Interviews

After the release of Good Grief in 2022 and his five-song EP If I was I am in 2023, Bells Larsen is back with Blurring Time, a beautiful nine-song album where past and present coexist, sometimes tugging at each other, for a moment that will never exist anywhere else but on the album. An immortalization of a passage through art where the artist, then in a process of transition, wanted to say goodbye to his former identity, like a farewell gift, intertwining it with his present.

There is one voice frame for the high notes by the ‘Bells of before’ and one for the low notes by the ‘Bells of now,’ after the testosterone intake. The result is a melodious, intimate duet that brilliantly records in music, and in history, this period of change that he wanted to be marked by benevolence rather than sadness.

The singles “514-415,” “Blurring Time” and “Might,” accompanied by his video clips, immediately set the tone for his gentle, comforting folk, with a touch of magic in the arrangements, and always with well-dosed vocals. This unique approach led to the artist being refused access to the United States, where he was due to perform live, and this was recently publicized in the media.

Marilyn Bouchard spoke to Bells Larsen about his creative process, the collaborators on the album and the changes he has experienced and will experience in the future, since they are never finished.

PAN M 360: Where did you get the idea of combining your old voice with your new one on the album?

Bells Larsen: Writing this album, in the space of a year, I understood who I was. I wrote “Blurring Time” first and “Might” last … but in reality it could have been called I’m gonna’ because it was no longer a possibility but a certainty. I realised at that point that I had to make certain decisions to be more authentic to myself, like starting to use testosterone. It was really difficult for me to decide whether I wanted to capture the album with my old voice or wait until after the transition and record it only with the new one. But in a way it was a bit worrying for me because there was an element of uncertainty in not knowing how my instrument would be modified. So, just to be on the safe side, I thought I’d record with my old voice first … and then as I thought about it I said to myself ‘You know what, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone mix documentation on their transition like that’ and at the same time there was a trend on Tik Tok at the time with duets where everyone was doing duets with a modified version of themselves … so I thought it would be a nice … farewell and welcome present to give myself.

PAN M 360: Since you’ve got a new voice, does that mean you’re taking inspiration from different sounds, since your instrument has changed?

Bells Larsen: Yes, absolutely! Really! It’s a bit like learning French: you have access to lots of new options that you didn’t have before! It allows me to understand and experiment with my instrument in new ways. Just as the French language gives me new rhymes to play with, my new voice gives me access to tones I didn’t have before.

PAN M 360: You said in an interview that this album was born more out of necessity than choice? Why is that?

Bells Larsen: I think it was necessary to understand myself better. My relationship with my identity isn’t one where it’s black or white…this or that…one or the other. Even though I’m a guy, even though I’ve made decisions to transition, I take so many things with me from my old version. And I thought it was important that this other me should accompany me in my transition, not only with the music but also for the rest of my life. I could have just recorded my voice before or just after my transition, but I made the musical choice of both… out of the need for me as a person to be in tune with everything I am, was, and will be.

PAN M 360: There are several places in Montreal that feature in your lyrics: Outremont, the Clark/Duluth corner. Is your art influenced by the city where you live?

Bells Larsen: Yes, of course! Montreal is so beautiful! It’s a magnificent city! I split my time between Toronto and Montreal, and I have a friend who used to live in Montreal and moved back to Toronto who said something like: ‘You go to Toronto for your friends, your connections … it’s really a social city. Montreal is an experience…’, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Montreal is an experience where all your senses are active. You can smell it, feel it, taste it, see it. I feel very inspired as an artist by Montreal, because it’s such an artistic city too.

PAN M 360: You said that the lens through which we look at the past in the case of a transition is often sad or tinged with regret, but that you wanted instead to make this passage a celebration, filled with kindness and gratitude. Can you explain your vision to us?

Bells Larsen: First of all, I really want to emphasize that this is my own perception and experience of the whole thing, but I completely understand that some people will need to grieve in their own way, which can sometimes be sadder, needing to put the old version of themselves aside so that the new one can really be born. Just to say that all feelings are valid. I grew up watching the Canadian show Degrassi and I also watched several coming-out videos, even before I did mine, and in many of the performances I saw… let’s say in Degrassi when there was a trans person talking, you saw the old version of that person and there was a lot of sad music playing in the background, in the coming-out videos on YouTube there wasn’t necessarily a sad tone but…a clear dichotomy (which I completely understand)…so in the end it was often more melancholy and I found myself less in it. It was less my reality because at the start I’d thought I might be non-binary… like I was a mix.

As I said in the song “Blurring Time,” I used to think I was ‘both and more’ and now I understand that it’s more of a binary side that I fall into but I have a lot of dualities, complexities, influences that cohabit within me and I couldn’t be the person I am now without all the versions of me from the past. So that’s kind of what I wanted to celebrate on the album, and I wanted it to be a gentle celebration of both of my selfs.

PAN M 360: The arrangements on the album are minimalist and uncluttered. Was this a choice to leave more room for the vocals?

Bells Larsen : Yes, exactly! I wanted the vocals to be at the forefront and on the other hand too… I write all my music in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, it’s quite intimate. And I just love the quality of the vocal memos when the song has just been written. I think I wanted that intimate quality too. That when someone listens to the music they can feel that they’re next to me now…and next to me before. That the two versions of me are on either side of the listener.

PAN M 360: You had already worked with Graham Ereaux on Good Grief, what was different about the creative process this time?

Bells Larsen : Honestly, I’d say there were times when it wasn’t easy. It’s really connected with my mental health and also my self-esteem and self-confidence. Before I was really ‘I’m flexible, I’m good to go with whatever’ but when you’re more sure of what you want, what your limits are and you’re more direct with it… It’s really good but when you had relationships that existed with a lot of ease, it creates a contrast let’s say. When I recorded the voice aloud, I hadn’t yet started the testosterone and I was still unsure… still a bit shy. Then I cultivated so much self-esteem and understanding of who I am in the interim, also thanks to a fantastic shrink…. I knew a lot more about who I was. So maybe that was shocking for some people. And Graham really is the sweetest person, it’s not about him but about the world in general and my relationship to it that has changed. I’ve lost a few links in the process, through alignment, but Graham’s not in that!

PAN M 360: You also worked with Georgia Harmer on this album, who is a childhood friend of yours, what was that like?

Bells Larsen : It was the most natural thing in the world. I’m at my parents’ flat right now and I see the guitar she gave me for my 18th birthday. I played all my first shows with Georgia on that guitar. I’ve got more or less a decade’s experience of working with her, and the reason I went looking for her for this project was because she had a really intimate relationship with my old voice. So she’s definitely going to help me with the new one. She’s also such a talented musician, with a really interesting way of thinking about harmonies. She understands things. She knows where to give and where to take away, how to create impact… and I’m really glad I went looking for her for that.

PAN M 360: Queer time is a subject that fascinates you and inspired you to write this album. Would you like to tell us a bit about it?

Bells Larsen : I think the queer and trans world experience time differently from cisgender or straight people, mainly because we find out a bit later in life. In any case, that’s been true for me since I’ve come out several times – I’ve already identified myself with each of the letters in the LGBTQ acronym. I’m 27 but at the same time I feel like I’m 3 years old. I’m just learning about my desires, my wishes, my limits… because it’s only now that I can cultivate and discover that. I have other friends my age who are having babies. A queer timeline isn’t chronological…but it’s not unchronological either. My timeline is so blurry, so all over the place. I’m me now. But I’ve always been me. And I’m still the me I was. All that coexists.

PAN M 360: You recently announced that you’d had to cancel a series of concerts in the United States, because of the worrying climate there these days and also because of complications related to the fact that you’re trans. Can we find out more?


Bells Larsen : Yeah, it’s been a week and a half since I announced that and it’s only been a few days since my album came out, so I think it’s only natural that the album and the fact that I’m a politicized artist should be mixed together. I welcome that and I understand it. And I hope my album can be a comfort to my community, especially those living in the US, to people who feel isolated and oppressed by the new regulations. I hope that music can humanize the community… because people hate what they don’t understand and are afraid of the unknown. I hope my music can show that I’m just a person wanting to get closer to myself and that it’s not something unique to trans people. I think it’s really beautiful that within the trans community there’s a propensity to explore oneself. I’m going to manage the situation and concentrate on Quebec, Canada and Europe. And I think I’m less in shock now, I understand the current situation.

PAN M 360: What’s in store for the rest of 2025?


Bells Larsen: There are a lot of shows coming up (not in the US but elsewhere haha)! Yes, there’s Toronto, Hamilton, and Montreal too, which is sold out and I’m very excited. Then there are the festivals and even more Quebec dates to come until the autumn. I’ll be touring Canada with one of my heroes, and we’ll be playing some big venues!

The 2025-26 season of the Salle Bourgie has just been launched, and it promises to be a particularly exciting one. It will be the 15th season for this now venerable institution, created thanks to an exemplary collaboration between the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and philanthropist Pierre Bourgie. After the remarkable reign of Isolde Lagacé, it is now four years since Oliver Godin, Artistic Director, and Caroline Louis, General Manager, took over the helm and set the course for an annual programme that is as colourful and high quality as ever.

I had a quick chat with the two indefatigable music lovers about the upcoming season, and their favourites (always an impossibly difficult exercise). 

Asked what they have learnt from their years of programming at Salle Bourgie, Olivier quickly replies that the Montreal public is extraordinary. ‘’It’s an audience that follows us in our choices and the directions where we want to take the venue‘’. He also mentions the versatility of the hall, which allows for a number of configurations, as well as privileged and intimate encounters with some very big international and local names. 

The good news is that young people are also present: ‘People always say that classical music is for greyheads, but we have an increasing number of under-34s, and that’s great to see. Of course, we love our greyheads with all our heart, they’re the core of our audience, but it’s inspiring to see that our strategies for acquiring another audience are bearing fruit‘’, says Olivier Godin. Caroline Louis points out that over the past three years, this segment has doubled, and now accounts for an average of over 15% of the audience. A more than respectable figure, given that the repertoire is often more niche classical music than the symphony fare.

For the season as a whole, there’s no need to draw up a long grocery list here, especially as the details are available on the venue’s website, but suffice it to mention the continuation of the complete Schubert lieder series with (brace yourself!) Wolfgang Holzmair in what will be one of his last recitals before retirement, Anne-Sofie von Otter, rising star Andrè Schuen, Samuel Hasselhorn, the exceptional Victoire Bunel, and many others. There will be a strong piano focus, with visits from Leif Ove Andsnes, a residency by Kristian Bezuidenhout, the explosive Beatrice Rana, a complete Prokofiev with David Jalbert, Quebec’s Élizabeth Pion, the eagerly awaited return of Vikingur Olafsson in Bach, Beethoven and Schubert, Alexandre Tharaud, an all-too rare appearance by Dang Thai Son, the spectacular Fazil Say, and so much more, including an event that promises to be memorable: the meeting of Marc-André Hamelin and Charles Richard-Hamelin! 

Violinists galore (Christian Tetzlaff, Jinjoo Cho, Andrew Wan, Tabea Zimmermann (viola)), cello, flute, guitar and more. In contemporary music, there will be some fine acts, including the excellent New York vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, with repertoire by Missy Mazzoli and Caroline Shaw, among others. There’s also the Duo Étrange (as it’s called), made up of soprano Vanessa Croome and cellist Sahara von Hattenberger, with a new work by Nicole Lizée. Les Violons du Roy, Les Idées heureuses, Arion Orchestre Baroque and other regulars are still there. Collectif9, the highly innovative string ensemble from Montreal, will be taking us on a journey through the various iterations of the Passacaglia, from Frescobaldi to Ligeti. 

‘’It’s very important for us to give a platform to local artists. They make up half our programme‘’ – Olivier Godin

Jazz (Jazzlab Orchestra, the inescapable Taurey Butler and his Charlie Brown Christmas, François Bourassa in duet with Marie-Josée Simard, the Cordâme ensemble and its beautiful show Fabula Femina, the Kate Wyatt Quartet, one of the best pianists in Canada today, and a Montrealer, a tribute to Pat Metheny, etc.) and world music (Zal Sissokho and his poetic West African kora that will meet jazz, Yiddish music by the Likht Ensemble and composers killed or who survived the Holocaust, a unique encounter between the venerable 92-year-old Alanis Obomsawin and two-time Polaris winner Jeremy Dutcher, in an intimate piano-voice version) are always on the bill, of course, not forgetting the unmissable visits by musicians from the OSM and the OM. Also, uncommon but very interesting : two concerts that will combine music with modern dance.

‘’We’re happy to programme established names, but we also like to provoke encounters, try things out and, perhaps, act as a precursor, by merging worlds‘’ – Olivier Godin

There’s a lot more, so take a look at the brochure, which is now available.

Before ending the interview, I couldn’t resist asking the two enthusiasts a few tough questions. 

Your most emotional moment in perspective? Olivier Godin: ‘’I’d have to say André Shuen’s recital. This will be his first time in Montreal and he’s a young baritone with an extraordinary interiority. He’ll be mixing lieder by Schubert and Mahler, set to movingly beautiful texts by a number of poets, which we’ll be able to follow above the performer. It’ll be a very moving journey, for sure‘’.

Caroline Louis: ‘’It’s so difficult, but I can’t fail to mention Wolfgang Holzmair’s final concert, performing Schubert’s Winterreise.

Oh well, another one : your most surprising moment? Olivier: ‘’Perhaps the concert of improvisations on keyboards (piano, harpsichord, organ) by Ilya Poletaev, who will play spontaneously on images from the last century chosen by the director of the FIFA (Festival international du film sur l’art de Montréal).’’ Cinema, surveillance cameras, NASA images and AI creations, a whole ensemble that paints a broad and fragmented portrait of a century of images.

Caroline : ‘’The concert by Fazil Say, who will be playing the Goldberg Variations alongside his own compositions.’’

Let’s meet often at the Sherbrooke street west hall.

Consult the online program of season 25-26

List of concerts on Bourgie Hall’s website

Tango Boréal, creators of Lettres de Chopin, present a new work at the Festival Classica, a chamber opera based on the melodies of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, with a libretto by Denis Plante. The dramatic plot of La fille aux cheveux de lin takes us to Paris, fin the 19th century, in the midst of cultural ferment. We find ourselves on the Butte Montmartre, in a studio where Rose is helping her painter brother restore a painting, until the sudden arrival of a mysterious girl with flaxen hair. Marc Boucher briefly explains the concept to Alain Brunet for PAN M 360.

BILLETS ET INFOS

Transplanted to New York, where her career is progressing alongside her graduate studies at Columbia University, composer and curator Corie Rose Soumah returned home to Montreal to perform for the second time since the beginning of 2025, when she was invited to perform in the context of Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques, where the vocal ensemble Ekmeles performed her music – watch the interview with Frédéric Cardin. She’s back for this invitation from Le Vivier, where her work will be featured alongside that of her Hypercube colleagues. Since PAN M 360 holds this artist in the highest esteem, Alain Brunet proposes this other interview, this time in advance of the program presented in the Salle Bleue of the Wilder Building, this Wednesday, April 30: Aptitudes Matérielles.

“Corie Rose Soumah invites Hypercube sound artists Erin Rogers, Antoine Goudreau and Antonin Bourgault for a concert where new technologies, visual arts and sound spatialization meet.”

PAN M 360: How did you come to work with Hypercube?

Corie Rose Soumah: I was lucky enough to collaborate with Hypercube for the first time in 2022 during the 2021-2022 season of Columbia Composers, a student organization developing a professional concert series taking place in New York. It was then that I discovered the rich potential and incredible quality of improvisation and interpretation that each member of the ensemble (Erin Rogers, Andrea Lodges, Jay Sorce and Chris Graham) brings to the table in their own very personal way. The collaboration culminated in my piece “SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW-”, which explores several sonic palettes between acoustic sounds and analog synthesizers. Since then, the ensemble has taken the piece to several concert halls in the U.S., and an album recording of it is currently in the works. For the “Aptitudes matérielles” concert, I wanted to bring this New York sonic sensibility to the Montreal scene, while blending in Montreal’s unique artistic richness.

PAN M 360: What is your professional affinity with your three colleagues, Erin Rogers, Antoine Goudreau and Antonin Bourgault?

Corie Rose Soumah: As a saxophonist, Erin Rogers is a member of Hypercube and an accomplished composer and improviser. In addition to working with her on SPINNING, I’ve had the privilege over the past few years of hearing her perform in concert on several occasions, across multiple varied aesthetics. The concert will feature a new piece written by Erin for ensemble and electronics.

I discovered Antoine Goudreau’s work more recently, at the end of 2023. I was struck by his creative use of technology in his artistic process, as well as the sonic particularity that emerges from it, a very unique touch of his own. For me, his work is a fine example of the richness of Montreal’s new generation of creators. I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to commission a new mixed-media piece from him for Hypercube.

As for Antonin Bourgault, we both studied at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal in 2015. Antonin was one of the first students to play my music, and since then we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on new pieces, including a premiere that will take place at this concert. He is also a gifted composer and improviser, playing in Montreal’s experimental venues. I owe a great deal of my ease and mastery of saxophone writing to him, thanks to all his advice and attention to detail.

“This convergence of two metropolises with tremendous creative dynamism, New York and Montreal, offers an ideal pretext for the encounter between new technologies, visual arts, theatricality and sound spatialization.”

PAN M 360: We know you’re currently studying at Columbia, and the program notes speak of a New York/Montreal convergence, but tell us more? Are we talking about New York, where you’re currently studying, and Hypercube, Montreal?

Corie Rose Soumah: My interest in this project was to create relationships between artists in New York and Montreal, two cities very close to my heart. The project began with an extensive multi-day workshop with Hypercube in New York, inviting Antoine and Antonin to participate in person. The concert in Montreal is the culmination of this initial sound research, and this Wednesday will feature three new pieces as well as two works composed in 2020 and 2022.

The Montreal scene is, in my opinion, one of the richest in North America, as is that of New York. There’s a wide range of styles and a very strong experimental music ecosystem. Some New York artistic directors are already amplifying the similarities between the two metropolises by inviting established Montreal ensembles to major new music festivals such as TIME:SPANS. With Aptitudes matérielles, I wanted to bring New York to Montreal and make this music accessible to a different audience.

PAN M 360: Since we’re on the subject of Columbia, how have you been coping with the current presidency’s threats against your university? Do you prefer not to talk about it in case you become a victim of repression? Do you feel comfortable with this question?

Corie Rose Soumah: I won’t comment on that.

“Featuring analog instruments and a myriad of graphic and acousmatic landscapes, the concert program summons plural universes representative of contemporary sonic diversity.”

PAN M 360: Could you describe the main theme of this program in terms of aesthetics and choice of expressive tools, if we go by the official description in the program notes?

Corie Rose Soumah: The idea of material aptitudes is to demonstrate the ability of the artists involved to manipulate materials rich in texture and gesture. The concert program is based entirely on mixed or electroacoustic music. One of the advantages of the blue room at Agora de la danse is the possibility of creating a different scenic layout from the classical concert. This will be the case this Wednesday, where eight loudspeakers will be placed around the audience and the ensemble will be located in the middle of the room, offering a totally immersive experience.

Each piece employs new technologies and spatialization movements of its own, such as the transformation of sounds by real-time processing or analog instruments built especially for the occasion. Most of the pieces also use elements of notation outside classical notation, either graphic or hybrid scores, inviting the performers to develop material under guided improvisation. This is the case with Antoine’s work, which uses a scrolling score in addition to electronic elements.

It was also important for me to dismantle this strict division between composer and performer. There’s this annoying tendency to believe that once you specialize in the artistic practice of composition, you don’t have the ability to be an excellent performer – which is completely false, of course! All the members of this project work through these two practices. That’s why I’ve chosen to present Antoine and Erin’s compositional work alongside their performance practice.

PAN M 360: Could you please give us a brief overview of each of the works on the program?

Corie Rose Soumah:

  • Antonin Bourgault: Mydriase <–> Myosis , 2020 (7’28”) : an acousmatic piece broadcast over eight loudspeakers surrounding the audience. The piece focuses on the evolution of different fictional places through multiple depth effects.
  • Antoine Goudreau: Fidelity in the Age of Plausibility, 2025 (8′ – creation, composed for Hypercube): a composition co-orchestrated with Hypercube, exploring states of copying, simulacrum, derivation and serialization in exchange for approximations and accuracies.
  • Corie Rose Soumah: Limpidités VI, 2025 (8′ – creation, composed for Antonin Bourgault and Erin Rogers) : this new work focuses on the improvisational expertise of the two saxophonists. Based on a miniature written for Antonin in 2022, this new piece presents the cohabitation of two saxophones in constantly expanding sonorities. The piece also uses shell instruments, i.e. Plexiglas plates with transducers that make them vibrate, cohabiting with the complex sounds of the saxophones.
  • Erin Rogers: Mirror to Fire, 2025 (10′ – piece, composed for Hypercube): inspired by the second song on Nine Inch Nails’ album “Add Violence”, the piece looks at how this song reflects the deep political division and growing isolation we are currently experiencing in our society.
  • Corie Rose Soumah : SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW- , 2022 (16′ – composed for Hypercube): born of a collaboration between Hypercube and myself, “SPINNING…” looks at the complexity found in the female condition, through dreams and falsified expectations. The piece mixes acoustic and analog synthesizer sounds that have been manipulated and transformed using different technical approaches.

PAN M 360: Could you tell us about the ensemble dedicated to the performance of these works, and how the performers are called upon for each performance?

Corie Rose Soumah:

  • CORIE ROSE SOUMAH : artistic curator, composer and creator of analog instruments, two pieces will be presented as part of the concert.
  • ERIN ROGERS : Hypercube saxophonist, composer and improviser, she will perform Antoine Goudreau’s piece, her new composition and two of my pieces.
  • ANTOINE GOUDREAU : composer and performer of experimental music, he will present a new mixed piece for Hypercube, while working on the spatialization of electronic elements at the mixing console.
  • ANTONIN BOURGAULT : saxophonist, composer and improviser, he will perform my new composition and broadcast his acousmatic piece.
  • CHRIS GRAHAM : percussionist with Hypercube, he will perform three of the pieces during the concert.
  • ANDREA LODGE : Hypercube pianist, she will perform three of the pieces during the concert.
  • JAY SORCE : guitarist with Hypercube, will perform three of the pieces during the concert.

PAN M 360: What are your upcoming projects?

Corie Rose Soumah: For my part, premieres at the Darmstadt Summer Course, TIME:SPANS festival and the Gaudeamus festival, in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Bozzini quartet, are on my list of upcoming events. My collaborator Antoine will be flying to Bali as part of a residency to begin research on microtonality with Balinese luthiers. Antonin can be found regularly at casa del popo or Sala Rossa. Finally, Hypercube is one of the guest artists at the Queens New Music Festival on May 18, 2025.

TICKETS AND INFO HERE

Antoine Corriveau is 40 and still flying through the night. Almost 5 years separate the release of Oiseau de Nuit and Pissenlit, also on Secret City Records, which marked a substantial change in his orchestral style. The release of Pissenlit was preceded and followed by a series of landmark concerts, and then…

After a series of existential, even depressive, transhumances, the artist finally extricated himself from the shadows and restarted the engine of his creation, thus inviting some fifteen musicians from different horizons, most of them from the left-field of Montreal culture – Stéphane Bergeron (drums and co-producer), Marc-André Landry (bass), Simon Angell (guitar, saxophone), Sheenah Ko and François Lafontaine (keyboards and synthesizers), Cherry Lena, VioleTT Pi, Rose Perron (vocals), Taurey Butler (piano), Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau (harp), Pietro Amato (horn), Émilie Fortin (trumpet), Kalun Leung (trombone), Laurie Torres (piano), Mat Vezio (drums), Ariel Comtois (saxophone).

To mark the release of his fifth studio album, Antoine Corriveau grants this interview to PAN M 360, conducted by Alain Brunet.

PAN M 360: This album is really part of a change already seen in 2019, shortly before the release of the album Pissenlit (2020). Back then, you started working with Simon Angell (Thus Owls), Stéphane Bergeron (Karkwa), Pietro Amato (Bell Orchestre). This time, they’re still with us, but some fifteen musicians have collaborated on Oiseau de nuit. Over the past five or six years, your musical culture has really changed.

Antoine Corriveau: You’re right. During the pandemic, my friend Marc-André Landry created a little listening group when we couldn’t leave the house, confinement was at its most intense. One of us would select two albums that we’d listen to together via What’sApp, then we’d comment on what we were listening to. It made me discover a lot of things.

PAN M 360: I see from your biographical profile that your discoveries were quite extensive, for example Makaya McCraven and Georgia Ann Muldrow.

Antoine Corriveau: I discovered them there, in fact.

PAN M 360: I’m one of those people who believes that the musical framework, the arrangements and the production make the difference between a generic song and a musically visionary one. There are plenty of people out there who can come up with good melodies and chord progressions, but that’s a limited universe, whereas the rest of a song depends on infinite creativity. And you, Antoine, have clearly understood this, i.e. your music has evolved since the beginning.

Antoine Corriveau: I still think this approach is dangerous, because it’s easy to turn your back on the idea that a song should be in its simplest form. I have my own studio, so it’s easy for me to fall into arrangement and production. It can be easy sometimes, I find, to go on a production trip when there’s no song behind it, there’s no text that holds together, there’s no music that holds together, there’s no (chord) progression that can.

PAN M 360: Yes, you have to find the right balance, avoid dogmatism and make sure the song holds together. A song that doesn’t hold together can’t count on a nice coating.

Antoine Corriveau: Well, I’d say the arrangement can’t be done if the song falls apart along the way. It’s very exciting, but…

PAN M 360: What was the creative core of the album?

Antoine Corriveau: It’s very much me and Stéphane Bergeron, who co-directed. We’ve been playing together for ten years. In the last few years, he started playing around a lot with recording, adding pedals, using compressors, producing beats. He’d say, “Send me some stuff,” and then he’d put his money where his mouth was. I got him involved because he was working a lot on my songs. Over the last few years, he’s evolved enormously and continues to look for new business. We’ve done some stuff together, and we’ve done some cool stuff with this new album.

PAN M 360: Working method for Oiseau de nuit?

Antoine Corriveau: A grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres enabled me to invite a lot of people into the studio I was recording in order to create material for myself at the start of the process.

Initially, I wanted to make a record of samples; I’d got hold of a collection of vinyl records. I started playing around with it, but I felt a bit limited, not being a real beatmaker. I thought it might be cool to make my own custom samples; a recorded one-tone chord would allow me to continue with instrumentalists and singers.

Then we had to reuse these recordings in the songs. After that, we recorded with Stéphane, Simon and Marc-André Landry, with whom we also recorded a week of jams. Several songs came out of these sessions, where I’d come up with a riff around which we built.

PAN M 360: A number of English speakers worked on the project, so it’s not strictly the indie-keb family. There’s also a cross-cultural, multi-genre mix, including instrumental hip-hop and jazz, which are very important in the final result.

Antoine Corriveau: Yeah, it kind of reflects my listening habits over the last few years.

PAN M 360: Let’s review a few songs from Oiseau de nuit. We start with “Suzo”, which builds on a piano motif. It’s a declamation akin to rap or slam, it’s barely sung.

Antoine Corriveau: Yes, the first part of the song is very similar to rap productions. I liked the economy of means, choosing no more than three or four elements. It was a challenge, you know; sometimes, I have extremely dense songs with big arrangements, but sometimes it’s also a question of taking on fairly minimalist parts; instead of adding, you have to cut. That’s something I’m a bit proud of on this record in terms of arrangement, as you can see in this song.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about Suzo’s text. We meet in Palermo, and “Suzo” is the character whose story you tell.

Antoine Corriveau: This character came into my head one morning, I don’t know exactly why. Things weren’t going so well in my life, I was in a kind of existential crisis. I imagined myself fleeing to another country, with the idea of erasing my life and starting all over again.

PAN M 360: “Jardin” is very influenced by jazz.

Antoine Corriveau: Yes, that’s right. It’s a song where I got these words from a book, sometimes I do that to help me write. This time, it took me back to my childhood memories, because we had a big garden at home. In fact, there’s something chronological about the order of the songs. “Suzo” was a kind of setup for what’s to come, and then I start with the song that’s perhaps a bit more about my childhood, childhood memories. Musically, I really wanted something softer than “Suzo”, and in the end, the drum and double bass groove is close to jazz, especially Makaya McCrevin. You can hear it. Then there’s a very long guitar solo by Simon in this song. It’s funny because Simon and I are guitarists, and we sometimes find the guitar “boring”. Then, when he recorded this solo, we removed an effect pedal with each new take. In the end, it’s the completely clean sound we wanted, super natural.

PAN M 360: Yes, there are some “roots” moments like that, even if the album is highly produced overall. And there’s a lot of improvisation!

Antoine Corriveau: As I record a lot of improvisation, it’s present, even if there’s a lot of processing and collage of sounds. Something deeply instinctive and human.

PAN M 360: Moscow Mule is about repression, AND it’s not going well for the narrator!

Antoine Corriveau: No, it’s not going well (laughs).

Well, this is a jam. The whole first part of the song is the original jam recording. I just started playing a guitar riff, the band got on board, and then we held it for a while. I really, really liked that energy.

Yes, I wrote this sort of story not really knowing what I was writing. But I was having a lot of fun! I was writing this narrative, I had ideas, they came out, I wasn’t worrying about what I was talking about. A friend to whom I had read the first version said to me, “It seems that in this text you’re telling how much you can lie to yourself in your life, but not in art.” I found that an extraordinary comment, and it enabled me to finish writing the text. It’s a song with a lot of ideas that echo things I’ve experienced for real, including a character from the American West Coast. After that, I talk about crossing over to the East, and I actually lived in the American East for a while. I was looking for something, I wasn’t doing well and I was driving to get better. So there are lots of real elements and others that serve the story, that put meat around the bone.

PAN M 360: And the title?

Antoine Corriveau: I had the word mule in mind and came across an article about a San Francisco bar that had removed the word “Moscow” from its drinks list, in support of Ukraine. So I imagined arriving at a bar and ordering a Moscow Mule as a password to access the basement where something was going on. Underground, a little hidden, which corresponded to this idea: what we reveal about ourselves and what we hide.

PAN M 360: Pastorale starts with a blues riff and then becomes orchestral.

Antoine Corriveau: Yes, a big jam that lasted 30 minutes and that I tightened, tightened, tightened until it was 9. It’s super bubbly and it’s the same riff all the time. It’s simple and lasts 9 minutes, during which a lot happens. There’s something unique and beautiful about this slightly cacophonous, ambitious affair.

PAN M 360: When you think of Pastorale, you think of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the Pastorale, which has nothing to do with this song.

Antoine Corriveau: “Pastorale” is a word I thought of maybe two years ago, because I thought it was beautiful, and I even considered it as an album title. Then I did some research and the first association was religion and choral singing, something to do with my youth. And then there’s this notion of the countryside or nature before human intervention. What would it be like if it weren’t altered by human society? What would we be without social alteration? Wild animals?

PAN M 360: And so on. We won’t do the full review, but we already have an excellent idea of the project.

Antoine Corriveau: This album is a mixture of imagined lives and real memories. Sometimes, I even feel that my memories belong to others, and I cross that line between fantasy and reality and everything blends together.

Part of the SAT × EAF night this Friday April 25th, Toronto-based artist SlowPitchSound brings a unique take  on turntablism, blending deep ecology with sci-fi imagination. Known for coining the  term sci-fi turntablism, their work fuses classic DJ techniques with live sampling, field  recordings, and improvised storytelling to create expansive, cinematic soundscapes.  With sets that feel like journeys through parallel dimensions, SlowPitchSound cracks  immersive performances where sound and visuals shiK slowly, guided by intuition,  nature, and a deep curiosity for the unknown. 

PAN M 360: You’ve coined the term “sci-fi turntablism” to describe your work. Can you unpack what that means for you — both sonically and conceptually? 

SlowPitchSound: The root is turntablism, but it goes much further from there. Interactions with other sound objects are informed by the techniques that have been practiced on a turntable. I imagine other worlds and realises when I create, this makes it easier for me to stay away from the usual restraints that arise when thinking in musical genres. Hopefully that makes sense. 

PAN M 360 : Your performances often incorporate field recordings and real-time sampling. What draws you to those textures, and how do you decide what sounds to bring into a set? 

SlowPitchSound: I love that field recordings usually contain many other sounds that aren’t necessarily what you’re actually attempting to record in the first place. There’s an unpredictability that happens in the field that inspires me.. hearing it a slightly different way with each listen. I try not to put too much thought into the sounds I use because I like to be surprised with what can happen to them as well.

PAN M 360: There’s a strong sense of movement and progression in your work. Do you think of your sets as journeys? How do you approach building emotional or spatial arcs through sound? 

SlowPitchSound:  Absolutely! I love a good journey. My early bar dj days really installed the idea of adding arcs in my sets. Back then I wanted to be creative with my mixing, it kept me on my toes and it was fun to do. The big differences now are that I create my own music live and my equipment is way more integrated with my emotions, so it’s much easier to express myself.

PAN M 360: How has your relationship with turntables evolved over the years? What are you discovering about the instrument now that you weren’t before?

SlowPitchSound:  I’m definitely not intimidated by it anymore. We’ve become great partners 🙂 Honestly it’s been a wonderful relationship getting to know it deeper with time. Feels like less of an instrument nowadays and more intuitive or instinctive. 

PAN M 360:  Nature and speculative fiction are recurring themes in your sound. Are there specific books, films, or life experiences that have shaped this part of your artistic vision? 

SlowPitchSound: I’ve always been an outside of the box thinker for as far as I can remember. I’ve also been amazed by the magic of nature and the unknown things out there in the deep universe. I’m sure this is why I so drawn towards anything sci-fi or fantasy. A show that particular stands out from when I was a kid, was called “The Twilight Zone”. It was a black and white TV show, and every episode was so imaginative with some of the most bazaar realities. Really opened up my brain.

PAN M 360: Your visuals are often minimal, abstract, or atmospheric. How do you approach the visual dimension of your performances, and how do you see it interacting with your sound? 

SlowPitchSound: Visuals are just the icing on my cake, a very low sugar version. There are so many little details in my sound, plenty to already feed the imagination, so I just like adding subtle slow moving images for atmosphere. Something to help put us in another reality but doesn’t overwhelm. 

PAN M 360: Improvisation seems central to your live process. What does improvisation mean to you — and how do you prepare for something that’s meant to remain unpredictable? 

SlowPitchSound: A couple things stand out. To me it means really learning how to listen and practice. How I prepare to react to the incoming sounds/thoughts, whether they’re from myself or others is by consistently practicing on many levels. I would compare it to learning a language, the more words you know the better the conversations and those conversations in general are usually unpredictable. 

PAN M 360:  You’ve spoken about being passionate about the environment and creating meaningful, inspiring work. How does that ecological consciousness shape your sound practice, and what role do you think artists can play in deepening our connection to the natural world? 

SlowPitchSound: To me it seems like we as a species are very disconnected with nature nowadays, so as artists whatever we can do to bring more awareness is something worth doing. Art is still a power tool and collectively we can absolutely make a difference. I like to say “be part of the voice of nature”. It’s one of the reasons why I include a lot of nature sounds in my work so that nature could have an opportunity to reach others. 

PAN M 360: What are some tools — analog or digital — that you rely on in your setup? Have you built or customized anything that feels essenGal to your performances? 

SlowPitchSound: I use a turntable, mixer, sampler and a Korg kaoss pad for looping and fx. My latest customization was pressing a vinyl that includes a bunch of my own sounds and samples to play with live. 

PAN M 360: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to emerging artists exploring experimental or cross-disciplinary paths in sound? 

SlowPitchSound: Try and let go of what you know about music and focus on practicing the things that feel good on your musical instruments of choice. The more you explore them the more confident you’ll get. 

PAN M 360: Montreal has a rich history of experimental sound and performance. How do you experience the city — either as a collaborator, an audience member, or just in spirit? SlowPitchSound: I love spending time in Montreal, especially in the warmer seasons 🙂 There’s such a great energy, and I absolutely enjoy strolling through the alleyways. Over the years I’ve made some great friends in the experimental scene. I’ve attended some amazing shows and have also played some as well including Mutek a couple 6mes, presented at Centre PHI and recently played a cool new experimental fest called Flux. I’ll be back to play Suoni Per Il Popolo’s 25th anniversary festival this June 27th.

TICKETS & INFOS HERE

In addition to his role as Artistic Director of the Festival international de Landaudière, Canada’s most important classical music festival, Renaud Loranger is Vice-President of Artists and Repertoire for the European label Pentatone, where he oversees the recruitment and recording development of the world’s leading classical musicians, including maestros Vladimir Jurowski, René Jacobs and Esa-Pekka Salonen, singers Piotr Beczala, Lisette Oropesa, Javier Camarena and Magdalena Kožená, pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Francesco Piemontesi, to name but a few. Since November 2018, Renaud Loranger has been Artistic Director of Lanaudière, in Joliette, his hometown where he has spent every summer since. A musicologist and art historian, he’s among the most experienced and refined professionals to carry out such missions. Listen in as he expresses his passion for his new Lanaudière programming and shares some of his top picks! Alain Brunet conducted this interview for PAN M 360.

TICKETS AND INFO

Irina Krasnyanskaya, artistic director of the Pro Musica concert company, had the excellent idea of pairing cellist Marion Portelance and pianist Emmanuel Charest for the Mélodînes series, dedicated to emerging artists. They chose Beethoven and Brahms to join forces and showcase their musical potential. This is a great opportunity to get to know these Quebec artists at the dawn of their professional careers. Alain Brunet conducted the interview for PAN M 360.

Questions for Marion Portelance:

“Named one of Canada’s 30 most promising young musicians by the CBC in 2023, cellist Marion Portelance performs as soloist with orchestras in Montreal, London and France. An active chamber musician, she performs in the UK, USA, Canada and Switzerland. Having won various prizes in Canadian and British competitions, in 2023 she has the honor of playing on the cello of King Charles III for the Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle, broadcast by the BBC.”

PAN M 360: Marion, many music lovers discovered you at the coronation of King Charles III, rather than your real accomplishments leading to an international career, including being named one of Canada’s Top 30 Young Musicians by the CBC. What’s the story? What has been the impact of these feats?

Marion Portelance: I’m really grateful for the visibility this extraordinary event has given me. The crowning has certainly brought me to the attention of a wider public, and therefore a certain notoriety. However, there’s more to my development as a musician than this, and I’d say that the wonderful opportunities that came my way afterwards weren’t necessarily or concretely linked to this event. Rather, they stemmed from my auditions and the invaluable encounters I made in London during my final years of study.

PAN M 360: Who have been your most influential teachers?

Marion Portelance: My 3 teachers who were with me for so many years! I was lucky enough to study with 3 exceptional women who inspired me, passed on their passion and know-how, and enabled me to discover and blossom as a young musician. I began my cello studies with Janick Simard until I entered the Conservatoire, where I continued with Carole Sirois. It was only after my baccalaureate that I went to London to study under Melissa Phelps at the Royal College of Music.

PAN M 360: Who are your favourite cellists?

Marion Portelance: There are so many, it’s hard to choose, but I’d definitely say Jacqueline du Pré. She was a very close friend of my teacher Melissa Phelps. I’m even more touched when I listen to her performances, now that I know her personal journey thanks to my teacher.

PAN M 360: What are your professional goals? An orchestra? Chamber music? Soloist? A mixture of all these?

Marion Portelance: For the time being, a mixture of all that! I fell in love with orchestral music and the experience of playing in a symphony orchestra when I was in high school. It’s always been a dream of mine to play in an orchestra. I’m currently on trial with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, so it’s a dream come true. I also had the opportunity to join the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and did a few chamber orchestra projects without a conductor, which was absolutely eye-opening!

I discovered a passion for chamber music a few years ago with my Vatra Quartet (piano quartet, Montreal) and have had the privilege of doing a lot of chamber music since moving to London. I’ve just joined the Fiora Quartet, a string quartet based in London, and I’m very excited about future projects with them. Of course, I’m as passionate as ever about the repertoire for cello and piano. It’s a great privilege for me to come back to Montreal and play these concerts this week alongside Emmanuel!

PAN M 360: What repertoires do you like to explore as a cellist?

Marion Portelance: I like to do everything! Most of my career to date has revolved around the broad classical repertoire, but I love exploring contemporary music, and I’m also always happy to take part in projects outside the classical framework.

Questions for Emmanuel Laforest:

“Emmanuel Laforest is distinguished by the many awards he has received, notably in 2022 and 2024: Fondation du Conservatoire prize, 1st prize in the Conservatoire de Montréal concerto competition, Grand Prix at the Canadian Music Competition, Concours de musique de la Capitale and the Classival de Valleyfield Competition. In 2021, he won 1st and Grand Prize, concerto section, at the Sorel Competition. As a soloist, he has played with many Canadian orchestras.”

PAN M 360: Do you see yourself as a deliberately versatile pianist, or are you one by necessity? Or a bit of both?

Emmanuel Laforest: I’m a musician first and foremost. I love being a concert pianist, I love conducting, accompanying, chamber music, jazz and so on. I love being able to explore all these different branches, which allow me to develop as a complete artist and enable me to discover different ways of sharing my love of music.

PAN M 360: You’ve made a name for yourself in major Canadian competitions. Do you plan to compete internationally?

Emmanuel Laforest: Eventually, I’d like to take part in various competitions abroad. Taking part in such competitions isn’t a prerequisite for a career as a pianist, but it’s a great calling card. It is also an enriching experience: International competitions are places where you can meet the rising stars of tomorrow’s musical world.

PAN M 360: How would you describe the main features of your pianistic personality?

Emmanuel Laforest: I think I’m a sensitive musician, and my musicality seems to touch audiences, according to the feedback I get. My sincere passion for music and respect for the text are essential values in my approach!

PAN M 360: Do you have any particular influences in your playing?

Emmanuel Laforest: I’ve been lucky enough to work with several great masters: Richard Raymond, Serhiy Salov, Mathieu Gaudet, Charles Richard-Hamelin, all of whom have greatly shaped me as a pianist. Internationally, I’ve been lucky enough to play for Louis Lortie and Benedetto Lupo, and their advice has had a profound influence on my playing. This summer, these two masters have invited me back to take part in several workshops in Charlevoix and Italy, where I’ll be able to hone my skills alongside them.

PAN M 360: Do you have any favourite composers?

Emmanuel Laforest: Sergei Rachmaninov is my favorite composer (we’ll give you a surprise at the end of the recital!). I also love the music of great composers like Chopin, Jacques Hétu, Beethoven, Brahms…

PAN M 360. Questions about the program and your professional relationship :

Emmanuel Laforest : How did you decide to play together?

Marion and I have been colleagues for a long time. We first met when I entered the Montreal Conservatory five years ago. We ran into each other many times at regional competitions we entered at the same time, took the same classes at the Conservatoire, and so on. Then she finished her degree and left to study in London.

It was Pro Musica’s artistic director, Irina Krasnyanskaya, who paired us up and proposed this concert. We were delighted to be working together. Even before this concert was proposed, I had already contacted Marion with a view to collaborating. So I’m delighted that this project has finally come to fruition.

PAN M 360: What directories have the two of you explored so far?

Emmanuel Laforest: We’ve only explored the repertoire for tomorrow’s concert, but we’ve prepared a few surprises for you. We hope to collaborate again soon on a different program, based around the Rachmaninov Sonata.

Questions on the program

PAN M 360: Could you briefly comment on the works on the program: two duets interspersed with 4 mazurkas by Chopin?

Emmanuel Laforest: The program we are proposing is both rich in emotion and contrasts, based on three great composers who share the romanticism and virtuosity of their music.

Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 3 in A major, Op. 69 opens the concert with all the vivacity and nobility of the classical style. This work highlights the equal dialogue between the two instruments, in an almost concertante spirit, elegant and refined.

This is followed by Chopin’s Fantaisie op. 49, a work for solo piano imbued with lyricism and passion. This piece, which I will perform alone, represents a deeply romantic, introspective moment at the heart of the program.

In the second half, we offer Brahms’s Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38, a majestic, dense and emotional work, where harmonic richness is combined with great melodic expressiveness. It’s a veritable inner journey that we close on a note of dramatic intensity and depth.

Ludwig Van BEETHOVEN, Sonate pour violoncelle et piano No. 3 en la majeur, op. 69
I. Allegro, ma non tanto
II. Scherzo. Allegro molto – Trio
III. Adagio cantabile  – Allegro vivace

Frédéric CHOPIN, 4 Mazurkas, op. 17

Johannes BRAHMS, Sonate pour violoncelle et piano no.1 en mi mineur, op. 38
I.Allegro non troppo
II. Allegretto quasi minuetto
II. Allegro

PAN M 360: What are your duet and/or other projects?

Marion Portelance: We hope to be able to play together again soon, but for the moment I’m going back to London for LPO and my quartet for the most part. I’m particularly looking forward to playing again for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in September!

Emmanuel Laforest: I’m finishing my master’s degree in piano at the Conservatoire de Montréal on May 4. I’ll be taking part in three workshops in Italy and Quebec. Alongside my studies in orchestral conducting, I’ll be performing Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini as a soloist with the Sinfonia de Lanaudière in February 2026. I will also give a solo recital in Lanaudière during the 2025-2026 season. I’m also preparing for various international competitions. Lots of exciting projects to come!

Three years ago, a group of Colombian-Montrealers began making music based on Afro-Colombian rhythms from the Atlantic coast. The result is Raíz Viva, a group of five musicians associated with an Afro-Colombian dance group.

Raíz Viva is a festive yet activist percussion group. They are four Colombians and one Brazilian, plus the dancers. Together, they try to build bridges with other cultures, including Quebec trad. Raíz Viva will be part of the Syli d’Or final, this Friday April 25 at the Fairmount Theatre. Michel Labrecque spoke to Nicolas Segura, founding member of the group.

A flagship band of the post-punk movement at the crossroads of the 1970s and 1980s, Gang of Four made their mark as soon as their critically acclaimed debut album Entertainment! was released, and is still recognized as a major work of the genre. The album is often cited as a cornerstone of post-punk, but also as a benchmark for dance-punk, art punk and funk-punk. Singer Jon King’s incisive or satirical lyrics are inspired by situationist theories, but also by the reflections of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, feminism and Marx’s theory of alienation. Themes include the commodification of human relations (“Natural’s Not in It,” “Return the Gift”) the working-class condition (“At Home He’s a Tourist”), criticism of the Great Man theory (“Not Great Men”), political repression during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (“Ether”), theories on the media (notably those of Guy Debord and the “Society of the Spectacle”), or the media’s reporting of terrorism and Maoist guerrilla warfare in Latin America (“5.45 “).

The band also hijacks the codes of traditional love songs to reveal their ideological underpinnings, notably through tracks like “Anthrax” and ‘Contract’, which question romantic love, or “Damaged Goods” and “I Found That Essence Rare”, which deconstruct classical representations of desire and sex. The cover of Entertainment! designed by Jon King, directly reflects the influence of the Situationist International. It shows an “Indian” and a “cowboy” shaking hands, in three stylized images taken from a Winnetou film series, which, in East Germany at the time, were interpreted as critiques of capitalism. The visual treatment reduces the faces to red-and-white solids, evoking racial clichés. Surrounding the image is an acerbic phrase: “The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him.” This image not only illustrates the theme of exploitation, but also criticizes the simplistic way in which the media and popular culture schematize ethnic, social or political conflicts.

To mark the 45th anniversary of this iconic album, the Gang of Four will visit us on a final tour, appropriately entitled The Long Goodbye Tour. On this unique evening, the British band will first perform Entertainment! in its entirety, before returning to the stage with an anthology of tracks mostly taken from the two albums that followed, Solid Gold and Songs of the Free. Following the death of guitarist Andy Gill in 2020 and, more recently, bassist Dave Allen, singer Jon King and drummer Hugo Burnham will be joined by guitarist Ted Leo and bassist Gail Greenwood. 

A few days before the start of this long final farewell, PAN M 360 spoke to Hugo Burnham, who has momentarily swapped his role as professor at Endicott College in Massachusetts for that of tempo keeper. From the difficult return to the drums, to lost friends and, of course, the creation of the now legendary Entertainment!, Hugo Burnham, affable, generous and sometimes emotional, delved into his memories, sharing a few interesting anecdotes along the way.

PAN M 360: First of all, I wanted to offer you my sincere sympathies for the recent passing of your friend and accomplice, Dave Allen, Gang of Four’s original bass player. It’s very sad. I think it would be interesting to talk a little bit about him, if you want. How did you guys meet?

Hugo Burnham: When Jon (King, voice), Andrew (Gill, guitar) and I started the band, we had a bass player called Dave Wolfson, who was really a jazz guy. But he was around the scene, you know, mutual friends and everything. And we played two shows with him in… like April and May of 77, or 76. I can’t remember which year it was, but anyway, then we had the summer off and Jon and Andrew went to New York. When they came back, we realised that Dave Wolfson wasn’t really right for us. So I put up a flyer in the university union bar saying, “Wanted R-I-V-V-U-M and blues bass player’.’  And that was sort of a code. Nothing to do with what is now known as rhythm and blues, which is essentially urban music. But it meant Dr. Feelgood, sort of pub rock, you know, the Coasters, anything of that nature.

So Dave had recently moved to Leeds from the  Northwest, literally to find a band. He’d been spending years in cover bands and jazz band. So he came to us. It seemed easy, natural, right from the beginning. From a social point of view, he did fit in with us, but he was especially a real musician, unlike any of us. So when we first started rehearsing and writing together, there was a “Hey, Dave, you’re playing too many notes”  or “Great four notes. now play two.” You know, it was that sort of thing, but we just gelled so well. And we each sort of found certain roles. Since Jon, Andrew and I were young students who’d occasionally study or go to class, and Dave wasn’t, he took on the role of basically trying to get gigs. Because we didn’t have a manager, we didn’t have an agent, you know, we were idiots messing around. And his house had a phone, which was not standard. I mean, try to explain that to people nowadays, you know, just there were no cell phones, but some people had a house phone. So that’s what he’d do, amongst other things. So, yeah, that’s how we met Dave. And it was a very easy transition into a great, not just creative partnership, but friendship.

PAN M 360: What was his contribution to Gang of Four? He had quite a unique bass playing style, and this awesome sound he was able to create.

Hugo Burnham: In the early days, we all basically rehearsed and wrote together; all the time arguing, pushing back and forward, testing each other, pushing each other. So his contribution was as an equal partner. It’s a bit like the four elements Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, you know, they’re completely different, but meld together to make this planet we live on. I mean, that’s a bit of a reach, but you know what I’m saying. Four totally different elements that worked together to create something fierce and wonderful. And that’s what we wanted to do, and did.

PAN M 360: So was there any question of him joining this tour, or was he too ill?

Hugo Burnham: We knew Dave had been unwell for quite a few years. We had hoped, back in 2020, before COVID threw the world under the wheels, and when Andrew died (of COVID), we had hoped that we would do a proper reunion. That would involve Dave. But after we came out of that and it got to sort of late 2021, it became clear that Dave wasn’t really able to come out and play with us. So that’s when we got Sara Lee back, our Sarah Lee, who had also retired after a stunning career with so many brilliant people, whether it was the B-52s or Ryuichi Sakamoto. I mean, Sara Lee really is a superstar player. But then Sara retired again last year. And we now have Gail Greenwood, from Belly and L7, who again brings a whole different vibe and really freshens it up, and kicks. I have to say I’ve been extraordinarily lucky as a drummer to play with those bass players. I don’t think I’m a brilliant drummer, but I became as good as I am because of playing with Dave. We formed something, we understood each other, we worked so well together, and it was terrifying when he left the band [1981, went on to form Shriekback with ex XTC Barry Andrews]. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but Sara came in, it was great. Although before Sara, for a few weeks after Dave left, we had Busta ‘’Cherry’’ Jones, who was with Talking Heads, Eno, Chris Spedding, Sharks, Parliament and many others (and Pagliaro!). He joined to finish a tour and that was extraordinary. He was brilliant, crazy… another one who just fitted right in with the team. Not just musically, but socially and everything else. But that wasn’t ultimately going to work. He lived in New York, he had other things, so Sara came in brilliant.

Then after I left (1983), Jon and Andrew carried on with some other people, then we all got back together briefly from 2005 ‘till 2006, and then in 2012, Andrew carried on with three younger session guys. So, you know, it’s an absolute joy coming back together for one last round, but it would have been wonderful had Dave been able to join us. When we played at the Cruel World Festival in California in 2023, we also did a couple of shows in San Francisco. Everyone then went home, but Jon and I flew up to Portland to go and spend a day with Dave and his family. Because, you know, by then, everyone knew he was not terribly well, but he was in great shape that day and we had a lovely time together. It really was good. So we miss him dreadfully. It’s really… [stifles a sob]… Even though we knew that he wasn’t probably going to last very much longer, it still is a punch in the heart. 

PAN M 360 : You mentioned Andy Gill, whose passing in 2020 is also very sad. He too had a quite unique sound. Did you have any trouble finding a replacement for him ?


Hugo Burnham: Well, it really was a conundrum for us. It’s like, how do you replace a sound, and a vibe, and an attitude like Andy’s? And it was like, okay, we have to find somebody. Lots of people said, oh, you know, anyone who’s ever played guitar for the Red Hot Chili Peppers would do it, that sort of thing. And a friend of mine suggested David Pajo (Slint). Not knowing anything of David’s history, I started investigating Slint and everything else that David had done. And I realized he looked and sounded like somebody who could be brilliant. So I reached out to him and asked if he’d be interested. We didn’t want somebody who simply just copies everything Andy did… We had a lovely time with David. And then at the end of last year, he wanted to concentrate on other things. I think he really wanted a little bit of stability. So now we have Ted Leo, who, well, I mean, people should know Ted, he’s been around for 100 years. He came out to the New York, D.C. hardcore scene years ago, younger than us. But then everyone is except Bill Wyman (laughs).

PAN M 360: For this special tour, will you be solely focusing on Entertainment!?

Hugo Burnham: This time around we’re really concentrating on Entertainment!. So it’s four people on stage and we’re doing two sets. We really wanted to make it like, and I know it sounds wanky, an evening with gang of Four. In other words, when you come in, the songs that you’ll hear before the show, will be the songs that we choose. The visuals will be the things that we choose. We will come on and play Entertainment! track by track, all the way through, to honour the fact that it’s the 45th anniversary of Entertainment! being released in the UK. That was 1979 in North America and everywhere else, but in the UK, it was the beginning of 1980, so it is 45 years. And interestingly enough, when we come up to you later this month, it will be almost exactly 45 years since we first played Montreal. May the 9th, 1980, at Broadway Live!

PAN M 360 : And what about the second set?

Hugo Burnham : After the Entertainment! set, we will then take a little break and come back to do a what we’re calling a best of the rest. We’ll play songs from other albums, a lot of the songs we’ve been playing over the last four years. It’s a lot of work for a bunch of old people. I mean, two whole sets. No support acts. Everyone must get there pretty soon after the doors open, because it’s not like the old days when we were going on stage at 11 (laughs). I will add that copies of Jon’s recent memoir, To Hell with Poverty! will be available on site, and that Jon will be holding a signing session after the concert.

PAN M 360 : So there aren’t any new songs on this show?

Hugo Burnham: No new songs. All the songs we’ll be playing are basically from the first two, slash three albums and we do one song, called ‘’I Parade Myself’’, which I’m not sure If it ever made it to an album, maybe on Content, I can’t remember. It was one of the songs when it was just the Jon and Andy years, which is a fantastic song… Some of these songs for Entertainment!… we have not played them since 1980. Like ‘’Guns before Butter’’, when I started listening to that again, to remember how to play it, I cried. I thought I was too old for it. And ‘’Contract’’ is a very difficult, fast song. So we’ve actually adapted them somewhat. When you’re 23, full of spit and vigor and speed, you can do these things. Not so much now.

PAN M 360: Playing the whole of Entertainment! in these weird times seems most appropriate. But when the album was originally created, what were your sources of inspiration, both lyrically and musically?

Hugo Burnham: Musically, the things that pulled us together, that drove us together, that we shared, it was everything from Dr. Feelgood to Free, to Jimi Hendrix, to Parliament Funkadelic, to Can, Hawkwind… You know, we had great shared musical loves. And like any group of artists, when you get together, you’re working from those common elements. You know, you can tell which songs were driven by me trying to play like Simon Kirk in Free, or being influenced by reggae. I mean, ‘’Damaged Goods“ is very much influenced by reggae and ska, which we all grew up with in England, of course. It was part of the whole thing. There weren’t black radio stations and pop stations. It was all one thing. So that was very much part of our DNA. And then you start to find your own sound. And I think that lyrically, it was very much avoiding the obvious, like singing about cars and girls and getting drunk and misbehaving… you know, being unsubtle. So there was something much subtler about our lyrics, But very observant about how people interacted with each other and with things around them, emotionally, socially, politically. Everything’s politics, really, isn’t it?

PAN M 360: So how was this album created?

Hugo Burnham: Well, we’d been playing for a couple of years, you know, at least 18 months, two years maybe, developing and building the songs. And we had been very successful with our first independent EP/single, Damaged Goods, which had ‘’Armalite Rifle‘’ and ‘’Love Like Anthrax‘’ on it. And that suddenly started getting us a lot of attention in the music press. I mean, we earned the fact that suddenly, after being ignored for a while by the whole industry, everybody wanted us to make a record. Because that’s what was going on at the time.  There were quite a few labels that were hoping to sign us back then. They felt they’d missed out on The Clash. So they went for something similar, although we never dressed up quite as beautifully as they did (laughs). And to be honest, we turned down a lot of money from other major labels to sign with EMI. Because instead of huge advances, we got significantly better royalty rates. For the time, we got complete creative control. As long as the label was technically able to make a record from what we turned in from our recording sessions. They could not refuse it because it didn’t sound right to them, or because it wasn’t commercial sounding enough.

We made some unforced errors over the years that turned the label away from us. I mean, the famous story about us walking off Top of the Pops… that really crippled our forward movement [the band walked off the show when the BBC told them to sing “rubbish” in the place of the original lyric “rubbers” as the original line was considered too risqué.] Because that was the place where you got to the bigger world. The whole country watched Top of the Pops. So that was disappointing. But anyway, so we made the album in a studio in South London called The Workhouse, which was where Ian Dury and the Blockheads had done New Boots and Panties, which we loved. And we liked the fact that it wasn’t a big West End or Center London studio. It was a little bit down at heel, but quite groovy. And it was Manfred Mann’s studio. It wasn’t the easiest of sessions to do. I found it very difficult. I suffered a lot from what I call red light fever. Because the way we would do the songs was: we’d start with Dave and I, with Andrew just playing along to lay down the bass and drums. And the way the studio was set up, the control room was upstairs and the people in the booth looked down through the glass. It really felt quite oppressive, and I was not very confident. And it was like, “no, do it again, do it!” And the engineer was not smart enough to let us keep going. You made a mistake, he’d stop. And that really was a bit unsettling. It was also quite difficult with the engineer because he did not understand what we were trying to do. Which was to make a record that sounded the way we heard it. It wasn’t a wash in treatments, you know, with reverb and whatever else. We wanted to make it quite dry and normal sounding. And that was anathema to him. So it wasn’t easy, but we loved what we’d done … In the few weeks leading up to the recording, we went to a rehearsal, a farm in the middle of Wales, where we just rehearsed all day and wrote these songs. I think “Not Great Men” came from that session, which is one of the most lastingly brilliant songs we ever wrote. And then we went out on the road and worked it.

PAN M 360: And how did this “Love Like Anthrax’’ song come about? Because it was utterly unique, with its manic guitar and layered lyrics.

Hugo Burnham: We wanted to make something that really pushed into people’s faces, something awkward, odd and extreme. And there was that whole Godard thing of, you know, you’ve got one screen here, one screen there. So you’ve got Jon sort of singing and Andrew just mumbling something underneath him at cross purposes. So there are two things going on at the same time. And then, of course, just the whole nod to Jimi Hendrix in the extreme feedback. People were just stunned by it, either they hated it, or they were like wow!, yeah! And it was great because it was never quite the same whenever we played it live, and it still blows people up. Like I said, we wanted to do things that were not just predictable and, at the same time, that were interesting to us. I mean, it was fun when we started, doing silly punk songs, or when we’d play a Ramones song and other covers, that was fun. But then you sort of want to do something that challenges each other as well as our audience.

PAN M 360: Over the years, Entertainment! have gained a bit in popularity, but especially in respect.

Hugo Burnham: Yes. like we’ve said in the past, we were sort of like our generation’s version of the Velvet Underground; everyone who saw or heard us went to start a band and was successful, but we never sold any records. You know, for everyone who said, “Oh my god, without the Gang of Four, we’d never existed,’’ or “Oh my god, they were so influential.’’ If we had a penny for everyone who had said that … but it lasts. You know, what we were doing, the songs we were writing, and the lyrics that mostly Jon was creating back in the late 70’s, are still so pertinent. Even more so now, I suspect. And I think that’s a large part of why we strike a chord with quite a lot of younger people. Our audiences, since we got back together in 2022, 30% to 40% are under 30, which is encouraging. And it’s not just fat old guys like me bringing along their teenage kids. People. They hear it, they react to it, they come and see us. It’s great, I’m pleased that our audiences aren’t just all people in their 60s like us. Come and see if we can play two whole sets without falling over! 

Gang of Four – The Long Goodbye

April 22, 2025
Théâtre Beanfield – 2490 Notre-Dame St W, Montreal Quebec H3J 1N5

Portes: 7:00pm
Spectacle: 8:00pm

All ages

Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.ca/event/31006184C9C830E4…

Opening photo by Jason Grow Photography

The Centre des Musiciens du Monde (CMM) in Montreal and Traquen’art will be presenting a concert of Mongolian diphonic singing on Thursday 24 April 2025. In addition to this concert, the duo of Nasanjargal Ganbold, a Mongolian based in Germany and promoter of this ancestral culture in Europe, and Johanni Curtet, a Frenchman and the rare Westerner to have mastered the authentic technique of khöömii (pronounced with an expired H, “’Hhhoomii”’), will be busy touring and taking part in a week of activities. This technique is the reason behind the amazing, fascinating sounds that come out of the mouths of Mongolian (and now some Western) vocal artists, and which we spontaneously associate with the cultural universe of Mongolia, with Genghis Khan, horse races, the almost infinite blue sky, the vast steppes and white yurts.

Demostration ok khöömii by Johanni Curtet :

Johanni Curtet

Ganbold and Curtet will spend the week in Eastern Canada, giving, in addition to Thursday’s performance at the CMM, a concert in Quebec City (with the Oktoecho ensemble), another in Toronto, at the Small World Music Center, and then an introductory workshop to the technique at the Maison de la culture Ahuntsic on Sunday 27 April. The workshop will be a golden opportunity for anyone who dares to try their voice at this unique and complex art. It’s a safe bet that some metal growlers will even find it easy to get their vocal cords on it! The invitation is extended to all those who recognise themselves!

In the interview I conducted with Johanni Curtet, we explored a number of aspects of khöömii, as well as what led this young Frenchman, who was initially turned on by the grunge rock style of the late 1990s, to develop a passion for guttural muscle control techniques whose origins are lost in time and subject to a number of anthropological hypotheses.

Curtet initially wanted to make music, to which his musician father responded with classical guitar lessons. But when he wanted to sing, he was told he shouldn’t because he did it out of tune! One day, on TV, he saw an ethnomusicologist, Trân Quang Hai, talking about the khöömii technique (which simply means ‘pharynx’). He was young and impressed by these sounds, but didn’t catch the name of the scientist. For years, he tried to repeat the sounds himself. It was probably a long way from the real thing, but it stayed with him continually, alongside his instrumental studies at the Conservatoire. During this training, he learned the rudiments of world voices, and then came the Inuit throat singing and the famous khöömii! He could now put into words the sounds that had fascinated him for so long. He then branched out into ethnomusicology, eventually completing his Master’s degree with… Trân Quang Hai.

From study grants to introductory trips, he perfected his knowledge and above all his mastery of this musical genre with some of the best teachers in Mongolia. He went on to create musical group projects, initiate collaborations, funded a Franco-Mongolian NGO (Routes nomades, ‘’nomadic roads’’) and began to share his love and knowledge of khöömii around the world, including now in Canada with this short tour.

He met Gambold in 2019 in Germany, but the duo we’ll be hearing this week has only been around since the end of 2024, created for the Ethnosoi festival in Helsinki!

He is often asked if this kind of practice hurts the throat. ‘’The body gets used to the instrument. As with any new technique, there’s a more difficult passage at the beginning, where you have to resist the temptation to quit. When I first started playing the guitar, my fingers hurt and I felt like giving up. But when I realised that the hard skin forming at the end of my fingers would enable me to play better and project the sound more effectively, my mind got used to it and my body got used to it. It’s true that there can be a tingling in the throat in the first moments of learning, but when you learn the right gestures and the right method, it doesn’t have any negative impact.”

In any case, if it hurt, the Mongols wouldn’t have been practising this art for so long and in such large numbers. But why do they do it anyway?

‘“There are several hypotheses, including that of shamanic use.”’ It’s true that if you imagine yourself in a remote time, in the wild steppes, in a nomadic clan imbued with a powerful imaginary universe, a shamanic ritual in which a man in a trance begins to resonate vocally in this way, it must have been very impressive. That said, over time it became, according to Curtet, a pastime for shepherds. But be careful! Not like whistling on the way to the market. In the case of Mongolian nomadism, it’s more a question of communion with nature and with the very nature of the Universe in which these people live. It’s a very vertical nature, with a very strong link between the underground, the visible earth, and the infinite sky (and beyond). To push out these multiple sounds, based on a basic drone created by the tightening of the throat muscles, then filtered through various mouth positions with the lips and tongue, is literally to connect tellurically, vibratory, magnetically and spiritually with the Universe.

That said, the shamanism inherent in the early musicological studies of khöömii led to a Western exploitation through the New Age movement, which turned it into a source of yogic and meditative transcendence, but watered down the technique itself. So much so that, ironically, there are probably more Westerners practising this ‘facilitated’ technique than Mongolians practising the authentic, more complex and difficult one. In the end, Johanni Curtet remains one of the few to do it for real. That’s why he started teaching an authentic khöömii course at the Institut international des musiques du monde in Aubagne around 5 years ago.

Montreal’s equivalent (the CMM) is perhaps the only one of its kind in America, which is why the Metropolis is so privileged to have access to so many concerts and workshops on the world’s most learned and fascinating musical art traditions. And now we can even bring them to other cities in the area, like Quebec City and Toronto. A Mongolian artist, Uurintuya Khalivan, who plays the morin khuur, the horse-headed fiddle, moved here some time ago, and I’ve already told you about her.

Curtet is passionate and utterly fascinating in his display of knowledge on the subject. It’s a simple and convivial display, which I personally enjoyed during this hour-long interview that could have gone on much longer, and of which I’m omitting a large part here because the man is inexhaustible and I’m running out of space. I can’t recommend enough that you put his visit (and that of his travelling companion) on your agenda as soon as possible. You shouldn’t miss an opportunity for discovery and enrichment like this when it arises.

Concert in Quebec City (Musée national des Beaux-Arts) on Wednesday 23 April

Concert in Montreal (Centre des Musiciens du Monde) on Thursday 24 April

Concert in Toronto (Small World Centre) on Friday 25 April

Introductory khöömii workshop at the Maison de la culture Ahuntsic (in collaboration with Oktoecho) on Sunday 27 April, 2-4pm. Bookings by email: [email protected]  

Syli d’Or 2025 | Latin America in the final with MARZOS and MATEO. This all started with a fundraiser for their grandmother. Little did the MARZOS brothers know that this would launch their artistic career, despite a break forced by the pandemic. But that didn’t stop them from relaunching the machine in 2024, by approaching MATEO for a project around the giant Héctor Lavoe. And the rest is history, as they say! Since then, MATEO and MARZOS have teamed up again for the Syli d’Or adventure, a successful gamble since they reached the final. Our journalist Sandra Gasana spoke to the MARZOS brothers and MATEO a few days before the final, to be held at the Fairmount Theatre on Friday April 25.

Crédit photo: André Rival

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