Deli Girls was spawned around 10 years ago in the vibrant and rapidly growing queer, counter-culture, leftist, abolitionist scene in New York. The noisy rave punk meets digital hardcore group is now a flexible, rotating cast of collaborators, all under the artistic wing of founder, Dan Orlowski. Part of the same scenes as names like Dreamcrusher, Machine Girl, or even Show Me The Body, Deli Girls music is raw and powerful, feeling like a rowdy street fight in the middle of a rave; courtesy of the hair raising screams and vocal work of Orlowski. The lyrics are straight to the point, trading out flowery language for direct vocal bombs about grief, depression, apathy, injustice, and other topics to rightfully scream about. We spoke with Orlowski about the humble beginnings of the group, activism, and keeping healthy for those nail-biting screams, before the Deli Girls’ performance at Taverne Tour.
PAN M 360: What is the lineup of Deli Girls now? Is Tommi no longer part of the band? Is Hatechild now a core member of the live shows?
Dan Orlowski: Deli Girls is now a conglomerate, a flexible entity. I performed and collaborated a lot with Dani Rev, and Hatechild in the last 2 years. They have both been core members in that time, but I want to keep it open. We recently performed with John Bemis on live drums at Pioneer Works. I want to do more with live drums. Maybe guitar.
PAN M 360: You wanted to be a painter originally right? How did you fall into music?
Dan Orlowski: Kind of classic art school to musician pipeline. I became really disenfranchised with the art scene-the galleries, the white walls, the art hoes…the art market is basically just a money laundering front for rich people, right? You start to realize most of the people in the art world came from upper middle class/money. Bourgeoisie values. Music feels much more democratic when it can be. A crowd. The mutual release. Immediate, sweaty.
PAN M 360: The latest self-titled album is pure madness and straight queercore arcane, what was it like to collaborate with that many talented artists?
Dan Orlowski: Honestly, extremely liberating and inspiring. It was great to get into a flow with other artists/their processes and keep it feeling fresh every track. Lots of possibilities. Hectic to coordinate all myself. New ideas, new directions for ideas. Getting to direct the project felt like a lot of responsibility, but creatively very worth it. My agency and self-realization has been emboldened by that project.
PAN M 360: And to call it Deli Girls is kind of a statement in itself? I know when bands do that it’s like “Here is our best and brightest concoction of songs that make us, us”
Dan Orlowski: Perhaps you are picking up on something there, haha. I wanted to make a non-statement with the title of this record, yet edify what the band IS now.
PAN M 360: The first time I heard Deil Girls was during a trans march protest I was covering back in like 2015 or 2016 in Alberta. I’m sure you know this, but Deli Girls has been very important for the queer community in terms of empowerment and making statements against hurtful rhetoric… how does that make you feel? And do people tell you this?
Dan Orlowski: I’m fortunate enough to be able to say that people do tell me this. I’m really grateful to the activists who have included me in/around their work…there’s truly nowhere I’d rather be. One of the best things anyone has ever told me was this group of activists in London called Pissed Off Trannies who collected a bunch of trans piss and doused the entrance to the public health building there in order to protest gender markers on ID cards being needed in UK to use public restrooms. They apparently created a public health biohazard, had to lock down the whole building with government employees inside…police were apparently scared of getting piss thrown on them, hahaha. They used a DG track over the documentation footage of this protest, and were lovely to hang with at the show. That was iconic and really inspiring. Things like that make the project feel really worth it. Stories like that cancel out all the social climbers and cringe parts of being a musician.
PAN M 360: Your screams are just so powerful, they sound like they hurt. Do you have vocal training/ do you have to warm your voice up before a performance?
Dan Orlowski: No warm-ups or training other than trying to build up the scream stamina/always stay active with it like a muscle. Doing it for a really long time. I’m constantly doing a lot of little things to take care of my body to make sure my throat is optimal (no dairy, exercise, gut care, no coffee, no smoking…boring but real).
PAN M 360: Do you have to ‘get into character’ so to speak to perform? Like screaming live, do you have to feel angry or remember your thought process when you wrote the song?
Dan Orlowski: I used to feel more like that, now I guess the process is more automatic/intuitive. I have always felt there is a bit of acting performance involved in vocals because you do have to ‘be there’ for it to feel genuine. It’s a challenge to constantly return to the same place I was in when I wrote the song for the first time.
PAN M 360: What kind of themes always seem to come back to you when writing the lyrics for Deli Girls?
Dan Orlowski: Whatever infuriates me in my bowels. Unfairness, injustice, whatever is hurting me the most at any given time. Sometimes sarcasm, criticism. More recently, grief.
PAN M 360: I find the vocals very direct, like no real flowery metaphors, but just straight to the point “This country’s abusive / now we’re all abusers”…
Dan Orlowski: I try to be as economical as possible with words. I usually dislike flowery writing because it’s pervasive and often covers up a lack of content.
PAN M 360: I heard from others at your past shows that your crowd is one of the best for moshing etiquette, y’know having a great time but being safe and having zero discrimination. Why do you think that is?
Dan Orlowski: I’m pretty sure most people who would be at a show we’re playing are already contentious of these things. Queer, leftist, abolitionist, etc. it’s really just a reflection of the excellent community I’m lucky to find myself in. We’ve never had to deal with TikTok or 4chan trolls, skater punks, etc. who might be on the cis/male/edgy end of the spectrum. That’s not who the music or the community is for.
PAN M 360: Take me back to some of those first Deli Girls shows in little DIY halls in NY or shitty bars… And now you’ve been able to play places like Berghain, Primavera, Unsound Fest, is it crazy to you how much you kind of exploded and now get these opportunities?
Dan Orlowski: It’s … absolutely crazy, haha. I’m thankful every day. But that’s how everyone starts right? Moshing in the club used to be such a wild concept and now it’s regular. There’s a lot that used to be avant-garde that’s standard now, and I’m thankful for those things (trans rights as a given within the scene, discussions of accountability, prioritizing BIPOC, ethics, criticality of gentrification, harm reduction to name a few). You have to appreciate the wins (while still fighting for a better world) or you will lose your mind.
PAN M 360: Anything you’d like to add?
Dan Orlowski: Free Palestine.
Deli Girls plays Taverne Tour on Thursday Feb. 8 w/ Slash Need, and Alix Fernz at Le Ministere FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE
This Sunday, 4 February, No Hay Banda will host a concert with Canadian cellist India Gailey at the Sala Rossa in Montreal. The programme includes a performance of Problematica, the independent artist’s new album, in which she plays compositions for cello/voice/electro by Fjóla Evans, Nicole Lizée, Julia Mermelstein, Andrew Noseworthy, Sarah Rossy, Joseph Glaser and Thanya Iyer. The first part of the concert will feature the world premiere of a work by Montreal composer Zihua Tan, what came before me is going after me. To find out more about Zihua Tan and his composition, listen to an interview with him here.
I spoke to India Gailey. Here’s a summary of what she had to say:
PAN M 360: Hello India. It’s a pleasure to welcome you. You’re originally from Halifax, and you’re still based there, aren’t you?
India Gailey: Yes, but I studied at McGill for several years…
PAN M 360: You’ve got just the thing for the Montreal scene…
India Gailey: I love that scene! I know several artists there, and it’s always a great pleasure to meet up with them again.
PAN M 360: You’re in the middle of a Canadian tour with Problematica, which you’ll be performing on Sunday 4 February at the Sala Rossa in Montreal (with stops in Toronto on 31 January and Guelph on 1 February). What is Problematica?
India Gailey: First and foremost, it’s an album that will be released soon (at the end of February) on People Places Records. This album is the result of a series of commissions I made to several Canadian composers: Fjóla Evans, Nicole Lizée, Julia Mermelstein, Andrew Noseworthy, Sarah Rossy, Joseph Glaser, and Thanya Iyer.
PAN M 360: What is your main aesthetic?
India Gailey: The one I generally use in my concerts and in the choice of works I play. You could say a kind of post-minimalism that blurs the boundaries between indie pop/rock and contemporary music.
PAN M 360: Where does this interest in contemporary music come from? From your youth?
India Gailey: I loved the cello when I was very young, once I’d touched it. But I didn’t immerse myself in “classical” music straight away. I first played in rock bands, but it was during my further studies that I discovered a world of possibilities that had eluded me. And I enjoyed exploring it.
PAN M 360: Let’s get back to Problematica. What “problem” is there?
India Gailey: None (laughs)! Technically, according to the dictionary, it’s a substitute for taxon, used for organisms whose classification cannot be determined. In simpler terms, I’m interested in the notion of duality and, above all, in breaking out of it and going further in terms of identity.
PAN M 360: How does this translate into the music?
India Gailey: Through all sorts of contrasts and superimpositions between the voices in the scores. There’s the cello, of course, but also my voice (I have to sing!) and sometimes electronics.
PAN M 360: Playing the cello and singing at the same time! How much more demanding is that?
India Gailey: Oh, it’s very demanding! Even though writing for voice takes my vocal abilities into account, I still have to step out of my comfort zone here and there. What’s more, I have to prepare twice for each concert: the cello and the voice. I have to be careful not to talk too much, to protect my throat and so on. It’s unusual for a cellist.
PAN M 360: We wish you an excellent concert, and look forward to hearing all about it.
India Gailey: Thank you! It will be a pleasure to see Montreal again!
Every year, McGill Music students, graduate and undergraduate alike, come together to stage an opera. This season, Cendrillon, by French composer Jules Massenet, will take the stage at the Monument-National. This opera is remarkable in its scale: many singers are required. A notable challenge, that even professional opera companies rarely decide to take on.
At the source of this production are Stephen Hargreaves, Opera McGill’s director, and David Lefkowich, guest stage director. Having both many years of experience in directing and staging operas, both locally and internationally, both on the professional level and in university settings, they took on the challenge of Cendrillon. This was their first time working with this piece, which they however already knew and loved.
PAN M 360 had the chance to talk to them a few days before the opening night. We spoke about their work together, what makes this opera by Massenet so unique, and their common concern to create the best environment in which the students can learn and develop their art.
PAN M 360: Thank you so much for being here today! How are the last rehearsals going?
DAVID LEFKOWICH: It’s been fantastic! I think the students are really rising to the challenge that Massenet has presented us, it is really exciting to see them all sort of blossom within the last few weeks.
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: Yeah. In many ways, this is a stretch for McGill and Opera McGill. And it’s a good bit. It’s one of those things where it asks a lot of people to do a lot of things on stage. There are a lot of students for whom this is their first experience being on stage. I can’t imagine a better eye-opening experience in terms of what’s happening. We had our final piano dress rehearsal last night, and this evening, we added the orchestra, which had rehearsed somewhat separately in previous weeks. And now we have to add that new layer, which will be the last big piece.
PAN M 360: How did you decide that Cendrillon by Jules Massenet was the work you were going to do this year at McGill Opera?
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: At McGill, we try to tailor the repertoire to the students. And that’s a challenge, it’s a challenge for every institution. For example, we need to give opportunities to the graduate students in the master’s programme to be on stage, those students are only here for two years. And we have all these people coming in who are new students. And we had a large class coming in this year, also. So, I listed all the singers that we had, and I looked for a piece that would really feature many of these students and get them on stage, because I think that’s really the only way that the students can learn what is like what opera is. And this piece just came up, which I always wanted to do, it’s a fantastic piece.
PAN M 360: Massenet wrote many operas. What distinguishes this one from his other works?
DAVID LEFKOWICH: There’s a really lovely balance between realism and fantasy and magic. There’s always a bit of these elements within his pieces, but in this one, it’s a little bit more expanded. For example, when you look at Manon, you know, it’s a story and it plays out and it’s a beautiful story at that, but this one, it’s a classic story that we know. And so we have the sort of realism aspect where we have Cendrillon, we have her sisters and her stepmother and the father, things that we recognize. But when it goes into more of the world of the fairy, instead of making it like an afterthought, it’s like a major aspect of the show. And I think this is really unique. I haven’t seen it in a lot of his pieces. And so that fantasy aspect is magnified through Massenet’s lens. And it’s exciting to sort of juxtapose those scenes alongside more traditional court and palace scenes and with the ballet and the things we sort of come to expect with French grand opera. It’s awesome.
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: From a musical perspective, a lot of the magical aspects are present in the orchestration, the sort of lightness, the ephemeral, ethereal qualities. Sometimes, it’s just one little instrument doing a pizzicato and other times dancing flutes. There’s another moment in the third act where it’s almost like Steve Reich, where this sort of eerie minimalism is happening. And you hear the fairy godmother and the spirits singing various things and trying to help solve the problem of Cendrillon and the prince. And so, it’s interesting how that magical element is woven in, you know, the prince and Cendrillon are kind of touched by that magic, whereas everybody else is kind of somehow separate. It’s really just stunning storytelling.
PAN M 360: This opera is a bit of a challenge, especially for students who will be on stage for the first time. Why is that so?
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: I think that the challenges in this piece are for everyone, not just one or two or three singers. The challenge is that you have to interact with each other, even with the relatively smaller roles. But also, it’s not a marathon for Cendrillon, the lead role. It’s an opportunity for them to really work on their craft and interactions with their colleagues.
DAVID LEFKOWICH: From a staging point of view, it’s also a challenge. When Patrick [Hansen] called me up and told me he wanted me to direct Cendrillon, I was like “Oh, how will we cast it? How will we do this? It’s impossible.” The Met can do it and Santa Fe can do it because they have very large budgets and lots and lots of singers. But it’s more difficult in a university context. And when it is a stretch, it’s a good stretch in the sense that it’s accomplishable and the students will find success and not sort of fall down on the job. That always can happen.
And what’s incredible about this program is that we don’t have one cast. We have two. The fact that a program that’s a university academic program could have two sets of all of these incredibly difficult roles is astounding. But it’s what I’ve come to expect at Opera McGill.
PAN M 360: Tell us a bit more about how your collaboration started.
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: So we had met briefly when David attended the auditions for the opera McGill students. And I have to say, I love working with David. He is a supreme collaborator. We’re aiming in the same direction. I feel like we have been on a great journey together and we’re absolutely in sync. I mean, it’s great to have somebody like David who has a wide range of experience in this repertoire for this this piece is new for both of us.
This allows us to do some level of exploration with the students. What works, and what doesn’t. How do we pull out these performances? I think many of the students are at a near professional level, and that this is an environment in which they can hone that energy and we can help them build the experiences that they don’t have yet.
DAVID LEFKOWICH: I find that these collaborations can be very scary for the first time because we’re sort of embarking on this journey. I had a lot of trepidation, not about working with Stephen, but just about sort of how this was going to happen. And on the first day, we sat next to each other, and it was like we had been doing this for years. And what’s been amazing is watching the singers, like one of us will give some instruction and the singers would try it and it may work. It may not. But then the other one of us jumps in and sort of brings something else to the table and suddenly there’s that “a-ha!” moment with the student and you see them rise to the challenge and that takes both of us sort of working together able to help craft this experience for the students.
PAN M 360: What should the public expect from this production of Cendrillon?
DAVID LEFKOWICH: Come ready to be joyful. I think that this opera has incredible music and a great story that we recognize. It’s told in a slightly different way. I think there are still some nice surprises along the way. But what’s great is that the scenes are short, so things keep changing, and this opera always brings surprises to the table. And so I think especially for a first-time opera goer, this is a perfect way to experience opera. It’s a very safe, very easy to listen to, and very easy to enjoy piece. And the impact at the end is quite strong.
STEPHEN HARGREAVES: I would add that I think it’s new for Opera McGill. It’s a large group of people on stage. And I think that you know, with both casts counted, there’ll be thirty-nine people singing on stage. There are thirty-nine orchestra members, and opera on that grand scale hits in a different way, you know, and it’s interesting because, as David was saying, you never feel like you’re stuck in one world. It dips into all sorts of different sides of things. And when we have that opportunity to just bask in the grandness of it all, it’s just thrilling. It’s an experience I would recommend not missing because they just don’t happen that often.
Cendrillon, and opera by Jules Massenet, with Opera McGill and the McGill Symphony Orchestra. Presented at the Ludger-Duvernay Hall of the Monument-National, on January 26 and 27 (7:30 PM) and January 28 (2:00 PM).TICKETS AND INFO HERE!
In the third row of New York’s Beacon Theatre, Mahnoosh Arsanjani is on her feet, singing in unison with her idol. She and her friend Bita Zavari have flown in from California to see Iran’s greatest pop singer, Googoosh, on stage one last time. “I couldn’t miss it,” says Mahnoosh. My family came to the U.S. when I was seven, and Googoosh’s songs accompanied my childhood. Even if it’s a bit of our parents’ music, it’s ours too!”
For several months now, the artist has been bidding farewell to the stage as part of an emotional world tour, entitled The Last Chapters, after 70 years (you read that right!) of a career rich in songs, films, and bans. Pan M 360 caught up with her on the eve of her last ever New York concert.
Every nation has its diva. We in Montreal have Céline Dion. The U.S. has Barbara Streisand and Diana Ross, the Lebanese have Fairuz, and the Italians, have Raffaella Carrà. The Iranians have Googoosh. Born in 1950 in Tehran, Fāegheh Atashin was put on the stage by her father at the age of three, and rose to fame at a very early age, before becoming the propeller of cultural Westernization in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. In the ‘70s, she sang disco and pop hits such as “Talagh” (Divorce), “Makhlough” (Creature), and “Pol” (Bridge), songs that today can often be heard remixed or sampled for the dancefloor. While some consider her too commercial, a majority of Persians have elevated her to a living goddess status.
In her suite on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, the 73-year-old singer, with hair and make-up done to perfection, looks petite, a contrast with the powerful, humorous persona she portrays on stage. The tour is scheduled to run until 2025. It’s her way of thanking and saying goodbye to her beloved public, a relationship she’s nurtured since childhood. After New York, Dusseldorf awaits her later in January, followed by Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and London.
Time to wrap it up
“I think it’s time to wrap it up,” Googoosh says. “After 70 years of singing and acting, with the exception of 21 years in my life. I have many other projects, I’m working on a book, I have a foundation, called Pol Foundation, which aims to support young artists in their artistic education.”
After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women’s voices in Iran were silenced. Googoosh was condemned to isolation for over twenty years until she left the country for good in 2000. Since then, she has lived in Los Angeles (except two years in Toronto between 2000 and 2002), resumed touring, and has released about a dozen albums.
On stage at the Beacon Theatre, the day after our meeting, she shows great generosity towards her older audience, who saw her grow up, as well as her younger crowd, who consider her a bit of an endearing godmother. The 2600-seat theater is packed with people of all ages and social classes. People dressed up, taking photos as if to say “I was there.” The vast majority are of Iranian origin, and the diva speaks only Farsi on stage. The concert opens with a heartfelt rendition of “Talagh,” accompanied by images on the screen of Iranian women fighters and photos of Mahsa Jina Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish girl murdered by morality police in September 2022 for allegedly wearing an inappropriate headscarf.
Googoosh has never hidden her support for the Women, Life, Freedom movement, and the LGBTQ2S+ community. In 2014, the video for her song “Behesht” (Paradise) featured a gay couple being the victim of repression. While she doesn’t verbally condemn the mullahs’ regime, she never ceases to celebrate those who resist it.
Celebrating freedom
She knows what she’s talking about. Her 21 years away from the stage represent a dark period for the star. Most of her colleagues and friends in the entertainment world had already fled. “It was very hard for me,” she recalls. “They took away my art, my profession, my love, my life, everything. From the age of three, I was on the stage. Somehow, I was born for the stage and then, it was taken away from me. I thought I was finished forever, I thought nobody wanted to hear me sing at that point.”
She was wrong: during her isolation, her songs and films remained in demand on the black market and among the diaspora. Thanks to new technologies, such as the Internet and clandestine satellites, she saw that her love from the Iranian public never died. When she left Iran in 2000, she embarked on a world tour, entitled The Comeback Tour, a real reunion with fans. “In 2000, I was excited, moved, and happy. I was reunited with the public that I love. In contrast, this tour today is full of sorrow. I cry a lot on stage, and I have to learn to control myself. Saying goodbye isn’t a pleasant feeling. It’s bittersweet.”
The context has changed since her departure. Women are still not allowed to sing alone on stage in Iran, unless they perform in front of an all-female audience or are accompanied by a man. On social media, a new generation of artists defy these prohibitions, sharing their music with the world. “I am so happy and excited to see these new faces, Googoosh says. “I forget their names, I’m bad with names, but I hear their voices. I have access to these fantastic singers through social media and I am grateful for what they’re doing, what they’re trying to show. They show that women can sing very well, even better than me. Because they are the new, the future. I’m part of an older generation. I’m so happy that they are rising.”
A stage cannon
On stage, the sadness the star says she feels is transformed into a genuine connection with the crowd, who sing along, laugh at her jokes, cry, and shout words of love. She knows what her fans want: the great pop and disco hits of the pre-Revolution era. The diva sings “Pol”, “Hamsafar,” “Kooh,” “Mano To” and “Jaddeh,” among others. Her ten-piece band; (keyboards, flute, two guitars, bass, drummer, backing vocalist, violin, percussion, and electric double bass) reproduces the sounds of the 1970s with a contemporary flavour. On the giant screen behind her, nostalgic images of the young Googoosh merge with the concert broadcast.
After a long intermission, the artist returns to the stage. She has changed from her long crystal dress to an olive-green pantsuit with sequined fringes. She goes on with “Hejrat” and “Maah Pishooni.” At the first recognizable notes of “Makhlough,” her smashing hit, the penultimate song, the room erupts in tears and cries as people rush to the front to cheer her on and blow kisses.
According to Mahnoosh Arsanjani, the California fan, there are some nasty rumors going around: Googoosh might be now too old for the stage. Mahnoosh disagrees. “But you see what she can do. The voice is there, her power is still there!”
Photos by Siavash Rokni
Born just before the sleepy lockdowns of the early pandemic, Hank’s Dream emerged as the manifestation of singer-songwriter Henry Cobb. Releasing their eponymous debut EP in the summer of 2020, the band – now featuring Henri Bouchard on bass, Frédéric Ferland on guitar, and Zach Lalonde on drums – is on the verge of turning a fresh musical chapter with a brand new single, “All Over Now”. The band graciously extended an invitation to their practice session, just ahead of their eagerly anticipated launch show at Bar L’Escogriffe.
PAN M 360 : Hey thanks for having me here. Big show coming up.
Frédéric : Yeah, our first full band show since September. We’ve been playing like a couple of duo shows, me and Henry, but it’s been a while since we’ve had everyone together on stage. That’s really exciting for us.
PAN M 360 : You must have lots of stuff you want to show us!
Frédéric : For sure. We will play some classics, like from the 2020 EP. Of course we will play the single we release in June, “San Francisco”. But most of the songs we are playing now are unreleased and they are from an album that we’re hoping to get out in the summer.
PAN M 360 : So you’re getting to try out the new material in a live context?
Henry : I wouldn’t necessarily say like trying out because like we’ve actually had these songs written for quite a while now. There’s just kind of like a stockpile of songs that needs to be recorded.
Frédéric : We’ve been playing them since like 2021 pretty much. A lot of them. We have like a book of like 12 songs that are not released, and we’re hoping to get them on tape.
Henry : Yeah, but it is nice because, for example, the song we’re about to release, “All Over Now”, is one of the ones that people really like when they play at shows. And so because we’ve had it around for a while, it was easy to record quickly because we’ve played it a million times.
PAN M 360 : And so when you say you’re about to “release” the song, what exactly does that mean?
Henry : “What does it mean?”
PAN M 360 : Well I understand that it will be out on all the streaming services and everything, but people have to know about it, right? So it seems like a release has basically become an instagram post.
Henry : Yeah, it’s the way it is now. We haven’t really done any physical releases of any of our stuff yet. I mean I would like to, but I think the market for it is very niche. You know, like your friends might buy it, but except for my friends who drive cars I don’t know anyone who actually even listens to CD’s. I like records, but that’s maybe more long term.
But then again I don’t know, I think I used to be really attached to the whole physical medium aspect of music, but one thing that is really cool about streaming is how people all around the world can access your stuff. We had sort of a meme moment a few days where one of our songs was on a playlist in Finland. So suddenly we had a spike in the number of streams coming in. Yeah, it was probably AI bots or something.
Frédéric : It was the second country in the world that was listening to most of our songs. We had 300 listeners in Finland.
Henri : We will probably go on tour there now.
PAN M 360 : I suppose I was trying to touch upon how underwhelming it can be at times. Here’s a post and there you go.
Frédéric : And then it’s over. Yeah, it’s a big thing.
Henry : Well, honestly, we made a big deal out of it, though. We are doing a show on the same day and then we’re also releasing a music video that we’ve been working on for a long time. So I feel like you can make a big deal out of these things.
PAN M 360 : For sure, and I’m sure your fans are thrilled. Can you tell me about the new single?
Henry : “All Over Now” is a tune that I wrote in 2021, I believe. It was sort of in response to the passing of Norm MacDonald, who’s my favourite comedian. It’s kind of partially about that but I mean, like all of these tunes were written with the music first and the lyrics second. So, I had the tune for a little while and then I sort of play around with words till something fits, and in this case, the first line that just came was ‘it’s all over now’. And I wrote the rest of the song around it.
PAN M 360 : Is it exploring a different sound or theme than the other ones?
Henry : Well, it’s the same layout. In the sense that it’s like bass, drums, guitar, synthesiser, and voice, but it’s definitely got a darker sound to it. The synth has more of a pad-kind of role. I would say that this song is like really dream pop. If you wanted to put it in a genre, whereas “San Francisco” is more yacht rock.
PAN M 360 : Ha, is that what you feel best describes your music?
Henri : It’s pretty accurate. We had never heard that term before but then last summer when we released “San Francisco”, we had like a bunch of people saying, oh, this is really giving Yacht Rock vibes.
Henry : Yeah, anyways. I don’t know, I think it’s pretty poppy music. But that’s the thing, I feel like our tunes are really different like from song to song. Some of them are really easy to categorise, and some not so much.
PAN M 360 : And what about “San Francisco”, what’s the story behind that one?
Henry : I think it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek…I wrote it during the pandemic, which really sucked, and I guess it’s about this guy who has an immature idea that getting away to another city is going to solve all their problems and stuff like. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s kind of just like a stupid goofy song too.
PAN M 360 : I’m curious about everyone in the band’s favourite song to play.
Henri : I love when Henry plays solo tunes, and I get to cry on stage.
Zachary : I think maybe “San Francisco”.
Frédéric : Maybe “Just 23” for me, which is like a big super high energy song that we’ve been playing for a while. It’s super fun to play.
PAN M 360 : And what’s the next big thing for the band?
Frédéric : Well, I think the biggest dream right now is to get to do the record. I mean tell me if I’m wrong Henry, but I feel like it’s pretty much the next big thing that we’re looking to do. Right. And when it’s going to be done, I think it’s going to be super satisfying because we’ve been working on it for a long time.
PAN M 360 : So do you have a plan for that yet? Or is it kind of still just an idea for now?
Henry : Well, basically, for like the past six or eight months we’ve been in the process of applying for grants. So we’re sort of basing the production schedule off of that. If we get them, then we can hopefully start recording the album like in March, and then have it out by the summer. And If we don’t get them, then that’s like a whole other story.
PAN M 360 : As a band singing in English to you feel at a disadvantage for those opportunities?
Henry : I feel like actually the opposite. I was expecting that to be the case, but we play tons of venues that are maybe more francophone oriented and it goes really well. Like we have tons of fans that are francophones, maybe even more so than anglophones.
Frédéric: All of us are playing with other francophone projects too, so for us it’s like more like making links than separating people.
Henry : We did do a thing one time at our release show, and we had like a poll at the beginning about which language we should speak between the songs, and it was pretty 50-50 but French won.
PAN M 360 : Well no matter what language, Montréal is a city that loves music. Have an amazing show !
Blanche Moisan Méthé built her career as a trumpeter, tubist, and vocalist, collaborating with a wide cast of musical groups before embarking on the path of a singer-songwriter. Now performing under the moniker of BLAMM, she released her first LP, Balivernes, earlier this year. Her compositions, infused with much irony, are inspired by the music of New Orleans, the rich poetry and folk traditions of Quebec, and the urban wisdom that comes from living in a city like Montreal. We sat down with BLAMM to talk about her story, her first release, and her coming performance at Club Soda.
PAN M 360 : Hey BLAMM, thanks again for being with us. You released Balivernes about six months ago now. And I imagine that’s a very interesting place to be. To be six months after the release of your album.
BLAMM : Ohdefinitely.
PAN M 360 : Maybe you can tell us a bit about what that feels like?
BLAMM : Okay, well first of all, I really enjoyed those last six months. I got to tour quite a bit this summer. So as I was releasing Balivernes, I was also booking my summer gigs pretty much. You know I’m doing it all myself, and now that I’m back here I realise I didn’t spend any time booking for the fall ! So I’m going back to that and also working on some new ideas. I think I’ve got my mindset on starting the process for the second album now.
PAN M 360 : Yeah, I suppose you can’t rest on your laurels too much.
BLAMM : Well, it’s fun to do ! But I’ve been writing some new songs and that’s generally what I feel I should be spending my time doing when I have some time off.
PAN M 360 : So the experience of releasing your Balivernes was really a positive one? One that encouraged you to want to get back to it?
BLAMM : Yeah, definitely. But coming back from all the touring and having so many upcoming gigs, it’s like, oh, I have to get back to the grind of booking gigs and sending emails and applying to things, which is not the most fun part of it.
PAN M 360 : Well, I wonder when you release something, do you try to promote it as a way to play more shows, or vice versa.
BLAMM : Yeah, I suppose my goal is really to play more shows. And I think making an album is in service of that goal too, to play live. Of course I love being in the studio but really my biggest fun is to play shows.
PAN M 360 : So you think the artistry of BLAMM really comes together in the live experience?
BLAMM : I do really enjoy the studio though, but the process of making an album, the proportion of studio time is kind of small compared to all the work that you have to do. So the studio time is really fun, but a lot of the other stuff is administrative work.
PAN M 360 : And maybe you can just introduce the project of BLAMM to our readers.
BLAMM : Sure. It’s a singer-songwriter project. It’s definitely very Québécois. BLAMM is a sort of an extravagant character who speaks quite frankly, with lots of local expressions and lots of themes that I think are uncommon to the music we tend to hear a lot. A lot of things that are maybe considered too banal, or very simple things that everybody goes through, but nobody talks about, like doing your tax report.
PAN M 360 : Well, you do it in a very interesting like sonic universe too, you know, the way you choose to present these themes.
BLAMM : Well, I’ve been playing music for almost eight years, playing in so many different projects. And so I guess all those years of being an accompanist and an interpreter shaped my musical world a lot. Those other experiences are all somewhere in there. It’s influenced my writing for the music. And of course the album is centred on brass a lot.
PAN M 360 : So was a brass instrument your first musical instrument?
BLAMM : Yes, it was trumpet in high school. So I’ve been mostly a trumpet player and now I’m coming out as a songwriter all of a sudden.
PAN M 360 : Could you tell me a bit about that transition? Were you always inclined to explore this direction?
BLAMM : I’ve been singing for a long time, not my original songs, mostly like traditional jazz songs. And I’ve always had some mixed feelings about that because I really love singing those songs. I think they are amazing melodically, but the lyrics are not so, well I don’t feel connected to them quite so much.
So I’ve been wanting to write songs about what I want to talk about, and I tried a lot in the past and nothing was coming out at all. Until one day I was in New Orleans and I bought a banjo, a tenor banjo. I thought I was buying it for my friend who plays guitar in my band because I thought he could use it to play banjo in my band instead. But then I ended up starting to noodle on it and I really liked it and I never gave it to him in the end.
PAN M 360 : Is that the peculiar four string guitar that you play?
BLAMM : Actually no, we’ll get to that. So I started on this cheap banjo and as soon as I got the hang of it I started writing songs. Like, right away. I played piano before but it never inspired me to come up with songs like that. But then after a while of playing it a lot I began to think that the banjo is kind of stuck in one style, well not really, but it’s a very particular tone that doesn’t fit in every kind of music. I kind of wanted to go outside of those styles and I happened to have a friend who’s an amazing luthier and I had another banjo playing friend who was ordering a tenor guitar from this guy and I know this luthier likes to do them twice, two at a time because it’s more efficient that way. So I knew it was the time to order it.
PAN M 360 : Wow, so that’s the instrument that’s at the heart of a lot of these compositions?
BLAMM : Yes. Some of them I wrote on the banjo of course, but a lot of them I wrote on with the guitar.
PAN M 360 : And was your fascination with the music of New Orleans because of your love for brass?
BLAMM : Yes, it’s perfect music for brass. It’s festive, it’s happy, it’s contagious. Even those who’ve never heard that kind of music are going to enjoy it and I busk a lot, so I played on the street a lot with this music.
PAN M 360 : Yeah. It’s interesting to hear its influence on your creative work. Because you take this sound but then, as you said, explore these absurd banal themes.
BLAMM : Yeah, there’s a circus vibe to it. I didn’t want to just copy the style and make it French. I really wanted to go somewhere else with it.
PAN M 360 : And so your album is very Québécois at the same time, was that a big frame of reference in making this music?
BLAMM : For the music, maybe not so much. There’s not a lot of brass in our music. And I grew up listening to music from all around the world, not really so much Québécois music. Now I listen to way more of it. But for the words and lyrics, absolutely it was a big reference.
PAN M 360 : So for you, the lyrics were really quite an important part of this.
BLAMM : Absolutely and I think that’s why it took me so long before I started writing because I didn’t know what I wanted to say and it’s not a filler for me. I can just make instrumental music if I really have nothing to say. So it was important for me to like, even though it’s silly at times, it’s still something I want to say and I think that’s why I started writing. And I get some nice comments about my lyrics actually.
PAN M 360 : Well «Si hier était demain » and «Vie D’ange »especially are really powerful! So does Blamm feel something like an alter ego?
BLAMM : Yeah, for sure. I think I’m quite introverted as a person but I feel like this opens up a new side of me and I can say whatever I want, I can be super silly, make stupid jokes on stage, and like sometimes I’m sort of sassy too. I think I can be like that too when I’m super comfortable with close friends but like in a social context where there’s more people, not so much. I also feel that people know me better if they hear my music.
PAN M 360 : And so a lot of these songs started off as kind of core singer-songwriter songs. Did you then arrange them as well?
BLAMM : Yes, I did the arranging. Some of them, because I play a lot of the instruments that are on the album. Well I don’t play tuba on the album, but I do play tuba.
PAN M 360 : Oh how come?
BLAMM : Because we played it live and I hired the best tuba player in town, well one of the best for sure. And yeah, playing it live I can’t do both for sure. So I had to have someone else. But when I was arranging, I could play tuba and record it to come up with the parts because I know how to play the instrument. I made mock-ups of the songs like this and then came to write the charts and stuff. But also there was a bit that was also done just during rehearsals with the musicians. They have better skills than me.
PAN M 360 : I mean your band is very talented. That’s for sure.
BLAMM : I’m lucky to have a good network.
PAN M 360 : So what’s the main difference in what you would say between the music in the studio and the music played live?
BLAMM : I have performed a lot of shows solo, duo, trio, and some shows with the five piece. The album launch was with 11 people. And so of course, the arrangements are way more complex with everybody, but I really enjoy playing in the smaller bands too. I find for music with lyrics especially, it’s usually better with a bit less going on and you have a better contact with the audience.
PAN M 360 : And what’s the band for your show this month?
BLAMM : It’s going to be the five-piece. That’s kind of the core band I would say. And it will be a short show, it’s just an opening act. But it’s a big venue at Club Soda. We’re opening for JP « Le Pad » Tremblay, a singer-songwriter from Quebec.
PAN M 360 : Okay, nice gig ! So you’ve been doing some networking? Is that how that works?
BLAMM : I suppose so. I met the right people at the right time and they needed an opener !
PAN M 360 : And so how has your experi
ence been kind of as an independent artist navigating the industry side of things? Well, is there one?
BLAMM : To me, it still sounds like a myth. Like all those bookers and those, I’m like, where are they? Who are they? I’ve been a professional musician for like eight years and barely ever met anyone like that. With all the bands I’ve played with, we book ourselves. And now I’ve met some people who have bookers or are signed to labels and they’re not so satisfied with them either. So, as I was preparing the album launch, I was sending emails and trying to get in those things, but I mean, there’s too much demand for what they can take, you know?
But also after I did it all by myself, I was quite happy. I had 15 shows this summer that I booked myself. They’re not big shows in fancy places, but I don’t need it to be big. I really like the small venues and being close to people. Of course I wouldn’t say no to having people helping me doing those things, but I’m kind of accepting that it might not happen anytime soon.
PAN M 360 : What would you say it’s your biggest kind of dream with this music? Or where do you ideally want this project to go?
BLAMM : Or asking myself that a lot these days. But I think my main drive is to keep playing live shows. So I managed to do it last summer by myself. And I’m going to keep doing it by myself if some people want to give me gigs or have a deal with me, that would be sweet. But I’m not expecting that to happen. And there’s a lot of artists that I really admire that do it by themselves. And I feel like you have more power over what you get to do. And if things go wrong, you only have yourself to blame. You know, if the gig is bad, if whatever is bad, it’s your own fault and you don’t get frustrated with whoever you’re working with.
PAN M 360 : A sign of the times BLAMM. Wishing you all the best with your music and your upcoming show. We look forward to the next album !
The Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca company was created in 1993 by Martín Santangelo, co-founder, artistic director and choreographer, and Soledad Barrio, co-founder, choreographer and principal dancer. Since the 1990’s their production company has come to be lauded as one of the finest exponents of the flamenco tradition today. Their most recent offering is a very unique and captivating program titled “Searching for Goya.” This special production, the brainchild of company director, Martin Santangelo, promises to be an extraordinary exploration of the profound connections between flamenco artistry and the iconic Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Scheduled to perform in January in Montreal, we sat with Martin ahead of his many premieres and tours to talk about the show.
PAN M 360 : Thanks for being with us Martin. We’re very excited for this very special programme. Have you started premiering the show?
Martin Santangelo : Yes, we just officially did the world premiere in Seattle, Washington last week. And the week before that we had the official premiere. We’ve been working on it and workshopping it for the last year or so. And of course I’ve been working on it for the last four years. So we were very, very happy and relieved to actually do the world premiere. It went very well. I was very happy about that.
PAN M 360 : Well I wonder, in your view, what really is the measure of a good performance?
Martin Santangelo : It’s a very good question. A good performance for me is that the audience understands what I’m trying to say. That’s the first measure. That’s much beyond whether it’s a good show or a bad show, that the comprehension of what I’m trying to do gets across to the audience. And at the end of the day it is also extremely important that there’s something cathartic that occurs. Because catharsis is built into the flamenco. It’s part of the flamenco. It’s why the flamenco exists. It’s a way for people to go on with their lives in face of or in lieu of an impossibility.
The flamenco is a mechanism of catharsis. It’s a scream that exists so people can wake up the next day and go on with their lives. So my measure of success is one, what am I trying to do? What am I trying to make understood in my performance? And then second, am I using the flamenco in the appropriate way? And those two things occurred last week in the World Premier. So that’s my measure of success. Of course things can be better. Things can always be better. We’re going to begin rehearsing next week again.
PAN M 360 : Have you ever felt that sometimes this very real history behind the flamenco gets neglected? Perhaps it’s important to be aware of its origins to get the most out of the experience.
Martin Santangelo : I mean, it only helps to be aware. However flamenco is pretty global, in the sense that it was made by like 28 different cultures. It’s not just Spanish. It has to do with the Northern Africans, the Muslims, the Jews, the Sephardic Jews, the Christians, the Northern Indians who migrated into Spain. And they all kind of mixed together for 900 years. And many of those cultures were repressed and they screamed out and they created flamenco. So of course, it can help to know the origins of this tradition… At the same time, we’re seeing…we’re seeing a lot of oppression of cultures all over the world now. So things historically have not changed. So in one sense, you can identify with what’s going on with the flamenco in the present time as well.
And so if you have the chance to go into the origins, great. If you don’t and you’re just exposed to it and if it’s done correctly, I’m pretty sure that you’ll feel it. You’ll get an understanding. An intuitive understanding.
PAN M 360 : And of course, this program has a special kind of Goya twist. Was this your brainchild?
Martin Santangelo : Yes, I fell in love with Goya about four years ago during the pandemic. I knew of him somewhat, but I didn’t know about him deeply. And you know there’s a great quote from an art critic that we put in the program – “to see Goya is to see ourselves” – and it’s quite true. Goya really reveals who we are, our human nature, our inadequacies, our brutality towards other human beings. And animals too, which is interesting, because he goes into the whole world of bullfighting. He calls it out. He calls out the violence that human beings have towards animals. Something he dealt with all his life. He really loved bullfighting but he hated the violent part of it. And so he really makes us see what violence, what war, what brutality does to one another, the effects of it. Of what we do to each other.
PAN M 360 : Was there one piece in particular that opened the doors so to speak?
Martin Santangelo : Yes there was! It’s called ‘the Follies’, or ‘Los disparates’ in Spanish. It was a series he did towards the end of his life, which many artists today say as the beginning of modern art and abstract art. And it’s a drawing or a lithograph, an engraving of a woman on a horse doing a magic trick or doing a show for an audience. And you look at the lithograph, the image, and you see the first thing you see is an audience. So you’re watching an audience, watching… a show. And it is, it’s amazing. It’s a little voyeuristic. We do it in the show and it’s a woman dancing on top of a horse and there’s a moment that she does that in the show. It’s extraordinary.
And you see this demolished, under nurtured audience watching one of the most beautiful shows in the world. And it’s like a, you know, a magic world for them. So it’s, it’s, it’s really quite a compassionate painting of watching these townsfolk from who don’t have much education witnessing an incredible show. And that’s my dream, you know, to be able to do art for people who really need it. So that was the beginning for me, it opened the doors as you said.
PAN M 360 : And what was your process in translating, you know, a visual medium into a flamenco choreography?
Martin Santangelo : What wasn’t the process! Yeah, I’ve tried everything and anything because it’s a very new thing for me to take a visual artist and translate it into dance or song. What it boils down to is to get a deep understanding of what Goya wants to say. And then, with my language, with the music, the song, and say, all right, how can I say that? Because I began doing the typical thing, which is an imitation of the original images, but it was a bit of a disaster. Because you can’t really do it. But I could steal certain things like his sense of composition. Because he’s a genius in that sense.
After about a year of working on this project, I realised I couldn’t just imitate the images because it didn’t really say anything new. I had to find a meeting point between the emotional storytelling of the flamenco and the narrative storytelling of Goya, of what his images are telling us. And then I began to find my way or at least I’m beginning to find my way.
PAN M 360 : And what can you say of Soledad’s role in all of this?
Martin Santangelo : Soledad’s role in this has been instrumental. She’s been very patient with me, because I’ve spent so many months and weeks and hours talking and talking and talking with her about ideas. And we go back and forth. I talk, she dances, she dances and I watch. She converts a lot of what I have in my mind into physicality. So that’s been, you know, a real gift for me. She’s extraordinary. And we understand each other, which is great.
As far as the other part, the music part, I usually work on that by myself with the musicians. And then I give it to her as a map, the music that’s mostly done, about 90% done. And then she’ll take that and take my ideas and come out with some extraordinary choreography. So we’re co-creators in this process. Absolute co-creators.
PAN M 360 : I see. It must be incredible to finally see your vision come to life after all this time. How many shows do you have lined up ahead of you?
Martin Santangelo : Right now we have a lot of shows in New York. I think about 20 or 25 shows, which is great, because it’ll be like working out the muscles. Now that we’ve broken the ice we are going to keep working the show and just perfect it. There’s so many more things that I’d like to do.
PAN M 360 : So each performance is always a bit different?
Martin Santangelo : A little bit, yeah. And, you know, when we do a show on a Wednesday and a Thursday, I can rehearse on Thursday what we did Wednesday.
PAN M 360 : This sounds exhausting. Especially for such a demanding and cathartic tradition as you say. What’s your secret Martin? Yoga?
Martin Santangelo : Ha, well I swim a lot. That’s my meditation. And yes, it’s exhausting but it’s also so nurturing, this work. Because, first of all, you understand deeper things in life with artists like Goya. I began to understand things, see things in a new way because of him. And of course each performance gives me a lot of energy back. You know, I would be lost without this work.
PAN M 360 : I see, it’s really a give and take. It’s been so interesting to hear you speak about this project. It’s really clear you’ve spent a lot of time trying to get inside the world of Goya. And I find with these sorts of endeavours, at the end of the day, you never really know how these artists truly felt, or where they were really coming from. Sometimes, I wonder what they would think of us.
Martin Santangelo : That would be fascinating.
PAN M 360 : Imagine if Goya was in your audience!
Martin Santangelo : Yeah. I don’t know if he would get up and leave or take me out for a glass of red wine!
PAN M 360 : I like to think he would! It’s been a real pleasure Martin. I’m extremely excited for this performance, I wish you and the team all the best with your performances.
Martin Santangelo : We’re looking forward to it too. Thanks a lot.
Nurtured by the rich cultural mosaic of Montreal, singer-songwriter Gabrielle Cloutier has always been adept at embracing diverse musical styles and forging close connections with numerous musicians. Now, at the cusp of her inaugural release, Chamade, her band has coalesced around seven talented musicians. Together, they have crafted a unique sound that blends vocals, violin, viola, cello, double bass, santuri, and accordion. The gentle, enthralling, and melancholic melodies lie at the core of this invitation to be carried away by the words and melodies.
PAN M 360 : Thanks for being here Gabrielle. And congratulations on the upcoming release of Chamade! Is the album releasing immediately after your show?
Gabrielle Cloutier : Yes, the show is the album launch and it’s also the first performance of this band. We formed this group to record the album and so we haven’t really played together in a show circumstance before. I don’t think people have really heard us yet. I only put a little clip on Facebook here and there. So it’s going to be great to finally play this music for everyone.
PAN M 360 : Well I’ve seen you perform before, so I know the vibe and a bit of what to expect. Your musicality is very interesting. It has this lovely folky, chanson, baroque quality to it. Can you maybe tell us a bit about your background?
Gabrielle Cloutier : Actually I started with a classical background. I studied music in CEGEP. I did a bachelor’s in classical singing and after that, I did my master’s degree at McGill in baroque singing and contemporary classical singing. So I like to touch on a lot of influences in my music.
At the end of my studies at McGill, I got to meet a lot of people and was chilling with musicians from the jazz world, from the Arabic music world. In Montreal, it’s like this, you know. You always meet a lot of musicians from so many different styles. Some of them wanted to start a band during the pandemic, and they thought about me. They had the music written but not really the words and melodies. So we began to jam and, coming from a classical background, I never really did that. The songs came together and we started to have some gigs and residencies and finally I started to really enjoy composing. So my road has changed a bit, but I can use what I got from the classical world and transpose it in my own music.
PAN M 360 : That I can hear. And when I saw you perform, you were playing the accordion and singing too!
Gabrielle Cloutier : Yeah, so this project actually started with me playing accordion with an upright bassist. But finally I decided I just want to sing. So I asked my friend to play accordion in the band. Because the accordion is a very demanding instrument. If I was an accordionist first and then a singer, it wouldn’t be so bad. But to start as a singer and then to learn accordion it’s not the same thing. I want to be free when I sing, and it’s a hard instrument if you really want to be in the moment and fully in connection.
PAN M 360 : Well you sounded quite at ease when I heard you the last time!
Gabrielle Cloutier : I was so stressed!
PAN M 360 : I think you can give yourself a little more credit, but I can understand that! And so do you play other instruments too then?
Gabrielle Cloutier : I play some mediaeval instruments actually, like the chifonie. It’s a rectangle box with only three strings and some notes but it’s basically like a simplified hurdy-gurdy. And I play the citole as well.
PAN M 360 : Okay, so not your typical singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar?
Gabrielle Cloutier : Not really, but I started like that. After all those challenges of learning different instruments I feel like my place is to sing for now.
PAN M 360 : Is the lyrical aspect of songwriting a big draw for you in this project?
Gabrielle Cloutier : Yeah, yeah, but it might be different for me. I really see this project as like…a certain period of a time of my life where these songs just came out really naturally, really easily. I think as artists we live some stuff and the lyrics come to reflect how we are situated in our souls and how we feel at that time. So now I’m somewhere else and might have something different to say.
PAN M 360 : That comes across in your album title, Chamade.
Gabrielle Cloutier : It’s the beat of your heart. There’s an expression in French, “mon coeur bat à la chamade”. It’s like your heart is really full of passion, you know. It’s about the tempo of your heart, it’s a bit kitschy maybe. But that’s what I was feeling and what came to mind.
PAN M 360 : So does it feel like it’s been like a long time coming, this release, or does it all feel new to you?
Gabrielle Cloutier : It’s like new and old at the same time. I’m excited to let go of this album, because it’s been a long time that I’ve spent with these five songs. We have new songs, and I’m excited for those and to see how we can go further with this project. Some people can maybe wait two years before releasing an album. Actually I had a discussion with my bandmates from another project, and we were talking about recording another album in December. And some of them were talking about taking our time and releasing it maybe a year after recording it. I think for me I couldn’t wait that long!
PAN M 360 : And of course do you feel like 2023 is an incredibly weird time to be releasing music into the world?
Gabrielle Cloutier : For sure, and I made a lot of prints of this album, so I don’t know if people will buy it. But it’s kind of like there’s people, there’s society, the industry, but then there’s also your own road. I did it for myself at the end of the day, and I think everyone has to be doing it for themselves. It was a challenge for me as an artist to see if I could make this record, even if it’s received or not. And it helps to have a record, it’s good to have something to show and give people.
PAN M 360 : So how was it navigating the actual logistics of an album release and distribution?
Gabrielle Cloutier : I really learned a lot about this. I didn’t know that I had to take care of copyright stuff, of SOCAN, of distrokid, printing an album, and even choosing the right person to do the mastering. All of that was fine in the end, but the part that was the hardest to deal with was to get some press, from labels, from magazines. I’m just like a small fish in this huge sea you know. And our music is very acoustic you know, not the most pop stuff that will sell.
PAN M 360 : So what can you tell us about the launch show?
Gabrielle Cloutier : It’s definitely going to be more on the soft side of things. The other two bands are also really acoustic, and they fit in the same universe with the music we will perform. To start the evening there will be a string quartet, Quatuor Bazar, and they will actually play a composition of a friend of mine, Nominoë,who arranged a song on the album. He’s going to be playing in the second act, which is a duo performing folk songs from Greece and Turkey.
PAN M 360 : So a lot of different stuff but all in the same chamber universe. And you will play Chamade front to back?
Gabrielle Cloutier : Maybe not in that order, and we have a few more songs. We’re going to have some solos and interludes from the different instruments, yeah, all the musicians are amazing. I’m really grateful that they are in this project with me.
PAN M 360 : You must be really excited for this performance. Do you deal with nerves still?
Gabrielle Cloutier : I’m feeling really fine. I was more nervous when I had to all the logistical work that I didn’t really understand, but now, since yesterday when I went to go to the printer to print the last posters, I’m chilling.We have one last rehearsal, everything is going well, I’m happy, and I think it’s going to be good.
PAN M 360 : We think so too. Thanks again Gabrielle, have a wonderful show!
This Sunday PM at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, AWR Music Productions and GFN Productions present Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY, the official tour of the FINAL FANTASY Symphony Orchestra, brought to Montreal by the now renowned Orchestre FilmHarmonique.
Launched in 2007 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FINAL FANTASY, Distant Worlds features music from composer Nobuo Uematsu’s acclaimed FINAL FANTASY video game series, including music from the latest cycle, FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE. Over the decades, other composers have also contributed, including Masayoshi Soken.
These works are performed by a symphony orchestra, a choir, vocal and instrumental soloists drawn from the famous video game. In this case, the conductor is GRAMMY award-winner Arnie Roth. Needless to say, HD images from developers SQUARE ENIX are projected onto giant screens, all in phase with the interpretations.
PAN M 360: What are the qualities of the works on the program, taken from Final Fantasy, a mythical video game that has been around for over 35 years? Arnie Roth: I can answer this by pointing out that in the Distant Worlds concert productions, all of the scores we perform aim to be as close as possible to the way they appeared in the games. We will represent music from the entire 35 years of the FINAL FANTASY series on this concert, and we are including scores from FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, and the premiere performance of FINAL FANTASY XIV: The Final Day, on this concert.
PAN M 360: Who wrote the arrangements and orchestrations on the program? How was it put together? How do we take the music from video games and transform it into orchestral works? Arnie Roth : The answers would require 3 different in-depth discussions. The Distant Worlds arrangements are put together by teams in Japan as well as by our own arrangements by Eric and Arnie Roth. Many of these are actually original versions from the games, and as such they were supervised by the composers involved : Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, Masayoshi Soken, and more.
PAN M 360: Do you always work with the same scores ? Can the scores evolve over time? Arnie Roth : Yes, in fact we have over 160 FINAL FANTASY scores in our Distant Worlds library. It is a constant process of adding new scores all the time. No 2 concerts have exactly the same repertoire.
PAN M 360: In your opinion, what is the added value of symphonic arrangements of music for video games? Arnie Roth : There are so many. First, understand that one of the unique qualities of all of the FF videogames is the extreme variety of genres and ensembles used on the OST of each game – Rock, Jazz, Symphonic, chamber music ensembles, choral ensembles, solo vocals, and more. The use of the symphony in these concerts comes from the template created first by Nobuo Uematsu in the earliest FF concerts in Japan.
PAN M 360: You work with a number of different orchestras with the same repertoire, so are there any differences in interpretation between the orchestras you work with? If so, what are those specificities ? Arnie Roth : Of course each orchestra we work with around the globe has different strengths. There are many factors including how much rehearsal time we have, what venue we are performing in, etc. However, I can confidently state that there are no discernable differences in interpretation, since I am guiding that specific thing myself in each case.
PAN M 360: Have you ever worked with the FilmHarmonic Orchestra? What do you know about this orchestra?
Arnie Roth : Yes I have, and they have always done a great job, and a pleasure to work with.
PAN M 360: Does your audience consist mainly of gamers who are proud to hear music from their favorite games acquire symphonic luster?
Arnie Roth : Yes, that is mostly correct, though I would make sure to take note of the strong sense of the FF community that takes place with each concert.
PAN M 360: What are your next projects as maestro and musician?
Arnie Roth : We have many Distant Worlds and A New World concerts throughout 2024, some with new themes. There are also many new projects for 2024, and I unfortunately cannot divulge anything at this time.
PAN M 360: Do you think that this symphonic music can interest audiences in the classical, modern and contemporary repertoire for symphony orchestras?
Arnie Roth : Yes, definitely. And I have to say that we have been performing Distant Worlds at the most important venues and orchestra’s for 16 years.
PAN M 360: In any case, your audiences are having a great time with this new orchestral music. Is it more than enough for you to bring happiness to these video game-inclined audiences? Arnie Roth : YES! But do not underestimate my own joy at performing these fantastic scores with musicians all over the globe! PAN M 360: Thank you so much for your collaboration!
Air Conditionné heralds the first release from up-and-coming artist ROM1, the moniker of Romain Peynichou who left his native France to immerse himself in the unique urban fabric of Montréal. Characterised by raw vulnerability and adventurous sonic exploration, his album plays much like a sonic coming of age story. We sat with Romain to learn how it all came to be.
PAN M 360 : Hey ROM1, thanks a lot for being with us today. You’ve just had your first release and it’s clear to anyone who listens to your record that it was a very personal undertaking. There’s a lot going here and so perhaps we can get started at the beginning of this project?
ROM1 : My goal really was to find my own voice. After playing in bands for a long time as a drummer, making other people’s music, it was a time to get alone in the studio and have my music being made with like no compromises.
PAN M 360 : So did you have some idea of what that voice was to begin with or was it really a process of discovery?
ROM1 : Well, there was a lot of exploration for sure. I kind of knew where I was going in the way of having my references and a particular sound in mind, but there was definitely a lot of exploration to get there. And a lot of learning for sure.
PAN M 360 : Can you tell us a bit about your background as a musician?
ROM1 : Yeah, I started playing drums really early because my brother was playing guitar. You know I got into a lot of classic rock music, soul music, always kind of from a drumming perspective, but early on too I was hooked on really nice songs. Some Bill Withers tunes, some Zeppelin riffs, a lot of Chili Peppers as a teenager. And then as I went more deeply into listening to music I discovered more dense, more intricate productions and I think that’s where it really hit for me.
PAN M 360 : What kinds of bands were you playing in?
ROM1 : So a lot of funk bands, rock bands and some jazz. I was at jazz school for a bit.
PAN M 360 : It’s interesting to hear you say that because I felt that even if your album doesn’t necessarily touch on those influences, it was made by someone who has experience in a lot of different styles. But at the end of the day it’s a producer-songwriter album.
ROM1 : Yeah, that’s the music that I love. I love funk music, I love rock music, I love jazz, but the one music that really resonated with me has always been more produced, personal, vulnerable, intimate, more like headphone music rather than live music.
PAN M 360 : Was there some sort of sound in Montréal that you were trying to find?
ROM1 : Yeah, absolutely. One of the reasons why I moved to Montréal was for Half Moon Run. In my high school years they were one of my favourite bands and they just represented this city for me. The Dark Eyes album was so impactful just in terms of the songs and the vibe and I got really attached to that record for a bit. And then coming here I listened to a lot of Montréal made music, a lot of Montréal producers, and the feeling of knowing them from afar, sometimes knowing them personally, seeing them around is something that I really value. It makes me feel like I’m part of the city and I think it’s really beautiful to have art that I love around me.
PAN M 360 : And how did the Air Conditionné kind of aesthetic manifest itself?
ROM1 : I had this very specific walk when I was working on the music very deeply, from my old apartment to the studio that I was working in. And yeah, it was just on this walk that I did every day that I noticed different things and I started to see a lot of air conditioning units. And that image just stuck with me. Then as I thought about a lot of the lyrics and the themes started to unveil themselves, it was a lot about growing up and what the process of being conditioned to be a certain way brings about. I started therapy kind of when I was deep in writing lyrics so a lot of that came through and I liked that the title Air Conditionné had different layers of meanings.
PAN M 360 : For me the album title was suggestive of work, the work always needing to be done on ourselves in a way. And that we’re building and repairing and installing ourselves kind of all the time.
ROM1 : Yeah, I really like that too. It wasn’t my original one but it definitely works. For me it was about how an air conditioner regulates the temperature of a room and you know regulates the atmosphere. And for me that’s a lot of what music does also, you know, like listening to a lot of music in public spaces and restaurants and bars and seeing how different music can impact a room in different ways. The power that the music that you choose has. That for me is very interesting. Air Conditionné could be interpreted in different ways. It can be light but there’s also a deep meaning there and I also liked the idea of an era of time. In French we say “l’ère du temps” also, which means just a period of time, which I thought was also cool.
PAN M 360: Was there any reason in particular the whole record is in French, for someone who is perfectly bilingual and kind of at ease with both cultures?
ROM1 : Well I started writing in English at first. The very first demos were in English and it just didn’t resonate with me as much. And then as I was working on the music, the Hubert Lenoir record came out, PICTURA DE IPSE : Musique directe, which is the record that completely changed everything for me in terms of what I wanted to do. I was writing in French already a bit but that just sealed the deal. There’s still some parts of the record, especially some voice memos and everything that are in English, because English is a huge part of my life, it’s about 50-50. But because a lot of the record is about me growing up and what that was like, that was all in French, so it made sense for me to do that.
PAN M 360: Can you tell us more about the composition process exactly? Your songs have a lot of intricate detail and moving parts and I’m wondering how you worked it all out.
ROM1 : A lot of the songs started with a synth patch that I really like, a bass line, sometimes even just drums. I’m not in any way a pianist or a guitar player. I don’t really compose music. It was about creating textures and creating grooves and making those landscapes and then making a song at the end, with the parts and dynamics and lyrics. It wasn’t really like sitting down at a piano, figuring out a chord progression, a melody over it, and then recording it and adding stuff. I was really interested in the production part of the process and that’s what I had the most fun with. And then the lyrics and the melodies came pretty much at the end.
PAN M 360 : I imagine this whole process must have been very cathartic almost, but from start to finish, did you feel you underwent a sort of transformation to bring your vision to life? You said you wanted to find your voice and do you feel like you did?
ROM1 : Yeah, absolutely. I mean now the music that I want to make is a bit different than what I’ve made in the sense that I’ve learned so much and I think I would want to do things differently moving forward. But it’s super liberating to me to have finished this project, because I’ve been wanting to make music for myself in this very personal way for as long as I can remember I never really did it. I never had enough faith in myself that I could do that and now that I’ve proven to myself that I could make something of that size, I’m way more confident in my ability to do it again and better and to just keep doing it.
PAN M 360 : Was there anything that surprised you in the process of making an album from start to finish?
ROM1 : Yeah, well the sharing process has not been what I expected. I mean I’m just thinking about that now because that’s what I’ve been doing recently, like the record came out a month ago. While I was making the album I was also really looking forward to sharing it and promoting it and it turns out I really don’t like that part. I think it was probably the most difficult part for me. I thought that the most difficult part was going to be the isolation and being really strict, having really strict discipline to get that record done especially when you’re an independent music maker but it turned out the promotion and putting my face out there and really like showing myself in this really vulnerable way. It was important for me to show myself authentically and to be very vocal about what this record represented to me and that was extremely difficult.
PAN M 360 : Well I think it was worth it! So what’s next for ROM1?
ROM1 : Some… maybe a little bit of disappearing at first. I’m really excited to open a new chapter of my life, I just moved to a new apartment. I was telling my friend last night at dinner, for three years it felt like I had two jobs, my regular job and my music job that didn’t pay and that I had to finance my second job with my first job. And now I’m happy to only have one job and there’s already new music that I’m excited to work on but I think I’m going to do it differently and hopefully I get another record out there in a few years and hopefully some songs before then.
PAN M 360 : And maybe just to end on, could you tell us what your favourite song is on the album? Or the tune that means the most to you?
ROM1 : I think the song that I’m the most proud of is J’ai rien d’autre à vivre, which is the last song of the record. It’s the song that I had the most significant moment with. It’s the most songlike song on the record and it’s perhaps the only song that was really written as a song, like I had the whole parts before I produced it. I’m really attached to the lyrics because that’s something that I was feeling very strongly when I was working on the album. I think that’s probably the most meaningful one to me.
PAN M 360 : For me too. Thanks again ROM1.
As the energy of the M for Montréal festival reaches its crescendo on closing night, we had the privilege of sitting down with the psych-rock outfit Hippie Hourrah! Comprising of Cédric Marinelli on voice, Gabriel Lambert on guitar, and Miles Dupire-Gagnon on drums, the band shares insights into their sonic journey just before hitting the stage for a night of transcendental musical exploration.
PAN M 360 : Hello Hippie Hourrah! Thanks for making the time before your show. You’ll be on stage in a few hours, does the band do anything in particular before a gig. Any kind of pre-show ritual or something?
Gabriel : Well I don’t know. We just goof around.
Miles : Yeah, but then again a ritual means it happens everytime, and sometimes we don’t.
PAN M 360 : You don’t get particularly nervous or anything?
Cedric: We’re getting too old for that. We know what we’re in for,we get disappointed if it’s shit but we just try and have fun out there.
PAN M 360 : As a “psychedelic” rock band, do you make room for a lot of spontaneity in the live set?
Gabriel : For sure, there’s quite a bit of that. We kind of have some organised jams, and sometimes we surprise ourselves by going other places entirely, just going off script.
PAN M 360 : Has the script been to play mostly off of Exposition Individuelle? Have you been trying out some newer material perhaps?
Miles : Did you see our set earlier? We play most songs from our latest record and then some from the previous record.
Gabriel : I mean the album came out in April so not too much newer stuff yet.
PAN M 360 : How did your earlier set go?
Miles : Wellwe played just a 30 minute set.
Cedric : Yeah for the music business. You know music business people.
Gabriel : Yeah it was an industry show but I would rather play an industrial show
PAN M 360 : And what exactly is the industry these days? Do you find that it’s still relevant or it’s becoming more and moreirrelevant?
Cedric : That’s the big question
Gabriel : Yeah big question. I was just talking about it with some people last week. It’s like there’s kind of a two-speed industry right now. The old industry that’s still going and that’s trying to keep the fire alive, and then there’s everything else and so it doesn’t feel so coherent anymore.
MIles : I would say that everybody has good intentions but I don’t find that the priorities are to get the money to the right people. I mean musicians are always the last ones to get something, which makes sense in a bureaucratic way, but musicians are the ones who need the money.
Cedric : At the same time, when we started, there was nothing for us to start from. We started during the pandemic. Miles had broken his arm. He told me I have some time, and together we started trying out some stuff and now we’re a band. It’s cool, in the sense that we have a good team with us, we work really hard, we do a lot of touring. Sure we’re new, and so nobody knows us, but we’re going to keep making music and when it works, it works, and when it doesn’t work, well, we drink.
PAN M 360 : I’d love to know the story behind the band name. Was it easy? Because usually that’s the hardest part.
Cedric : Well we were still not a serious band yet and I just said it and we thought it was kind of stupid, but still it just took on.
Miles : I’ve met a lot of people that don’t really like the name actually.
Cedric : But what’s funny is that on Instagram, there’s like a bunch of hippies that follow us because of our name. That’s so funny.
PAN M 360 : Speaking about Instagram, do you find that it’s a necessary tool for the band? Miles : Well it seems to be the only thing….It used to be like, even just three years ago with Facebook, that you were on tour and there was an event for your show. Okay, there’s 250 people interested. But now there’s just nobody there..
Cedric : I try to do DIY stuff. Like to promote the arty side of the band. Like the covers, stuff like that, all the visuals, that’s what I do. To maintain our identity.
PAN M 360 : Your music is most often described as ‘psychedelic rock’, well ‘nonchalant psychedelic rock’ for this program, but I mean do you think that’s a descriptor or do you resent it a bit?
Miles : I don’t think so. It’s just rock.
Gabriel : The danger is that if you call it psychedelic rock, then people have a really kind of clear picture in their minds of what to expect. And while we touch on those influences we’re not exactly Paisley rockers from the 60’s.
PAN M 360 : Well anyone just needs to listen to “Pur sang rouge”. Awesome song.
Cedric : Thanks. I personally don’t want to do just one thing. When I started doing the demo for that with Gab, he gave me a little keyboard and I wanted to do a kind of rap tune, and the guys laughed at me, you know, whatever. In the end even if it’s not rap, we compromise, and we find something that sounds cool.
PAN M 360 : And is that how the songs come about, kind of with a jam or something?
Miles : No, not really. It should though, haha.
Gabriel : Yeah, it should, but it doesn’t.
Cedric : I think every song has its own story behind it.
Gabriel : I think that if we were jamming to play songs, we would just record hours and hours of just improvised music. I would have a hard time limiting it to just five minutes you know.
PAN M 360 : I know the visual element is really a big part of the band, do you make an effort to bring that to the live shows?
Gabriel : Well, tonight we are going to have some projections actually, which is pretty cool. And I don’t know if you’ve seen Cedric, but there’s something going on there. We’re doing some stuff with our costumes, and that’s something we can do on tour too, because bringing lights is costly.
PAN M 360 : All your albums have been really well produced with a tight kind of pop-production. You’ve got a bunch of overdubs and stuff. Do you feel the need to compensate in the live show with more energy, more jams, or something.
Miles : Well It can be different, too. Personally, I see the live set as a different album, a different creative aspect. I mean, a live show that sounds exactly like the album, personally, would get bored of it.
Cedric : Yeah, I mean we already tracked it. We want to do something different now.
PAN M 360 : So does a song like “Pur sang rouge” open up more in the live show?
Miles : Ha, that’s the only one we play kind of as it is.
Cedric : I think it’s great that we have one song that finishes. Because we just tend to do the opposite and just have perpetual jams going on.
PAN M 360 : Fair enough. So what’s next for the band?
Gabriel : We’re hoping for Mexico. It’s not sure but we all just did like five interviews with the press in Mexico. So it seems there’s some interest. We’ll see!
Vancouver-born indie darlings Winona Forever released their third album, Acrobat just earlier this year, but they haven’t shown any signs of slowing down. Coming off the back of an extensive US and Canada tour, plus their first foray into Europe supporting Ginger Root, the four-piece is headed to Quebec to play the M for Montreal festival. PAN M 360 caught up with Ben Robertson (guitar, keys, vocals), Rowan Webster-Shaw (guitar, vocals), and Alex Bingham (drums) prior to the show to learn more about their unannounced new album, their process, and the journey from a DIY Vancouver group to an international tour-worthy band.
PAN M 360: You’ve just wrapped up your first European tour and a big American tour, right? What was that experience like?
Rowan Webster-Shaw: It was really fun.
Ben Robertson: Yeah, Europe was really fun.Ginger Root had a really good crowd. A lot of people spoke English, which I guess I could have been assuming, but it was pretty okay to navigate. We were driving on the other side of the road for a bit there. And like, the wheel’s on the other side, but it was really cool.
PAN M 360:How did it feel to be touring alongside Ginger Root after semi-knowing each other virtually for so long?
BR: Yeah, we were supposed to play together before COVID, as with many things that we were supposed to do before COVID. I’ve been a really big fan of them for a while, and I was kind of waiting for their moment to really pop off which happened with “Loretta” (2021). And thankfully, we’re on the same label. They’re cool people. And it came about that we were kind of hoping to get to Europe, and they were able to get some dates locked in. So it feels really lucky.
PAN M 360:Were there any dates in Europe that felt especially memorable?
Alex Bingham: In particular, the first place we played was Utrecht which was outside Amsterdam, and it was a pretty cool place.
RWS: I think we’re all in agreement that the Netherlands was our favourite place.
BR: Yeah, we like the Dutch sensibility, you know? About their dam approach, that’s pretty cool. Their biking, all their canals.
AB: I bike a lot, so I appreciated the crazy amount of biking.
RWS: They have like one and a half bikes per person.
PAN M 360:Have you mostly been playing songs off of Acrobat and Feelgood, or are you working on any songs we haven’t heard yet?
AB: Yeah, we’ve been playing a few new songs that we recorded this past year. And then some older stuff.
BR: It’s almost like a couple of songs per record. Like we still play stuff from our first record. Only a couple, but it helps to keep some of that energy. Which is interesting, because it’s like old vibes. But also, for people who haven’t seen us before, they get to see a bunch of stuff we’ve done. Right? The eras.
PAN M 360: You guys obviously started out in the Vancouver scene, then had a stint in Montreal—what do you find are the biggest differences between being a band in each city?
RWS: I mean, I feel Vancouver is just smaller. With us being from here, like, we have a little bit more of a community around playing music here. And a lot of our friends who play in bands and stuff are still here. So that was definitely part of why I wanted to come back to Vancouver. And also just kind of being ready for a change again, because we’d been in Montreal for a few years, which was the reason we basically went there in the first place.
BR: Yeah, we were ready for a change having played the same places a lot here in Vancouver.
AB: And then all those places are closed now.
BR: Yeah, little did we know that would be a long break. But I think in Montreal, we were starting to get our footing, and then COVID hit, so then we made a record instead. And then one thing I’d say is that we’ve been lucky with some of the grants in BC. I think in in Quebec, they’re obviously a little more geared towards Francophone artists, which makes sense. But we weren’t really taking advantage of that. We’ve kind of been able to be an export artist from BC, like through Music BC and Creative BC to get some funding. And that’s been really helpful, because there are certain things we didn’t really think we could do, and then there’s actually money for it. And so that’s kind of cool. I think it was healthy for us to try something else. And we did our first US tour from Montreal. We were trying to push ourselves in a few ways. And then now we tour the US from here, but I never would have thought we could. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a mentality thing to keep changing it up.
RWS: I feel like we’ve got to do a bunch of things that I definitely wanted to, but kind of never thought that we would be able to do. Like going to Europe, doing a month and a bit in the US. It’s been pretty crazy.
PAN M 360:Vancouver is known for its DIY scene when it comes to shows—janky house shows, illegal venues, and community-run spaces—do you have a favourite memory of a show in the early days of the band?
RWS: I remember them being really fun. Definitely a lot sloppier. (The three of them crack up.)
BR: I remember one time, we were gonna play a new song Rowan had written—it was “Shrek-Chic.” And I think the man drank about a whole bottle of wine. Our friend had recorded the show, and it was just unusable. But in the best way unusable. I think that it’s something we keep in mind. The energy from those shows was really fun. There’s a place called The Matador that was like a literal basement of a house. And the 60 people that could fit in there felt like a huge amount of energy. So I think that’s where we started. And we couldn’t really just keep doing that forever. But it’s also still, like, the kind of thing that we find fun. Our last show before the pandemic was a house show. It was really fun. I remember climbing all over Alex’s drum kit and just like, electrocuting myself on the mic.
AB: Yeah, getting to play shows like that is some of the most fun.
RWS: They’re both cool. I think it’s definitely something we try and translate when we play larger spaces and more legitimate things.
AB: It is hard, though. When the crowd isn’t like, falling over themselves at the show.
BR: It’s a little bit more of a mentality than a reality. Maybe you bring a certain energy on stage, even though the crowd isn’t so directly responding right in your face. But we played a couple of shows on this Europe run where the crowd was kind of right there, especially in Copenhagen, where we were in this little fishbowl of people. And if I said something on the mic, they could respond and it was pretty intimate in that way. So I don’t know—if someone is to like, jump in the crowd or be kind of weird, some people would really like that. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen a band do that.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, man. That’s all we do.’
PAN M 360: Talking now about Acrobat as a whole, was there anything about making that record that really surprised you? Any challenges that were new to you?
AB: Uh… Yes. (They all laugh.)
BR: Dude, it was so easy. (Laughs)
AB: For me, at least, it’s a lot easier to know what a song is supposed to sound like if we’ve played it live before. I personally get a sense of what the song is at that point. But all of this stuff was kind of just recorded in our basement, and no one had heard it. We had played the stuff together, but it was a lot of re-recording stuff and searching for what this song was. And it took a long time.
BR: Yeah, it probably shouldn’t have taken us that long to make nine songs.
RWS: But we kind of had unlimited time too, and the home studio.
BR: Rowan and I were also learning more about production. And then we had ideas and trying to get piano sounds was new. It was certainly a bit of a head-scratcher to try something new. And to Alex’s point, there isn’t necessarily a goal of like, ‘Oh, man, I gotta do this, and then it’ll translate on stage,’ or whatever. It was kind of just in the bubble of recording. So I think I think we didn’t make it that easy on ourselves. But we did persevere to get some tracks that I still think were a good use of time. And we play the ones that feel good to play live. And some of them, we haven’t really played live, but people like them online or what have you, and that’s cool too.
To contrast it, I don’t know if we’ve announced this, but we have another album. We’ve done like 17 songs since then that we all just cut live, just to really feel differently about that. And the results are really different. Kind of. I mean, not that different but it feels much more like we edited by playing together versus editing by being producer people. So yeah, I think I think it would have been pretty different. But yeah, I don’t know. We had a Rhodes and a Wurlitzer and a piano and different rented stuff on Acrobat and experimented, and I think we tried to keep it interesting.
PAN M 360:Listening through the album, you can tell a lot of editing and refining went into the process. Was there a lot of music that didn’t make the cut for it or ended up being better for your soloproject?
AB: Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t… That we didn’t finish.
BR: Yeah, there’s stuff we didn’t finish. There are a couple of things we were doing live that we dropped. I also had some extra songs that I just made into my own EP. The ones that kind of stuck through were, I think, kind of the best ones. But some of them were just getting tricky, so we stopped working on them. I think that was probably a product of the mentality. I know people who didn’t have much creativity at all during the pandemic, like, it’s not really a super inspiring time. Especially in Montreal, where it was kind of locked down around 7 or 8 PM. Not a super normal time.
PAN M 360: Speaking of that next thing, how far along in the process are you for the new album?
BR: It’s into mastering! We tried to just do it a lot quicker, tried to make more, and get more past the finish line. And that’s felt a little bit more like how we used to make records. We did our first album mostly live, and so there’s something intuitive there. I mean, we’re a band that has live chemistry, and we can record live. Although the first couple of tracks we did for that one, I was wondering, like, ‘Can we do this?’ We’d just been in editing mode for a little bit, which is cool. I like music that sounds like that. But I also like music that sounds really raw. So we got those first couple days of tracking done, and I thought it sounded great. So that felt really cool to know that we could do either.
AB: We’ve sort of always wanted to do something new every time we go to make whatever the project is at the time. So I think any approach is valid, and we’ll see.
RWS: A live thing is pretty nice because it’s just so fast.
BR: We’ve had a few different workflows, and they’ve needed to change over time. It used to be that Alex would handle all the recording and mixing because he went to audio school. And Rowan and I would be like, what, mic is that? Why are you doing that? And slowly, we kind of learned our own takes on things, and now the process is a little bit more democratic. But also going to a studio is nice—someone else does that stuff and you get to just be like, ‘Alright, are we locked in together? Are we playing the way we want to?’
We recorded in New Westminster at a place called Little Red Sounds on Gabriola Island at Noise Floor. And both had good engineers and producers that worked there, so we got to just kind of go and be the band.
RWS: And that was something we hadn’t done before.
AB: We did a decent amount of pre-production on some of it. And then other stuff was more in the studio. And that was kind of fun to just be able to focus on like, what you’re playing and what sound you’re putting into it instead of, having to think about like, ‘Oh, how am I going to mic this drum?’
PAN M 360: Did you find that any of the music shifted as you went through that process, or did it feel pretty locked in?
RWS: Some of it was fairly locked in. But some of it, especially towards the end of the process, was more like, we had ideas but they only really came together as we played.
BR: What I noticed was like, let’s say you’re overdubbing just bass on something or just guitar. You do your three-minute take, and then you hear back one thing. And if you’re tracking the whole band, and you’re all just fine-tuning on the song—like, okay, let’s lean back here, let’s really push this harder—and then you hear the whole song back through the speakers, and you’ve been in control of the whole song. That kind of puts power in the band to be in control of the whole thing, instead of getting into a loop of changing parts or overdubbing something, and just doing things one at a time. It’s just a little bit different.
RWS: Definitely. Being able to listen to everything and not just focus on if what you played is perfect. Focusing on whether everything feels good together and being okay with letting some things go if it’s the right call.
BR: You bring the control into the room when you’re just like, ‘Alright, let’s all play.’
RWS: You know if everything is working, or if it’s not.
PAN M 360: What else can we expect from the new album?
BR: Well, there’s no piano. Well, it isn’t noticeable. It’s a bit of a return to some more guitar vibes and some higher-energy stuff. I think the feeling that it has cohesively is sort of live-off-the-floor. It’s a range of songs—including some songs that Rowan and Ruby (the bass player), and I wrote lyrically together. We would sit here with acoustic guitars and write together, and that’s something we haven’t done for a while. Or ever. Usually, maybe one of us would bring a song and then we collaborate with the rhythm and kind of go from there. But yeah, some group vocals, stuff like that. I think there’s new territory on it for us.
PAN M 360: When you’re working on something new, do you ever struggle with making it fit a certain ‘Winona Forever’ sound? Or do you feel pretty comfortable letting the band’s sound evolve as you do?
RWS: I think we generally just want to keep moving forward. So I don’t really feel any kind of drawbacks about bringing an idea to this group, and it can be different.
BR: I think it’s kind of a mentality. I find it tricky sometimes. But if you’re an artist, you might be like ‘Oh, here’s my next idea. And it’s really different.’ And then their best friends are like, ‘Alright, it still sounds like you.’ But you can’t see that. You’re doing the same kind of melodies and chords, and it’s got a different energy, but I’m still seeing the throughline. Playing the Acrobat stuff live, I think I had the kind of moment when I was playing the Wurlitzer live. And we now have a moment in the set where we’re kind of rocking out a bit, then do the Wurlitzer stuff, then a pretty slow song, then rock out a bit more. And that’s been fun. And I think it’s kind of funny to still play some of the stuff that we’ve played for years and years. But then once you’re playing it, it kind of brings that same feeling that the band’s had for quite a while now. And I think it’s pretty cool that we still have that.
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