Interviews

For eight years now, Exposé Noir has been a steady undercurrent in Montrealʼs underground scene, quietly shaping spaces where music, visuals, and community coalesce. We talked with M, one of the two core organizers of the project, to talk about its beginnings, their curatorial approach, and how theyʼve navigated the shifting tides of the local electronic music landscape.

PAN M 360: Exposé Noir has been part of Montreal’s underground for nearly a decade. Could you take us back to its beginnings? What was this part that pushed you to create and what kind of space were you dreaming of back then? So, take us back to the beginning. What was the spark and what kind of space were we trying to create?

M : So the project basically began in 2017. It was not my brainchild, but the one of my co-organizer, who came up with this concept that was very much inspired by the underground culture in Europe that he wasnʼt necessarily seeing here in Montreal, where it takes electronic music but infuses different layers of visual art and design for a more intentionally curated experience. From A to Z, from when you arrive to what the space is to what kind of artists youʼre booking. So, yeah, I would say it was kind of born from that, like, “okay, hereʼs something that we donʼt necessarily have on a large scale that could be cool to import.ˮ

We were introduced to each other by chance. He didnʼt have any organization experience but had a vision of what he wanted to do, and after coming to a loft party I had organized, got in touch, asked me if I like techno. I love techno. So we didnʼt know each other at all, but we started meeting, and we kind of got really lucky for our first event. The stars aligned.

Through a mutual connection, we got access to the Darling Foundry, which is actually pretty hard to book, and we got a DJ who is now not necessarily our style but at the time was more underground, Amelie Lens. She is now one of the biggest names in techno music, so we got her just at the right time when she had a lot of hype but wasnʼt yet unaffordable or too commercial. Things came together nicely, and it was definitely a big mess, but ultimately we pulled through, and we thought: “okay, thatʼs cool. Whatʼs next?ˮ. So since then, opportunities aligned, and we kept it going, defining our approach in the process.

PAN M 360: This is very elaborate, thank you. And it follows perfectly with the second question: Over the years, how have you witnessed the techno and experimental electronic music scene in Montreal evolve? So like you were talking with that DJ, that initially was interesting and then maybe you were looking for something else. Has Exposé Noir always grown alongside, or sometimes against these changes?

M: I definitely think itʼs 100% alongside. I would have to think hard to find ways in which we’ve gone against the changes. I would say we’ve been a part of them. At the beginning we were newbies, but now we’re part of a kind of wave of organizers. In my head I’m still this new organizer, but then people start coming to me for advice, like promoters that are 10 years younger than you, and you realize youʼre an old one now. It really happens without you noticing. I’ve seen the scene here evolving in a lot of really positive ways – I would say pretty much only positive. Thereʼs maybe some ways in which it’s gotten worse, but thatʼs more universal, for example, the influence of social media and the big tech companies on how we consume information and what information is consumed, and how that shapes culture in certain ways.

I’ve seen the scene professionalized in a lot of really positive ways, not in the sense that itʼs gotten more commercial, but in the sense that things like safety and information sharing between organizers has changed dramatically. There used to be a lot of gatekeeping, and people would get away with doing all sorts of things. Whereas now thereʼs a lot more transparency, thereʼs a lot more cooperation. I work all the time with other organizers that do disco parties and bass music parties, stuff thatʼs completely different. But we all know that we’re working towards the same goal. So Iʼve seen it take a really positive direction. Obviously, there are always ways to improve, but the trend for me has been positive.

PAN M 360: Exposé Noir lineups have always struck a delicate balance between local and international acts. How do you approach curation, and what kinds of conversations do you hope to open between these different communities?

M: Yeah, itʼs a great question. I mean, I think one maybe more critical perspective of our events that is sometimes raised, which I think has validity to it, is the fact that weʼre very oriented towards international artists. Most of our parties are at least half or majority local, but sometimes they end up being more international, like this one. My perspective though is that itʼs not always just about quantity, itʼs also about giving a really high-quality platform to artists. Thatʼs a big thing of what weʼre trying to do. Weʼre not just going to book our friends all the time, weʼre gonna try to find the perfect opportunity to book someone in a way that weʼre really excited about. So rather than it just being another gig, weʼre trying to make the best possible platform for artists to meet and play with other amazing artists from all around the world. We often see people citing our parties as one of their achievements on their profile, and that helps them maybe get other gigs.

PAN M 360: This upcoming four days feels like both an expansion and a culmination. What inspired you to take this bold step now, with the Belvedere experience, even though youʼve done it before? And how does this event reflect where you and Exposé Noir are at today?

M: We have a really amazing team! Some people are more central and some people are more indirectly involved—but at the core, itʼs just two people. We kind of have a dynamic where one of us will be the unrealistic dreamer, and the other one will be like: “Okay, no, letʼs come down to reality.ˮ Itʼs often a push and pull, and we take turns.

This time it was my partner who was going crazy, and there was the Wire festival in New York that was bringing in a lot of amazing artists to the region. So it just kept piling up, and then thereʼs a thing where when you get a certain number of artists on board, other artists will see that and go, “oh, I want to play at that party.ˮ It quickly became this runaway train where it was originally just going to be a weekend, then it was three days, and then we added the Monday. At first it was a dream, and then we thought: “okay, we dug ourselves into this hole. How do we dig ourselves out?ˮ

PAN M 360: Representation, diversity, and safer spaces have always been part of your DNA. Beyond the buzzwords, how do you personally navigate these questions when building spaces that are truly welcoming and transformative?

M: I think itʼs a really good question because these concepts can be a double-edged sword in the way that they can be tokenized. You can see this happening in certain organizations, like Pride for example. Theyʼve become this big establishment in Montreal, and even though their mandate is supposedly diversity, theyʼre bullying smaller groups of people within these communities. Weʼre happy because when you look at the data of our bookings, a huge percentage are gender minorities or racial minorities, like a majority. But thatʼs never at the front end of our goals. What I think is most important is to really shine a light on the contributions of these different communities. We look at the amazing contributions that Black arts in a certain region have done or that queer artist from another place and giving them the space on the platform.

We also want our life not to be boring too. You see more dated promoters—itʼll just be like six white guys with the same haircut and wearing black T-shirts, like I am right now. So we need to be self-aware that weʼre not always experts on everything. And when youʼre open to all the cool shit thatʼs going on, like the crazy Mamba Negra parties happening in Brazil or the Mjunta shit theyʼre doing in Berlin—just being aware of amazing shit happening is gonna inspire you as a programmer and make your life a lot easier.

PAN M 360: The spaces youʼve been in—like the raw industrial souls of the Belvedere —always feel deeply tied to the experience you craft. How do you see the relationship between the physical environment, the sound, and the collective energy of the crowd?

M: I personally have always viewed the space as one of the main headliners. In fiction, thereʼs an interesting perspective where you can look at inanimate objects or things like the wind or a place as a character. And I find that really interesting— to think of space as almost having its own agency. You can think of it almost as another artist on your lineup. Itʼs something that attracts people, but itʼs also something that frames your work. Like when we use new venues, which we often are looking to do, then itʼs a whole new puzzle. It forces us to rethink the flow of things. But take an existing venue like the science center here, and itʼs like, “okay, weʼve done it a few times already. How do we take it to the next level?ˮ Thereʼs always new challenges and opportunities with each space, and obviously, we take the visual aspect very seriously, so we put a huge effort into finding new venues. Itʼs a lot more time-consuming than one might think.

PAN M 360: Beyond the dance floor, Exposé Noir has become a kind of gathering point for a wider community of artists, activists, and dreamers. How do you see your role, not just as an organizer, but as a cultural worker supporting local ecosystems and voices?

M: Itʼs definitely something important to keep in mind. A festival like this—thereʼs at least 50 or 60 people on the payroll and a good core of like 30 people working for us every month. Weʼve become like an employer in a way, which is kind of crazy, so thatʼs cool in terms of, I think thatʼs something thatʼs often overlooked. So thereʼs a really cool economic thing happening where people might have trouble getting a 9-to-5 but have amazing skills to contribute.

In terms of the culture, honestly, I have no idea, because there is a kind of deliberately aloof approach. Itʼs really not about trying to make you a certain way or promote a certain look. I love that I walk into my parties and I see people of all walks of life. You know, I see young, crusty artists, I see people in their 60s having a great time, I see young professionals letting loose. I think the broader culture thatʼs really cool—that we are honored to be a part of—is night culture and how it provides a really amazing space for people to be themselves more, or at least explore other parts of themselves. So if we can provide that kind of space successfully, then I would say thatʼs the thing that Iʼm very grateful to do.

PAN M 360: Running an independent, community-rooted project for this long is no small feat. Weʼre all aware of this. What have been the hardest lessons or moments of doubt youʼve faced over the years, and what keeps you going?

M: Thereʼs definitely a lot of challenges, and weʼre constantly joking or seriously talking about hanging up our gloves or whatever you say. This will be our last year in full operation, and what 2026 holds, I donʼt know. Weʼre not closing the door, but certainly, the health and financial aspects have been hard. Itʼs hard on your relationships. For an event like this, not only am I here for four days, Iʼm here weeks before working nonstop, and not every friendship or romantic relationship is compatible with that. Weʼre lucky to have partners that are, but that wasnʼt always the case. So thereʼs a personal cost, and even financially, people see a huge event and they assume weʼre rolling in it, but the reality is weʼre scraping by. On the positive side, weʼre trying to make our events also for ourselves and for our staff—healthier spaces where wellness is at the center. Planning things better, offering nice quality espresso and fruits in order to take care of ourselves and our team more. But ultimately, itʼs not sustainable forever.

At a certain point, itʼs like we had our run, and it will leave room for others. You leave a vacuum, and you let other people fill it. I remember you were mentioning the day parties also, which is something that is an option, especially as we get older. Day parties are great, and it fits into a broader view of night culture that I fully support. I think we should make a different word for nightlife that includes day parties since theyʼre part of the same culture. I would love it if from Friday to Monday morning, you can go out at any time and the parties are gonna be great. You can go sober, you can sleep, you can stay up all night. Thatʼs what I would love to see.

PAN M 360: Past editions have also opened up to art installations. Like in the previous edition in the Belvedere. What conversations do you hope to spark by weaving together music, visual art, and new technologies within the same space?

M: I donʼt know how much we go into new technology. I would say weʼre almost a bit old-school in our approach. Everything we do could have been done in the 90s. Weʼre definitely not that original or maybe not even that innovative in a way. Some things are just timeless. For example, we almost never use visual projections. Thatʼs just our personal tastes. Unless thereʼs a really specific installation—for example, when we did our three-day event last year, we had a photo exhibition by Sven Marquardt. Then there was a live set from MMSI with visuals by Deograph on butcher curtains, and that was in a way innovative. But usually, weʼre working with a bunch of fog machines and a bunch of lights that we build internally and design internally. Itʼs just things that work, things that you can do yourself and create this elaborate and impressive effect with minimal costs.

That kind of multidisciplinary aspect has always been important to us from the beginning. As I was saying, weʼve done a really amazing runway show with a young designer, Jesse Colucci, who runs Process Visual, with the Festival International du Film sur lʼArt, and with Cinema Erotica. It was really fun to first of all, create something really unexpected for people that they donʼt often see in electronic music events. Weʼre lucky that we have this discipline of throwing events that people are going to come to regardless, because itʼs the party, itʼs whatʼs going on. People go out. They donʼt necessarily have that privilege in the worlds of film and visual art. Itʼs hard to get more than 100 people in the gallery. So weʼre able to take these people and expose them to really cool vintage black and-white photography or a trippy-ass experimental movie. Of course, when we do these things, I have a certain nervousness. Is it going to make sense? Is it going to work? Youʼre taking a leap of faith, but if you find really talented people, you can just trust them—theyʼre gonna get the assignment, and theyʼre gonna do it right.

PAN M 360: Looking ahead, whether or not this is a turning point for Exposé Noir, what are the questions, dreams, challenges that still drive you? Are there new territories you feel like you want to explore?

M: Definitely, weʼre always trying to switch it up to not get bored of the project, so we’re always challenging ourselves. Thereʼs a certain Sisyphean element to that where our team is getting better and weʼre getting more experienced, but the event itself is getting more complex. Itʼs this treadmill thatʼs always getting faster. We never want to be the people that just do the same thing with a party over and over. We want to make our last year as special as we can so that hopefully by the end of it, weʼll have created strong memories and feelings that will be carried on into the future.

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Le violoniste Sergey et la pianiste Lusine Khachatryan, frère et sœur, mènent chacun carrières de soliste à l’échelle internationale et se retrouvent sporadiquement en duo pour y interpréter des œuvres du grand répertoire et intégrer à leurs programmes des œuvres arméniennes modernes ou contemporaines. Issus d’une famille de musiciens d’Erevan où ils sont nés, Sergey et Lusine tiennent immanquablement à faire découvrir et savourer les œuvres des meilleurs compositeurs de leur nation, il sera question cette fois d’Arno Babajanian (1921-1983), qui fut aussi un pianiste de très haut niveau.

Rappelons au demeurant que Sergey Khachatryan a remporté le Premier Prix du VIIIe Concours international Jean Sibelius à Helsinki en 2000, et le Grand Prix du Concours Reine Elisabeth à Bruxelles en 2005.Quant à Lusine Khachatryan, elle est lauréate du Concours International de Piano à « Città di Ostra» (Italie 2023).Inutile de souligner que toustes deux se sont produit.e.s sur les plus grandes scènes d’Europe, d’Asie et d’Amérique.

Avant leur passage attendu du tandem à Montréal, soit ce dimanche à la Salle Pierre-Mercure dans un programme mis de l’avant par Pro Musica, Lusine Khachatryan répond aux questions d’Alain Brunet pour PAN M 360.

PAN M 360: Vous avez choisi d’interpréter une œuvre d’Arno Babadjanian. Vous avez également enregistré des œuvres de Komitas, d’Eduard Bagdasarian, d’Aram Khatchaturyan et d’autres encore, j’imagine. Pourquoi celle-ci, en ce dimanche à Montréal ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Nous avons décidé de créer un programme composé de deux sonates de Beethoven et deux sonates du 20ème siècle. La Sonate pour violon et piano d´Arno Babadjanian est une fantastique sonate, pour nous est une des meilleures sonates du 20ème siècle. Les compositions de ces trois génies sont influencées par leur origines, mais finalement toutes ces œuvres d´art deviennent universelles à travers le langage musical. Langage qui défie toute frontière.

PAN M 360 : Y a-t-il un danger pour vos carrières respectives si votre réputation est exclusivement liée à votre identité arménienne ? Cherchez-vous un équilibre entre l’Arménien qui est en vous et votre capacité à interpréter l’ensemble du répertoire ?

Lusine Khachatryan: En effet nous sommes arméniens, cela fait partie de notre identité. Mais en tant qu’artistes, le langage musical est notre façon de communiquer avec le monde et c’est un langage qui est universel.

PAN M 360: On peut aussi deviner qu’il existe une grande et solide tradition d’interprétation et de haute virtuosité du côté arménien, comme Sergei Babayan (classique) ou Tigran Hamasyan (jazz). Une source d’inspiration ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Oui, c’est vrai. Il a beaucoup de merveilleux musiciens et artistes arméniens. On pourrait en nommer indéfiniment. Personnellement, je m’inspire énormément des compositeurs et aussi d’autres formats comme le théâtre et la peinture par exemple. C’est ainsi que mon projet de piano – théâtre est né. En m’inspirant pour créer quelque chose de nouveau, pas seulement musicalement mais aussi visuellement. 

PAN M 360: Retournez-vous régulièrement à Erevan ? Quelle est, selon vous, l’ambiance après les récentes souffrances du peuple arménien dans le Haut-Karabagh (Artsakh) ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Nous voyageons en Arménie tous les ans, pour rendre visite à notre famille, à nos amis et pour jouer en concert. Cette année, nous aurons l’occasion de jouer, même deux fois, en tant que solistes. Après la perte d’Artsakh, l’ambiance en Arménie était profondément triste. Nous sommes toujours très inquiets des attaques constantes de la part de l’Azerbaïdjan à la République d’Arménie. Ce qui est également inquiétant, c’est la propagande qui continue à s’exercer contre les Arméniens : l’idée de l’Azerbaïdjan de l’ouest, le déni de l’identité arménienne, la propagande dans les écoles. Tout cela est extrêmement inquiétant. La relation entre l’Azerbaïdjan et la Turquie, pays qui jusqu’à aujourd’hui continue de nier le génocide arménien. Il y a beaucoup de chemin à faire vers la paix, et pour l’instant, la situation n’est pas très prometteuse. 

PAN M 360 : Quelle importance accordez-vous à votre travail en duo par rapport à vos carrières en solo ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Travailler en duo avec mon frère a ouvert beaucoup d’horizons pour moi, musicalement et personnellement. C’est une collaboration d’une grande valeur pour moi. Un espace familier où je me sens en sécurité, libre et très appréciée. Il règne entre nous une ambiance non compétitive, nous évoluons dans une zone qui n’est pas minée par l’ambition individuelle. Nos personnalités sont très différentes mais nos valeurs musicales sont très similaires, d’où le rôle et l’influence musicale de nos parents.

Artistiquement parlant, la musique est toujours notre première priorité. Ni notre carrière, ni notre persona. C’est toujours la musique qui doit prendre la parole, qui doit être la protagoniste. Bien sûr, cette mentalité, cette manière d’aborder la musique et l’interprétation a un côté positif mais comporte aussi beaucoup d’inconvénients dans le monde actuel. Un monde tellement concentré sur l’individualisme.

M 360: Quels ont été vos professeurs les plus influents ? Les plus grands interprètes de piano et de violon ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Notre première et principale influence ont été nos parents. Tous les deux sont musiciens, pianistes formidables. Par après nous avons beaucoup appris de nos professeurs au conservatoire: professeur Sontraud Speidel et professeur Dr. Saule Tatubaeva dans mon cas. Sergey a étudié avec plusieurs professeurs mais le professeur qui a vraiment marqué son apprentissage en tant que violoniste est Josef Rissin. 

PAN M 360: Avez-vous des compositeurs ou des œuvres préférés dans le répertoire classique ou contemporain ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Je suis devenue pianiste grâce à Chopin. Je considérais mon âme sœur dans le monde musical. Maintenant mes préférences et mon goût musical ont un peu changé. Je m’intéresse beaucoup et je suis très inspirée par les impressionnistes et la musique du 20 et du 21e siècle. Les compositeurs contemporains sont aussi très intéressants. L’année dernière, par exemple, j’ai joué la première à Paris d’une œuvre composée par Sona Talian In A-Mur. Pouvoir travailler avec elle et participer à la naissance et à la création de cette pièce m’a beaucoup inspirée.

PAN M 360: Comment avez-vous mis en place le programme de Montréal ?

Lusine Khachatryan: Nous voulions présenter deux époques contrastantes, deux ambiances. La première sonate de Beethoven et la sonate de Debussy ont plus en commun que la Sonate n.4 de Beethoven par exemple. La quatrième sonate de Beethoven est pleine de désespoir, d’inquiétude et de turbulence. Elle peut être comparable à la sonate de Babadjanian qui transmet un certain esprit tragique et combattant. 

La première sonate de Beethoven et la sonate de Debussy par contre se caractérisent par une certaine légèreté et insouciance. Elles se caractérisent toutes les deux par cet élément flottant, presque céleste. Debussy a composé la sonate juste avant sa mort, et elle transmet loin du tragique un sentiment presque de joie. Peut-être l’anticipation de la séparation du monde physique et matériel. 

Si notre programme devait être un tableau, ce serait un tableau de Vermeer pour moi. Avec des motifs plus obscurs, les ombres et puis des couleurs pleines de lumière qui éblouit le regard.

PROGRAMME

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, Sonate pour violon et piano No. 1 en ré majeur, op.12

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, Sonate pour violon et piano No. 4 en la mineur, op.23

-ENTRACTE-

CLAUDE DEBUSSY, Sonate pour violon et piano en sol mineur

ARNO BABADJANIAN, Sonate pour violon et piano en si bémol mineur

Durée : 90 minutes avec entracte

I don’t know if you have a prefabricated image in your head when you hear the word “organist”, but if you do, it probably doesn’t match the physical look of Montrealer Maria Gajraj. The young Ottawa-born lady with Trinidadian roots, in her twenties, slim and ultra-smiling, stands out in the usual professional corpus of artists who master the ‘King of instruments’. Maria is preparing to release her debut album, Exhale (aptly titled in the case of the organ), on which she offers a journey between soaring bliss and bewitching repetitive minimalism, guided by contemporary compositions from female and non-binary composers. In other words, a musical UFO that gently (and usefully) overturns the a-priori of organ music.

The repertoire features young up-and-comer composers such as George Rahi, Hania Rani and Esther-Ruth Teel, as well as a sure thing, Ann Southam, whose excerpt from her piano masterpiece Glass Houses, here transposed to the pipes, is very convincing.

READ MY REVIEW OF THE ALBUM EXHALE

In her interview with me, Maria Gajraj revealed that this album and its repertoire represented a turning point in her musical life, a kind of rediscovery of the pleasure of the instrument after a period of emptiness.

this music reminded me why i first fell in love with the organ

But she hadn’t been at it for very long! Since the age of 19. Only 19? A bit late, isn’t it? Yes and no. Let me recap her story.

Maria grew up in a family of Trinidadian origin in the Ottawa region. She learned to play the piano for several years. The ultra-competitive side of the discipline didn’t appeal to her, so she set her sights on a career in engineering. Then a chance offer gave her the opportunity to try her hand at the organ in an Ottawa church. She hadn’t mastered all the details of the pedals, valves and cranks of the great Gargantua engine, but she could play music, and a keyboard! So she took the plunge, and one day when, she says, the sun was shining through the magnificent stained-glass windows, she felt so good that she decided this was what she wanted to do for a living! No surprise there; that’s often how it goes with musical instruments.

She ends up at McGill, but goes through a moment of uncertainty. ‘’I love the music of the great composers’’, says she, but there’s something missing, an intimate connection that isn’t there. ‘’I don’t recognize myself in the life narrative of these white men from another time.’’ Again, not a qualitative criticism, but a sense of cultural proximity that means the experience is not 100% authentic for the young woman.

Comes McGill’s Chabe Castillo who invites her to record something on the Wolff organ in Redpath Hall, a beautiful instrument in the French classical style. He asks her what she wants to play. And so it goes, the names keep coming up and lead to Exhale, which is based on her personal musical loves and values : favouring female composers, non-binary artists and non-European composers. On that last note, she is currently in the final stages of a doctorate on the Caribbean organ repertoire, a whole area that remains largely unknown.

One composer who particularly fascinates her is Edward Margetson, from St Kitts, who emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became part of the Harlem Renaissance movement! Although this repertoire is hard to find and especially hard to listen to, Maria would love to record a few pearls in the near future.

But I ask her which “traditional” (white, European) composer touches her more than others? ‘’Just one? Messiaen! Such fantastic colours and rhythms!’’ Maria is certainly not detached from the European world of music, as last January she took over the co-direction of the early music ensemble Comtessa here in Montreal, in which she handles the organetto, a portable medieval version of the big brother of churches. She says she has a great love of the music of the Middle Ages.

If you look up her name in a search engine, you’re also likely to see it associated with the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Secours in Old Montreal, where she is currently the organist, and perhaps also with Sapphonix Collective, a project she is running with her friend Esther-Ruth Teel, which is an unusual proposal for events presenting music (two organs!) in combination with other arts (visual, performance, tattooing, etc.).

For all these reasons, for the breath of fresh air that she brings to the ordinary practice and listening of the organ as a musical instrument, and for the inclusive values that never limit the fundamental quality of the aesthetic experiences on offer, Maria Gajraj is a name you should remember, because it is likely to resonate more and more on the Montreal scene (and eventually in Canada, North America and beyond), and above all to enrich substantially the already plethoric musical ambiance of our cultural metropolis.

Not all the repertoires of Quebec’s late French-speaking chanson stars are familiar to the generations that followed them. We know Félix Leclerc, Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Sylvain Lelièvre, Gerry Boulet, Dédé Fortin and Karl Tremblay, but do we really know their repertoires? It’s even less obvious for Lawrence Lepage or Georges Dor. Here’s a program that deserves a few explanations from its creator, author, composer, performer and circus performer Louis-Dominique Lévesque, who has been leading a group of musicians since 2009, regularly presenting a program of songs by deceased artists. Que je me souvienne aims to pass on Quebec’s songwriting legacy, and can best be described as a memory show. Alain Brunet interviewed him ahead of his concert, scheduled for Saturday May 31 at Place des Arts’ Salle Claude-Léveillée.

Publicité panam

Érick D’Orion is an extreme artist who takes his work very seriously, without taking himself too seriously. Contagious absurdist humor! An iconoclast of noise, electro, free improvisation and other electroshocks, he is also a sound curator, a related profession he has practiced with openness and enthusiasm for many years at FIMAV. His contribution has become essential, so much so that even a scaled-down version of the festival can’t leave out what he’s responsible for: the outdoor sound installation trail, FIMAV’s most important cultural mediation operation for the Bois-Francs population. That’s why this work deserves to be highlighted, and why PAN M 360 is posting this interview with Alain Brunet.

PAN M 360: What other sound installation projects have inspired you since you began curating FIMAV?

Érick D’Orion: Although our background is fairly unique in the music festival world, I was inspired by certain events and festivals where I’ve had the opportunity to present my installation work as well as concerts, mainly in contexts specializing in audio and electronic art. The City Sonic festival in Belgium, which I attended three times, is probably the most significant inspiration. In fact, for 2026 or 2027, I’m in the process of hosting the work of a French artist whose career I’ve been following since my first participation in this festival.It’s also worth mentioning that we presented two works by the Scenocosme duo in 2019, artists who I also met during one of my visits to City Sonic. Closer to home, Mois Multi has also been a great influence, as I discovered sound installations at the very first edition of this festival in Quebec City.

PAN M 360: As a sound artist (you’re playing with FIRE! next week), how do you situate your work?

Érick D’Orion: My work veers towards a radical approach to sound, to the listening experience. I try to express a dynamic energy, and I’d like people to find the spirit of free jazz in what I do. Basically, it’s free jazz: emotion, expression, joy and a certain form of spirituality outside the esoteric!

PAN M 360: How has this concept progressed at FIMAV over the years? Exactly how many years? Has the budget increased over time?

Érick D’Orion: This is my fifteenth program out of 16 editions. The first year, I presented 3 works, including one of my own. Later, I was invited to take on the curatorial role and presented 4 works. The project developed over the years, and the mediation aspect became extremely important, with over 40 school visits a year for the past 6 years. As the budget has grown, I’m now able to program around ten works with the appropriate means to properly accommodate the artists.

PAN M 360: How does the selection process work?

Érick D’Orion: I receive around thirty submissions spontaneously every year. I prefer to avoid putting out calls for submissions, because I don’t like the idea of having artists work needlessly on projects designed expressly for our festival, which may not be selected in the end, simply because the competition is too strong. In fact, I try to avoid the logic of competition at all costs.

I prefer a grassroots approach: I travel, I visit exhibitions, and when I’m away on business in other cities, I take the time to see what’s going on in artist-run centers. I also talk to my friends in the art community, because yes, I do like to collaborate with people I know – not exclusively, but it happens a lot. After all, it’s a role based on mutual trust.

PAN M 360: Can you briefly describe the works and their creators selected this year? (the longest answer!)

Érick D’Orion: This year, as fate would have it, we’re giving pride of place to artists in the early stages of their careers, many of whom are still at university!

For example, Léa Boudreau – artist and composer, winner of an Opus Prize last year – and Simon Chioini, both in the final stages of their master’s degrees at the Université de Montréal, present us with a site-specific work on the acoustic space of a venue. The same goes for Quebec City trio MMV2005, made up of graduates of the Master’s program in visual arts at Université Laval, who will be presenting us with a performative, evolving installation, deployed throughout the week – a living work in constant transformation.

Max Boutin has just completed a doctorate in art studies and practice at UQAM. His installation explores the world of skateboarding, between urban culture and the poetry of gesture. And finally, Giuseppe Masia, also completing his master’s degree at UQAM (his jury will be visiting his work during the week!), works with sound by making homemade record players and tampering with vinyl records – artisanal, raw, inventive work.

So much for the “school theme”.

Pascale Leblanc Lavigne, who made her mark in 2022 with two memorable works, also returns. This time, she returns with a large-scale installation, evoking snowfall in a certain poetic chaos. Quebec City-based trio Théâtre Rude Ingénierie presents two mechanical works with a strong theatrical dimension.
And to top it all off, we have a visit from a major artist in the field of audio art: the Frenchman Félix Blume. Thanks to a partnership with the Avatar artist-run center in Quebec City, we’ll be presenting two works by the artist, including a world premiere, developed during his residency in April.

PAN M 360: Is there a local/international ratio in the choice of works?

Érick D’Orion: There’s no set ratio, just a desire to have as many new works as possible in the region.

PAN M 360: Do you look for coherence between the works when you select them? How do you construct the itinerary?

Érick D’Orion: I’m probably a very bad curator – an impostor among my colleagues! Curatorial practice is normally based on prior reflection: the curator develops a line of thought, then selects works in line with this logic, weaving a common thread that goes beyond a simple theme.

Me, I work on instinct. I let myself be guided by encounters, impulses and intuitions. Chance imposes itself, and, without being voluntary, a meaning emerges. The subject establishes itself, almost by stealth. The water always finds its way, so to speak.

But that’s just between us!

PAN M 360: Haha! free jazz curating of a sort. And what are the production criteria for works that have to withstand the elements?

Érick D’Orion: This was an important consideration, and one that became more and more of a constraint on my selection over time. For some years now, we have been opting for works that can be displayed in containers that we fit out. In addition to protection from the elements, we’re assured of greater security outside exhibition hours, as the containers lock.

PAN M 360: How involved has the local population really been over the years? Were they simply curious, or did they embrace the concept?

Érick D’Orion: It’s a mixture of curiosity and real support for the project.
I’m out in the field for most of the festival, and I recognize faces year after year – people who come to talk to me, to check in, to tell me that the return of the route is always a good sign. (And yet, I don’t even live in Victoriaville!) School groups are also a fine example of this support: children remember the works from previous years, they talk about them, they look forward to them.


Some volunteers even signed up because they discovered the festival along the way – which just goes to show how much this proposal resonates with people.

PAN M 360: Have you ever thought of a permanent open-air museum with the kind of sound installations you see elsewhere?

Érick D’Orion: Museum, no. But a few permanent works in partnership with the city would be a real success.

PAN M 360: How do you envisage these works lasting? Ephemeral? Seasonal? Permanent? Ah, I’ve just unwittingly answered your question!

PAN M 360: What does the future hold for this course in Victo?

Érick D’Orion: I can see it getting bigger. Going to 15 works and making it last 2 weeks is an idea I have, and one that resonates with the team.

PAN M 360: Do you have any other similar projects in the pipeline?

Érick D’Orion: Yes, I’ll be heading up a delegation of Quebec artists for a major event in early 2026 in France. I’ll be programming 6 experimental music solos and 5 installations over the course of a week. I can’t name the event, but I’ll keep PAN M 360 afficionados in the loop. And I’m planning something big in 3 years’ time for an exhibition of travelling sound installations. Stay tuned….!

Publicité panam

Here we are again, spending spring, summer and autumn at Piknic Electronik! Given the immensity of the 5-month program at Parc Jean-Drapeau, Alain Brunet suggested to Mathieu Constance, in charge of programming at Piknic, that we interview him on a monthly basis. The aim will be to identify and comment on his main choices for May, June, July, August, September and October. Let’s start at the beginning: May!

PAN M 360: Let’s start with this weekend’s opening. Just how many? And how do you prepare for such an opening? Infrastructure, reception etc.?

Mathieu Constance: 23rd edition! It’s incredible when you think about it. We’ve been working on this for a while now, pre-prodding and editing, and we can’t wait to welcome festival-goers back to Parc Jean-Drapeau!

PAN M 360: Are you the only one to program the entire season, or how does it work?

Mathieu Constance: Our prog team has 3 members now – and it’s split between local and international prog mostly. But we discuss all the artists we want to present together.

PAN M 360: In terms of programming, can we talk about an angle of attack this year? A favorite genre or sub-genre? A major trend? A recurring theme?

Mathieu Constance: We try not to restrict ourselves too much when we start out. Of course, we want to put forward emerging sounds as much as possible and ensure diversity on all our lineups. This year, we’ve got a lot of first-time Montreal performers on the lineup, and we’re particularly proud of that!

PAN M 360: We’ll come back to this in a little more detail each month, but can you name and briefly present your top 5 catches this year?

Mathieu Constance: I wouldn’t say there are any bests per se, but I’m particularly looking forward to Nico de Andrea’s first headline, the return of Sally C, Bambii, Notion’s closing and… our surprise artist on September 7.

PAN M 360: For the first weekend, you’ve programmed 8 artists on May 18 and 6 on May 19, which is a real kick-off. How did you plan the progression of the two stages?

Mathieu Constance: As far as I’m concerned, this first weekend has been a great success, with a wide range of styles, opening with the melodic house / afro house of STRYV, Chloé and Tommy on the mainstage. On the 2nd stage, Collection Disques Durs presents a line-up with plenty of tempo and energy, leaving something for everyone.

On Monday, we present techno legend Enrico Sangiuliano, with local artist BitterCaress, who needs no introduction at this stage. And Stage 2, presented by Club Sagacité, welcomes Rinse FM resident Arthi.

PAN M 360: Who are the key artists this weekend? Describe and comment on your choice!

Mathieu Constance:

STRYV – composer of Move with Adam Port, which has garnered over 500 million streams, yes 500 MILLION. It’s a track that dictates the summer of 2025, and a first performance in Montreal!

Lobsta B – those of you who were there in 2023 know that it’s going to be fun, high energy and a party on our new 2nd stage.

BitterCaress – Always a highlight, she’ll set the perfect mood for one of techno’s greats.

Arthi – A flavour of UKG, dancehall and more will be another fine debut for a UK artist who’s starting to make a name for herself!

PAN M 360: On May 25, Fred Everything performs a marathon on the Banque National stage! But what else? Where did this idea come from?

Mathieu Constance: Fred is a fixture on the Montreal scene, celebrating his 30th anniversary as a DJ, and the 20th of his label, Lazy Days Recordings. We wanted to mark the occasion with something different and special! A 5-hour marathon set is sure to be full of surprises.

PAN M 360: Another must on the 25th?

Mathieu Constance: Boys Noize delivered an unforgettable performance, that’s for sure. This is his 2nd appearance with us, and an artist we’ve been trying to get back since the second he stepped off the stage in 2022.

PAN M 360: We’ll talk again in the week of the 26th for the month of June! The questionnaire will be shorter then. :))

TICKETS AND INFO

For the last concert of its 2024-2025 season, the Orchestre symphonique de Laval invites the public to an evening of discoveries, with a program essentially made up of German Romantic music, Johannes Brahms’ first symphony and two works that are rarely performed: Robert Schumann’s Genoveva Overture and the Cello Concerto by French composer Marie Jaëll. Under the direction of young conductor Andrei Feher, the OSL will welcome Bryan Cheng, a Canadian cellist who has established himself as one of the most captivating young artists on the classical music scene. Alexandre Villemaire of PAN M 360 spoke with him before the concert to discuss repertoire, interpretation and future projects.

PAN M 360: In this concert with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval, you’ll be performing the Cello Concerto in F major by Marie Jaëll, a French composer from the late 19th century whose work is little known or performed. Was this work a discovery for you, and why?

Bryan Cheng: Yes, it was a real discovery. I didn’t know Marie Jaëll’s cello concerto, or even her music in general, before this project, and I was struck by the great lyrical quality of her voice. It’s also refreshing to play a historic cello concerto by a female composer, as they have been vastly under-represented over the centuries. This is a real hidden gem of the repertoire, with something deeply captivating to offer.

PAN M 360: Tell us a little about this concerto. How is it constructed, and what are the particularities of its interpretation?

Bryan Cheng: The concerto is in three movements and follows a fairly classical structure, but it stands out for its great personality. The first movement has a dramatic intensity, with sweeping outbursts and harmonic surprises. The second is very lyrical, deeply introspective, almost reminiscent of an operatic scene. The last movement is both exuberant and virtuosic. Performing the concerto requires technical finesse as well as real emotional sensitivity. It’s not a demonstration concerto: what’s needed is honesty and a richness of colour.

PAN M 360: The concert program gives pride of place to German music with, in addition to the Concerto, Schumann’s Genoveva Overture and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. How does Jaëll’s musical language complement the other two works on the program?

Bryan Cheng: Jaëll shares with Schumann and Brahms a depth of expression and a solid architecture. In her language, we sense an affinity with the Germanic school, but enriched by a harmonic finesse that evokes French refinement. In a way, she builds a bridge between these two traditions. Her concerto, placed between Schumann and Brahms, allows us to perceive both the common resonances and the singularity of her voice.

PAN M 360: You play a 1696 Stradivarius “Bonjour” cello, on generous loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank. What is your relationship with this instrument?

Bryan Cheng: It’s a great privilege to play this cello. The “Bonjour” has a powerful voice with remarkable subtlety. It has a strong character, but it’s also very responsive – you really feel you’re having a dialogue with a full-fledged musical partner. After seven years of playing with him, a real complicity has developed. This instrument has shaped not only my sound, but also my way of thinking about music.

PAN M 360: Does the nature of the instrument influence the way you interpret works, or the way you approach them?

Bryan Cheng: Yes, absolutely. Each instrument pushes you to rethink certain passages, to explore new colours, new articulations. With the “Bonjour,” I find myself listening more attentively to the inner voices, searching for more supple phrasing and deeper resonance. It’s not an instrument that simply reproduces what’s asked of it: it pushes us to go further.

PAN M 360: You enjoy a prolific career that began at a very young age. Carnegie Hall at 14, debut at the Elbphilharmonie at 20 with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, in addition to several distinctions and nominations, including the Prix Yves Paternot, and two JUNOS nominations. What are the challenges of starting a career when you’re still a teenager or young adult, and what drives you today in pursuing your career and what you want to share with the public?

Bryan Cheng: Starting young can be both exhilarating and demanding. You grow as a person at the same time as you evolve as a musician, and finding a balance isn’t always easy. I’m grateful for the mentors and experiences that have kept me grounded. Today, what motivates me is connection: through music, with audiences, with composers past and present. I want every concert to be a living encounter, a shared moment of discovery.

PAN M 360: What are your next projects?

Bryan Cheng : This year and the season to come promise to be rich in highlights, with several highly anticipated debuts alongside exceptional orchestras and musicians, in some of the world’s most prestigious halls. These include my debut with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Sir András Schiff, at Carnegie Hall with pianist Kirill Gerstein, at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw with Ostrava’s Janaček Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as with Hannover’s NDR Radiophilharmonie and Musikkollegium Winterthur.

In Canada, I’m delighted to be playing with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec for the first time, and to be reunited with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa for the world premiere of a work for cello and orchestra by Canadian composer Samy Moussa.

I’ll also be Musician-in-Residence at Cecilia Concerts in Halifax for the 2025-2026 season, where I’ll be offering three highly varied programs in the company of some of my closest international collaborators.

I’m always keen to develop new projects and collaborations, such as recordings featuring little-played works – like the Jaëll concerto. I’m passionate about continuing to build bridges between the familiar repertoire and that which has yet to be discovered.

crédit photo : Andrej Grilc

Publicité panam

This is his first appearance at the Stéréo Africa Festival, and he’s one of this year’s headliners, known for his frenzied concerts. It’s impossible to stay seated when this multidisciplinary artist takes the stage. Coming from a family of artists, music entered his life early and never left. A guitarist and singer, he handles both perfectly. He’ll be accompanied by a full band of equally talented musicians, some of whom participated in the festival’s Jazz Up evenings a few days earlier. Our journalist Sandra Gasana caught up with him a few hours before his highly anticipated show at the Maison de la Culture Douta Seck.

Videograpy and Photo Credit: Cheikh Oumar Diallo

In 2017, Blair Thomson arranged his first symphonic program with Montreal band Half Moon Run and the OSM. Blair Thomson had already arranged for (among others) Michel Rivard and La Symphonie rapaillée, and the experience with HMR had been more than conclusive, with audiences and critics raving about it. Spring 2025, a second symphonic chapter is written shortly after the release of the Another Woman EP. Blair Thomson has refined the orchestral discourse, even more in tune with the famous pop band. There will be hits, there will be harmonized vocals, there will be Devon Portielje, Conner Molander and Dylan Phillips, and there will be the OSM under the direction of Adam Johnson!

The architect of all this explains its construction with PAN M 360. Alain Brunet interviewed Blair Thomson before he went to the dress rehearsal, preceding the three-day Half Moon Run cycle at the Maison symphonique.

BILLETS ET INFOS

Here’s a Californian band with just enough of a cult following to delight music lovers converging on the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville this weekend.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum sparked interest among musique actuelle fans after a decade or so of silence prior to this revival. 

The band re-emerged with “Of the Last Human Being”, a hybrid album warmly welcomed by its base. The SGM experience involves furious real-time performance, offered by unbridled artists who sing and also play multiple instruments, both consecrated and invented. 

SGM has been described as a catalyst for metal, progressive rock, classical/modern/contemporary music and contagious theatricality! 

Let’s talk to guitarist, flautist and singer Nils Frykdahl, to get us ready for the concert on Saturday May 17 in Victoriaville.

PAN M 360 : Recently Sleepytime Gorilla Museum was back in action after a long hiatus. An album last year, new concerts, new projects… Why did you re-form the collective ?

Nils Frykdahl: The long hiatus was an accident. We were always just about to attend to our unfinished business, but the various exigencies of life…families, elders, children… had led us to opposite coasts and three different regions of Northern California. Finishing the album and the film naturally brought us to our favorite medium of all: the stage.

PAN M 360: Prog, metal, grindcore, funk, jazz, classical contemporary music, art rock… How have the musical genres and sub-genres evolved within this large band ?

Nils Frykdahl: We listen to and enjoy music of all kinds and it all swims through us and emerges differently from song to song, with all of us writing and none of us filtering by genre.

PAN M 360: Let’s be more specific: before integrating them into your language, what forms do you take from metal? From prog? Funk? Jazz? Other influences?

Nils Frykdahl: Certainly the application of the principles of African polyrhythm to heavy music was one of the founding gestures of the band. After being introduced to polyrhythm by CK Ladzepko, for whom it must be felt in the body..”it must come out dancing”, and after feeling the coexistence of 2,3, and 4, it was only natural to try extending the numbers… 5 and 3 living together so merrily in Sleep is Wrong. A contrasting sonic gesture, found in some modern classical, free jazz, and extreme metal, is the overwhelm of rhythm: too fast or chaotic

complex to be truly felt as a pulse or pattern. This then is not rock&roll, but mediation music, primarily for religious purposes.

PAN M 360 : How are you perceived by fans of each of these genres?

Nils Frykdahl: No doubt some see us as monsters or transvestites, but there are open-minded folks in all of these genres ready to celebrate this incredible world with us.

PAN M 360 : Do you primarily reach an audience interested in avant-garde forms of music?

Nils Frykdahl: No. We attract thrill-seekers of all ages, some of them who self-admittedly do not listen to heavy or avant-garde music generally. We are always thrilled to bring unlikely listeners into the beauty of these forms.

PAN M 360 : How do you attract others, if at all?

Nils Frykdahl: It seems that the exclusionary nature of genre boundaries is less restrictive than ever before, with artists and audiences skating freely around the world and centuries. The Big Ears festival in Knoxville Tennessee that hosted us last year being a prime example.

PAN M 360: The writing of your works is precise and rigorous, and so is the execution. Could you describe the creative chain, from composition to recording and public performance?

Nils Frykdahl: The songs initially start with one of us, but are then put through a rehearsal intensive process with each player fashioning their part. This rethinking is never entirely finished, even after recording, as honing in continues during each rehearsal, which we just finished 4 days of here in the old wooden Community Hall in Woods Hole MA. All will be slightly new.

PAN M 360 : Are you adept at hyperactive collage, as Zappa was throughout his career, or Zorn at certain moments?

Nils Frykdahl: No. Our songs maintain a jealous distinctness from each other, often being about entirely disparate things or calling up highly specific emotions.

PAN M 360 : Your interest in text is important. You’re not planning “normal” song forms; text and vocals (or growl) are materials among others. Why integrate text and vocals into this music? What themes or literary approaches are driving them? We know that you were interested in Dadaïsm

Nils Frykdahl: Our interest in Dada is in its catalyst as a positive defiance of the policing of artistic correctness, the separation between artifice and sincerity, meaning and non-sense, theater and authenticity. The interpretation of Dada as nihilism has no interest for me.. too easy. Of course life can be interpreted as meaningless. Open your eyes, salamander.

Most of the songs start with verbal impulses which shape the flow of the music, but sometimes the other way around.

PAN M 360 : You’ve been described as a collective. How do you maintain the cohesion and motivation of such a collective?

Nils Frykdahl: Our mutual enjoyment of each others’ often surprising input is part of what drew us to each other in the first place, so many years ago, wanting to work with folks who we could not second guess. The cohesion is now maintained by the effort of extensive travel, but that in itself is something many of us love.

PAN M 360 : How would you describe the process of creating the works, the compositions, the space reserved for improvisation, the appropriation of the material by the performers and the execution?

Nils Frykdahl: Improvisation is generally only written into the music in fairly small ways, but the inevitable chaos of the live show provides opportunity to see what happens when we are taken by surprise.

PAN M 360 : What are the dynamics of leadership and personal investment within the collective?

Nils Frykdahl: We all contribute according to our inclinations. Some are more likely to make breakfast, some dinner, some sauces.. This includes our crew: John Karr on sound, Wind Beaver on merch, driving and knowing most things, and new for this run Lyndsey on lights (though a late passport may keep her out of Canada, alas).

PAN M 360 : How do we maintain such a company in 2025? On a day-to-day basis?In the medium or long term?

Nils Frykdahl: In fits and starts, and with the aid of new long-distance communication machines.

PAN M 360 : Is this your first concert in Quebec?

Nils Frykdahl: No. We played in Montreal at least once or twice before, and many of us were also there in other projects. In fact, the Greenless Wreath song on “In Glorious Times” was begun and largely written on Mont Royal on a walk there in the shifting wind of a stunning autumn-into-winter day.

PAN M 360 : What are your future plans?

Nils Frykdahl: To raise our voices in songs of praise! At your house!

LINE UP:
Nils Frykdahl – guitar, flute, voice
Carla Kihlstedt – violin, percussion guitar, voice
Michael Mellender – guitar, Tangularium, trumpet, percussion, voice
Dan Rathbun – bass, Sledgehammer Dulcimer, Wiggler, voice
Matthias Bossi – drums, percussion, voice

TICKETS & INFOS

In a phosphorescent haze of a crumbling dream, A Place to Bury Strangers returns to Montreal this week—not as a band, but as a transmission from some rogue frequency where noisy shoegaze dissolves into pure electricity. Their new album, Synthesizer, is a neon-lit séance where analog ghosts wrestle with digital demons in a cathedral of blown-out amplifiers. Each track is a synapse firing backward, a glitch in the fabric of noise that rewires your nervous system into a conduit for their apocalyptic lullabies. Founder of the band, Oliver Ackermann’s guitar howls like a dying satellite and his vocals croon like a petrifed ghost, but now, the synthesizers rise—cybernetic serpents whispering and screaming in binary code.

The physical album cover for A Place to Bury Strangers’ Synthesizer isn’t just an image—it’s a portal, a circuit board disguised as a Rorschach blot, pulsing with latent noise. The album packaging can be turned into an instrument wired directly into the album’s nervous system, a tactile hallucination where the art plays you. This is not hyperbole for dramatic effect. Along with his pedal company, Death By Audio, Ackermann actually laid out the schematic for the synthesizer used on the album, on the front and back of the album gatefold, and with a good knowledge of soldering you too can create this noise machine.

Ahead of their date in Montreal this week, we spoke with Oliver about the new album, destruction and playing every show like it’s his last in the world, and his love for new, sometimes impossible to use sounds.

PAN M 360: You’ve had your pedal company, Death By Audio, basically just as long as you’ve been making music with A Place To Bury Strangers. You use some of these pedals and gear on tour, so has the company always gone hand in hand with the band for you?

Oliver Ackermann: Totally. One of the great things about having this pedal company as well as the band is it’s this focus to find these sounds and these noises all of the time. And that’s what’s so exciting, is searching for these things to discover ‘Oh how can we create these’ and ‘How can we twist the boundaries on these and create this like from the scientific perspective?’ And then from the musical perspective, it’s like you want to create these things to create more music. So it just kind of keeps everything like sort of thrilling. They like kind of feed off of each other. Even the new technologies that are kind of always sort of coming out, you can constantly sort of get excited behind these things and try to experiment. The rate of technology just makes it so wild. Like, if you were to get tired of analog circuits, like even digital programming, it’s just whole other worlds of all of this stuff. I love it.

PAN M 360: Yeah and I mean your band is known as the loudest in New York and and having these intese walls of noise and sound, but have you ever created something and gotten to a point where you’re like, ‘Maybe this is too much noise or ‘This is too crazy?’

Oliver Ackermann: Man, that happens all the time! There are pedals that I won’t use, that we create and we sell at Death By Audio because I’m like, this is just too insane for this part. But it’s also based on like, you know, your own personal preferences. I still can see the value of these things for somebody else and what their music is, you know? And that’s why we kind of created it because you’re like, ‘Oh, this is like really awesome and I think the world should have this,’ but then it also goes in the other hand too. I can create things something like maybe even dangerous or doesn’t really sound that good to other people, but I love it and I can use it. 

PAN M 360: Going off that, this new album, Synthesizer, the actual physical album can be turned into a synthesizer. Can you tell me how the hell you had that idea and how you implemented it?

Oliver Ackermann: I think it was around 10 years ago. I was looking at circuit boards and just thinking, ‘Man, these are so beautiful,’ like just as art. So I was like, this needs to be an album cover sometime. I didn’t even have the idea of turning it into something you could build then. And then, we’ve been building all of these synthesizers for ourselves to go on tour in like guitar cases or something, so you can save the weight of cost on air flights. So we’ve had a bunch of weird synths in like cases and then it all kind of clicked and I was like ‘What if you could actually build and synth from a circuit board on a album cover?’ And then I had another thought about playing the synth on all tracks of the record. So you can build this crazy noise synth and not many people have a project like this that sounds so fucked up (laughs). I guess I wanted to break the boundaries of what these sorts of things are.

PAN M 360: And anyone can build this? Like do you need to know how to build synths?

Oliver Ackermann: It’s definitely an advanced project (laughs), for people who like to do meticulous soldering, and you can easily solder together so many things that shouldn’t be connected. But even if you mess up, you get a custom synthesizer that works a bit! I think I’ve even converted a few people who have just come down to Death By Audio sometimes and just saw how much excitement there was around this project. It’s like you’re hanging around with your friends, you’re soldering a bunch of stuff together to make sound and noise. What more could you want to do?

PAN M 360: Are you already kind of like on with the next thing too? I mean, since the record came out in like October, are you already on the next trajectory for another album or EP or something?

Oliver Ackermann: Yeah, totally. Like I have this spreadsheet where I like, maybe I wrote like what I thought were maybe like 45 good songs or something like that. And then we were starting to book, a bunch of these like fly-in shows, and we’re starting to book this like studio time with like friends who are kind of like engineering in different places. I think we’re just gonna like, probably write songs in these different studios and capture those moments.

PAN M 360: That’s a cool approach. Do you believe that the space or the essence of the space that you decide to record in kind of gets baked into the song or the record?

Oliver Ackermann: I mean, all these things must influence it. Microphones sound different and these spaces, it’s your body in this weird moment trying to improvise and not fuck up but then maybe a mistake becomes the main part. That space you’re in is part of that experience. I mean, think about hearing samples in songs and them transporting you to a place. It’s a sonic signature. It’s like, if you smell your grandmother’s bathroom  or something, you’re back there for sure. I think that that stuff must even happen with those spaces. Some particular space is gonna even create some magic. That’s the excitement of music  is the human error and the kind of space and the weirdness and those little subtleties.

PAN M 360: What’s your view of AI in music? We’re in this weird period where there are AI bands making full songs now.

Oliver Ackermann: Yeah, I mean music could be as perfect as AI possibly wants it to generate it or imperfect or whatever. I think, you know, I’d rather make a conscious choice to like, you know, see some real people or hear some real people making it. I’ve always joked that we (APTBS) don’t have to worry about AI because our music’s so terrible. That’s just what we’re doing.

PAN M 360: Seeing AI try to make A Place To Bury Strangers music would be pretty hilarious.

Oliver Ackermann: Yeah, I feel it would have a meltdown and be like ‘I don’t know why we’re doing this now.’

PAN M 360: Do you still have like the Frankensteined guitar where it’s like different pieces that you’ve put back together after smashing it at the live show?

Oliver Ackermann: All of my guitars are like that (laughs). So I got a bunch of them, and on tour I’ll usually travel with like five guitars and then maybe like three extra guitar necks and then like a box of all sorts of parts and stuff. So then all of these things kind of get like slowly like put together and rotated around through each other. So sometimes it’s like a piece of one to the other. You basically just have to make as many working guitars as you can each night. So, you know, these things get glued back together.

And before I started bringing all of these things, I remember like just sort of breaking some of my first guitars on these tours. So you’d be scrambling. How can I fix this? So some of these guitars have like pieces of like wood from like the forest near the venue. Stuff like that, glued into it and stuff. I think, you know, knowing that when you break something  that you can always fix it is sort of a kind of cool, like liberating feeling. Cause I know that like the fear of like having a guitar and like, you know, breaking the headstock off and just being totally devastated and crushed with that. So to not have to worry about that is a good feeling.

PAN M 360: Your live shows are pretty legendary for their intensity and moments of destruction. Last time you were here in Montreal, you kind of pushed the amp into the crowd, and Sandra and John took the drum set into the middle of the floor, and people were throwing around drum parts… Do you always go in with that mentality for this insane, uncontrolled chaos?

Oliver Ackermann: I mean, that’s the goal for me, if possible. Those are the times when you really find you have the most fun as a performer, when things sort of go awry and get a bit out of control. And that’s really fun. I feel the exact same way as an audience member. Those are the shows. It’s like seeing Monotonics live where like the drummer’s trying to play drums while people are holding him up in the air and stuff. All of those kinds of things you’re like, ‘Wow, this is like an insane moment.’ 

The music isn’t just getting me out of my comfort zones and all of this stuff, but then you’re also getting pushed around and you scream and nobody can hear you or they can or whatever. For me that just takes me out of my head and it’s sort of like really what you want out of a live experience is to sort of, you know,  not be thinking your normal everyday thoughts, you know; what things you have planned, if your clothes are clean or whatever it is that is going through your head. I’m sure that’s the same reason  why people love like extreme sports and stuff and all of these kinds of things. It’s like, you know, you’re at this sort of like make or break moment of this thing.

PAN M 360: But you also have to be aware, amid all the chaos and sometimes destruction, to make sure that you, as a performer, are safe and the same with the audience?

Oliver Ackermann: Well, we’ll always only break our own stuff that we bring. We’re at least like conscious of that. You know, I’ve seen other people throw guitars out into the crowd with some sort of weird, vicious anger or something. And like, you know, I don’t want to get anybody hurt. For me, one of like the awesomest shows I ever went to was like The Ramones. And it was like this all ages crowd. Everybody’s like fricking slam dancing with the biggest smiles on their faces. And like, there’s the kids in there and stuff and people getting thrown in the air all over the place. And, you know, it might be this like gray memory in my head, but for me, it was like a moment of joy and sort of excitement.

With our shows, I’m not trying to hurt anybody or create anything like that, but I think that there’s like, beautiful moments that can be kind of made with lights changing and shifting and doing these things, and changing perspectives on stage. I think if you can like grab the guitar of the person that’s playing guitar, that’s like breaking the barrier of what even like this sacred space of music and things are, or you get the chance to play drums with Sandra or something. These kinds of moments or, you know, bringing an amp out and you can hear this amp over your head and it’s moving around and you’re passing it to your buddy behind you or something like it’s a crazy kind of moment that could possibly happen.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t throw ourselves into those kind of potentially fucked up situations. I’ll jump into frickin’ mosh pits all the time, get pushed down, my head slammed and stuff. And other people have a different idea of what fun is … or have someone jump on my back or, you know, trying to yank something out of your hand or something. You just gotta, you know, kind of go with the flow in those situations. That’s why I do it.

Nothing predestined the Montrealer of Moroccan origin to settle in Dakar, Senegal. But life saw her settle there first for a professional internship before branching out into art and becoming one of the founders of this major musical event on the continent. Much more than concerts, this festival is a movement. It brings together young artists from all regions of the country, masterclasses led by professionals from South Africa, Unplugged sessions, and the Women Art Academy, dedicated entirely to women. Our journalist Sandra Gasana was there for PAN M 360.

Videography and Photo Credit: Cheikh Oumar Diallo

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