Interviews

Rising from an agitated state of sleep, just before her metamorphosis into her adult self, the young Quebec singer and composer N NAO (named Naomie De Lorimier) creates, with her new album, L’eau et les rêves the imprint of an invisible illusion, a marvellous phenomenon, a mysterious encounter. Through an artistic and symbolic ritual that has been occurring naturally for millions of years, this prodigious second album of experimental dream pop, released via Mothland, is part of an ambitious transdisciplinary and collaborative work, whose theme gradually unfolds with the help of a documentary research project on the world of freshwater. Combining free jazz spontaneity, acoustic tenderness, soaring lyricism, psychedelic folk improvisation, krautrock rhythms, dream pop effect chains, and outdoor recordings taken on the run, the whole album, written with a rare sense of authenticity, invites us to get lost at the top of a mountain, to give birth to ourselves during a dream, next to a source of fresh water which makes life more porous to unconscious changes. 

Done in a meditative and trance-like state, her research brings to life the magic of a heavenly angel, sometimes gentle, sometimes stormy, like a deity personifying the forces of nature that make the pure sensation of living shine within. Safe in her room or in the studio, the spontaneous and intuitive urge of her unconscious is no longer afraid to say what needs to be said in order to lighten the burden of shadows. This silent, mystical, and caring communication allows one to look deep into the depths of matters: decay, loss, life, death, reconstruction, and care. The supernatural whisper of a long-distance connection encourages her to take risks on the edge of the abyss, as the sky now catches her in her fall. 

The eclipse of colours is indeed a victory, it smashes the boundary between reality and imagination and allows life to be renewed with the future. A survivor’s right to exist hides a mystery, a gift, a mighty tool. The power of the numinous gives hope to survive the “Fin du monde.” Simplicity creates miracles. N NAO agreed to meet with PAN M 360 to tell us about her secret.

PAN M 360: While we are only discovering you now, with your second album L’eau et les rêves we can notice that you already have a long background in the underground scene, notably alongside Klô Pelgag, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Crabe, zouz, Safia Nolin, Jonathan Personne, and Lumière. How did you get involved in this community of artists?

N NAO: Being born in Montreal, I was able to meet a lot of artists very early on in my career. In CÉGEP, I already had contacts with people active on the music scene. I met Etienne Dupré (bassist for Klô Pelgag, Mon Doux Saigneur, zouz) who is currently in my band, as well as Charles, with whom I have been playing for a long time. I started doing sets in Montreal in DIY places like La Plante. The experimental music label Jeunesse cosmique also gave me my first chance. After my jazz studies, I moved to Berlin for four months with my effects pedals, to sort of conquer my fears. One night, I managed to play a set in a full venue, and that’s how I realised that there was actually an audience for what I was doing and that I could become confident. When I came back to Montreal, I started supporting Laurence-Anne, which helped me meet new people. One thing led to another and I began to support more and more artists. It all happened very naturally over time.

PAN M 360: During your CEGEP, you did a program in jazz singing, composition and arrangement. Was music present very early in your life? 

N NAO: Yes, my parents noticed very early that I had a good ear. When I couldn’t even speak yet, I could imitate the sound of the vacuum cleaner perfectly, I had the right note (laughs). As a child I studied classical music at Le Plateau school, my grandfather always listened to classical music and my father was a singer.

PAN M 360: Charles was the first member to join you in your N NAO project. This meeting seems important to you, can you tell us more about it?

N NAO: I started writing, composing, singing, and experimenting on my own between high school and CEGEP and Charles was the very first person who heard my songs. We feel connected through the way we see music, the way we listen to it, and the way we appreciate art in general. When we played together, it was as if we were exchanging our thoughts through music, like a kind of correspondence about our worldview. Charles has a master’s degree in art history and we really enjoy sharing our theories.

PAN M 360: How did the rest of the group come about?

N NAO: The process was very natural. Lysandre Ménard (Lysandre, Helena Deland) was already on my first album A jamais pour toujours in 2018. Just before her trip to London, I came to her house to sample her piano improvisations. I was sad about her departure and I wanted to keep a piece of her with me. This became her first contribution to the project. Etienne and I had already played together in the past in our studio, and we kept running into each other at the same shows. We met again in zouz, Klô Pelgag and then on my first record. Samuel Gougoux (TDA, Corridor, Kee Avil, VICTIME) had seen Charles and me opening for Jonathan Personne in 2019. He fell in love with our duo and we started playing as a trio from then on. These are all great encounters, it’s really magical when we’re together.

PAN M 360: You recorded the album at Green Room Studios and in your bedroom. Was it important for you to feel surrounded, in an intimate and personal setting?

N NAO: Yes, really. I’ve always worked in an intimate setting, I find that’s where the creative process can flow in a much purer way when you feel confident in your interactions. I am someone who likes to get to the bottom of things and to feel a certain depth with my team members. I needed to be with people I could trust to be able to create this sense of exposure.

PAN M 360: Your album is illustrated with videos that show documentary research on freshwater. How did you conceive the idea?

N NAO: Actually, the idea came to me after filming the videos. I did a short movie in a pond for the EP “La plus belle chose”. I saw it more as a performance, grounded in a moment. I then got an 8mm camera, which I kept with me during two cycles of seasons during my meditative getaways in nature. Four tapes came out of these experiences. I realized spontaneously that there were many themes around water, its shimmer, its various states, and its mysterious, sensual, sensorial qualities. It was as if I had discovered it afterward. So I started to concentrate on this substance, on its light and its refraction. All of this became clearer in terms of the music, the texts, and the visuals. With my camera, I wanted to try to see through and inside the matter.

PAN M 360: The cover was made during one of these nature excursions. Can you tell us more about it?

N NAO: I wanted to collaborate with Laurence Veri, who is a ceramist I really like. We met at the Jean-Talon market when we were both florists. We decided to create a ceramic together. From there came the idea of an angel, which she had already explored in ceramic and which I also saw in the texts of the album. She drew the figure of the angel in sandstone with grains of sand and rocks. I took the ceramics with me to document it around a waterfall, seven hours from here. Laurence had produced three different ceramics, and it turned out that my favourite had a crack in it. In the end, I found this imperfection so beautiful. It was so fragile, we had to be careful with it during our trip. We stayed a whole weekend near this waterfall Charles and I. We read, swam, and took pictures. It was a great documentary experience. I chose this particular waterfall because I knew I could be quiet.

PAN M 360: The title of the album is inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s book “L’eau et les rêves,” What link do you make between this book and your album?

N NAO: Through our artistic and correspondence relationship, Charles gifted me this book. It sort of filled in the themes that were already addressed in the album. I like its philosophical aspect, but also how the author approaches the poetry of matter. He says that “water is the matter of dreams.” This sentence means a lot to me. To write the songs, I used my dream memories. I used to practice in the morning when I came out of my dreams, to write and compose on the guitar. Water is also a very sensual material that can be associated with femininity, with the nymph, and with the mermaid. Gaston Bachelard published this book in the 1940s, I find it interesting to have a more contemporary perspective, coming from a woman.

PAN M 360: You describe the footage in the video “Tout va bien” as haptic. How did you achieve this?

N NAO: I read a text by Laura U. Marks during my studies at Concordia that really resonated with me. She brings up the idea that this is actually a strategy used by women throughout history, which can be found in tapestry and its caressing textures for example. She talks about haptic videos as being very distorted, so textured that they will caress the eye. Today, everything happens through screens, we live in an age where everything is visual, so I find it interesting to create imagery that speaks to the body, to the skin, to the sensation. I did it naturally with the camera, I capture what I see as if I were touching them. There is a form of sensuality in my exploration that is in line with my eco-feminist values. I try to offer an equal-to-equal approach to nature.

PAN M 360: What is “La plus belle chose” for you?

N NAO: In a day, I often say “this is the most beautiful thing”. But it’s never the same thing. What crosses all these moments are these bursts of life, authenticity, of sincerity. It’s the meeting. We accept to meet others, to meet ourselves, that things affect us. If I am in front of a magnificent landscape, I accept that it strikes me and I accept to be present in these things. The most beautiful thing is to take the risk of meeting oneself. Behind this lies a way of thinking that is constantly in motion, like a form of presence.

Crédit photo : Naomie de Lorimier & Cléo Sjölander

Affiche ci-dessous: Juliette Dupont-Duchesne

Without helmet and without safety net, the co-founder of Daft Punk has just launched his first large-scale composition for large orchestra, intended for a ballet at the initiative of choreographer Angelin Preljocaj. Mythologies is a work of 23 tableaux performed by the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine under the direction of Romain Dumas.

His fans should be aware that Thomas Bangalter is far, far from doing Daft Punk. Without any advanced technology except perhaps a composition software, and especially in an orchestral spirit very close to European romanticism in the second half of the 19th century, the French artist revisits in depth his relationship to composition.

This is certainly an excellent subject for an interview… given to us by Thomas Bangalter in a video conference.

PAN M 360 : What brought you to symphonic music? You must have had a good musical upbringing, as is the case in most good families.

THOMAS BANGALTER :  It’s not exactly a story of a “good family” in fact, it’s rather a family of artists and classical music came to me through dance: my mother (Thérèse Thoreux) was a classical dancer, my aunt was a dancer, my uncle was a choreographer, my father is an author, composer and producer, so I was born into a family of artists. But my relationship with orchestral music and symphonic music came about through dance, and then, I would even say, through the discovery of symphonic music in the cinema. I did indeed take piano lessons when I was a child, but my piano teacher was a coach for the Paris Opera, but he came from the dance world. But my music wasn’t a sideline, it was quite central. Art was the centre of it all.

PAN M 360 : PAN M 360: In classical dance, anyway, there is necessarily a rather intimate relationship with classical music. Not necessarily. There’s a lot of contemporary music or modern music that are different forms.

THOMAS BANGALTER : Yes, my mother was initially a dancer in a classical company with Roland Petit’s Ballets from the end of the 1950s, for about ten years. Then she joined the first contemporary dance company in France, which had been set up by the Ministry of Culture, called the Ballet Théâtre Contemporain. There, she did contemporary dance and then created music by composers such as Xenakis. There is both this double filiation with classical lyrical music on the one hand and contemporary music on the other.

PAN M 360 :  So it’s kind of natural that you would come to this point at some point in your creative career. How did you go about creating this music? The first time you do a cursory listen to this album, it feels like you are in the XIXᵉ century. It is romantic music from Europe, well mostly.

THOMAS BANGALTER : It’s funny because I feel like I didn’t think that much about it. It’s quite a spontaneous approach to this idea of elegance, lyricism or romanticism, which are things that I don’t necessarily see in society today. I often have the impression that I’m thinking by reaction and that I want to bring out things that I miss at a given moment. In 2005, with my partner in Daft Punk (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo), we had this idea: “Let’s make a pyramid of light and LEDs like this”. It was something we had in our heads, but it didn’t really exist. A few years later, I remember being in Times Square and there were LED walls everywhere – it used to be neon. Now we’re in a world that’s completely covered in LEDs with increasingly huge systems at all levels of scale. So I wouldn’t have the idea today, the idea of saying to myself “Here, I’d like to create a geometric structure in LEDs”. So there is this idea of counterpoint or interaction with one’s environment.

PAN M 360: So what is the motivation for this new “counterpoint”?

THOMAS BANGALTER : A lot of reasons aligned to do this project. At the same time, this dance world that I knew well and from which I had distanced myself a bit, although… it was dance music that I was creating at the time. But then, there was a certain timelessness in the idea of tackling myths. I also like to do things that are a bit old-fashioned. Because in the end, when it’s old-fashioned, it doesn’t really go out of fashion any more! You don’t have a relationship with modernity by trying to create something that, five years later, may sound a bit out of date. I like the idea of tackling forms, making them exercises in style with a certain interest in temporality. It’s true that this idea of romanticism sprang up without being an intellectual thing. 

PAN M 360 : Of course, it was not the result of any planning. It wouldn’t be art.

THOMAS BANGALTER : It was much more spontaneous actually. When we were working on Random Access Memories ten years ago, we were in the middle of the EDM boom and this hyper energetic, hyper electronic music. And at that time we had a slightly romantic vision of the dancefloor, a bit of a disco. So there was this idea of having fun with these retro-futuristic codes. Except that this time, I found it funny to arrive in a retro-futurism not from the 70s or 80s, but from a century before, even two centuries for some colours because we could be at the end of the 18th century for some moments even if it’s the end of the 19th century for most of the pieces.

PAN M 360 :  When you’re an authentic artist, you don’t say to yourself “I’m going to make music from 1855 to 1890. It’s something that comes out of the subconscious, but you can see that several so-called neo-classical composers are familiar with this romantic period (and also with early modern French music).

THOMAS BANGALTER : What I find interesting is that I don’t find myself in an axis that could oppose, as it has been for contemporary music towards classical music for example. It’s a bit the same thing in pop music today, where many of its barriers have fallen. I worked with samples but also with studio musicians where we wrote the music, the scores or the arrangements completely. So it’s not one method against another. That’s perhaps what’s changing the most at the moment, because before there were chapels that hated each other. Today, the perspectives are really very different. It can be related to certain lyrical or neo-classical colours, but at the same time it can use cells of repetition and get closer to contemporary minimalist trends. So I don’t feel that it’s so contradictory now, whereas there used to be a certain purism in the vision of symphonic music.

PAN M 360 : How did you adapt to symphonic composition?

THOMAS BANGALTER : I had some experience with symphonic music on film scores and other music, but I had worked with orchestrators and arrangers at that time. My main motivation was to take on this project to write for the orchestra and to do all the arrangements and orchestrations myself. I usually compose on the piano, but my lack of virtuosity on the piano would limit the composition a bit. That’s why it was really a music that was written directly on the score with a notation software. At that point, I worked on different sketches that I sent to the choreographer. From there, the concept of mythology became clearer. After that I went to my corner to write most of the music. A few months later I came back with the written ballet. There was a bit of cutting, editing and structural planning with the choreographer, and then, the dancing started.

PAN M 360 : So, no one other than the choreographer was involved in the editing, in the editing of the original score

THOMAS BANGALTER :  No, except for the conductor who was also in the process from the beginning. He was able to help me with certain questions. I myself was immersed in symphonic music, in the direction of works. For many months, I really studied the orchestration treatises but… I still had questions that only a conductor’s experience could answer, especially about managing the effort, about the feasibility of certain parts. The conductor was therefore able to guide me on certain questions. I asked him not to give me the solution but rather to tell me more if it was viable. It was really a work with the choreographer and the conductor.

PAN M 360 :  So you are free of all the preliminary stages, i.e. without an orchestrator or arranger. This time you were alone, without a net – and without (Daft Punk) helmet needless to say.

THOMAS BANGALTER : That’s it. That was the reason why I accepted this project. I’ve always liked reinventing the circumstances of the creative process. At each stage of Daft Punk, we had the opportunity to approach the work in a different way. When I worked on a Japanese cartoon, it was the same, a bit like an internship; I had been back and forth to Japan 15 times when I got into cartoon production. The opportunity of such a project was a bit like starting from scratch, learning new things, making mistakes and starting over, succeeding in certain things and realising once again that in a state of mind, when you are a beginner, you don’t do the same things in the same way as someone who is really experienced. But this innocence and this sincerity or this clumsiness interests me as a rule. That’s also why I decided to take the time to accomplish this work spread over two and a half years and which must have mobilised me about a year and a half full time.

PAN M 360 :  Now if we talk about the concept of Mythologies, how did it finally come about?

THOMAS BANGALTER : The choreographer had the idea. After I gave him some sketches and had a few meetings on those sketches, about twenty minutes at that point, he came back to me and said “I feel like these colours and this direction work with the idea of working on mythologies. That’s when he came back with a list, a kind of compact booklet of different myths. I then started to propose to him the attribution of these different myths to my different sketches. When he validated that, I went back to work on my own.

PAN M 360 : And is there any connection with your background as an electronic composer and producer and what happened in that context?

THOMAS BANGALTER :  Not really. If I go back to the last Daft Punk record that we did in Random Access Memory, I don’t really feel like it’s an electronic music record. So I find it hard to answer that question. It’s true that I worked more strictly with machines at the beginning (of my career), but soon enough I made compositions and songs with these machines. And then added (non-electronic) instruments as I went along. I’ve done instrumental music with machines too.

PAN M 360 : This time, not at all.

THOMAS BANGALTER : There was definitely a certain form of radicalism in me saying “I’m going to compose music without a machine, just for the orchestra, for the musicians and to accompany the dancers.” From that point on, it’s true that in this process, there was perhaps not a futuristic determination, but I have the impression that there wasn’t necessarily one in the others either. Where I make the connection is in the idea of trying different forms with each record, which is what I was saying earlier. I’m interested in how the records respond to each other or how the tracks respond to each other. If you take techno tracks and then put in more abstract sounds or even extracts from mythology which can be very lyrical. What amuses me is the contrast.

PAN M 360 :n fact, you are a generalist who wants to get to the bottom of things in each of your projects.

THOMAS BANGALTER : In fact, I don’t feel like I’m saying to myself, “that’s it, now I’m a composer of symphonic music”. These are attempts, explorations, experiments, but what motivates me is to keep on experimenting. The idea of being a bit of a stickler for something, but exploring different forms. Sometimes we try to do… Sometimes we might have the pretension of trying to do things that have never been done by anyone. Sometimes, we can become much more humble, that is to say, we can just have the ambition to do something that we have never done ourselves. For me, it was more like that. So I didn’t really have this idea of saying to myself “I’m going to invent symphonic forms”. It was more like asking myself “If I write with an orchestra, what do I want to express? What will be expressed through this?” Afterwards, there was a functional aspect too. We come back to the idea of making dance music or dance music. It was a music to accompany the dance and to accompany this theme too.

PAN M 360 : This music was written for a ballet, but is it also meant to be independent from the dance?

THOMAS BANGALTER :  In the end, I realised that it could be. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure it would be made into a record. I was really trying to do a live show at the time. I was interested in writing and composing for 50 musicians and 20 dancers in a theatre like the Bordeaux Opera or the Théâtre du Châtelet. I liked this slightly local aspect at a time when everything is hyper-connected and hyper-globalised. In the end, when I listened to the music again, I said to myself that it was appropriate to be able to release it as a record, even if it wasn’t the original idea. Getting there was already a big challenge.

ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT: STÉPHANE MANEL

Have no fear, firmly embrace the audacity that lies within you to enter the Mind Maze. To achieve this, Trees Speak invites you to imagine the desperate, passionate, yet peaceful act of a random cerebral gunshot fired into a crowd: a call to murder. Of whom?! But … has DADA never spoken to you? This is only an optical illusion, just put the photographic plate of the figure in the acid bath first.

To fully understand this new album, create in your mind a misty labyrinth of distorting mirrors filled with the excitement of a film noir in which the victim, the murderer and the detective are one and the same but do not know each other. If each one says the exact opposite, it is because they are right. You might say that this is a paradox. That is DADA speaking to you. DADA always expresses itself in violent acts that reason could not fill with words or conventions. Where the yes and the no meet to witness the birth of the renewed human being in pain.

Let’s prepare for the great spectacle of catastrophe, the fire, the decay! Publishing a critique about technology has now become a matter of civic courage. Not for Trees Speak. We are not naive enough to believe in the sterile need of the illiterate bourgeois to make old progress. After all, there is no more classical achievement of surrealism than the ensemble of a machine and the human being standing before it. If the world were to plunge into a state of collective pathology, then anti-Dadaism would be a disease.

Let us prepare for the suppression of grief! I know you expect some explanation about Trees Speak. I won’t give any. Explain to me why you exist. You don’t know. Pure psychic automatism will simply prevent man from becoming a mechanical automaton. The uncertainty principle, antimatter, relativity, Hitler, relativity, cybernetics, DNA, game theory, etc. There is something in the air. Science describes the world but does not explain it. Our feelings are behind our actions. We live in a particularly curious time. We are astonished to discover that moldy progress has once again made a pact with barbarism. All this was an attempt to render impotent the absurd and its mad game of nothingness. It has failed. 

DADA has therapeutic properties.

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DADA DECIDES. 

☞No one should ignore D∀ᗡA.

Trees Speak :…..(Geistermaschine)……………..…………………………………………………………..…………D…………D……………D……………………D……………D…………D…………De…..………Des………Desert…..is……a……safe…space……for……creativity……It……………It…………It……….……It……takes…….time…….to……appreciate……it……it……it……it..………………It..grows…..out…of……us……in….a….…way……..we…can’t……comprehend……end………end………end………….d…..d………d…….…….DaDa……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…V…………V………V…Vertigo…of…Flaws…was……written…without…………thought…………………but…with…our……emotions………(drums)……(drums)……(drums)………A…lot…of…it…was…..done…..…separately,…one……part…..in…New…York…and…..…one…part.…in…Tucson…..….during…COVID……..……We…wanted..…to……make….……something………….…ImPeRFeCt……It……was…..difficult……to…….make………But…..it…….also…….felt…..…like…….………something…..…we…had………to……do…………It…was…….…CHAOS……to…..…put…….…that…out……of……our…chest…………………………..………∞+1=∞……1=0……………………..……………01010111……..01001111……..01010010……….01001100………..01000100………01010111……………………………(BIP)…………………(BIP)……………………(BIP)………Mind….Maze…nimmt…..die….Zuhörer…mit….auf…eine….Klangreise….durch….verschiedene….Stimmungen…..und….Dynamiken,…die….sowohl….Schönheit….als….auch….Dunkelheit….umfassen…..Wir…hoffen,….dass….das….Album….die….angeborene….Neugier….des….menschlichen….Geistes…und….unseren….angeborenen….Wunsch….einfängt,…sich….in….die…unerforschten….Bereiche…unserer…Existenz….zu…wagen………(BIP)…………………(BIP)……………………(BIP)………….01000001…….01010010………01010111………….01000101………….01000010…………………………………………….…………………(uuuuuuuuu)……………..……(uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu)……..…………………(uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu).…………We……speak…in…………very…….……abstract…ways……about….a…..spiritual…………connection……….…We…are……trying…to………convey……something…….that……is……not…….tangible,………an……emotion…It…is…..very…..special……It……is……something…..we…..have…..done…….for……years………We……don’t…even…need…….words……..to……..communicate……It…….is……so……OOOOOORRRRRRGAAAAAAANICCCCCCC……It….is……..like……an….exploration…There…..is…..a….lot….of…..driving…….In…..some…..songs….there….is….a…..detour……It…..is….easy….to…..FALL…out….IN…..THE…..same….direct…..path…..……A………movie………would……be………the………next………fulfilling………step……for……us………We………bring………ideas……from………classic……films………But……if………people……can………create……a……movie……for……a…minute…in…their…minds,……that…is……the……most…beautiful…thing…we…can…ever…achieve…….Songs….are….about…..things….that…..exist…..and….they…..are…..waiting….for…..somebody…….to…….find…..them..…This……year,……a……machine……said…that……it……could……feel……emotions……This…is…it……We…are…already…in…the…future…We…are…already…in…a…SIMULATION………The…way……we…approach……music……is……very……specific……to…what…we…are…trying…to……do…….Music……creates…..shapes….…Even…if……it……sounds……abstract,…we…are…both…looking……for…something…Even…though…we…don’t…know…what…it…is……We…both…know…it…together…When…we…are……recording,…we…know…what…we…are…telling…each…other…The…thread…between…the…records…is…the…relationship…between…us…It…is……constantly………evolving…It……..is….always….changing……It…is…an…evolving……being……It…is…not…a…band…It…is…a…LIFE…FORCE……………………………………………BA……BOOM………………………………………………………………………

Personne ne peut échapper au sort. Personne ne peut échapper au labyrinthe. Il n’y a que le labyrinthe qui puisse vous faire échapper au sort. Der Minotaurus hat einen Zauber in das Labyrinth unseres Geistes gelegt.

Trees Speak is the brainchild of Damian Diaz and Daniel Martin Diaz.

Mind Maze is the band’s sixth studio album, released on the British label Soul Jazz Records. The cover art is a collaboration between artist Charlie Elms, painter Genevieve Zacconi and graphic designer Eric Adrian Lee.

Photo credit: Jacob D Gonzalez (from left to right: Gabriel Sullivan, Damian Diaz, Craig Dreyer, Alex Pope, Daniel Martin Diaz) at the Mighty Toad studio in Brooklyn in June 2022.

The name Murray A. Lightburn is probably best known as the lead vocalist and main songwriter for The Dears here in Montreal. But his newest solo album, Once Upon A Time In Montreal, deserves it’s own recognition. Inspired by the life of his past father, a jazz musician from Belize who moved to Montreal via New York to reconnect with his teenage sweetheart, Once Upon A Time In Montreal was written by Murray to really put himself in the shoes of his father. His father was married to Murray’s mother for 56 years, until he passed in April 2020 in a Quebec nursing home where he’d been living with Alzheimer’s. Reflecting on the secenario, Murray eventually discovered he didn’t want to make a record about someone dying, but a record that imagined what his father felt, being a working Black man who moved his whole life to be with the love of his life. Murray had to play detective to piece together his father’s story, talking with his mother, and diving deep into his own memories about his experiences with the reserved man.

PAN M 360 spoke to Murray on the patio of Café Olimpico about Once Upon A Time In Montreal, and moving into a newer composing direction, as he did with the film score of the new coming of age cinephile romp, I Like Movies.

“Everything I do, I want it to have a relatability,” Murray tells me while sipping on an espresso. “I was thinking about the whole premise for this album on the way over here and it was that my dad moved here, for a woman, not entirely wanting to be here. He just wanted to be with her. And so I think about how many millions of people get together in that way. They move because somebody has an opportunity. And they’re willing to support that. And be with that. They don’t want to let go of the idea of that. That’s the part that I hope people get.”

PAN M 360: Right. So more of his story living in Montreal, through your words?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yeah. You know, part of the story is OK, my dad died. People die. That’s no big deal. He was old and vulnerable. There was no other way this was gonna go right? At the start of the pandemic, it was like ‘OK, he’s gone.’ So I didn’t want to make a record that was about somebody dying, or worse, my grief over that person dying. I wanted to make something that was true to his story and his story, while unique, is also very common. I remember realizing that when we went to the cemetery when the stone was finally up. I hadn’t been to a cemetery is ages. So we went to the stone to say some things, ’cause we didn’t get to go to the funeral.

PAN M 360: Yes, the pandemic wouldn’t allow that.

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yeah, just my mom was allowed to go while the rest of the family, about 30 to 40 of us, were on a conference call listening to the play by play. It was brutal. Me and my family and sitting in the living room on speakerphone just listening to ‘Okay, they’re putting him in the ground now.’ And then somebody prayed. It was like listening to a funeral on the radio and that’s not that’s not what I wanted to write or sing about. It’s part of the story but I wanted a bit more of a eulogy y’know?

PAN M 360: And writing this story for the album, learning these stories about your father, would you say it brought you closer to him? You’re singing from his perspective in a few songs?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yes. That being said, the perspective is imagined. I’m imagining that if he could find it in himself, to reveal himself, in some way, on his way out, this is what he would have to say. You do what you can you do. I’m not in therapy (laughs). Like he sculpted his entire life around being with my mom, right? It informed everything. And that’s the only thing that actually makes sense about him. And it’s the only thing that I can, aside from the music because he was a musician and all that, really relate to him. I wish we could have had that conversation. Instead, you know, I had to do my own detective work.

PAN M 360: Music is kind of its own form of cathartic therapy though? You write a song to get a feeling out that maybe you didn’t know was there?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: True, but it didn’t intentionally start out that way. I wasn’t really given a chance to get into it, let’s just say. Waiting for him to go, even before the pandemic, whenever he got a cold or the flu, it was just touch and go. Then he would come back and we would laugh, like ‘Nothing can take this guy down.’ Then when it happened, it was so fast. Like when you have a car accident, there’s this whole protocol, and this whole mechanism goes into place. Replacing the car, the police report, this that … I hate to make the comparison, but that’s the only other comparison I can come up with is like there are a whole bunch of things you got to do.

When somebody dies, and is close to you, and everything falls on your lap. Calling the government, getting the death certificate, dealing with the funeral home. There’s a song on the album called “No New Deaths Today.” That actually came from a headline I read months after he died. The sun was shining and I read that and was like ‘This is how we’re being optimistic now?’ I started to see the comedic aspects of it all.

PAN M 360: Of death in general you mean?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yeah just the situation, or at least mine. There was a point where I had a situation where the casket that they had picked out you know, in classic Montreal fashion was in on backorder or something like that. They didn’t have his casket at the time of his passing. So I had to negotiate this situation. And his casket originally had prayer hands on it. Well, they were all out of prayer hands caskets. Like this is on the the eve of them putting him in the ground. This was weird to have to deal with. Like you’re in the fog of him being dead and they’re out of the casket that was chosen. So we got stuck with the Virgin Mary on the casket. There’s a line in the song [No New Deaths Today] “no praying hands will wipe our tears away,” which is a sad line, but for me, it’s from my super dry sense of dark comedy.

PAN M 360: The first time I listened to the album, it really reminded me of the old 50s and 60s jazz crooner records. Like Nat King Cole or something. And I thought, there aren’t many records made like this anymore; that have a story from beginning to end, that traditional way of making a record.

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: I think I hear what you’re saying. And I think that’s also something that is still important to me, and I hope that will other artists will challenge themselves to create or to stick with certain traditions of songwriting. I think there’s still lots of real estate to create things that tell stories in a meaningful way. Because there’s a million stories, man, a million fucking stories. And I think that every story has unique twists and turns. But, you know, battling the sort of machine of how the business is evolving, it’s really focused on the shortest gains, the shortest short term gains. The right volume of business, that’s what all it’s about. It’s kind of like the dollar store where you can just walk into the dollar store and get as much rubbish as you can for 20 bucks. And then, none of it lasts. It’s all going either in the recycling or just in the garbage or in the ocean one day—it’s just total disposable nonsense.

PAN M 360: That’s the streaming age for sure.

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yes, but I think there’s still an audience for people who hunt for something a bit more meaningful. And dare I say, artisan, boutique-y. I think there’s an appetite for it. Unfortunately, it gets completely tsunamied the fuck out by the sort of dollar store of the current music biz.

PAN M 360: Did your dad play music around the house at all? Did you guys listen to music as a family?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: I mean, I have so many memories of music being played in the basement. My dad had a stereo system that he really loved and put a lot of time into and had everything from eight tracks to reel to reel tapes to records, cassettes. I remember hearing lots of music all the time. You know?

PAN M 360: Did you ever talk about music together? He was a saxophonist and you were learning to play music?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: He never wanted any of us to go into music. He discouraged music. But at the same time, when we showed interest, he did step up and be like, ‘Okay, you want to play drums? Alright, I’m gonna send you to Jimmy Charles.’ He’s a drummer. Jimmy Charles was a guy he played with, a jazz guy, so I went to see Jimmy Charles, when I was like, 12, or 13 got lessons from Jimmy Charles. I kind of was just finding my way through music, and every once in awhile he would step in a be like ‘It’s more like this’ you got to do it like this. I guess I do have memories of my dad teaching me, you know, the melody for “Round Midnight,” which I can’t remember now. I was playing guitar and he would play a line and I would play it back on the guitar.

PAN M 360: And you were writing music too as a kid?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: Yeah. We had this old sequencing keyboard in the living room and nobody played it ever, except me. I would just sit there with my headphones, and just spent the entire day sitting there and I would compose on that. It had so limited memory. I mean, this is like the ’80s. So every time I made something, I had to record it onto a cassette before I could wipe it and do something new. I had just a bunch of cassettes of pieces of music that I was working on. From when I was like, 14 or 15, or something like that. My dad heard some of it. And, you know, some of the pieces were pretty complicated, and very thought out and had all the parts and everything. Like when I hear music it’s usually everything, all the melodies and parts, like this nightmare cloud of music. Now I’ve learned to weed through the noise and focus on the important bits and sculpt form there. But my dad, he was funny because in the face of all that, he knew I was also not a very good musician. Like, I’m actually a terrible musician. I’m not a good pianist, the worst piano player you’ll ever come across, mostly just out of not practicing, right? I have all the ideas in my head, I can make some chords, I can play some, but I’m a terrible piano player. I’m a terrible guitar player. I used to be okay, when I was really playing a lot. And now I don’t have any skills at all. I’m just not a strong musician. My old man, his favourite musician of all time was John Coltrane. So he knew I would never hit that level. And he would say, ‘Well, you’re not much of a player, but you’re definitely a composer.’ And that really stuck in there.

PAN M 360: That wasn’t discouraging to hear as a kid?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: No it wasn’t a negative thing. I was just like, ‘He’s right. I’m gonna focus on that.’ And that’s what I did. That’s what I spent my life’s work doing—focusing way more on the composition of work. You can always find a million ringers to play whatever you want. There’s tons of guys that can just play anything. And people spend their lives practicing and playing. So it’s like, man, there’s already somebody that can play it. Why do I want to play it? I’m focused on telling everybody what to play (laughs). I mean, if I could just compose music, get people to play it. That’s like my dream. And so I’m moving heavily in that direction.

PAN M 360: Composing. Like with doing the score for I Like Movies. So you want to do more of that?

MURRAY A. LIGHTBURN: I do, I do because I find that it’s the biggest part of me in the pie chart of me. It’s the biggest part. Being a performer is not something that I really ever liked (laughs). I’ve never had the desire to be like in the spotlight in that way. I do appreciate being recognized for my work, and not being completely ignored for my work, but only as it pertains to being included in consideration for other work. I don’t want to be excluded.

Montreal’s LaF will release Chrome, their second album on Disques 7ième Ciel, next Friday.

Since the release of their last EP Soin Entreprise in 2020, the three rappers of the collective have been blossoming their flow and their pen by taking the solo road. Jamaz started the ball with Les Ennuis (2020), followed by Bkay with Midi-Pile (2022) and Mantisse with Colin-Maillard (2022). This time, they come back to the charge with the most assertive and diversified bouquet of sounds of their career.

As usual, Montreal producer Bnjmn.lloyd is omnipresent, setting the table with complex and atmospheric sounds. LaF called on other artists to create this project: Blaise Borboën-Léonard plays violin, rapper SeinsSucrer has a blast on Le Champ des possibles and Pops & Poolboy from Clay and Friends as well as Hologramme gave a hand to the production. Also, the winning band of the Francouvertes 2022, Rau Ze, joins LaF on Blue Cheez, one of the best tracks of the album.Chrome is a project with a rather dark visual and sonic identity.

In the album’s first track, the three men lay down some very busy, heavily UK Garage-inspired instrusions. LaF’s frantic pace in sounds such as Terrain Supérieur and Pièges echoes the rocky pace of life of the three musketeers of keb rap over the past few years. However, there is a glimmer of hope throughout the project, demonstrating the personal journey the three emcees have taken.

LaF produira son nouvel album sur scène pour la première fois au MTELUS, le 14 avril prochain.  

PAN M 360: How did the creation process of Chrome take place?

LAF : At the early beginning of the pandemic, we had the idea to go solo. In parallel, we started the creation of Chrome in July 2020. We rented a cottage for two weeks and brought our entire studio to compose there. That’s how we usually operate for albums. We weren’t quite sure where we were headed, but as time went on we accumulated demos and the project came to life. All of our other projects have been created over a period of about a year, usually. For Chrome, it took us almost three years. It was important for us to let ourselves breathe, and it shows in the album, in the lyrics and in the production. We did several sessions at the cottage and refined our songs in Montreal. The two collaborations were done in the last year. We think that this project is a true mirror of ourselves. It is the result of many hours of questioning and introspection. It’s an album that is heavy with meaning for us. It’s pretty intense to say, “Okay, we’ve finished the project for real.” The last few months have been super rock’n’roll for us, in a lot of different facets and it feels really good.

PAN M 360: Where did the name Chrome and the visual identity of the project come from?

LAF : When we were on tour, Mantisse came up with the idea of having one color for our album. We all agreed that we wanted to have something very unified and absolute. That’s when we came up with the idea of using chrome and molten metal as an aesthetic. At that point, we were still in the early stages of creation and we got hooked on the concept right away. Then, the more we created, the more we realized that the album was going to be not only visually dark, but also lyrically dark. We still talk about our individual angst and as a band. We’ve gotten older in the last few years and we definitely see life differently. Want, don’t want, it clashes with our former projects which were more luminous. There are still some brighter tracks in the second half of the album, but in general it’s pretty dark. The two music videos that have already been released are in the same vein, but the next one will have more light.

PAN M 360: What is Chrome about?

LAF: Chrome is a bit of a logical extension of the pandemic and our arrival in our mid-twenties. This project reflects a certain awareness that has come to each of us and the changes in our lives. It speaks to the times of indecision and our vision for the future. I think we tightened up around that and it defined a lot. We didn’t necessarily plan for the album to have darker moments and brighter moments, it’s just a reflection of our lives. Basically, it’s a collection of the emotions and processes we’ve gone through over the past few years. The creation of Chrome was a long journey, a kind of pilgrimage.

PAN M 360: The productions of the first right of the project are very rhythmic and very inspired by UK garage. Does that kind of echo your lifestyle over the last few years?

LAF: Yeah, 100%, the last few years have been intense. There was the pandemic which was a time of uncertainty for us and we’ve also done a lot of shows in the last few years. It’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of emotions. It’s true that it’s a bit crazy for the first songs, the beginning of the album is 100% clearly more intense. It’s not necessarily that it’s smoother, but it’s definitely more digestible. But it was intentional, it was the idea to reflect a little bit the chaos that we all went through together and the brightness that follows. There was a moment in the beginning of the album process where we had an interest in terms of production around UK Garage, then up-tempo, drum and bass type productions. After that, we went in many other directions. It’s clear that there was a really intense momentum in the beginning of the production. Those music sessions were super intense and we went through many emotions during the creation. There was a kind of whirlwind in the studio and we became quite invested in the music.

PAN M 360: What did your respective solo adventures bring to your creation as LaF?

LAF: Mostly it gave us a better understanding of ourselves. It gave us a fresh perspective on creation and made it easier to try new things. It clearly gave us more confidence and the desire to take LaF to another level. It was nice to see that we were able to create on our own and know our own capabilities. It gave us some breathing room and it definitely helped us later on.

PAN M 360: How did your Blue Cheez collaboration with Rau Ze come about?

LAF: We have several friends in common with the singer of Rau Ze, Rose Perron, and we followed her closely at the Francouvertes. We’ve been going to the Francos for several years now. We were all very impressed by his performances. We met her at the festival La Noce in Chicoutimi and we spent some time with her. We really got along well with her. During the creation of the album, we had the idea to invite her on the track. We thought she could do really well on the production of Blue Cheez. The creation was super easy with her and her colleague Felix Paul. We are really happy with the result.

PAN M 360: Are there any other solo projects in the pipeline? Do you want to focus on LaF in the future?

LAF: We don’t really know yet, only time will tell! LaF is an artistic collective, but it is first and foremost a group of friends who love to make music together. It’s a bit like a fireplace that never goes out. For sure, solo projects are not over. We’ll always make sure that our solo and LaF careers don’t overlap. We think that our individual projects complement LaF. This collective is our life project, and we will defend it as if it were our first born.

Roy Davis Jr. is a house music legend. American DJ, producer and musician, his career spans over three decades during which he never stopped to innovate and push boundaries, blending elements of soul, funk, and jazz with electronic music to create a unique sound that has earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase. With a career that has seen him collaborate with some of the biggest names in music and perform at top venues around the world, Roy Davis Jr. remains an influential and highly respected figure in the electronic music scene. Cofounder of the renowned label Undaground Therapy Muzik in the 1990’s, he relaunched it in 2018 and has initiated the digitization of the entire back catalog – a very good news for electronic music lovers and one good reason for PAN M 360 to interview him.

PAN M 360: You grew up in Chicago in the 70’s and 80’s. What genres of music did you grow up listening to and how did they influence you in becoming the artist you are today?

Roy Davis Jr. : I grew up on a lot of different music genres coming from a musical family; Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Soul music and Disco, break dance music from NY to Italo Disco to house and Hip Hop. My musical taste has always been hugely varied and although I am a house music producer my music taste has a wide range still today.

PAN M 360: You are one of the architects of Chicago (and worldwide) house music. How would you describe the essence of house music and what can you tell us about the way it is evolving (what changed, what did not change)?

Roy Davis Jr. : Being one of the originators and architects of house music I remember my early days in the basement in the beginning of the 80s making dope tracks with one keyboard, the Roland Juno 106, and a Roland TR 808 drum machine and being thrilled when they reached the dance floor when played by DJ Pierre, Lil Louis and Ron Hardy. Being recognized by those guys at that time made me a superstar in high school. Radio didn’t really come to mind, also we were a lot simpler back then how we created compared to later when things gradually got more and more musical. We started adding more vocals with messages of unity & love in our lyrics and also incorporated instruments like violins, bass guitars, and such. Having said that, the essence of house music was and is still today very raw and keeps the 4×4 kick drum rolling.

PAN M 360: In 1996, you cofounded Undaground Therapy Muzik with Odell Braziel, which had and still has a huge impact on the house music scene thanks to all the classics you’ve released and key artists you’ve collaborated with. Looking back, how would you describe the birth of the project and the road travelled since?

Roy Davis Jr. : Well in the beginning we never knew what would happen to our vision, we however deeply believed in each other on how to get the job done. We both were djs with a mission to own our own destiny with our music, a lot of the songs we put out had its own individual life. The road we choose to travel was one that created our own journey as opposed to aiming for the hit records per se.

PAN M 360: What made you relaunched the label in 2018 and what happened between then and now?

Roy Davis Jr. : A time came when I was traveling too much to focus on my own label and my partner Odell had moved on to became a college professor and therefore we decided to let things rest for a while. So, I took a break from the label and started selling music to other companies like Miles End, Bombay, Nice and Smooth records out of Canada. I also thought it was a good time to make a shift and move to Los Angeles where I was born to reconnect with family on the west coast and I started doing work in L.A. with artist like Terry Dexter, Patti Labelle, Baby Face, Christina Milian and Seal to name a few from that era. Now, blowing life in the label again, I feel like it is a fantastic time to create and put more music out so I’m keeping my eyes open to younger new talents. I’m also very excited as I just started on my next Roy Davis Jr album that will be launched on UTM.

PAN M 360: The full back catalogue is being digitised for the first time, what can you tell us about this process and the reissue of The Men From The Nile “Watch Them Come”?

Roy Davis Jr. : Well, it wasn’t easy trying to dig up a few of these classic pieces and get them re-mastered but I have a good team and friends that helped me pull it all together, and get new remixes done for today’s time.

PAN M 360: 2022-2023 is an important year for you and for electronic music heads since you are coming back on stage to DJ. How does it feel? What is the thing you are most excited about, and maybe the one you are more stressed about regarding this part of your work?

Roy Davis Jr. : Coming back to the stage since our Covid break has been real great vibes from the crowd having sold out shows in America, France and Canada. It feels good to be back out and about, I’m still being picky and careful of how much I’m doing out there with my body having M.S. and making sure I don’t overdo things. I however also see this as an opportunity to be able to create more special moments for my fans.

PAN M 360: Where can we meet you on the road in the next few months? Are there any cities, clubs, festivals already confirmed you can share with us?

Roy Davis Jr. : Well I just finished up Miami Music Week and I will head back on the road April 21st at Djoon in Paris and then on the 22nd in Berlin at OXI for the month of April and the Chicago House Music Festival June 24th, with more to come over the summer. My gigs are posted on my key channels and I can reassure you I have some more heat coming!

Men From The Nile ft Peven Everett ‘Watch Them Come’ with remixes. Released 20th March (vinyl) / 24th March (digital) on Undaground Therapy Muzik. Buy link .

To call Billy Childish (Steven John Hamper) a prolific artist would be an understatement. A painter, writer, poet and musician, the Chatham, Kent native co-founded the Medway Poets literary movement, founded the Stuckist art movement and the Hangman Records label. A fervent defender of amateurism and free expression, the tireless musician, singer and songwriter has (re)defined garage lo-fi punk, under names such as The Pop Rivets, Thee Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats, The Buff Medways, The Chatham Singers, The Spartan Dreggs and Wild Billy Childish & CTMF. Not only does he have one of the longest discographies in the history of music with hundreds of albums and singles, but he is also the author of more than 40 books of poetry and nearly a dozen novels, has made several films and photographs and painted more than 2,500 pictures, often under the name William Hamper. 

In recent years, music has become less important than painting. Hamper makes a living from his paintings, but Wild Billy Childish is never far behind. Having recently recalled his two old accomplices Bruce Brand and Johnny Johnson for the Tribute to Don Craine EP (the late leader of the British R&B band The Downliner Sect) under the name of Thee Headcoats Sect, a short-lived band that also produced the 1999 album Ready Sect Go! Recorded last year at Ranscombe Studios in Rochester, Irregularis (The Great Hiatus) features 12 tracks of pure Headcoats, with perhaps a more pronounced blues and R&B bent.

The trio’s last album dates back to 2000 (I Am The Object Of Your Desire), so a chat with the undisputed king of garage rock and punk was in order. Captured in his home town of Chatham, Billy Childish kindly gave us some of his precious time to answer a few questions (we would have asked him thousands!). A meeting with a larger than life artist.

PAN M 360: You recently got back together as Thee Headcoats Sect to make the Tribute to Don Crane EP. Did that lead to the reformation of Thee Headcoats?

Billy Childish: Essentially. I saw it as a good excuse to do a 45 for Don. And then Johnny, our bass player, would have to come out from Sicily. And since he was coming and the other fellas were keen to do it, I saw it as an opportunity to record an album. Which is a normal thing with me: if we bother getting the canon out and loading it, then we might as well go one step further. So I said to the lads ‘’do you fancy doing an album?’’ and I had a few tunes in mind. They seemed keen. 

PAN M 360: Two birds with one stone then.

Billy Childish: Yeah, essentially, the same thing happened with the Singing Loins. A friend of mine died a year ago he was in the Singing Loins. I recorded their first two albums 30 years ago. They’re a folk group, and we did a folk variations of an album of mine. And then Chris Broderick died last year, and I said to the two lads, ‘’why don’t we do a 45 for Chris?’’. And we did it. And I said, my usual trick, I said ‘’well, we’re recording the 45, might as well do an LP!’’ (laughs)

PAN M 360 : So there weren’t any rehearsals? you just spontaneously jammed around?

Billy Childish: Johnny came over on the Friday, we met in the studio, I showed them the tunes… It’s actually how we record most of the stuff these days cuz we don’t really rehearse. I often work out a tune and then show the other two and we do a run through and then press record. And you know, first, second, third take. and we go to the next one and the next one and the next one. 

PAN M 360: It’s kind of a trademark; since your first albums, you seem to favor a simple and spontaneous approach to recording. 

Billy Childish: That came about because in the Pop Rivets, where I was the singer in 77, I knew nothing about music or how to record it, and I still don’t know much of the technicalities of it. But I go by the sound I like, and we were told what we could and couldn’t do. And things were not sounding as exciting as the records we heard when we were kids. I was brought up on rock and roll music, 60s music, and I couldn’t work out why it sounded worse. So we did have an old ReVox… well, we still got it, we use it sometimes, it’s a ReVox half track, early 60s tape recorder, and we used to record ourselves on that and found out that recording things very simply and straight sounded a lot more exciting and a little bit more like the records that we liked, with a bit more performance involved. So then, by trial and error, we managed to translate that into recording into a studio as well. And even in a digital studio, we’ve been able to get enough good equipment between us and the digital recording to make it sound like real music as far as we’re concerned.

PAN M 360: You have always claimed a more authentic approach to rock and roll with a more raw and direct sound and concerts in small, human-sized venues. 

Billy Childish: Yeah, well, it’s a funny thing because I’ve been accused of being lo-fi. But music is incredibly snobby in that way. If you consider that a rough charcoal sketch could be in the highest Museum but a cassette recording of a tune couldn’t be on Top of the Pops… it’s very strange. It’s like a very strange snobbery this idea about what raw is, or what they call lo-fi. And I don’t try to sound lo-fii. I’m not interested, strangely. I mean, even when we were in the Milkshakes, people talked about garage music, and we always referred to it as rock and roll essentially. And one of the things I liked about the Clash, very early on with their first album, was that they referred to it as rock and roll. There’s a strand of punk rock that came through, which may be with Joe Strummer, slightly with the Damned and the (Johnny) Moped, which came from a rock and roll background. A lot of the other stuff in punk rock, which I was unaware of at the time, came through the glam channel, which I’d call pantomime dame rock and roll. And I hated glam music when I was a kid. I actually used to listen to Buddy Holly and people like that during the early 70s, whereas my friends were listening to David Bowie. So to call it raw, it’s sort of a fair enough description, but it’s got this sort of pejorative thing to it, you know. It’s a bit like talking about indigenous art, or primitive art. It’s trying to put something into a ghetto to make it less viable in a way. I mean, it’s okay for people like us to like, for a better word, to like the rawness of it. But the thing is, it’s not really the point. It’s like, trying to categorize it into a subdivision. Whereas really, I would think it should be, in a way, the mainstream. For me, it’s like, do you want to see the Rolling Stones at Wembley, or do you want to see them at the Eel Pie Island in 1963? And the idea that the sound that the Stones had in 63, or the Downliners had in 63-64, is somehow inferior to high fidelity now, but the things you hear on stage through these mixing desks is absolutely diabolical and tinny, and it’s got all this horrible top end all this horrible bottom end. I mean, the Jimi Hendrix Experience wouldn’t even be able to play now. Because they wouldn’t be able to use feedback, the sound isn’t in the control of the group. It’s like some sort of homogenized sound. We just played in Berlin, and we still use a vocal PA. And we don’t go for off stage mixing. The reason we don’t do it is because you have all this bass end that you get through these massive PA’s and all this weird high top end… You know all this boom and bottom, and then all of this weird scratchy top end. And then the drum sound completely inauthentic. Whereas we go for how a jazz drum sound like. If you listen to classical stations, which still record jazz groups, some of them still have the drum kit sound like a drum kit. I mean, regardless of what the music’s like… So really all we want is the drum kit to sound like a drum kit, a Selmer amplifier, a Vox amplifier that sound like a Vox amplifier. And the vocal to sound like it’s going through a PA, which is part of the the suite if you like, of what music is meant to sound like. I mean, you’ve got all this snobbery about people wanting to use a Vox amplifier but they don’t want to use the drum kit that goes with it, or the PA that goes with it… It’s a bit like having a Georgian house with plastic windows in it. I will tell you that the amount of times I talked about sound and music on interviews in the past, and how uninterested anybody is in it is quite incredible, because they believe that the technology is advancing continually. We’re in a situation now where we’re at the height of digital technology, but people try to masquerad it as old technology. You know, can it sound like a tape? can it emulate a tape record, and valve audio equipment, everything’s trying to pretend to be valve, when all of that plus stuff was put in a skip.

PAN M 360: Do you apply this method, or philosophy, to your other projects? For instance when you paint?

Billy Childish: Yeah, because I don’t like plastic. I like oil. We use charcoal and use linen, like the finish. There’s a quality and integrity in material. And a you know, it’s a bit like having a whole grain bread rather than a Mother’s Pride,  something that’s actually made of wheat. You know, or meat that comes from an animal that lives in the sun and grass, and not in a barn and injected with all sorts of stuff, you know, or a good example would be like an apple that you picked from your garden, which might have a worm in it, and might be irregular, but tastes twice as good as the factory farm apple. I think people are so used to a modernized lifestyle that they react very badly to what they think is dirty or unclean. I think it’s all part of that modern world, to have this sort of like germ free adolescents, to quote X-Ray Specs.

PAN M 360: Getting back to the new album, would you say it’s maybe one of your more bluesy or more rhythm and blues record yet with Thee Headcoats?

Billy Childish: With Thee Headcoats? Mmmm… Well, possibly it’s a little bit more that, in the sense that there might be slightly more blues and R&B encapsulated on one record. But we certainly did a lot of bluesy or R&B stuff over the 15 or so albums, I don’t know how many albums we made… But you could make probably a few R&B albums out of what we did. If you’ve put those pieces together, you can make a couple of punk rock albums out of what we did, and a couple of maybe rock and roll albums out of what we did too. But as far as it goes on one album, it’s feasible, without me knowing because I don’t know what we’ve recorded, It’s a bit more R&B. But we did do a blues group called the Chatham Singers, which is obviously a lot more bluesy.

PAN M 360: And you have a great version of ‘’Cops and Robbers’’ also on the album…

Billy Childish: Yeah, I was unaware of the doo wop version of it when we recorded it. I wish I’d listened to that sort of early 50s version before, which is a quite strange version. I thought it was by Bo Diddley. It’s really quite good and it rhymes right away. It makes sense when you hear it. Bruce found it and he sent it to me after we recorded. It’s quite interesting. Well, it’s like ‘’Have Love Will Travel’’, it is originaly a doowop song, isn’t it? You know the version the Sonics do? The original to that was sort of a doowop number. Ba bum ba bum ba bum ba ba ba ba ba bum…

PAN M 360: Tell us about the closing song ‘’The Kids Are All Square’’. Usually it’s the kids who accuse the adults of being squares. Now, its more and more the other way around it seems.

Billy Childish: Well, you know, we did an album called The Kids Are All Square with Thee Headcoats many years ago and I often thought ‘Oh, well, I need to write a song about that.’ So I think I wrote it about four years ago, or five, maybe 10 years ago… But the album was probably 20 years ago. But the reason we did The Kids Are All Square album in the first place was because I always thought about “The Kids Are Alright” by the Who. I thought it was a very patronizing title. So we were already well aware, 25 years ago, or 20 years ago, that the kids were square. Because, you know, no one wanted to know what we were doing or what we’ve done. We were so outside the mainstream of culture with what we were doing and what we believed in. And I just updated the lyrics a little bit for this version. I think we’ve got Billy… is it Ilish? Billy Eilish? Billy Eilish, or she’s called, I don’t know… she’s got some name a bit like mine. And then Beyonce I think has an appearance on the song, in the lyrics. Yeah, we’ve mentioned these style icons, Billy Eilish, she’s some sort of girl with blue hair. Beyonce, some sort of lady with a large buttock.

PAN M 360: Where Bruce and Johnny hard to convince to get back with Thee Headcoats?

Billy Childish: I never bother convincing anybody, you know? It was like a suggestion. And if they’d have not been interested, I’ve got other things to do.

PAN M 360: So does that mean it’s an official reunion of Thee Headcoats? Should we expect more albums? Or maybe shows?

Billy Childish: I don’t know. The difficulty is John living in Sicily. And I don’t really like reunions much. But it would be possible if it was good fun. I mean, we’ve been asked to go to Japan. But although we’re sort of like respected, don’t forget, I still don’t have a manager. We don’t have management or agents. So no one looks after our corner. I mean, Thee Headcoats album is recorded because I paid for it to be recorded. You know, and no one else asks me to do things. I mean, when I said to Damaged Goods I’m doing an album, they said ‘’great, we’d love to have that’’ and they gave me an advance to cover the costs of two or three days work, And then giving Johnny some airfare and we get a bit of spare. But it’s like, we don’t have a machine behind us, or a management or an agent. Even when we’re in Berlin, with CTMF, my current group, we’re playing a little bit, we like playing small venues. We like using local PAs. And we like nobody telling us what to do or how to do it. And it actually makes it much more awkward using the equipment we do. And also people would prefer it if we use modern equipment, which is the big irony. So we’re sort of like doing something that no one else does. And also, when you do it, the way we do it, you’re much more exposed. And you can’t hear what’s going on so well, the holes are more apparent, the mistakes are more apparent. So you’re laying yourself open for a lot of problems using the gear we use. But for me, the whole thing is the sound and the feeling. And if it can’t be the sound and the feeling I want. I’m happy to stay indoors and have a cup of tea instead.

PAN M 360: You have to find a venue that will fit your standards.

Billy Childish: And also someone who will lend us the gear if we’re going abroad. Yeah, we’re playing with CTMF in Reno, or near Reno, in Nevada in July. We’re doing one show in the States. People who are fans got a Vocal Master PA, we use a real drum kit, and we use use amplifiers, so that we can have the sound that we like. I mean, we’ve just been asked to go to Serbia, but who’s got the crap we use in Serbia? Or what promoter understands what we do? They don’t understand, because everyone would prefer if we’d play a big venue with the modern equipment. Even in the Milkshakes people said to us, in the early 80’s in Germany, ‘’if you use the big boxes, people would like you’’. Because we used to take a vocal PA with us and do it the way we want it. But for us, it’s the homegrown. It’s a small corner shop, not the supermarket. And it’s the analog sound, it’s the way we want it.

PAN M 360: It would be great to have you guys in Montreal. I think you’ve played only once, many years ago.

Billy Childish: We did that with two amplifiers, I think, because you can get that sound there. We flew over, we did it as a weekend. We flew one day, did the gig the next night and flew home the next day. Julie (his wife and partner in many projects) found it a bit intense.

PAN M 360: Is it going to be the same thing with the Reno show? 

Billy Childish: Julie is American and we’re gonna visit the family and California. So we’re gonna be out there. It’s actually a family holiday. Because I haven’t been there for a long time. And then someone roped us into doing a show in the middle of it, which I agreed to.

PAN M 360: You do a lot of stuff. You’re a musician, you’re a poet, you’re a writer, you’re a painter… What are you working on right now?Billy Childish: I published a novel in secret, like in chapters, last year. And that was part of a double novel that I’ve been writing for 12 years. So I’m writing this novel on the punk rock period, which I work on every day. I’ve done about 32 drafts of that over the last 12 years. And then I started a quarterly magazine, small press poetry. People just subscribe. I’ve got an exhibition opening in England in July with my English gallery. There’s a couple of other things but I can’t remember… I’m working on a couple of films of some of the concerts we did recently… What else do I do? I do quite a lot of things. I’m writing and painting, doing the poetry. There’s some other things I do, but I can’t remember. I’m working with about three or four different groups at the moment as well. And the painting takes quite a lot of my time, it is my main job, being a painter. There’s an art fair in Hong Kong, I mean, at the minute. And then there can be Art Basel, which is another big art fair, which is coming up as well. But I’m not signed to any art galleries either. You know, we just did a big show in New York.

PAN M 360: And what are these four other groups? 

Billy Childish: The Chatham Singers, which is the blues group, the Singing Loins, which is the folk group, the William Loveday Intention, which is sort of like another strange group, the Guy Hamper trio, which is with James Taylor, which is like an Hammond organ instrumental group, CTMF, Thee Headcoats, which we’ve just done… I think that’s it. 

PAN M 360: Well, that’s quite prolific. Thank you for your time!

Billy Childish: It’s a pleasure. Oh, and if someone’s got a vocal PA and the right gear in Montreal, we might consider coming over!

(Photo: Alison Wonderland)

The singer-songwriter, Maude Audet, unveiled her fifth album, We must leave now, last Friday.

After a short stint in English with Translations (2021), the Quebecer offers a new project of eleven luminous and poetic titles. As usual, she draws much of her inspiration from the 1960s and 1970s, an era she dearly cherishes. This time, Maude Audet adds her voice to orchestral arrangements that she has jointly concocted with Mathieu Charbonneau (Avec pas d’casque, and Organ Mood).

Mostly created during the pandemic, We must leave now is the result of many questions and the artist’s personal journey. The texts are neat, simple and release both the pain and hope experienced by Maude Audet in recent years. The project ends with “I’m so afraid,” a collaboration with Mara Tremblay. With gentleness and sensitivity, this title addresses the fear of women in the face of feminicides and represents a highlight of the album.

Photo Credit: Fred Gervais

Maude Audet will bring her fifth opus to the Gesù stage on April 20.

PAN M 360: What is your album about You have to leave now ?

MAUDE AUDET: The themes I address in this project are both personal and universal. It’s a bit my way of composing starting from something of myself. The first few times I started writing about personal matters, I touched people more. At the end of the day, we all experience a bit the same things, even if we are all different. We all have heartaches, bereavements and difficult times. Of course, from one album to another, it’s always a challenge to renew yourself and not repeat the same things. It’s an album that started to be composed during the pandemic. We have all been through things, we have all found ourselves, at times, isolated, more than we would have liked. There are habits that we realized that we didn’t want to keep for the future. I have questioned myself a lot during the pandemic about the person I want to be and my future. These questions are at the heart of this record, that’s for sure.

PAN M 360: How did your creation go during the pandemic?

MAUDE AUDET: Not being able to go to the studio for part of the pandemic kind of allowed me to polish my tracks more, and that’s good. So when I arrived in the studio, I had even bigger ideas than usual. I worked a lot with the orchestration for this album, and it was really nice to finally be in the studio and create with real humans. It went really well.

PAN M 360: Tell me about your musical influences and your attachment to the 1960s & 1970s?

MAUDE AUDET: I love those years. I like the folk side of this era. I also like a panoply of contemporary artists who are also inspired by that era, like Lana Del Rey, Weyes Blood, Father John Misty. I draw a lot of inspiration from that, but I find that my music is still 2023 because I incorporate current elements into it. It is sure that it remains very organic music, I find that it makes my music timeless. I’m also a ’90s teenager, so there’s a rawer side to the way I compose. It probably comes from my grunge influences, even if my music is not in this musical style at all.

PAN M 360: You mentioned artists like Lana Del Rey who are in this musical genre and who have had their share of success. What is the place of this type of music today?

MAUDE AUDET: I’m most likely a bad judge, but I love that kind of music. Take Lana Del Rey for example, she has millions of listeners, she is extremely prolific too, she makes almost an album a year and her fans are always there waiting. She is an artist who really reinvents herself a lot, then who also draws on something very urban, despite the fact that she is inspired by the 1960s & 1970s. In this type of music, there is comfort and I think we will always need it. I’m not saying that other genres don’t bring it, on the contrary, there are rap or hip-hop artists who have extraordinary texts. I find that there are really good things happening in all genres at the moment, you just have to choose your niche and choose what you like.

PAN M 360: Your new title “On ne se dire plus que je t’aime” particularly appealed to me on your new album. How was this song born?

MAUDE AUDET: When I composed it, I had mourning in mind, but in the end, it’s more about the memory of someone with whom we shared things in the past and their absence. There are several ways to interpret this title, it could speak of a heartbreak or of someone who is no longer present in our life, but whom we loved very much. Also, it talks a lot about the forest, about nature. The older I get, the more I am soothed by the grandeur of nature and it has become a bit of a refuge for me in difficult times. That’s why I tackle this theme in “On ne se sera plus que je t’aime.” 

PAN M 360: For the first time, you ensure the co-production of one of your projects. What does your creative process look like?

MAUDE AUDET: I’ve always been very involved in the production, and I was even more so for this album. Often my compositions start with the guitar. Then I add backing vocals and other instruments. I develop my own models and my colleague Mathieu Charbonneau helps me bring my ideas to life. I am surrounded by several excellent musicians.

PAN M 360: We must leave now ends with “I’m so afraid,” a collaboration with Mara Tremblay. What is the story behind this title?   

MAUDE AUDET: “I’m so scared,” it’s a song about feminicides. At one point during the pandemic, it felt like there were two a week. Every time I saw such an event on the news, I said to myself that it didn’t make sense that there were women who still suffered from this violence. This is what inspired me for the creation of this title. Initially, this song was not supposed to be a duet. One day I had the idea that this song could become a mini-choir of women supporting each other. I thought of Mara because she is one of my favorite artists in Quebec. Also, the themes of my song resemble certain ideas that Mara Tremblay has approached in the past. She agreed to join me and I was really happy. I had already met her in the past, and I took a chance by asking her.

On March 17th, after releasing two EPs in the last year, Anna Valsk released her first album Morphologies, for which she has been the songwriter, the performer and the producer. Her project takes us on a spacious musical journey, exploring the changing seasons and their effects. The songs take us through an entire cycle of seasons, from winter to fall, with a concert of folk, electro and experimental sounds. To learn more about this album, which reveals a passionate approach and work, PAN M 360 spoke with Ariane Vaillancourt aka Anna Valsk.

PAN M 360: Is Morphologies a project that comes from afar? When did the idea come to you?

Anna Valsk: I would say that in total it took about 3 years. I had a vague image of the project for a long time, and it took a while for that image to define itself and show its direction. When I got the idea of the cycle of seasons and the cycle in general, I could really get into the production.

PAN M 360: And this idea of the cycle, did it come suddenly or was it already there?

Anna Valsk: Before the pandemic, my partner and I went to live in a small house in the Lanaudière area. There, it seems that the seasons are more intense. Personally, I’ve known for a long time that the changing seasons affect me. They affect everyone, but collectively we find it normal. So I wanted to observe the effects of these changes on myself and on what I feel around me. We can also talk about the cycle of the seasons of a life, which change through the decades. In short, it’s a great source of inspiration… an infinite source (laughs).

PAN M 360: The theme of water is very present in your album. Were you near a stream, a lake?

Anna Valsk: Yes, in Lanaudière, I was in the woods, but also by the water! Water is something that has always fascinated me. The concept of hydrotherapy, the idea that water can be regenerative. For example, I love cold baths, and I can’t wait for the lakes to start thawing before I go for my first swim. Cold water is good for the body and the mind.

PAN M 360: In terms of sound, too, water can be a kind of white noise. Many people fall asleep to the sounds of rain, river, waterfall.

Anna Valsk : Yes. Precisely, in “Wash your soul”, I say “And you, you dream to the sound of water”. Springtime is the sound of water coming back. It’s very reassuring… I’m passionate about water! (laughs)

PAN M 360: Your lyrics on the album seem to be very worked out, and the structures of the songs too. Did the lyrics come before the music?

Anna Valsk: I always (or mostly) start with the music. But often, in the music, there are words that stand out. It has to flow. The words have to come with the music. For me, when the music of a song becomes clearer, it means that the theme of the song becomes clearer. What I have to say, I do it musically, and then I support it with words.

PAN M 360: Making an album about the seasons and how they make us feel is about affect. Did this side transpose itself in your approach? Did you approach the music through theory or rather through its qualitative properties?

Anna Valsk : I think so. If I have to write an arrangement, I really see it as a texture or a color. For example, for the song “Jamais”, I had an image in my head of a humid, orange summer morning, where the sun is coming through a window and there are two people lying in a bed, and you can feel their skin beading. When I was composing the music, I wanted to make you feel like you were in that place. So yes, I work a lot with textures, colors and sensations.

PAN M 360: You took charge of the production of your album. Did you have to change your attitude towards your creations when you went from being a singer-songwriter to being a producer?

Anna Valsk: It wavered. Sometimes I felt more like a director, other times I felt more like a songwriter. It’s hard to have some perspective on your own music, your own voice, your own interpretation. At first, it was Pierre Girard, who mixed the album, who encouraged me to do it myself. I had the direction, I had the vision, so I went for it. But that brought its own challenges. It gets hard to delineate come to mind questions like “Is this the songwriter or the director talking?” At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same person, and I think that comes through.

PAN M 360: Was there any other music that guided you during the creation of the album?

Anna Valsk: For sure, all the music I listen to is in me. I think my influences are also pretty clear: I’ve always loved the imaginary and musical world of Patrick Watson. What I like about his albums is the cohesion from start to finish, like taking a long walk. I wanted my album to be listened to a bit like that, from beginning to end like an adventure, a story. I also listen to a lot of classical music, because I like the textures of the instruments. I love electro when it’s mixed with the real thing, it becomes like a character. Otherwise, the last album of Chloé Lacasse had a big effect on me. I also like “Le ciel est au plancher” by Louis-Jean Cormier. It’s an album with a lot of space, and that was something I wanted from the start for my album; I wanted to let the music breathe and include interesting transitions.

PAN M 360: Do you see your project as a “concept” album? Is it more of a straitjacket or an exercise in creativity for you?

Anna Valsk: I see it more as a frame to be undone. To hold my image, I needed a frame. My frame was my concept. It helped me gather my ideas. Afterwards, I hope that people, when they listen to the album, don’t think only about the “concept”, don’t try too much to intellectualize the thing. It’s more a pretext for me, a guideline, a mantra.

PAN M 360: Thank you Anna!

Under the name of his electro-pop project, Super Plage, the Rimouski resident Jules Henry unveils this Friday his fourth opus, Magic at midnight.

Since the creation of Super Plage towards the end of 2019, the artist has not stopped creating: he already has three albums and a remix compilation to his credit. Quickly, he carved out a place for himself on the Montreal scene with a refreshing and dancing sound. Under the Lisbon Lux Records label, Jules Henry also participated in the 2021 edition of the Francouvertes competition.

Greatly inspired by artists such as Polo & Pan and L’Impératrice, the project reveals itself as a portrait of Montreal nightlife. Magic at Midnight represents those evenings where everything seems fine and of which we would never like to see the end. In this opus composed of ten titles, Super Plage affixes more often than usual its vaporous voice to its own productions, and we are not complaining about it! His texts are simple, effective and add more lightness to his sounds. Also, Jules Henry calls on the artists Virginie B, Meggie Lennon and Le Couleur who breathe an additional dose of sweetness into his art.

The Midnight Magic launch will take place at Ausgang Plaza on April 13th.

Photo credit: Marie-Michèle Bouchard

PAN M 360: How did the development of Magie à midnight go? What does your album say?

SUPER PLAGE: It must have been almost two years since I started creating Magie àmidi and I finished it about six months ago. It’s the first album that I started knowing that it was going to be produced by a record company. Despite everything, it’s a project that I did by myself, with all my friends. I started the whole thing when we couldn’t always get out of our house towards the end of the pandemic. I wanted to create a picture of Montreal’s nightlife and the festivals I’ve experienced in recent years. For example, “Rue Dandurand,” the collaboration with Le Couleur, talks about the incredible parties we had at our studio on the street of the same name. It’s a project that has a good vibe. I want people to listen to this in the afternoon at the park or in the bars. My music is simple, I’m not someone tormented in life, I won’t pretend to be to make music that doesn’t sound like me.

PAN M 360: Exactly, let’s talk about the artists who appear on the project. Who are they and what do they bring?

SUPER PLAGE: The artists Virginie B, Meggie Lennon and Le Couleur are present on the album. For me, it’s really exciting the stage where they come to add stuff to my demos and I hear my models differently for the first time. This is often where I understand what the vibe of my tracks is and whether I like them or not. Almost all my friends are my co-directors. My friends and I, we show each other our demos and we’re like “oh yeah, I’ll change the bass on that part” or “I think this part is a little too long.” I really learned a lot by producing with people around me. This process is never-ending and my songs are always improving thanks to the ideas of others. If I had to redo Magic at midnight, it would surely be very different. I don’t think I’ll ever release the album I want to release on the day it comes out, if you know what I mean. I always release the album that I wanted to do a few months ago. Telling me that motivates me to continue producing, to see how far I can go.

PAN M 360: What tools did you use to create your album? Do you have a favorite plugin ?

SUPER PLAGE: I work in Pro Tools. There are not many people who like it to produce in Pro Tools, they find that MIDI is not beautiful. Me, I really like it and I’ve been creating in it for a long time. In the past, I had a great teacher who spent five hours after class showing his projects to interested students. I thought the workflow was really good with Pro Tool. For the creation of Magic at midnight,we incorporated theremin and pedal steel. The album is really a happy mix of stuff, with a few instruments here and there that make it more organic. My synthesizers are all Omnisphere or Serum. Then my favorite plug-in, I think, is the Brauer Motion. It passes the sounds from right to left with a different pattern . It makes everything more alive, and I love it. I think the key is the movements in my music. That’s what makes your shoulders start to move. I like doing that kind of music because it’s so reactive. It shows directly on the dance floor if a song is good or not.

PAN M 360: In your universe, what importance do you give to writing and lyrics?

SUPER PLAGE: I still attach a lot of importance to the lyrics. Personally, I don’t put a lot of lyrics and I find that some artists put too many words in their songs. I really like the phrase of the group Bon Enfant which says “A place in pastel colors where everyone laughs at my jokes. ” I find that it demonstrates a beautiful fragility and naivety, without going through a lot of lame metaphors. This is the kind of writing that inspires me. I like it to be minimalist, while giving great importance to each of the words. I don’t wear any that I don’t like. Besides, I sing more than usual on this album. It’s probably because Midnight Magic is more personal.

PAN M 360: What is your piece “Laurence” about ?

SUPER PLAGE: My manager’s name is Laurence and she is retiring very soon. She has been with me for three years and we are good friends. The last few years have not always been easy for her, but she has always been there for my project. She has always been very motivated towards Super Plage and I am very grateful for that. I created this track last summer when she was feeling down. “Laurence” is both a song to celebrate, but also a professional farewell to my friend and manager.  

PAN M 360: What is your vision of the future of the electro scene in Quebec?

SUPER PLAGE: It’s interesting because we really live in a bubble where this musical genre is not super popular. I found it funny at the last Gala de l’ADISQ ceremony, it talked about electronics as being a marginal and endangered category. In Quebec, I know a panoply of electronic producers who are excellent and who are not listed with ADISQ. This scene is much more alive than a lot of people think. I believe that Quebec is a little slow to embark on the wave of electro that has already started for a very long time in Europe. That said, L’Impératrice had a solid success here and it proves that Quebec loves this kind of music. 

In the future, I think the next musical direction is going to be house-pop. Recently I saw a documentary about the golden years of britpop from 1993 to 1997. At some point, everything stopped and this musical style ceased to be on top. While I was listening to this, I thought to myself “is it going to be the same for electro-pop? Do we have to plan for it, do we have to leave the ship before it sinks?” I don’t think it will happen, but you never know.

French-based in Montreal, KORVN is a committed emerging techno DJ and producer, as evidenced by his multiple collaborations with the Montreal techno activist label MFC Records. After a first participation in the compilation Strangers In their Own World (2021) whose objective was to raise awareness of civil rights and homelessness, KORVN reveals the extent of its talent with a first EP, Tidal Waves, which reminds us of the climate emergency we face. All proceeds will be donated to the David Suzuki Foundation of Canada.

Techno music has often been associated with activism, particularly in its ability to bring together diverse communities and promote progressive ideas. The roots of techno music go back to the black countercultures of the 1980s, carried by artists’ collectives like Underground Resistance (Detroit), defining themselves as “A movement that wants change through a sonic revolution” (our translation, excerpt from their manifesto ).

Although it has become globalized and commercialized (sometimes excessively), techno music has remained a means for artists to convey political and social messages relating to the fight against discrimination, the promotion of equality and opposition. to oppression. Techno music festivals such as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and Berlin’s Love Parade have also served as platforms for peaceful protests and advocacy for minority rights.

Today, techno music continues to inspire activism, and vice versa. She is a source of inspiration for young and old generations of committed DJs and producers who seek to promote social change and justice. KORVN is one of them.

Photo credit: Flore Boubila

PAN M 360: You have already collaborated on the first MFC Records compilation in 2021, so you have a history with this label. Can you tell us more about this?

KORVN: I can’t not mention MFC without mentioning my friendship with Camille Bernard alias BitterCaress who is the mother of MFC Records. We met five years ago when I joined the OCTOV collective to organize events, and for which I am now a resident DJ. We’ve always had a bit of the same musical interests, we got into music at the same time, it inspires me a lot and one thing leading to another, after participating in the label’s first VA, playing for the podcast Mixing For A Cause, she gave me the chance to do my own project, my first EP.

PAN M 360: With your EP Tidal Waves, you decided to raise awareness of the climate emergency, why?

KORVN: It’s a subject that takes up space but is also sometimes difficult to put forward because there are so many other serious things going on. There, it is sure that we are going through difficult times, we cannot deny the other socio-political issues in the world with the war in Ukraine for example. However, I think that global warming is a problem that is just as global and that will necessarily generate other situations of instability because of climate refugees, resource problems, loss of biodiversity and for these reasons it is important to continue to express oneself on this subject. It’s also close to my heart personally, because I’m part of a generation that has a lot of eco-anxiety and that asks itself a lot of questions about the future, pessimisticly.

PAN M 360: How does this thought translate conceptually into the EP?

KORVN: I thought about the EP songs with this vision on the environment. The EP is called Tidal Waves which refers to the rising waters we are already facing. The environment is not just biodiversity, it’s also the people who will be uprooted from their culture, who will have to leave their environment, as is the case for example in Panama. “I’m Dying” is yet another call from the planet which is quite equivocal. “Second Skin” is the idea that the planet is a living organism that will eventually recover, even if we no longer exist to see it, so it’s a bit of a revival.

PAN M 360: You have chosen to donate the profits to the David Suzuki Foundation, can you tell me more?

KORVN: There are many foundations and organizations working for the environmental cause. I would say that it is not that it is better than the others but first of all, it is a Canadian foundation. I found it important to be close to what is happening a little more locally. I also like their vision, they are based on the idea of ​​empowering people to do things on their scale, it’s an interesting approach.

PAN M 360: On a daily basis, how are you committed to the fight against global warming?

KORVN: I eat less and less meat and I pay attention as much as possible to the origin of the products I consume, even if it is not easy because it is expensive. I bring my gourd as much as possible with me. These are small gestures. As a DJ, I participate in the eco-rider initiative launched by Bye Bye Plastic which aims to promote the accountability of event organizers, for example to limit single-use plastics. In my rider , through my requests, I can encourage good practices. And above all, I talk about it around me, I make it a subject of discussion.

PAN M 360: Can you introduce us to the artists with whom you collaborate on this EP?

KORVN: I’m really happy to have been able to collaborate with Lucas so URUBU, Aisha and Lifka, they are all artists that are close to my heart. URUBU is an artist and a producer whom I respect enormously and with whom it is really a pleasure to collaborate. We’ve worked together before and the track on the EP comes from a draft track we did for our first collaboration, it’s been there for a long time. Lifka is a German artist that I greatly appreciate. What I find cool is it’s not exactly the same style of techno, but I’m a very eclectic person, even in my DJ sets and suddenly I’m quite happy that he wanted to reclaim his this track and take it completely elsewhere. And Aisha that I discovered during my creative process and that I haven’t stopped following ever since. She’s a rising artist whose slightly psychic touch I love. It’s one of the things that have always made me trip, I had discovered a little electronic music with the teufs in France and the shrink was part of the evenings that I rubbed shoulders with. These sounds have always appealed to me and I’m very happy that it’s on the EP, even if I hadn’t anticipated it.

MORE INFO ON EP LAUNCH EVENT – April 21, 2023 at Newspeak. $1 per ticket will be donated to the David Suzuki Foundation.

BUY THE EP . All proceeds from MFC004 music sales will go to the David Suzuki Foundation.

The Ensemble ArtChoral (formerly the Ensemble vocal Art-Québec) is currently undertaking the ambitious project of tracing the history of choral singing from the 16th to the 19th century. This historical journey, which began at the beginning of the pandemic, will unfold in 11 discs recorded by ATMA Classique, as well as several concerts and video recordings. The project will take place over three years.

After the release of volume 7, devoted to Christmas carols, the ArtChoral Ensemble is now offering volume 3, entitled Baroque II. This one is dedicated to the late baroque, and therefore contains pieces composed from the second half of the 18th century. On this album, well-known composers and discoveries are mixed together.

PAN M 360 spoke with Matthias Maute, conductor of the ArtChoral Ensemble, who is behind this great project. We wanted to know more about the proposed listening path, the particularities of this album, as well as its inclusion in the overall project.

PAN M 360: How did this great project to trace the history of choral singing come about?

Matthias Maute: This project was born during the pandemic. We were able to find funding to do concerts and create this great project of records that will last for three years.

PAN M 360: The ArtChoral Ensemble did a lot for the music community during the pandemic. Can you tell us more about this?

Matthias Maute: Our project does not stop with the recording of 11 discs. ArtChoral is also working to create partnerships with other choirs to organize tours with the singers. Choristers are the lowest paid people in our music business. During the pandemic, there was a lot of work that went unpaid. We also want to honor the great choral tradition we have here in Quebec. The ArtChoral Ensemble has a history of over thirty years, and I am very happy to be able to lead this ensemble and to be able to present this project.

PAN M 360: How did you choose the pieces that appear on the album?

Matthias Maute: As far as the repertoire is concerned, it’s very easy to fall into the German repertoire. Especially in Germany you find repertoire for singers, it was very anchored in the culture of the time. Composers wrote for a cappella choir.

PAN M 360: So the theme that would unite all the pieces on Baroque II would be German a cappella music?

Matthias Maute: The treasures of the a cappella repertoire of the second half of the 18th century are to be found in the Germanic tradition, so it was a great pleasure for me to draw on this repertoire.

PAN M 360: Some of the composers on the album are lesser known and few of their works have come down to us. Was there a process of reconstitution necessary? How did you choose the repertoire for the album?

Matthias Maute: There is no real need to reconstruct. It’s surprising how vast the sung repertoire is in the Germanic regions. So I started my research with the Bach family, since Johann Sebastian Bach is in himself very important for the choral art, especially with his motets. Bach was like a sun, with many composers working around him. Homilius, some of whose motets are on the disc, is very little known. He was a student of Bach.

PAN M 360: What is the listening path proposed by the album?

Matthias Maute: All the pieces are religious, in the Lutheran tradition, with the exception of the piece by Lotti. The first motet begins in darkness and chaos. So on the album we have a kind of story, that is to say, at the beginning there is the depression, and at the end you have the illustration of the soul that finally tears itself away from the body and rises to the top. Through work and effort, one manages to detach oneself. There is this wonder, this light that allows us to reflect on the problems of our life. This journey from the bottom to the top is represented in the musical language of each piece and throughout the album.

PAN M 360: The ArtChoral Ensemble’s project also includes a video part. Why did you make this choice?

Matthias Maute: Indeed, the videos are the other part of the production. There are several reasons for this. We realized that less and less people have CD players and that less records are being bought than before. Also, since the pandemic, life was very much on the computer. To reach people globally, through the computer, proved to be a good avenue for us. We produced videos of our concerts for the global community to see. And, in general, it is a good tool to promote our project. So everyone can see and hear our work.

PAN M 360: In this context, what would be the difference between preparing for a record and preparing for a concert?

Matthias Maute: For me, there is not really a difference in the preparation. There is a difference in the way you organize the program. For a record, you always have a hook at the beginning. There are also all the technical requirements, everything has to be perfect at the same time and you can go back and listen to the pieces again. During the concerts, you have to keep a strong moment at the end. For the group, for the choir, it is also very different in concert, since there is communication with the public, the sound and the hall.

PAN M 360: And finally, what is next for the ArtChoral Ensemble?

Matthias Maute: We have already recorded a lot! We have two more albums to do, which will be recorded in the fall of 2023.

The albums of the ArtChoral Ensemble are recorded by ATMA Classique. Two of the 11 discs tracing the history of choral music since the 16th century are already available: volume 7, devoted to Christmas, and recently volume 3, Baroque II.

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