumental music?

MIKE MILOSH: Before, I went through a phase where I was doing a lot of production, including many processes inherent to the use of digital technologies, a lot of editing as well. Now, the new album doesn’t have MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), everything is much more organic. It’s, I think, the consequence of my tours where there were eight of us on stage. No computers taken into account, the emphasis is on the uniqueness of each performance. When I compose now, I try to see how it translates on stage, how it can vary from one night to another. I play several instruments myself: drums, cello, most keyboards. I’m very interested in synthesizers, I can also write string arrangements. All in all, each instrument involved is really played by a human being.

PAN M 360: But why did you give up the electro side of your early Rhye material?

MIKE MILOSH: You know, Rhye remains Rhye. Before launching this project, I had another electronic project called Milosh, a pop project close to songwriting but electro. There was a time when I used to love electronic production, but at a certain point I got bored with the use of the computer. My body wanted to listen to real instruments, real strings, real wind instruments, real drums, a piano sound resulting from a subtle adjustment of the recording. There is in the instrumental performance this magic that is missing in electronic production, although the experimental side of electronic music remains very interesting for me.

It’s less interesting for me as a director. I’m currently interested in the textures of the instruments, the natural reverberation, the careful use of microphones, the warmth of analog technologies. But it remains the same style, my approach is centered on my ability to sing and compose songs. It’s always me you hear in the end. I don’t reinvent the wheel. I want to record what I like to hear in a song, in the sense that there is often something missing in pop production and that’s what I try to fill in.

PAN M 360: What do you think are the distinctive features of Home?

MIKE MILOSH: On this album, my dearest achievement was the recording of a Danish choir of about 50 female voices. It wasn’t easy to bring these singers together in one room and get the best out of it; the operating costs are high, the choral arrangements have to be well done, but it was quite natural for me to arrange these voices as it was the case with the strings on this recording. 

On the other hand, I was very careful to maintain the balance of the arrangements, not to overload them, to arrange them soberly, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. In fact, it’s all a continuous process whose link is none other than myself. Basically, it’s similar to my early electronic recordings, although the means to achieve it are different. I’m trying to capture the human spirit involved, mine and that of my collaborators.

PAN M 360: On the lyrical side, can you explain the link between inspiration and result?

MIKE MILOSH: The inspiration for these songs comes mostly from real-life experiences. In my opinion, each of my songs must be embodied in real life experiences. My personal life and my artistic expression, therefore, are intimately merged. Of course, I try to exclude direct elements of my private life in my song lyrics, but my own experiences are certainly reflected without anyone knowing exactly what happened.

PAN M 360: Can you give us some examples?

MIKE MILOSH: I’ll give you two. The song “My Heart Bleeds” was a work in progress, I was working with a colleague in Los Angeles at the time, I wasn’t sure where I was going and I decided to wait for the idea to take shape. While I was waiting, my colleague’s African-American cousin was the victim of a racially motivated crime – she was stabbed, and fortunately got away. This event obsessed me… and clarified the idea of the song. Currently, there is a lot of racial tension in the United States, it affects me a lot and the lyrics of “My Heart Bleeds” is finally the result of this state of mind. Even though I don’t address this fact directly in the song, the text is a result of it. 

In “Sweetest Revenge”, I express this idea of not conveying hatred and aggression towards anyone who can hurt me. I feel it is better to get on with my life and try to be happy. There is no point in taking revenge, the best therapy in the face of aggression is to move forward and find beauty in life.

From 2006 to 2020, Kent Nagano was Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, the global pandemic ruined the end of his Montreal stay at the helm of the OSM, a series of special concerts planned for last spring and summer… cancelled or postponed, obviously. We can already imagine invitations in 2021 when the concert halls will be allowed to reopen. In the meantime, he granted this in-depth interview to PAN M 360.

The first question that comes to mind after this year of profound disruption in the music world concerns the maestro’s final round, of which 2020 was his last year at the helm of the OSM, an exit unfortunately overshadowed by the pandemic.

“Of course, it’s disappointing. I’m afraid that the current situation is simply out of our control. We must remain positive. And I think the vaccine will have a positive effect by late spring or early summer. The finale was really very rich, not one concert but a rich process, that’s the best word to use. Several concerts linked together, which were going to have a crescendo or a general recapitulation towards the end, and that involved not only the OSM but also the community and many artists from Quebec who joined the orchestra, it was also the last Classical Virée that was going to give Andrew Wan another chance to perform the Samy Moussa concerto that we recorded. It’s always different when you play a brand new concerto twice.”

It’s easy to imagine that the conductor, based (mostly) in Paris and (sometimes) in San Francisco, and whose main job is in Hamburg, will be entitled to important invitations when the Maison symphonique reopens. In the meantime, he remains Honourary Conductor of the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, where he was Music Director from 2000 to 2006, but his most important duties are in Hamburg, where he is Music Director of the State Opera and the Philharmonic Orchestra.

A more festive conclusion to his Montreal direction would have been desirable, but… At 69 years of age, Nagano accepts his fate wisely and expresses a deep attachment to the city that has embraced him for at least 14 years.

“When your child leaves home, the relationship is different, of course. You don’t see each other every day, but that has nothing to do with the love you have for your child. In this case, I actually feel like it’s not over yet. My respect and admiration for the OSM is just as strong today as it was on day one, if not more so. My feelings for Montreal and the orchestra are much deeper today. Because the orchestra can accomplish so much, which means that we have developed a very, very intense personal relationship. And that hasn’t ended. So yes, I’m looking forward to the future.”

The maestro leaves with his head held high after 14 years of service to the OSM, and is proud of his Montreal achievements.

“What am I most proud of? It’s terribly difficult to say. Together, we have done so much.”

Without claiming to be exhaustive, it nevertheless lends itself to gambling. The construction of the Maison symphonique comes first:

“We started by bringing the orchestra closer to the community. We first filled Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, which led us to the realization of an old dream of which Quebec can be very proud. The construction of the new concert hall was carried out in 2007, 2008 and 2009 in the midst of a global banking scandal. It is so impressive to me that Montrealers and Quebecers were saying ‘Let’s do it’, very impressive despite the global financial fragility.”

The OSM Choir, under the direction of Andrew Megill, is then touched on by the maestro.

“I had always felt that we needed a choir that could sing at the same level as the orchestra, so we created the OSM Choir.”

The acquisition of the Pierre Béique organ is another source of great pleasure for Nagano. The purchase of this orchestral organ was made possible thanks to the late Jacqueline Desmarais, a patron of the arts. Its name honours the contribution of Pierre Béique, the OSM’s first director general, from 1939 to 1970.

“Many concert halls have left an empty space where the organ was supposed to be!” Nagano laughs. “Installed at the Maison symphonique, the Pierre Béique organ is currently one of the best in the world.”

The Maestro is also pleased with a relationship that he feels has been strengthened between the Montreal community and the OSM, beginning with the Classical Tour, which is normally presented at the end of the summer.

“That’s why we’ve set up our summer festival, La Virée classique. I’ve always felt that one of the unique, special features of Montreal is its summer festival season. There’s a great atmosphere and there’s a place for classical music.”

Maestro Nagano goes on to cite La musique aux enfants, an OSM music-education initiative conducted in partnership with the Université de Montréal and the Commission scolaire de la Pointe-de-l’Île. The goal was to introduce preschoolers to intensive music learning. The project was inaugurated in November 2016, first initiated at St-Rémi public school in Montréal-Nord.

“I am very happy with our involvement in this very special school, which provides children with a high level of education.”

Finally, the rejuvenation of the OSM’s audience is a great victory for Maestro Nagano.

“For me, one of the things that people don’t realize so much is that over time, the orchestra and I have lowered the average age of our audience; we see young adults, teenagers, whole families. The orchestra today has one of the youngest audiences in all of North America, without neglecting our mature audience. I’ve always thought that the OSM audience should be the people you meet on the streets of Montreal, people from all walks of life, all age groups, all interests, all levels of experience and education.

“The idea was to reflect Montreal, a very special city: mosaic of cultures, high quality of life, cuisine, arts, culture, education, visionary industries, advanced technologies, etc. When the Montreal public comes to us, they can feel, hear and be nourished through the OSM, the sense of belonging develops, it makes the orchestra all the more relevant. Slowly and surely, this representation of Montrealers is tangible in the OSM. It’s a sign of good health, and I think we can really be proud of it.”

Kent Nagano has not always enjoyed unanimous support. His conducting has sometimes been considered too soft by some. His artistic orientation, very open to the contemporary corpus and therefore not always consensual for the “classical audience”, has displeased those who are reluctant to change. It is also possible that these differences in values sometimes had a negative impact within some of the orchestra’s staff, which may have affected some performances.

Regrets, Maestro Nagano… He takes responsibility for everything, starting with an artistic direction that he feels he has imposed through dialogue.

“We had a fairly open dialogue between members of the OSM, the decisions that were taken were not unilateral. There was a lot of discussion among us, because when we wanted to do something important, because we all had to go in the same direction. If you divide and go in different directions, you can’t achieve your goals. Without discussion, by losing the sense of unity and community, you may find yourself in very dangerous situations.”

That being said, the maestro remains aware that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

“If you are an artist and you take risks, you have to assume the difficulties and the consequences. Not everyone will systematically understand, not everyone will be able to feel at the same time what has been implemented. The orchestra quickly achieved my initial goals and each year I set the bar higher and higher. My only regret is that I didn’t have enough time. But maybe that’s a good thing…”

In this, he suggests that the development of the OSM must continue, a new direction must now take over with Maestro Rafael Payare.

“I think it’s important for an orchestra to be able to go back to the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and to get to the present day. The idea of an orchestra for musicians is to make music together. Artists from different nationalities, cultures, or social classes pool their talent to achieve what they cannot accomplish individually. This is a kind of metaphor for democracy.”

Photo: Martin Girard/Shoot Studio

The spotlight was on Louis-Philippe Marsolais as he performed the French-horn encore that brought to a close the first European tour in the history of Montreal’s Orchestre métropolitain, at the Philharmonie de Paris.

“It was like weightlessness,” Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin recalls. “All of a sudden, there was no longer any barrier between emotion and playing. It gave us wings.”

Three years later, almost to the day, Louis-Philippe Marsolais, 43, embraces the lull caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has allowed him to catch his breath after a marathon of concerts, recordings and tours. From one day to the next, we went from 100 miles an hour to a wall,” recalls the bearded horn player. “It was great, it gave me a chance to step back.”

Principal horn of the Orchestre métropolitain (OM), member of the Pentaèdre wind quintet, professor at l’Université de Montréal and father of Violette, Henri, and Victor, Louis-Philippe Marsolais has not been idle since the beginning of confinement in mid-March. Like everyone else, the classical music industry has had to conform to this new norm of physical distancing and atomization of society.

Orchestras, the very incarnation of strength in numbers and esprit de corps, have been fragmented by health measures. It is difficult to become accustomed to the transformation of this environment for which tradition is the backbone. Abroad, for example, acrylic panels separate the musicians of the wind instrument section of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. In our backyard, the OM has to occupy an entire hall – including the floor – in order to be able to rehearse with sufficient distance. Enough to distort the essence of classical music? Yes and no, answers Marsolais.

“[With distancing in the hall,] the speed of sound comes into play,” he explains. “We noticed at the beginning that we were always playing early or late. You always have to readjust the scales, it becomes mathematical.” This goes against an orchestra’s personality, he says, as he emphasises the communal qualities of music, where listening and reacting to the playing of others prevails. “For me, the great pleasure of making music is being with the people I love and having fun together,” says the musician, partially hidden by his spotted mask. He gets this feeling much more often “with his gang in an orchestra” than on tour as a soloist.

Louis-Philippe Marsolais (in the center). Photo: François Goupil

Rockstar in Austria, nuisance on the orange line

Marsolais cherishes unforgettable moments from his expeditions in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Like this time he went to Austria for the most important festival paying tribute to Schubert’s music, The Schubertiades. His Pentaèdre Quintet presented a newly released recording before “1000 old Austrians singing Schubert at night before going to bed”. Marsolais had experienced one of the moments in his career that made him feel like a superhero. “At the end, people came to us crying… it’s really quite a feeling,” he recalls today, wearing a Captain America T-shirt. “It doesn’t happen often in classical music.”

He first tasted this collective appreciation for classical music some 20 years ago when he was completing his training at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany. After obtaining a DEC at Joliette and a BAC at McGill, both in music, he decided to go abroad to the home of Bach and Beethoven. “I used to get stopped on the street by passers-by who would tell me how lucky I was to play the horn, and that they couldn’t wait to hear me play,” he recalls. “Here in Montreal, you’re more likely to get yelled at in the metro because you take up too much room!”

You don’t need to have written a doctoral thesis to understand why classical music is so marginal here in Quebec. It has simply never been part of its (young) popular culture. However, can it still be described as inaccessible, or worse, elitist? 

“We’ve tried hard not to,” says Marsolais. “There is so much diversity, so many free shows. It’s possible to follow the scene very closely, even for students or people with little income.” According to Marsolais, this has resulted in a rejuvenation of the fanbase of Montreal orchestras, whereas young professionals have been gaining ground on the bluehairs for the past decade. The OM has seen its proportion of unit tickets sold to the under-35s jump by 188% between 2015 and 2020. The same is true of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), where the number of subscription packages for those 34 and under also nearly doubled between 2015 and 2020. 

OSM and OM, opposite atmospheres

In addition to being the solo horn for the OM, Marsolais also served as third horn for the OSM between 2013 and 2015. “I dug that job a lot less, it was much less demanding, but people found it cooler and I made five times more money,” he says with irony.

Shortly after his arrival in the Nagano troupe, “political jousts” got the better of him. Although he was assured that the brass section had never sounded as good as it did in with him present, he was given no clear explanation as to why he had been dismissed. “When all this happened, it really knocked me down,” he confides. “It made me lose faith in the importance of music, in a context like that.”

The months that followed this turning point in his career were not easy. Marsolais plunged into an implacable quest to prove to everyone that he was still first in class. With hindsight, he now understands the darker side of his competitiveness, which has sometimes overshadowed his interpersonal relationships. “When I was younger, I wasn’t aware of what it could do to others,” he says.

This departure from the OSM was perhaps a life-saver for Marsolais’ professional health. He was able to devote more time to the OSM, which he now places on an equal footing with its main competitor. “On paper, the OSM has better musicians,” the horn player says. Afterwards, you wonder how it is that the OM sometimes sounds better than the OSM. “It’s really a matter of cohesion.”

They owe this cohesion in large part to their captain, the Quebec prodigy Yannick Nézet-Séguin. “It makes all the difference in the world to have a leader who is strong, inspired, respected and competent,” says Marsolais. “There is no confrontation, no ‘I will play louder than you to show that I’m better’.” For me, it comes from the leadership of the person at the podium.”

Marsolais’ admiration for Nézet-Séguin is not unreciprocated, far from it. “When he became the main French horn of the OM, it was an extraordinary addition,” the conductor says. “Louis-Philippe has this way of inspiring us all. He is so dedicated and reliable, which is very important for horn players.”

Nézet-Séguin nevertheless describes his “fluidity of style” as “one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the world, and the great horn players he knows.” It’s thanks, among other things, to his various orchestral and chamber-music experiences with Pentaèdre that Marsolais was able to build his enviable versatility. So much so that he estimates he has performed 90 percent of the French-horn repertoire that’s commonly played.

Making music for the right reasons

The next step for Louis-Philippe Marsolais? The organisation of an international French-horn festival, which had been suspended due to the pandemic. Until then, the most accessible of Quebec virtuosos advises neophytes not to be impressed by the immensity and complexity of the classical repertoire. “You can listen to classical music and think, ‘wow, that’s beautiful.’ You don’t have to say to yourself, ‘ah, there’s a 1-4-5-7-1 progression here!’” He also assures you that his grandiose knowledge of solfège and music theory has in no way affected his appreciation of his favourite non-classical artists – he’s followed the career of the Cowboys Fringants since their beginnings and loves the works of the great French chansonniers and American crooners.

Marsolais has the career he has because he “makes music for the right reasons.” He adds, “I don’t know if it’s because I came from another planet, but I never wondered if I was going to be able to make a living from it. I think that innocence at that moment in my life allowed me to go wherever I wanted to go, without needing security or answers about what was waiting for me.”

“Even when he was young, everyone admired Louis-Philippe,” Nézet-Séguin recalls. “He handles this with great humility. It’s a beautiful story that continues to be written through people, like Louis-Philippe, who have joined OM over the years.”

Sunday, 3 December, 2017. After performing a moving six-minute solo by Ravel in front of his lectern at the sumptuous Philharmonie de Paris, Louis-Philippe Marsolais burst into tears. At the end of this “moment of grace,” as his conductor described it, this likeable rock star from the shadows could once again say, mission accomplished.

In only three years of existence, Mothland’s moths have chewed out a place for themselves in Montreal’s nightlife. Their cocoon is based in an underground parallel universe, out of the spotlight. Only the initiated can access the portal to this dimension, which is located in the Bermuda triangle formed by the three taverns on St-Denis Street at the corner of Mont-Royal. Despite the imposed distancing and the uncertainty that reigns over the artistic world, the psychedelic conspiracy Mothland has decided to move forward, with an officially metamorphosis into an independent label.

To mark the occasion, Mothland are releasing their first cassette compilation Sounds from Mothland Volume 1, an astonishing mix of demos and unreleased B-side tracks from various local and international artists who have marked the Montreal psychedelic niche over the last five years. Below, you will find an exclusive listening link that will give you access to the tracks of the compilation. You will be able to listen to a post-disco utopian ballad by the shoegazers Yoo Doo Right, a post-punk cover of the song Enigma Of The Absolute from Dead Can Dance by the Frenchman Jessica93 or a live recording of the Sunwatchers, a New York jazz-punk quartet. To collectors and lovers of rarities, the cassette is coming out in a small limited edition of only one hundred copies.

PAN M 360 entered into telepathic communication with the “mothés” community to discuss psychedelic music, the mythical 4AD label, origami, and their official launch as an independent label.

PAN M 360: You launched the first Distorsion Festival in 2015. Mothland followed two years later. How was the Mothland agency created? What was lacking in the local scene?

Marilyne Lacombe: Mothland started from the Distorsion festival, which is the idea of forming and organizing a community around the Montreal psychedelic scene, to give tools to this scene, places to broadcast, organized in a professional way, while keeping a DIY charm. The artistic direction of Distorsion became the artistic direction of Mothland. As a festival programmer [Taverne Tour and FME], I found myself representing the scene we had built around Distorsion to other programmers and bringing it to festivals that were not necessarily niche festivals. We still opened the door to bands that would never have played in more mainstream festivals.

PAN M 360: There are many festivals that focus on psychedelic music, in a strictly speaking musical sense. Yours has a wider opening field, with post-punk, noise, no-wave, garage, and so on. How do you gather all this around the psychedelic label? What is your vision of the term psychedelic?

ML: We had a very broad, modern, and up-to-date vision of the psychedelic scene. Musically, we didn’t have a limit of style, but more of a state of mind and an aesthetic, I think.

Philippe Larocque: We wanted leftfield programming that was also accessible. It’s not just a two-hour drone show, there’s a party side to it. We mixed heavy bands with electronic music, it didn’t have to be just rock, like in the San Francisco counterculture. We have more of an experimental vibe. For example, Crabe and FET.NAT joined us, they’re bands that have been around for a long time. The scene already existed but we made a bridge between several experimental bands that didn’t necessarily have a direct link. For us, it fit into the same definition of psychedelic experimental music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdilLVslYlM&ab_channel=CBCMusic

Maxime Hébert: We wanted something that would change perception, whether it be sounds or images. That’s one of the main drivers. Psychedelic music is very appealing. People stay in front of a psychedelic video clip because it stimulates them. Psychedelic music is just as stimulating. It’s not a closed genre, it can be enjoyed by so many different gigs.

ML: In 2014, there was a kind of Golden Age of psychedelic rock with Levitation, Austin Psych Fest. We were inspired by that, but we really gave it a Montreal flavour, I think. The idea behind Distorsion was to start a community, a scene started to gravitate around Distorsion, bands that would come back often and we started to forge stronger relationships with them, like Paul Jacobs, Atsuko Chiba, and Yonatan Gat. That scene, that community needed a hat to introduce those bands to the industry. At the beginning, Mothland was purely a booking agency. Our mandate was to take the bands we had federated and present them to festivals. I think there are doors that opened up with the work we did.

PAN M 360: From the very beginning, you brought together local but also international artists, why did you choose to have an international opening very early in the project?

PL: With the Desert Daze gang, the world in Europe of Teenage Menopause, we wanted to find moths all over the world, people who had a bit of the same vision. We began to forge ties with Elzo Durt, who made our posters for Distorsion. His friends from Le Prince Harry came, and we decided to reprint on tape the split between Duchess Says and Le Prince Harry. We didn’t want to be a label but on the side we made a small run of this cassette, it’s like breaking the ice to start making a label.

ML: We’ve built bridges, not only with festivals, but also with labels, other communities and organizations that are a bit like us and that do the same kind of work. There have been encounters, links that have been forged through all of this. Our initial mission was to create an original community, with people helping each other and creating together. There has always been St Denis versus St Laurent, Esco versus La Casa, I think we always had the idea of bringing people from both sides and being together on the same stage.

PAN M 360: You say that Sounds from Mothland is influenced by the punk compilations of the ’80s, which label or compilation do you think of?

Jean-Philippe Bourgeois: On 4AD, all the artists collaborated together on the albums of This Mortal Coil, there was this aspect of community, of creating together. 

PL: I had this desire to look to the past, to look at the labels that influenced us and that were real curators with a strong identity, like 4AD, Sub Pop. Releasing this mixtape was precisely to do something that no longer exists in our time, everything is digital, everything is intangible. Sub Pop and Rough Trade used to release compilations that were sick, nowadays, labels make playlists with all the hits of their artists on Spotify but it just stays there. I didn’t want us to get into that. Without falling into nostalgia, we can bring back what worked back then. As a music lover, sometimes you need something tangible, the finished product. 

[exclusive listening link]

PAN M 360: The compilation is a good representation of this year’s collective feeling. We all feel out of our comfort zone, and that’s what you asked the artists to do to create the tracks. Can we say that it’s a call to stay creative and experiment despite the uncertainty that hangs over the artistic community?

ML: As much as Mothland was born out of the need for this scene to be represented in booking, we also realized that there weren’t many labels in Quebec anymore that were taking risks. It’s really the pandemic that made Mothland as a label truly become a priority. After the first two months of the pandemic, we realized that the shows weren’t coming back for another year, maybe even two years, so it became Mothland’s priority to release music. We reviewed the whole way of doing things, we’re learning how to manage this whole ecosystem. It was a great way to reconnect with the world.

PAN M 360: Paul Jacobs signs the design of the cassette. How would you define his artistic signature? We obviously think of Daniel Johnston’s drawings.

PL: The first time I met Paul, he was wearing a Daniel Johnston t-shirt. We asked Paul to do the packaging, to make it look like it was hand-drawn. We called the compilation Sounds from Mothland, to say that Mothland is really a tangible place. Paul ended up designing his little apartment with someone who plays music.  

ML: It’s the universe that we carry with us everywhere we go. 

PAN M 360: What about Elie Chap’s mystery insertion?

PL: To bring our totem animal, I had the idea to create a kit of how to make your own origami moth. A mothé is like an underdog too.

Watch the Distorsion Domesicle again here.

Above: “Celestial Broadcast”, from the Marquees Tropica series by Ardneks

If you’re a fan of the worldwide, polycultural psych revival of recent years, chances are the artwork of Jakarta-based illustrator, painter, and designer Kendra Ahimsa, known as Ardneks, has tickled your retinas more than once. His visions have graced record sleeves and gig posters for the likes of Moon Duo, Khruangbin, Flamingods, Acid Mothers Temple, and Neon Indian. A visit to his Paraiso Grafica website is a headfirst dive into these and many other wonderful images. Ardnek’s work for the brand-new Ko Shin Moon EP Miniature 1 is among PAN M 360’s Top 20 Record Covers of 2020, which seemed as good an excuse as any to connect with the artist and find out more about what motivates him, the art he loves, and the amazing creative scene evolving across Asia.

PAN M 360: This year, you did the cover art for Ko Shin Moon’s new EP Miniature 1, and for the singles “Nuevo Mundo” by los Hermanos Gutiérrez, and “Mushroom Kingdom” / “Bonsoy” by Australia’s Sunfruits (and there was an animated video for “Bonsoy”). What other music-related commissions have you done this year?

Ardneks: I’m currently working on a couple of music-related projects. I’m not sure I can reveal them yet, since all of them are for upcoming releases. I have to sync with the bands’ announcement timelines, but soon! All I can say is that I’m grateful I still have projects to work on. Because of the pandemic, there are no gigs or tours, which means no posters. I really miss working on gig posters.

Above: Poster designs by Ardneks

PAN M 360: Aside from a general affinity for gentle psychedelia – good trip, not bad trip! – what do you think connects you with the musicians with whom you work?

Ardneks: The music, first and foremost. I only take on music-related projects if I actually like the music. That’s why I always ask if I could listen to the songs first. Besides that, probably the nerding out. Like with Ko Shin Moon, we shared our mutual love for Haruomi Hosono. They told me about Indonesian records they listen to and stuff. I really enjoy the getting-to-know-the-band phase, they tell me stories and concepts behind the songs, the creation process, their influences. It’s easy to tell if a person genuinely loves music after a few conversations.

PAN M 360: I’m really taken with your Marquees Tropica series. These weren’t commercial commissions, they were expressions of self. Each is related to a particular song, which you listened to exclusively until the piece was completed. Is there more about this series you’d like to add?

Ardneks: Music is heavily substantial to my body of work. It’s like, if you look at the back of a juicebox and see the ingredients, probably 75% of every illustration I make is inspired by music in some way. The Marquees Tropica series tries to express it in more of an intimate way, how music has influenced me at different stages in my life. I had this idea of choosing one song from each stage, put it on repeat and start drawing wherever the song takes me, until the illustration’s finished. Listening to the same song over and over took me to fun, weird places. 

“Celestial Broadcast” (see top of page) was the first work that I made for the series and the song was The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey”. It’s about a curiosity-filled stage in my life. It depicts a boy who thinks that the first few lines of “Just Like Honey” is about his dream encounter with the goddess Sarasvati, so he built this machine trying to reach her. I was a rather curious teenager. From trying every hallucinogen, trying to understand different religions and spiritualism, I even went through a hippie phase, gone to rainbow gatherings, ashrams and stuff, until I realized all that utopian stuff are just like an illusory honey and I think I’ve had just about enough. So that’s the narrative behind the piece.

It’s a very personal project. I’m thinking of continuing to add more to the series as the years go by.

Above: Models in Ardneks designs for Artist Attire

PAN M 360: I was thrilled to see that you’ve been developing merchandise, and not just prints, but also apparel and accessories. I was a little heartbroken too – the items that would be available internationally are all sold out! Can you tell me a bit more about this aspect of the expanding Ardneks empire?

Ardneks: I’m sorry! They’re actually not sold out. I had to close shop temporarily due to the current situation. The only shipping method available is quite expensive from where I am, plus it’s a bit of a gamble because different countries have different postal policies. Some sent packages were returned to me for unknown reasons, so I figure I’ll just wait until things calm down a bit until I open the shop again.

Does that make me an emperor? Ha ha! The only empire I believe in is the Wobbling Empire (Yura Yura Teikoku). I don’t really think of it as an expansion, to me it’s just another medium for my work. I was approached by this local brand, Artist Attire, to develop some wearable stuff, and I answered the call. The idea is to make a walking artwork that people can appreciate in unlikely places. A one-hour bus ride will be much enjoyable when you have artwork on someone’s back to look at. The brand itself is planning on working with other local artists in the near future. So I’m actually just one collaborator. It’s surreal though, this one time in Japan I was on the train and I saw some random girl wearing one of my shirts. So that idea came to a full circle!

Above: Ardneks’ “Felt-Kontra Harmonia” and “Jajouka House”

PAN M 360: Though I see elements of art deco, classic Japanese theatre posters, and French sci-fi comics in your work, the main ingredient, it seems to me, is the psychedelic Pop Art of about 50 years ago – that clean-line, geometrically precise “good trip” stuff, from Yellow Submarine to the famous Fillmore posters. What are a couple of your key influences or inspirations? 

Ardneks: Thanks for noticing! Whew, I don’t know where to start, I drew inspirations from a lot of stuff. Music, of course, can’t live without it. I’ll try to listen to almost anything. I grew up with a lot of Japanese anime and manga, I guess that’s where my drawing style’s rooted at. As I got older, I was obsessed with Fillmore-era posters and the psychedelic artistic sensibilities. The colours and the compositional freedom got me. There’s no rule, no grid, you really have to take your time to decipher it. Things really escalated for me when I saw Yokoo Tadanori’s posters. That’s even crazier. How he composed everything is so revolutionary to me. Every element is chaotic, yet beautifully placed in ways you haven’t seen before. It’s the perfect approach for me because I’m a maximalist who likes a lot of details. I drew inspiration from films too. I try to watch at least a film a day, it fuels my imagination. Retro magazine advertisements are also good for inspiration, they just don’t make them like that anymore.

PAN M 360:  Who among your contemporaries, making “rock art” in this neo-psych style, are you particularly fond of?

Ardneks: So many! Some of my favorites are Will Sweeney, Aaron Lowell Denton, Jason Galea, Brian Blomerth, Jaime Zuverza, and Edward Carvalho-Monaghan.

Above: Ardneks in studio

PAN M 360: I’m having a lot of fun keeping tabs on all the cool culture coming out of Indonesia in recent years, in cinema, music, and graphic art. Being there inside that scene, what’s your assessment on the popular arts world of Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia these days?

Ardneks: Really? That’s cool! Yeah, I feel Indonesia is in a really good place right now. There are many local platforms giving great opportunities to creators, be it directors, artists, or musicians. Given those platforms, these creative individuals create amazing stuff, and the reach broadens significantly. And thanks to the internet, we can easily find creators from different parts of the country. I think part of it is because both the industry and the audience have better appreciation towards it. What was niche has entered the mainstream. Even the big corporations have dipped into the pool. They collaborate with proper creators and compete in making better projects.

PAN M 360: Your work involves a lot of dialogue with other parts of Asia, both in its content and its audience. What would you say are the cultural hotspots elsewhere in Asia right now, the cities or even neighbourhoods that are exciting and important to you?

Ardneks: I’m particularly fond of Osaka. It’s my second home. I love the city so much. I had the chance to get to know and become good friends with some amazing people there. Great art scene, lots of cool spots to check out, and not to mention the food. Last year, I held an exhibition at this neighborhood Nakazakicho. It’s really an interesting area – located next to the contrasting modern district Umeda, the neighborhood is comprised of old Showa-era buildings, buildings that were unharmed during the wars, but young people have transformed it into art galleries, coffee shops, vintage secondhand clothing stores, record stores, ramen joints. Shinsekai, Dotonbori, Nakanoshima, Shinsaibashi, many unique interesting neighborhoods. There’s this the annual event called Unknown Asia, it’s where almost 200 artists from all over Asia gather and exhibit their work personally. So many great artists, and you can chat with them about their work. I participated in 2016 and it not only jumpstarted my career, it opened my eyes about the art scenes in other parts of Asia.

PAN M 360: Finishing out 2020, there’s a lot of reflection right now on the best music of the year. What have you been listening to lately? Do you have a particular favourite record of 2020?

Ardneks: I’ve been listening to a lot of exotica music lately. Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Xavier Cugat, Piero Piccioni, and more. I haven’t really followed this year’s releases so I’m not sure about the best music of the year, but the ones I listened to and like are Kahil El’Zabar’s America the Beautiful, Khruangbin’s Mordechai, Jon McKiel’s Bobby Joe Hope, I really enjoy Fontaines D.C.’s A Hero’s Death. Oh, and Shintaro Sakamoto released four new songs earlier this month, so good.

Above: Ardneks’ “Speckled Sherbet”

The very cool ensemble Collectif9 proposes Rituaels, a musical-video journey with almost mystical echoes and hints of… a beneficial ritual in these troubled times. The naturally amplified and reverberant music of Arvo Pärt, Michael Tippett, Nicole Lizée, Bryce Dessner (yes, from The National), Jocelyn Morlock, and even Hildegarde de Bingen resonates with rare emotional and even spiritual significance.

The Montreal-based ensemble has only been on the local scene for a few years, but it’s already, in my humble opinion, one of the most interesting things going. If you love meaningful instrumental music that both upsets your listening habits and gives you goosebumps, you absolutely must hear them at least once. And that’s just as well, because from December 11 to 13, you’ll have free access to their latest adventure, a film-concert called Rituaels.

As a prelude to the premiere of Rituaels, broadcast on the group’s website and on Facebook starting at 8 pm on December 11, I spoke with their leader, double bassist Thibault Bertin-Maghit, who explained that the idea for Rituaels came from a “normal” concert that was to be given on May 2. Pandemic and associated restrictions forced the concert to become a larger project, involving a dancer and creative video to accompany the music. In the end, Rituaels quickly became a kind of big, one-hour music video.

“Once we knew that Rituaels could only be digital, at least in the near future,” says Bertin-Maghit, “we decided that we should fully engage with this form of broadcasting and use all the advantages it offers us. We wondered how we could keep the audience’s attention for 60 minutes. A filmed concert involves a few camera shots, but at a certain point, when you’ve seen the same shots four or five times, it becomes boring. So we added shots with dancer Stacey Désilier as well as video creations by Benoit Fry and Lucas Harrison Rupnik.”

The result, which I had the chance to watch before the first broadcast, is very beautiful. It alternates simple but beautifully staged shots of the musicians in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre-Apôtre church with the stylized movements of Désilier, soberly clad in white. 

But no matter how neatly shot, the visuals serve primarily to support one thing: the music. And what music! Mostly modern and contemporary, in the tradition of mystical contemplative minimalism, or, if not, one that “fades” perfectly with it.

“Since we initially wanted to play in a church, a very reverberant space,” Bertin-Maghit continues, “we decided to fully dive into this choice. Musicians often ‘make do’ with reverberation, fighting to avoid letting it dominate everything. For our part, we have chosen rooms that not only work perfectly in this kind of acoustics, but that even come out of it bigger.”

Bigger, yes, I would say so. Arvo Pärt could only sound good in this, as one would expect, but the neo-ancient colours of Tippett’s homage to Purcell succeed just as well. I also note the delicate and poetic extravagances of Nicole Lizée, and the furious and uplifting energy of Bryce Dessner’s Aheym (a rare non-contemplative piece in the programme). There is even the medieval mystic Hildegarde de Bingen, who launches the show in a bewitching way with O vis æternitatis.

The rich, warm, long-lasting harmonies, the long sustained notes and the early musical resonances of most of the works on the programme create a sensory landscape that evokes timelessness, duration, the non ephemeral, the signifier and, finally, the real, the important. It’s a horizontal music, which forces us to get out of the verticality of the instant and immediacy – anti-commercialism at its best.

The staging of the musicians, already planned for the concert, is well treated in terms of camera shots. The musicians change position after each piece, in a calm choreography. Surrounded by a few white curtains suspended, and lit from a few discreet sources, the resulting subdued look evokes, yes, a kind of ritual in which everyone can see what they want: religious inspiration, ancestral pagan evocations, secular and profane spirituality, transcendence of Art and Beauty. In the end, it doesn’t matter: whoever participates will be touched and perhaps even transformed.

After the broadcast of the 11th, the concert will be available free of charge for a further 48 hours. Having said that, will it be possible to experience this sublime music in a “face-to-face” setting, as they say now?

“We would love to take this concept on tour,” Bertin-Maghitto replies, “take it on the road, so that the audience can experience the powerful experience of this music with us, at the same time and in the same place. But for now, I invite everyone who will be watching to settle down and take the time to get into the rhythm of the music. I hope it will bring well-being and comfort.”

Collectif9 has a mandate to reinvent the way people listen, see and participate in classical music concerts. To play music of (not just) today that speaks to a (not just) young audience, to invest in unusual venues (bars, discos, warehouses, etc.). Not only do they succeed, but they open up new avenues. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see them one day collaborating with Montreal indie cult groups. Imagine a creation involving, oh, I don’t know, Godspeed You! Black Emperor? Anyway, Thibault says he’d love that. Who knows? The message is out! 

It’s the meeting of two universes, the virtuoso contemporary music of the Quasar saxophone quartet and the more pop, poetic and slightly mischievous one of Jérôme Minière. Je ne suis pas un robot is a tragicomic and experimental technoper-ballet that explores our intimate relationship with the world of computers and technology, and the increasingly tenuous frontier that exists between the human and the machine. PAN M 360 spoke to its three main creators, to find out more. 

PAN M 360: How did the project come about?

Jean-Marc Bouchard: It began in 2018, when I met Jérôme. We spent the summer working together [as part of the Épicerie musicale project that Minière was the instigator of], giving concerts in all the city’s parks. We were behind kiosks, dressed as market farmers. We sold vegetables, and with the vegetables came a song. The idea behind it was that you have to eat good organic vegetables, but you also have to nourish your spirit, with art, music… We had our theme, which Jérôme had composed, which we played three or four times per block of groceries, and we jammed to it. We had Eric West on the double bass, Jérôme strummed his chords, and I jammed with the others. 

He’s a pop singer but an experimental one, and we’re an experimental band, but we’re not afraid to tap our feet when it’s swinging. So I thought it would be fun to do a concert together. A concert of a slightly different nature, more a show than a concert. 

Jérôme Minière: At first, there wasn’t necessarily a subject, we brainstormed together, but I’d say the spark came from their side. They were already playing a very complex piece called “Hello” [by German composer Alexander Schubert, and part of the concert program]. They have to follow a very complicated metronome, with their earpieces, it’s really a difficult piece, and when they played it, they thought, “It’s not possible, we’re not robots!” That’s kind of the initial joke.

Jérôme Minière. (Photo: LePetitRusse)

Marie-Chantal Leclair: On the other hand, it’s difficult to say exactly who had the idea for what. I remember that at one point, Jérôme presented us with a series of clips called La vie en boîte. It was the story of an unemployed man who goes into a computer, with an ironic touch, and I was drawn to it. One thing led to another, and we moved towards this theme. 

JM: I wasn’t really keen on the idea of going into this field because I’ve tackled it in a lot of songs and projects in the past. It’s a subject that I’ve covered a lot. But in the end, we found another angle, because when we were discussing it, they were saying, it’s not necessarily negative, our relationship with machines.

PAN M 360: Between the time you began to throw ideas around, and the first show at the Ethel parking lot in Verdun in the summer of 2019, how did it develop?

JMB: The better it went, the more often we met, there was a sort of momentum. We exchanged emails, we called each other to discuss it. Jérôme would come up with a script, and we would see what we could do with it musically.

JM: One thing led to another, and there were people who got involved in the project as well. They work regularly with Jean-François Laporte, a brilliant inventor of sound objects. He invents some really quite fantastic things. So there was that meeting, and I, for my part, work a lot in a duo with my wife, Marie-Pierre Normand. For the past 20 years or so, she has always accompanied me, often in the visuals on the covers, and sometimes on stage, she has done live visuals, for example, with an overhead projector. So, we are used to collaborating together, and she got involved in the project.

PAN M 360: How would you summarise the theme? 

JMB: Jérôme has been working for a long time on the problems of the internet, communications and all that, and he has an interesting formula that goes, “Is it the human who becomes robotic, or the machine that becomes human?” 

MCL: The machine is taking up space in our lives, we know that. And then, there is a kind of love-hate relationship in that universe. In our lives, our machines, we love them, we couldn’t do without them, and at the same time, sometimes they irritate us, and we want to free ourselves from them. “I’m not a robot” is the box that we sometimes have to tick. At the narrative level, Jérôme will have to prove that he is not a robot, but it might not always be easy.

JM: The story is very simple, you log in, a series of events happen. It’s very commonplace, you do it every day, you sit down in front of your computer, you log in and at the end of the day, you’re still at the computer, so it’s sort of the most banal thing in the world, but in the end you deconstruct it a little bit and you question it. you bring out its strangeness a little bit.

The idea is that Quasar is a computer system, and I’m sort of the presenter of it all, the master of ceremonies. For the past few years, I’ve been working on solo shows where I’ve developed a strong relationship with technology, that is to say, I use software that is not normally used in shows, but rather for conferences, PowerPoint or Keynote, and I have a lot of fun with it. The idea is that we travel within a system, which I present. Quasar is the operating system, Jean-François is more like the hard disk, and Marie-Pierre and I are no longer in the desktop, the office. 

Quasar (Photo: Marie Lassiat)

PAN M 360: What is the common thread in all this?

JM: It’s really the relationship between humans and machines, a theme that in a sense is very old. Think of Chaplin’s Modern Times, or the films of Jacques Tati. So it’s this idea of the relationship between humans and machines, and then, as I was explaining, I like to give fake lectures that get a bit out of hand. 

When I say that I am the MC, it’s because I took charge of the part that concerns words and performance, whereas Quasar remains themselves, but in this context. So it’s the meeting of several universes. I find it quite touching because it seems that when there are no words, there are sounds, there is music, the interventions of Jean-François or Marie-Pierre. All of this is answered.

JMB: At one point, I said to Jérôme, “it would be fun for me to work with your equipment, then for you to work on Quasar’s equipment.” He came to rehearse with the rest of us, he recorded us, then he started making tapes with sounds that came from the saxophones. I took one of his songs called “Dans un magasin qui n’existe pas”, a song from about 10 years ago, and then I made an arrangement of it, the theme, and for a whole central part, I added a series of variations. These are quartets that stack up, one on top of the other, and it ends with 60 voices, where we play over ourselves.

JM: It’s a piece I’ve played with all sorts of people and which has had all sorts of redos like that, and then there, it has an arrangement by Jean-Marc that’s completely different in the central part, which is instrumental. It gave me great pleasure. If there was just this one song, I’d be delighted. I’ve been dreaming of a minimalist arrangement for years, it’s great! 

MCL: As Jean-Marc said, there are 14 quartets of saxophones superimposed. At first there were just four of us, but afterwards we thought why not call in other musicians? So we asked other saxophonists to record parts and send them to us, and recruited 60 young amateur saxophonists. From high school to university students, from Los Angeles to Newfoundland, from Edmonton, Victoria, Rivière-du-Loup or the Saguenay. There’s going to be a giant screen behind us, and we’re going to be able to see all these young musicians who will finally join us, virtually of course, and who will make a new version of this piece. It’s being edited, because we’ve received more than 400 short videos, we have to organise that, but it allowed us to reach a lot of people we might not otherwise have reached.

JM: What’s a bit strange is that in this project, in 2019, we were dressed like the people who are facing COVID. We didn’t have masks, but…

JMB: In the first version, there was a scene where we were looking for a virus, a computer virus. As a joke among the rest of us, we told ourselves that we were precursors, not that we saw it coming, but it forced us to re-evaluate certain things.

JM: In the end, we thought it was less interesting in the context of this year. We could have kept it, but in the end we found it took up too much space.

Je ne suis pas un robot is webcast on Saturday, December 12 at 8 pm. Get tickets to watch the show here.

(Photo: Lena Shkoda)

A resident of Brooklyn, Faten Kanaan rakes through the territory of minimalism and repetition. With a passion for keyboards, from the piano to analog synthesizers, this young composer with Middle Eastern roots is part of a third generation to follow this path laid out by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. A Mythology of Circles, her fourth album, this time on the British label Fire Records, was celebrated by music media interested in the post-minimalist corpus. PAN M 360 is one of these cutting-edge platforms, and Kanaan connected with us from Brooklyn, to explain her background and her creative choices.

PAN M 360: As a composer, you seem to have carefully studied contemporary minimalism and repetitious music from the USA and Europe. Can you explain your own path in that sense?

Faten Kanaan:  I studied piano at a young age, and then very briefly played the cello, harp, and oud later on. I never studied composition, but leant towards minimalism in music because it relayed an intentionality that I admire. Every note chosen serves a purpose. And with repetition, the smallest change can have a profound effect.  

PAN M 360: What, for you, are the next steps in these post-minimalist explorations?

FK: With genres blurring and artists exploring the depths of overlapping electronic and acoustic instruments, I think it’s a really exciting time for music to expand its potential as a language. It’s not just about harmonies and structure, but also pushing the possibilities in timbre and texture.

PAN M 360: Your culture in music is obviously broader than minimalism in contemporary music. What other music styles or forms are involved?

FK: Film scores are definitely a big influence on me, as is some folkloric music from various cultures. And the music I love listening to generally finds its way into my own sensibilities.

PAN M 360: You seem to use different keyboards (including piano and organ) and other electronic devices, it’s part of your overdubs and general sounds, can you explain?

FK: I like to be minimal with the gear I use, so that I can really get to know an instrument and fully utilise its possibilities. Every synthesizer and instrument has a sound that its voice can shine in. On my early albums, I used a vintage Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 – but I wanted something more compact and solid for touring, and with a brighter filter, so I’ve been using an OB-6 desktop synth for the last three years.

My set-up for live shows and for recording are two rather different things. For live shows, I exclusively use the OB-6 desktop synth, with a midi controller keyboard and an old Boss 20-xl looper guitar pedal (without Midi) that I have. The looper has a nice natural drift to it, and I’ve gotten so used to its timing. Sometimes its constraints hold me back a bit, so I’m considering getting a new looper that will allow me more freedom on stage, compositionally. Since my introduction to performance was through classical music/piano, it’s important for me to perform everything live, so the audience can take that journey with me and understand how a song is being built, layer by layer. 

For recordings, I can fully explore a composition without these restraints. The looper’s drift doesn’t translate well into recordings for me, so I manually play the repeating parts without it. 

I use the OB-6, then add some VST instruments, depending on what the song needs.

Each track is born differently… but most often, I overdub the main harmonies and chords of a song in five- to seven-minute single takes (yes, my hands get tired), until I have the spine of a track. I then start recording all the shorter segments for the arrangement, editing, and mixing as I go along. The mixing process is very much part of the arrangement. It’s a lovely experience to hear a song becoming more nuanced as its structure and spirit take shape. 

PAN M 360: What’s your training as a musician? Where did you study?

FK:  I studied piano as a kid and loved it. I’d thought about applying to a conservatory, but decided to attend a liberal arts university. I moved to America, and started off as a double major in Fine Arts and Biology (w a focus in genetics). I quickly dropped the bio/pre-med bit, and did a minor in French literature instead. During this time I continued playing, just for fun, and occasionally sitting-in informally with friends’ bands. I did my Masters in Fine Arts (painting & sculpture), but often felt more comfortable expressing myself through music & performance work. It would be years before I took the leap into considering music as a main path, and am so glad I finally did.  

PAN M 360: As a listener, what are your favourite genres, artists or periods of music history?

FK:  Oh I can’t really pick one favourite genre…film scores, ambient drones, medieval and renaissance choral music, Arabic music, French and Italian 60s pop that my parents often listened to, folk, industrial, no wave, electronica…

PAN M 360: Do you relate to a music community? Do you share creative activities with other artists?

FK:   I’m so grateful for the music community in New York and other cities – artists and engineers alike. It’s heartwarming to see how supportive people are of each other while still maintaining their own practice. And with the internet making international connections easier, it’s been wonderful to reconnect with the music community in Beirut, Lebanon (and in Amman, Jordan) recently. It’s been very fulfilling to find colleagues back ‘home’. Also, the UK has been especially supportive these last few years, I’ve really made a connection with artists, labels, and the audience there.

PAN M 360: Do you still enjoy your Brooklyn neighbourhood?

FK:  I do still love Brooklyn and my community here, but am hoping to move back to Europe next year.

PAN M 360: Your background is diversified. Can you explain where you come from, where your ancestors come from, where you have been raised, and how this specific background had an impact on your craft, consciously or unconsciously?

FK: I’m Syrian-Palestinian-Jordanian-Lebanese, born in Germany, and was living between Europe and the Middle East before moving to the U.S. for university. Sometimes it’s a strange feeling not belonging to one place, or being able to call one place “home”, but on a positive note, every place I have a connection with becomes a home. And musically, I can draw from all these experiences.

PAN M 360: Is asking you about being a woman composer relevant? Some women composers refuse to talk about it, even think it’s lazy journalism. Others think it’s relevant and say there are specific ways and sensibilities to women’s composing processes. What do you think?

FK: I think it’s important whenever talking about gender, race, or ethnicity, to always remember that within each group is a diversity of voices. No one woman speaks for all, each will have different experiences, boundaries, goals. For myself, I don’t like being lugged as a “woman composer”, as it’s only one aspect of my identity. At the forefront, I’m a human. The music doesn’t sound any different because I’m a woman, it sounds the way it does because it draws from the various experiences that make up who I am… just like every musician’s vision is unique to them. My gender has never dictated what I do musically, nor who I associate with or relate to. I believe in the spirit of inclusivity.

Whether it’s the name, the music, or the commitment through its lyrics, the group Chaos E.T. Sexual is everything and its opposite. The collaboration of Thomas, Tarik, and Yves is truly unconventional. However, the music and the love for the drone/doom style brought them together for the better. On November 20, their third album Only Human Crust was released. They spoke to PAN M 360 about what attracts them more and more to this musical darkness.

PAN M 360: What was the genesis of the group?

CHAOS E.T. SEXUAL: We met at university, but in different contexts. As far as Thomas and myself (Yves) are concerned, it was during a bossa nova class. Quite paradoxical when you know that we are two big metal fans. At the time, we used to play Pantera together at home. As for meeting Tarik, it was also at university, in the same class. However, the friendly relationship took another dimension when we all met together at the HellFest festival. It’s afterwards that Tarik joined the band, when we needed to add a rhythmic base to our compositions. He was immersed in hip-hop and was already producing a lot of sounds. We had a particular affection for these two musical styles, hip-hop and drone, which we saw fitting together logically. It didn’t take long before we all composed together, and the magic happened.

PAN M 360: It took six long years before the release of this new album, why did it take so long, and what was your state of mind when you recorded Only Human Crust?

CETS: Like everyone else, we all have our own distinct lives, and experience emotions and events that are personal to each of us. During these six years, we questioned ourselves and lived many things. We had come to the point where we wanted to take a musical turn. We wanted to create something more alive, more danceable. But our love for the drone and doom style caught up with us. In particular, the fact that we play together all the time made this album take a darker turn than the previous one. We are attracted by melancholy and coldness. We live in an increasingly anxious society and the compositions of the last two years are a bit like our catharsis that we needed to express unconsciously. So the year 2020 has nothing to do with the atmosphere of this album, as is said a lot on the Internet. The album was even finished in January of this year.

PAN M 360: This new album is very heavy, dark, with an atmosphere worthy of a horror film – how did you create such an atmosphere, and what drives you into it?

CETS: You probably already know that we are very inspired by science fiction, horror films, politics, both good and bad. The paradoxes of these worlds can be found in our compositions and that’s what makes our style and also gives this atmosphere. When we open our album with a speech by Vladimir Putin who praises democracy and freedom of expression, it’s funny. The dramatic and sinister sides of the character fit our musical style. With the guitars, we try to work on the massive side, and the drums come to sublimate the balance of power between the frequencies. The tempos are very slow. We like that, playing in slow motion and as loud as possible. The drums play an important role in the interaction with the guitars. The power of this instrument is the highlight of our style. We have songs at 50 BPM, which is very slow and also allows us to convey a lot of emotions.

PAN M 360: As such, many songs are well over six minutes long. Is it the musical style that wants this or is it a way for you to convey emotions?

CETS: To take the example of the title Asylum, it was for us an exercise in style. That is to say to retranscribe in a minimum of time the emotion and the power of a title that usually lasts six minutes. But by doing this experiment, we realised that we succeeded in transmitting emotions in spite of everything. However, the length of the songs is linked to time. Imposing an atmosphere and telling a story. Taking time for that is necessary. We pay particular attention to the story told in our albums and slowness accentuates feelings and emotions. When we play on stage or even in the studio, we like the trance-like feeling that comes from these slow sounds. You have to raise the desire and that takes time. When we compose, it’s the same thing. This state of trance is common to the three of us, that’s why the alchemy takes each time.

PAN M 360: At each introduction to your albums, a political discourse is present, is it to be seen as a commitment of some kind, and what do these personalities inspire you?

CETS: Not necessarily a commitment, more an interest in the impact of the lyrics which coincides perfectly with our musical style. Characters like Vladimir Putin arouse our curiosity. He’s a sulphurous political figure whose speeches fit very well with our style. On the previous album, we used a speech by Salvador Allende, the socialist president of the Republic of Chile in the 1970s. One shouldn’t see any political perspective in it, but rather what the character reflects as an image. It’s a way for us to denounce artistically, by turning certain political speeches into irony, as on the track “Holy Liars” from the previous album. It also allows us to create dark and heavy atmospheres.

“Tomorrow Prudence” is the speech of Houari Boumédiène, President of Algeria in the 1970s, at the UN, which highlights the interference of France and Western countries in Africa, with the theme of colonization and the fate of migrants in certain European countries. And for that, you have to learn and read about what happened beforehand. Each sample of this type is reflected upon. It’s the result of historical research, which unfortunately always fits in with current events.

PAN M 360: On this subject, beyond political discourse, what are your other sources of inspiration in film, art, culture, and even society?

CETS: We are great lovers of cinema. So, when it’s not the speeches of dictators that inspire us, it is the great science-fiction directors. For this album, there’s Emir Kusturica and the film Time of the Gypsies, from which we used an extract of the soundtrack. It’s a post-war idea, as with the film Underground by the same director, whose apocalyptic side is very interesting in terms of sound. Like the loss of a lost paradise where everything collapses. The title “Solace Exhaust” was invented around that, linked to destruction.

On “1674-Now: Many Thousand Gone”, we can hear a gospel and a slave song, also following a trip to the United States. The sample is not only used for its musical aspect, but also for the interest it arouses. There’s a search, an idea to convey a message. The sample of the track “La Française des jeunes” is taken from the French programme Strip-Tease. An edgy show that highlights people’s everyday life, but in an ironic way and always with a kind yet funny look at the same time. A vision of things that’s similar to ours, and which is also found in our albums as well as in the name of our band.

PAN M 360: You said you wanted to write a story on each of your albums, how do you conceptualise your albums?

CETS: There is no calculation in the creation of our music and the concept of the albums, we go by instinct. Once we have the beginning of a song, we’re going to make the most of it, to see how far we can go and what we can do with it. There’s always a message behind each of our songs. We always work in successive stages without necessarily thinking that we’re going to do this or that concept for this or that song. We prefer to have material and let things mature. That also explains why we worked on it for six years. Time does the work too and participates in the creation of our songs. We often find an emotional framework on each one of them, which allows us to compose more easily. Ideas become clearer with time.

PAN M 360: We were previously talking about commitment, artistic, cultural, and political; there seems to be a certain meaning given to the cover, can you tell us about it?

CETS: We already knew what we wanted, and we called on one of our friends whose artistic vision we really appreciate and share. The idea was to describe a society based on the omniscience of the powerful who are represented by towers of governance, faced with parasites represented by rats trying to revolt. La planète sauvage is another animated and science-fiction film that inspired us. As for the pastel colours, they give a sense of opposition to the dark side of the album.

PAN M 360: Your band name is quite unique and recognisable, can you give us a rational explanation as to its meaning?

CETS: (laughs) The story behind this stage name is long and peculiar to us, but in short, it comes from an expression that a Peruvian friend often used during the concerts we all attended together. It was intended to show that there was a correlation between men being overweight and their libido, and that it was not related to alcohol consumption. From there, we took this expression away and the word ‘chaos’ contrasts perfectly with sex and music. E.T. is none other than the character in Steven Spielberg’s film of the same name, which also defines the group, since we are all three of us passionate about cinema, science fiction, horror and many other genres. All in all, the name represents us perfectly, the ironic side contrasting with the dark emotion of our music.

For the first time in eight years, cellist Stéphane Tétreault will play Bach’s famous Suites for Solo Cello, over two evenings (December 3 and 4 online) as part of the Festival Bach Montréal. It was a great opportunity to talk with the artist about pandemics, the cello, and the changes in his way of playing this music that’s frankly invincible to the passage of time and tastes.

PAN M 360: Hi Stéphane, nice to talk to you! How are you dealing with the pandemic and all the restrictions?

Stéphane Tétreault: Hi, very happy to talk to you too! I’m experiencing the pandemic a bit like everyone else: it’s difficult. The deprivation of family and friends ends up affecting my morale, for sure, they have a big place in my life. And then, the deprivation of the stage, and direct contact with the audience, adds another layer. Having said that, I can’t complain either. I’m lucky enough to make several recordings, and keep busy with several things. That’s not the case for everyone.

PAN M 360: It’s true, we saw you in a Quartier des spectacles commercial, among other things, alongside many other performing artists, such as Adib Alkhalidey, Ariane Moffatt, Catherine-Anne Toupin, Emmanuel Schwartz, and Lydia Bouchard…

ST: Yes, I was very touched to be invited to participate! It’s a beautiful initiative that reflects the importance of culture. We need to talk about living art, talk about its vitality and the benefits it brings to all of society. 

PAN M 360: Especially now that we’re starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Are you optimistic for the post-pandemic period?

ST: Yes, although I anticipate that it will not be easy for some time to come. Having said that, it seems obvious to me that people are super eager to get back into the venues to see and hear the artists, and vice versa! I think that when the return is official and without too many restrictions, the intensity of the positive energy will be incredible! I, for one, can’t wait to sit down at a concert or theatre and welcome the emotions that the artists will want to share with me. I’m just as eager to offer emotions to the audience in front of myself.

PAN M 360: Let’s get to the main reason for this interview: the Bach Suites that you are playing in two evenings at the Festival Bach Montréal. Is it the first time you’re performing them in one shot like this?

ST: No, I played them in two evenings as well in 2012, at the Festival Classica de Saint-Lambert, but I was only 19 at the time. It was a bit crazy to accept this kind of challenge at such a young age, because these suites are very demanding not only technically and musically, but also emotionally mature. I still took up the challenge, but never again since. Of course, I’ve played a suite here and there in various concerts, but never again in one go. So this will be the second time, but not the last!

PAN M 360: Are you planning to do them again elsewhere?

ST: I’d like to tour with them, all over Quebec and Canada, and even internationally. 

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about your vision and your understanding of these musical monuments. What has changed since 2012?

ST: So many things! I’ve had to review my bowing and fingering 112 times! My approach has also changed a lot. I would say it’s more… refined, closer to the source of this music. Among others, I worked with Elinor Frey, a Montreal baroque cellist of immense talent and deep stylistic knowledge of early music. She opened my mind to the culture and thinking of this musical discipline, Baroque performance, although I don’t pretend that this is exactly what I will do. Let’s just say that my playing is now “informed” by it.

PAN M 360: What is the best advice you got from her?

ST: She taught me so much! It’s difficult to identify a single point. Spontaneously, I would say that she made me aware of the meaning of the expression “less is more”. In this kind of music, you have to convey emotions, it has to be warm and communicative, but it has to be subtle and refined. You don’t spend all your time tearing your shirt on stage, and that’s not necessary for the music to say what it has to say anyway. There is also the organist and harpsichordist Mireille Lagacé, whom I must thank, she has accompanied me in my development. She taught me a lot about the type of playing to be deployed in this kind of music.

PAN M 360: Do you remember your first encounter with this music?

ST: I remember that when I was 11 years old, Yuli Turovsky gave me the first follow-up to learn. I knew the melody of the Prelude, like everyone else, but without more depth. I practiced, I practiced, but Yuli was never satisfied with my performance. One day he said to me, “Stéphane, imagine you are Bach. You have insomnia and you decide to go to church and improvise on the organ rather than toss and turn under the covers. You have to play the Prelude as if it were in the middle of the night, improvising to lighten your mind. It’s not thought out, it’s not thought out for this or that effect, it’s spontaneous and it’s not too hard, because you’re alone in a church in the middle of the night!”

It made an impression on me. I thought about it constantly afterwards. So much so that, shortly afterwards, at the Concours de musique de Sorel, just before starting this piece, I crouched down on the cello and concentrated on projecting myself into this scenario for something like a good 45 seconds! The judges must have wondered what he was doing there! In the end, I was satisfied after playing it, which I didn’t often get to do?

What’s so great about this music? Listen to a simple and effective tutorial to better understand the fascination of Bach’s famous Prelude to Suite No. 1 (in English, with cellist Alisa Weilerstein).

PAN M 360: Both evenings are at 10 pm (if we listen live, but we can also listen to them afterwards). Is it an advantage or a constraint for you to play at this time?

ST: It suits me very well! I’ve already played a programme at 11 pm in Switzerland, with candlelight and everything. I adjust my routine accordingly, taking a nap in the afternoon, for example. I’m a night owl! If I had to give a concert at 9 am, then I think it would be a bit more difficult!

PAN M 360: I wish you all the best for these two evenings!

ST: Thank you!

Photos: Stian Andersen et Vanessa Heins

Is there a common sensibility among women artists with northern origins? With the help of our colleague and friend Jeremy Spellazon, PAN M 360 thought it appropriate to bring together two writers, composers, and performers with Arctic origins, loved and recognized south of the Arctic Circle. The great-grandmother of Ane Brunvall, better known by the diminutive Ane Brun (pronounced An-ha Broon), came from the Sami people living in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia. Elisapie, for her part, is a full-fledged Inuit and curious to talk to her Norwegian interlocutor, who has lived two decades in Sweden and is considering leaving Stockholm to settle in Oslo, where her husband lives.

Ane Brun and Elisapie courteously accepted our proposal, the other pretext being the imminent release of two albums of new songs by Ane Brun, from the same creative cycle: After the Great Storm and Ow Beauty Holds the Hands of Sorrow, on the Balloon Ranger label.

PAN M 360: Many thanks to you ladies for having accepted this invitation! The first question is at the heart of this encounter: is there a common sensibility for artists from the far north?

Elisapie: Yes, I think so! Having been in Kautokaino, in the northern part of Norway, I felt strange at that time because I discovered the humour of the Sami people, the same humour as my people in Nunavik. Oh my goodness, that was so close! I haven’t been there for performing, but for a documentary film. My biggest, biggest regret is not having worked hard enough to make things happen in the northern countries. But next time! 

Ane Brun: What was the documentary about ?

Elisapie: It was a film on the polar-circle peoples, I could go  to Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, Norway, and northern Canada. In Norway, I could eat reindeer recipes, I loved it!  It was an amazing experience. And you, Ane, are you from the northern part of Norway?

Ane Brun: No. I grew up in Molde, halfway between the south and the north of Norway, but my mom’s family is from the north – an hour driving from Tromsø. Her grandmother was Sami, so we have a straight line. 

PAN M 360: More precisely, what do Sami people have in common with Inuit people in Nunavik?

Elisapie: The first thing I really felt is the very calming rhythm. This is a different territory from the Sami territory,  but the presence of the people is quite similar. I mean people being in the moment. And also when you live something with Sami people and a friendship is possible, it’s not halfway. Something is marked forever. People open up very quickly. Inuit people experience the same openness in my Indigenous community. Once you are in their world and environment, it is open. So that is really what I felt in Norway, it was family.

Elisapie. Photo: Jonathan Brisebois

Ane Brun: It’s nice! We Norwegians don’t know the Sami language. There is still a barrier, we don’t get a chance to really step into the atmosphere that exists up there.  By the way, The Sami language is quite present in the North, there is a Sami presence in the government, there is Sami language on the TV, but is is always subtitled .  

Elisapie: It’s the same here in Canada. Inuktitut is one of the most difficult languages to learn.  You know, I thought  there would be common roots in our two languages, but no. The Sami langage is totally different from Inuktitut.

Ane Brun: Personally, I have never been in the Sami culture, even if my great-grandmother was Sami. Otherwise, my mother tried to rediscover this culture, she tried to connect with relatives and started digging in our family history. She discovered that when her grandmother was alive, it was quite difficult to be a Sami during her life, there was a lot of discrimination. You know the singer Mari Boine? Even for her generation, it was really hard. Until recently, Sami people were forced to speak Norwegian, to go to Norweigian school, there were religious expectations and cultural assimilation. In Sweden and Norway, there’s a really sad story about how Indigenous people were treated. That changed not a long time ago, I can imagine that some of my mom’s ancestors didn’t want to live as Sami people because it was really hard, but my mom wanted to rediscover, she reconnected with relatives and knew more about the tribe where we come from. Later, people from my generation learned about this inequality, it’s quite recent. There was a great Swedish movie called Sami Blood that also had an important impact on our awareness. And I have myself had a chance to sing with Mari Boine and also with Sofia Jannok, another Sami artist – Sofia had permission from Bon Iver to translate some of his songs into the Sami language, so she made an EP of Bon Iver songs, and I got to sing in Sami with her. With Mari Boine as well, we wrote a song together for a TV show where Scandinavian artists were coupled with Sami artists. Then we met for three days to write the song and I got to know the amazing Mari Boine better. It became a beautiful song, she used the joik singing. 

Elisapie: I also met Mari Boine, I opened for her in Belgium. She is magical, her presence is almost scary!

PAN M 360: How do each of you identify the Northern aspects of your craft?

Elisapie: I think it is unconscious but… If I write a song, I can say that I have to look outside, I must have window to see the sky. Where I am from,  there are no trees and a lot of horizon. I left the North when I was 23, it’s still very present in my mind. Life is hard in my community, the suicide rate is high, people try to get their shit together. There is that sense of the North everywhere I go and I am. Even now in Montreal, I’m getting to know myself in a stronger way. And I think my roots are coming back to me a lot more. I have three children now, I try to find many things since I’m a mother, and funnily, I feel I’m more Inuk than ever. I don’t live daily the traditions of my people – food, hunting, etc. – but I reflect partly on this life when I write songs. But I try to be in the moment, not intellectualize my work too much while I am creating. I think it’s a Northern way of seeing things.

Ane Brun. Photo: Stian Andersen

Ane Brun: For me, inspiration from the North is the nature as well. I connect with nature. You and me, Elisapie, also have the same age in common… because I checked your profile on Wikipedia (haha!).  So we are both in the middle of our lives. I lived in Sweden for 20 years and I’m in the process of moving back in Norway because my partner is in Oslo (where I am actually speaking to you from). Since two or three years, I could connect with my Norwegian roots. Sweden is not far away but it’s different, with a different history, so I have been longing to come back  I feel that I’m connected to those first 20 years of my life, so that is kind of your same feeling of being connected with your roots. So in my songwriting lyrics, I use a lot the nature. I grew up in a very beautiful place with the fjords, the sea, and the mountains. And I know when I write about big emotions, nature is the element that come up, it’s the wind, it’s the water, the ocean, the waves, the mountains, the temperature. I remember having studied the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg when I was a teenager, they were talking about the importance of nature in his music, and I didn’t get it at that time. Now I look back on my own music and I can see it. It does inspire me, it does influence me that I had the nature so close to me. 

Elisapie: It is awesome the way you talk about nature. I also have a lot of anori – wind, in Inuktitut – in my songs. The wind purifies! The natural elements can be very harsh in the North but also very beautiful and symbolic. It is the same thing for me. I am more in touch and in tune with that in my songwriting. 

Ane Brun: The darkness in the North during the winter is also important. We are about to get in the darkest times of the year, the sun goes down at 3 pm…

PAN M 360: What about artists from the far north being based in big cities?

Elisapie: The North never leaves you in the big cities where we live. North is gorgeous, harsh, tough, spectacular, those very strong elements make you an outsider, in a way, when you live in the south.  At the beginning, when I moved to Montreal, I was so excited to live in a big city, to meet new people, learn new languages, live new experiences, eat new food and on and on. But after a while, you ask yourself questions. Me, what am I, really? I feel I missed out so much by leaving my family, my little cousins, my friends. When it gets dark and Christmas is coming, I start to think about my family… but I’m still such an independent person. So one side of me is longing but the other side of me made a decision of living with that decision. I am happy where I am, but certainly I bring the North with me in my personal life. I am very connected, but I don’t always share it. Songwriting becomes interesting when you open this little bubble, more fragile, more vulnerable, all this ancient culture becomes my guard. For me, the North is a source of inspiration and challenge.

Ane Brun: I was 19 when I moved away from my small town. I didn’t look back until I started longing a few years ago. Nature is also different in Sweden. I’m kind of moving away from the big cities more and more because I have done it for 25 years and I still access it through my work. Oslo is a big city of course, but not as big as Stockholm is. I don’t feel the same way in Oslo. For sure, the things that I grew up with are carried around with me.

Elisapie. Photo: Jonathan Brisebois

Elisapie: The first time I heard your music was a while ago. A friend of mine told me that I must hear your music. And I did, it really dit hit me then. I really love your music, I think you have a very singular voice,  every time you do new music, it’s very strong. I’m just curious to know, who did you listen to? We all have many influences, but you must have one person that made your voice the way it is, that emotion that you have, that you connect to?

Ane Brun: I think there are quite a few! First, my mother is one of them, she is a musician, she sings and plays piano. She’s quite bold in her singing… and growing up like that, I didn’t sing and make my music until my twenties. I didn’t think myself about singing until I turn 20. And didn’t think about my influences until more recently, but now I know that my childhood must  have influence me a lot. I think it’s a big mix of everything. Jazz singers for the phrasing in a different genre, and big stars like Annie Lennox, and also more whispering and obscure singers. So it’s a mix of many things, you know. When I first heard my voice on tape, I liked it. It has developed on its standing point, I tried to expand it all the time, always tried to explore with the microphone, reverb, etc. and  explore what it could do. My sound have been developed by me listening, trying to fine something warm and connecting. 

Elisapie: You made many albums, it’s amazing. Where do you think you are now with your expression? 

Ane Brun: I made two albums released this fall. I really tried to do two different outputs,  the second coming now (November 27) is more relaxed. I tried different things and I observe that my voice is more versatile now. I can do a lot with it, it’s something that I developed through live shows. So the two new albums have been recorded in the same cycle. At first I was going to record one album, and I had 16 songs. The songs on the first album are bigger sounding, you can move to it, lots of beats, more elaborate production. And then in the studio, a few songs didn’t want to be that big. So I let them become small. And then I listen the recordings and I wasn’t happy with three of the “big songs”. I also made them small songs, and I finally had other small songs, enough not to be released at the same time. So I decided to make two albums from the same cycle of music. We released one different song each month during the last months, so we had many singles. Releasing all those singles was an experiment, we didn’t know if it would be too much, and it finally worked out really well. It created a momentum. When the first album came out a few weeks ago, people were still interested. 

Elisapie: I love that you have your own label! I also love the idea of releasing two albums almost at the same time. People are so afraid to try new things!

Ane Brun: Yeah! It’s  a good thing, actually. It’s been very interesting for us as a label, we combined the old way and new way to release my music. 

PAN M 360: Could we have a few more words about the second album, with those songs that wanted to be small ?

Ane Brun: My father passed away. I first shut down and took a break. When I started writing , a moment after, big life questions came up. Midlife, roots, missing my own country, my little town, etc. The lyrics are about griefs, also existentialism, I’ve been kind of my own philosopher, my own Buddha. A lot of of big issues are on these albums. Weirdly enough, this year brought up similar questions as well, so those songs are still relevant, even though they were written last year!  Some journalist said that the most recent album is very empathetic and the previous one is darker. Indeed, the new small songs are more empathetic, those songs didn’t want to be big and roaring, they wanted to be like whispers. That’s what they’re supposed to be for people. It’s quite sad sometimes, but it is also comforting and soft. While the other one can be quite dramatic, it also connected with the same big issues, but with a different output.

Ane Brun. Photo: Stian Andersen

Elisapie: It’s almost like you are comforting yourself! 

Ane Brun: As you say! And yes, I tried something different. About yourself, Elisapie, did you sing as a teenager? 

Elisapie: Like you, Ane, I experienced the singer in me later on, which was a good thing. I was around 23. New life for an Inuk girl, identity crisis and more… Of course, I’ve sung since I was a kid, I did it first at the church… I liked it because that was the only place where I could sing! And we didn’t have music school or other institutions to learn music. There was also my amazing uncle’s rock band, so I loved music as a teenager. But I was so shy that it took me a long time tell myself, yeah, I could sing.

Ane Brun: I just watched your Tiny Desk session. Great!

Elisapie: Thank you!  It happened a year ago and my last album was out two years ago. Probably new things will be added this year in my creative agenda. Since spring, I was supposed to write new songs, but I couldn’t – many things happened, especially for Indigenous people in Quebec. A lot of awareness and also tragic things happened in the Indigeno-sphere, in the lights of Black Lives Matters. An event has been very important: an Indigenous woman died in a regional hospital after having been badly treated, in such an horrible manner. But she filmed her bad treatment with her phone before dying, so it shocked everybody here. There is now a movement called Justice for Joyce (her name) and it touches many people, even including children at elementary schools. “Hello Elisapie, I’m singing a song in Inuktitut!”, a kid told me. In my oldest daughter’s high school, teachers spoke about this tragic event and all this ugliness. Also, people get more and more aware of relocation of Indigenous people in the past, and also horrible treatment in residential schools over many years. So all this new awareness is very positive. Hopefully this winter, I will shut up and write new songs in my little bubble, inspired by the wind and other natural elements.

Ane Brun: Maybe you will also be inspired by those events.

Elisapie: Yeah! By some hope and some beauty. There is a lot of beauty that needs to come out.

Ane Brun: Will you write in Inuktitut?

Elisapie: I have a feeling that my Inuktitut is not limited as it was. Our language is very simple, very day tot day. Having a kind of Bob Dylan poetical approach is not a very Inuit way of seeing things, but… I think so much is going on, I find new vocabulary in our language. It will be much more fun for me, playing with words. So yeah, the elastic is looser.

Ane Brun: Maybe you are partly responsible for  this expansion of the language.

Elisapie: Yeah, possibly! People want to hear who we are, much more than, “Okay she’s from the cold.” We are also human beings with feelings, passionate, intense. We are all much more than people from the cold and the white snow. So Ane, let’s keep in touch!

Ane Brun: Yes! I will talk to music festival organizers to invite you to Scandinavia! 

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