Interviews

Afrobeats, a composite style of which Yemi Alade is one of the greatest icons, is now a key word in the lexicon of globalized pop. 

Dominating the dance floors, the Afrobeats trend refers to the updating of styles from the English-speaking fringe of West Africa, i.e. highlife, juju, hiplife or afrobeat, musical genres from Nigeria and Ghana to which reggaeton, dancehall, R&B, soul and hip-hop are included. 

Beyond the Afrobeats movement, Nigerian Yemi Alade is undoubtedly one of the female superstars of black Africa, she is in the leading group formed by Tiwa Savage, Aya Nakamura, Asa, Sha Sha, Moonchild Sanelly, Simi and others.

Last July, Yemi Alade was invited to close the Nuits d’Afrique festival in style, but the pathetic slowness of Canadian customs to admit non-Western artists caused the unfortunate postponement of that concert. This time, visas were delivered on time, Yemi Alade and his band will fill the M TELUS, this Thursday, November 10.

Even better, PAN M 360 obtained an interview with the singer, who was reached in Paris before flying to Montreal.

PAN M 360: You are finally coming to Montreal. We were supposed to interview you last summer, and nothing happened because of what we know. Things are finally getting better!

YEMI ALADE: Yes, we can now laugh about it now !

PAN M 360: In the last five years, a lot has happened on your end. Your rise is huge. You are now one of the main stars of Africa, so how do you live it?

YEMI ALADE: I try to take everything with grace, you know, as it comes. I don’t try to overthink about, I focus on the moment. It avoids unnecessary pressure, the kind that is harmful.

PAN M 360: Where are you mainly based?

YEMI ALADE: I’m based where the money is ! (laughs)

PAN M 360: Joking aside, is there a particular place where everything starts from?

YEMI ALADE: Today I can’t really say that there is a particular place. But I have found a way to feel that the cities I work in become my home. Cities like Paris where I am able to settle down when I spend too much time in my luggage.

PAN M 360: In recent years, you became an African superstar, an ambassador of your culture and at the same time a citizen of the world because you adhere to many musical trends and cultures from outside and inside Africa.

YEMI ALADE: Yes, you can say that. Thank God I’m really happy to be alive in this era where the Afrobeats style is getting so much love.  

PAN M 360: Most definitely, you are one of the leaders of Afrobeats. It also speaks to the back and forth between Africa and the Americas because Afrobeats has something to do with Colombian cumbia, Latin reggaeton or even Jamaican dancehall. And all this is African, isn’t it?

YEMI ALADE: Yes, Afrobeats has found itself on a path that leads to the right place and I’m just happy that it’s gotten there. We can’t say what the next step will be, but the journey is already remarkable. All of us who are the pioneers, singers, beatmakers, musicians, fans, are all enjoying this journey. We have to take it step by step and look at where it’s going. Anyway, we can say now that Afrobeat is global right now and we appreciate all the love it is getting.

PAN M 360: How do you see your own contribution to the Afrobeats movement? 

YEMI ALADE: Yes. Well, I would say that from the beginning, the most important thing for me has always been to be original, to be myself. And I realized that many people love and respect me, especially because of my apologetic love for Africa. And I get all the love that comes with that wholeheartedly. So what I have to do is to stay original in my music, videos, shows, look, etc.. All you can see and hear from me is Africa.

PAN M 360: Indeed, your identity is totally African. You are an ambassador, not only of Nigeria, but of the whole continent. But at the same time, it is international, which is beautiful.

YEMI ALADE: Exactly.

PAN M 360: Nigeria is a difficult country, but at the same time, very exciting. There’s a lot going on there. But there are also a lot of difficult things going on. How do you see the country?

YEMI ALADE: It’s not a very good time for Nigeria. Those days, the economy has yet to rebound from COVID and the recent floods. And of course, the third world countries are the ones that are suffering the most. From that, even though the whole world in general is suffering.There’s a lot of desperation in Nigeria right now. How will this all end? I don’t know. But our hope is also that in the next elections in 2023, that is next year. I pray that our votes will really count to the point that we get the right leader to get us out of this mess. 

PAN M 360: And since you are such an admired public figure in your country, what is your responsibility in this context?

YEMI ALADE: The most I can do at the moment is to lend my voice where it is needed for the people who need my help. Personally, I’m just waiting for a better country and government, beyond what I can do myself. I can only really control my music. But I can’t control how the recipients feel. As for the responsibility in the context lies on the shoulders of so many people.

PAN M 360: If we go back to the music itself, what are your main steps? What have you and your band achieved in the studio recently?

YEMI ALADE: I’m totally involved in this ever-evolving experience, because I’m learning along the way, just like they are. As far as sound goes, I don’t like being put in a box. For example, this year I’m really not holding back on showing my love for dancehall music. I let loose! And I passed that energy on to my band.

PAN M 360: So there is not only afrobeats in your music, there is dancehall as you say. There is also the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti, the juju of King Sunny Adé, many styles in fact.

YEMI ALADE: True, exactly.

PAN M 360: And how many musicians are you bringing to Montreal?

YEMI ALADE: Depending on the context, it can go up to 13, but I’m coming to Montreal with a group of 7 people this time: keyboards, percussion, machines, guitar, bass, etc. We’ve been working on it for a few weeks now because we’re very excited about it, and also because I created a special song for the Montreal show. 

PAN M 360: That’s very nice of you! Do you do this everywhere you are invited? 

YEMI ALADE: No, not all the time. I mostly do it at my solo shows. But this time. I just had to do something different. I felt, from this conversation, that I follow what I feel. That’s how I feel right now. 

PAN M 360: You know, the city is very open to African music.

YEMI ALADE: Fantastic. I’m going to be in the right place at the right time  !

PAN M 360: Is this concert in Montreal part of the North American tour?

YEMI ALADE: No, I’m going to do this show and then go back to Europe. Because I have commitments in other countries that I have already accepted. Normally when I come to Canada, we always go to different cities. You know, I also shot one of my videos in Toronto too. But this time it won’t be a tour, unfortunately. I will be back.

PAN M 360: Yes, you also featured in Black Is King, that movie directed and produced by Beyoncé. How was the experience of appearing in a very important film showcasing the new African and Afro-descendant culture in the world ?

YEMI ALADE: As you can guess, it was a dream come true. It’s still a vivid memory in my head. Being able to meet Beyoncé personally, and even be on the album itself, is something I didn’t take for granted. Growing up listening to her music, I remember learning certain things from her that helped me become the artist I am today. And for me to get an email and a phone call from her team to mine, that was really important to me. It shows that in this day and age, if you keep giving your best, your work will speak for you. And that’s exactly how I defined this moment. 

PAN M 360: Beyoncé probably felt that, beyond your Afrobeats culture, you also had a very strong R&bB and hip hop culture, right?

YEMI ALADE: Yeah, I think the people that were chosen to be part of this work were carefully selected. And you know, if you look at her team very closely, you can see that they do a lot of research, so yeah, don’t be surprised if they had all the necessary information about me before I even arrived.

PAN M 360: Since she made this film, by the way, there are a lot of afrobeats and creators involved in her own productions!

YEMI ALADE: Yes, we are all part of this dream, so a lot of good things have happened. A blessing!

PAN M 360: So, you integrate the music of the Western world, or Afro-Western world, into your West African world.

YEMI ALADE: Correct. I like to say that in music, music represents a world apart. There are no boundaries in this world and I draw from this endless well for my inspiration. Even as a little girl, I used to rap while the songs were playing on the radio. This interest in international music goes back to my early childhood.

PAN M 360: On occasion, you are also involved with French rappers. So your openness is not limited to the Americas.

YEMI ALADE: Oh yes. At one point I decided to do French versions and I was having fun! Since then, there is a strong love connection between me and the French-speaking world.

PAN M 360: France has always been open to African music for at least 50 years. So as it continues with you, in particular.

YEMI ALADE: Yes, I know that in France there is a deep appreciation of the cultures of people of African origin.

PAN M 360: By the way, have you ever performed in Jamaica?

YEMI ALADE: Unfortunately, I never sang in Jamaica, but I went there on vacation. And I felt right at home there. As for the Caribbean, I had the opportunity to perform in Barbados about a month ago. 

PAN M 360: In the short term, what are the next steps in your career?

YEMI ALADE: First of all, I just presented my solo show at the prestigious Olympia in Paris. After that, I’m flying to Montreal for a custom concert, after which I’ll be releasing my new EP, African Body. So look out for that! 

PAN M 360: Is there a disparity with your impact in Africa and the one you have in the West?

YEMI ALADE: I can fill stadiums in Africa, yes. But you know, I’ve also been in front of huge audiences in North America and Europe. Wherever I am when I get on stage and I feel love, I see my tribe. When I’m on stage, I don’t see any difference between audiences. You know, my favorite mantra is this: I go where the love is.  

PAN M 360: Being a pop superstar also means that you are a conqueror.  You are said to have great authority with your team. Is that true?

YEMI ALADE: People often say that about me ! (laughs) So yes, I think I am a force of nature. I know that I have a huge influence on people through my music. And that’s a blessing for me and my audience. The main goal is still to spread some joy with my music. There is so much sadness in this world!  And so I try to spice up my music with happiness and joy, I want to infect my fans with it!  

PAN M 360: As a female leader, how do you see yourself?

YEMI ALADE: A woman representing the music industry is a relay race. We, as women artists, must pass the baton so that the next generation can achieve success as those who came before me did. So when a generation of women does better than the previous one, it’s a sign of success. We should be grateful. 

PAN M 360: As an influential leader, do you produce and encourage emerging artists?  

YEMI ALADE: I have been mentoring some female artists who are doing very well today Nigerian artists, female artists in general. We need to do this because I feel like most of the time we don’t have the same opportunities that our male counterparts have. So if I see that the door can open for my sister, I will definitely give her a hand. Right now? I am a big fan of Guchi, a singer from Nigeria. There is also Zuchu from Tanzania, whom I like very much.  And I hope the world will give them the opportunity to really show what they have, because they are very special.

PAN M 360: So are you at the peak of a new generation that will emerge in the near future?


YEMI ALADE: Let’s wait and see how it goes. I am definitely a key actress, but I don’t know what roles I will play in the future. I don’t know. But I know that the force of nature that I am is there to give it my all. I just want to get better at what I do and be able to keep the conversation going on.

YEMI ALADE PERFORMS AT MTELUS, NOVEMBER 10, 8H30 PM. FOR MORE INFOS & TICKETS, IT’S HERE

The universe is too vast for there not to be alternate universes and perhaps, one of the journeys through the human condition is finding the doors into these abstract universes or leaving little drips of what it might sound like. This is where the Canadian psychedelic indie synth rock group, Loon Town, takes their name and inspiration. Made up of members living in Montreal, Whitehorse, and Kitchener, Loon Town took the nostalgia and feelings from their collective hometown and created the album, Slow Space, which loosely takes place in this fictionalized alternate reality dubbed Loon Town.

Don’t let the intense-sounding concept dissuade you. The music on Slow Space is meant to be enjoyed while dancing on wine-soaked nights, under the night sky, or at a funk-themed after-party. We spoke with Loon Town a bit about their creative process, Loons, and a playful return home, before their show in Montreal on November 13.

PAN M 360: What’s it like to be in a band with members scattered throughout Canada?

Loon Town: It’s odd! It makes us be very intentional about our time. We have weekly meetings and different strategies to stay connected to the material and to each other. We toss sound materials at each other in folders and flesh out demos via songwriting from our home studios. Then we take a month or two and come together and finish them, arrange them, etc.

PAN M 360: Were you all in Future States? How does the creative process differ between the projects?

Loon Town: Three of the four of us were in Future States. Our process in this project shares the songwriting process in a much more collaborative way. We are all passionate about writing, and this has been a chance to co-write in a very significant way. It is really interesting to write a harmonic structure and then pass it on to someone and let them write lyrics or melody, or vice versa. It forces each of us to let go, to move with the material as it develops instead of getting too stuck on any one idea. It’s really a new way of working for us, and we definitely recommend it, so long as you have built trust with your collaborators because it can also be really vulnerable!

PAN M 360: Can you tell me the reasoning behind the name Loon Town, it’s a fictionalized town for the band?

Loon Town: Dave and Dani were on a weeklong canoe trip a few years ago in Algonquin park, in a part of the park where there were more Loons than people. They both have a fascination with the sound of the loon, almost as if they are able to speak across from one world to the next. To this end, we have imagined the town as a literal place, perhaps in some alternate dimension, or the sum total of all our hometowns in this world. It’s like an imaginary ‘everyperson’s” hometown, which reaches across the space of imagination and speaks to our world. From there, we imagined each song is a place, a person, or a thing in the town, and can be placed on a map. The farther we go into this world, the more universalized but also strange it gets. It has become a landing pad for everything that happens in one’s life. The leaving, the coming, the death, the existential crises, etc.

PAN M 360: The theme is a return home on the debut LP, Slow Space. A return home from what? The pandemic? Grief?

Loon Town: Yeah, there is this meandering relationship you can have with your hometown. The town you left because your imagination pulled you onward to other things. Or because you couldn’t stand it. Or because opportunity knocked. Then it becomes the town you came back to, maybe to take care of a relative, or tie up loose ends, or because of a death, or you were in some state of limbo. Then it’s all the complicated feelings that spring from that return. It’s not a straightforward relationship, but it’s an important one. And yes, as the creation of this album happened during the pandemic, it certainly factors in, haha.

PAN M 360: Who are some bands you maybe draw inspiration for Loon Town’s lush instrumentation?

Loon Town: We love old music with rich string and brass sections, everything from Duke Ellington’s orchestra, to all the Motown harmonies, and the janky rich sounds of Neutral Milk hotel. We’ve also been obsessed with the textures that Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld create with their instruments.

PAN M 360: I really love the vibe of “Party at the Ice Cream Shoppe,” the lyricism is very tongue-in-cheek. What was the inspiration behind that one?

Loon Town: This one was a lyrical co-write between Nic and Dani. For some reason, during the making of this album, there were various half-songs with the theme of ice cream, ice cream shoppes, and the ice cream man. One of them was perhaps even cheekier, and may be released someday too. This one was born for Nic from the idea of going out on the town during a visit home, in a place where there is a rich yet varied history (and baggage). It was an imagination of a night where they could totally let go, connect with and rediscover old friends and loves while presenting as they are – without yielding to real or imagined social pressures.

Specifically for Nic, this turns around notions of gender expression and presentation. This also plays out through a sort of surreal painting of a scene through the symbol of “flavours” of ice-cream, which can be stand-ins or metaphors – for Nic this ties into expressions of identity, but for Dani it’s something else entirely! Either way, it’s meant to be playful, and we’re glad it comes across that way. Our friends have been debating the meaning of the track, with one of them saying that they see it as an analogy for going ‘downtown’.

PAN M 360: The brass really adds to the atmosphere on a song like “Doesn’t Matter,” “Party at the Ice Cream Shoppe,” “Silver Flowers,” etc. Did you have the idea for brass from the beginning?

Loon Town: We did. Dave plays some brass, and so we included some on our previous EP. We all love brass, and we knew our recording engineer Andy Magoffin played various brass instruments and was willing to work with us, so we seized the opportunity. We were super jazzed by how invested Andy became in the process, and ended up with even more densely layered arrangements than we’d initially anticipated. We feel very lucky!

PAN M 360: There’s a multimedia aspect to the LP with the interactive map for Slow Space. Where did that idea come from?

Loon Town: It’s linked to this idea of Loon Town as an actual town, and each song, in our imaginations, became a place on the map. During our writing residency for the record, we actually created a rough sketch of the town with markers and paper, and it influenced the final song selection on the album. As we continue to write songs, the town becomes richer, denser, and more full of life. We worked with Davide Di Saro to create the album art, and he imagined this town in space, as a person, whose hair flowed as rivers through the town. It is a beautiful imagining of our original ideas for the map, and one that we never would’ve come up with on our own! Then the website became 3d and interactive thanks to further collaboration with Davide, Andrea Cossu, and Liam Brown.

PAN M 360: What do you think about the streaming singles age? I ask because, Slow Space is definitely meant to be listened to in full for the theme to really ring true, but lots of I guess ordinary music listeners go single by single.

Loon Town: Our band members have varying degrees of modernity in their hearts, haha. Some of us are basically neo-luddites, and do most of our listening in public parks (to birds), or on wax cylinders. Joking. But some of us (not to single anyone out) actively play music on their CD, tape, and record players, while others stream more often. Of course, things are best when you slow down, savour, and get the whole experience, even if that experience is streaming online, but we realize this isn’t possible or desirable in all situations, and we embrace the plurality while keeping a soft spot for all things slow.

There are certainly advantages to both approaches. In some ways, the streaming singles era is actually more amenable to a record like Slow Space, or perhaps the other way around. It’s an album with some sonic coherence but it’s certainly not 12 songs where everything stays the same except the chords and lyrics. We dabble in a lot of different genres, which in the full-length age might be less acceptable. Also, with the interactive website, we hope to bridge the gap between single and album and offer the audience the opportunity to slow down, meander through the “town” in digital space, and experience the record in both a slow, daydreaming and immediate gratification kind of way, if that makes sense.

Loon Town Plays at Casa Del Popolo on November 13 w/ High Five and Slight

Tickets Here

Mathieu Arsenault, aka SEULEMENT, released his first album Ex Po in November 2021. Composed of eight tracks, this project is a combination of electronic sounds and the appearance of the artist’s bewitching voice.

When he creates, SEULEMENT draws most of his inspiration from contemporary architecture. “My universe is made of multiple rhythmic balances that are often very strange and unstable. That’s what architecture inspires me,” he says. 

For the past few years, Mathieu Arsenault has been a member of the English-speaking group Technical Kidman. Ex Po is his first project in French. “To be invited to Coup de cœur francophone after my first solo francophone project is very flattering,” he adds.

As part of Coup de coeur francophone, SEULEMENT will take the stage at Bar l’Escogriffe with Teenage Witch on November 3rd at 10 pm. This festival, which runs from November 3 to 13, aims to promote francophone music in all its forms. A multitude of shows will take place in Montreal over the next two weeks. Pan M 360 spoke with SEULEMENT about his musical universe, his inspirations, and his participation in Coup de cœur francophone this year.

PAN M 360: What is your main inspiration when you create?

SEULEMENT: It’s hard to say what my main inspiration is. I feel like what inspires is not clear. Certainly, contemporary architecture influences me a lot. It is from that that I imagine my musical forms and structures.

PAN M 360: Your universe is atypical and very immersive. Can you describe it?

SEULEMENT: My universe is made of multiple rhythmic balances that are often very strange. The pulsations are multiple, and my music can seem very unstable. As I mentioned earlier, contemporary architecture inspires me a lot and that’s where I’m going to get these instabilities from.

PAN M 360: What do you want to convey through your music?

SEULEMENT: My music is very emotional and full of energy. I created the songs on Ex Po during a very emotional time in my life and that’s what I want to convey. Also, what I create is very personal and open to interpretation. I don’t have a specific message and I want my listeners to appropriate it in their own way. My shows are sensorially very engaging, and it flashes a lot. I think that contributes to the message I’m sending.  

PAN M 360: What does the Coup de coeur francophone festival mean to you? 

SEULEMENT: This festival is something new for me. I was happy when I received the invitation. Francophone music is also new for me. I come from the electronic music and digital art scene. Also, I was part of an English rock band for almost 10 years. To be invited to such an event shortly after the release of my first solo project in French is extremely flattering and I am very grateful.

PAN M 360: How important is the French language in your creative process? SEULEMENT: I’ve wanted to try creating in French for a long time. I was inspired by a lot of artists from here and elsewhere who make different music in their mother tongue. I told myself that if these people were capable, I could do it. I think that creating in French makes my music more unique.

Photo Credit: Coup de coeur francophone.

SEULEMENT PLAYS L’ESCO, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3 AT 10 PM, WITH TEENAGE WITCH, FOR COUP DE COEUR FRANCOPHONE. INFO AND TICKETS HERE!

Montreal artist L.Teez has just released the album “Studio Blue”, a mix of hip-hop, jazz and soul. With a bonus performance, a launch party is planned at Petit Campus this Thursday, November 3rd.

Born in France to a Montreal African-Chinese mother of Jamaican descent and a Parisian father of Algerian Kabyle descent, Lee Terki moved to Quebec with his family as a child. Since he was a child, he has been immersed in music. He studied for six years at the FACE school and his father is a professional in the music industry. “I spent a lot of my childhood listening to music and being at concerts and festivals,” he says.

In his latest project, the MC comfortably blends hip-hop and jazz, two musical styles that run in his family. We’re not just talking about a few samples from jazz songs here. In Studio Blue, we’re dealing with a soulful jazz soundtrack, recorded in a studio with very good musicians. It’s not surprising that he wanted to pay tribute to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, an important album in his life.

In his creation, L.Teez is also greatly influenced by the cinema, an art cherished by his cinema-loving mother who transmitted this passion to him. “In “Studio Blue”, I refer to” Annie Hall”, Spike Lee and the movie “Seventh Heaven,” the rapper says.

The city of Montreal is another source of inspiration: “I have always lived in Mile End since my parents are in Montreal. The culture of the city is very present in my music,” he continues. In this Studio Blue, L. Teez slaloms between rap and singing, his flow is fluid and effective. Some of his intonations, moreover, can remind those of the American rapper Westside Gunn. The result is really impressive.

Licensed by Hydrophonik Records, L.Teez collaborated with many local artists for the creation of his album, including Clerel, Mel Pacifico, Lea Keeley, Burton White and Elmnt. That’s why Pan M 360 spoke with L.Teez about Studio Blue, his influences and his creative process.

PAN M 360: What stage do you like the most in your creative process?

L.TEEZ: I definitely enjoy writing. However, I don’t write every day. There are artists who do, but I can’t do it. What I love most is being in the studio and creating the musical arrangements. I love being in the studio with producers and musicians. The creativity is at its peak and I love it. I feel extremely comfortable there.

PAN M 360: How was Studio Blue born?

L.TEEZ: When I was in college, I discovered Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”. I found this album incredible. Miles’ music makes me feel a lot of emotions. Listening to Kind of Blue opened my eyes to jazz and other musical styles. With my project, I wanted to pay tribute to this album. Also, I recorded “Studio Blue” in a studio actually called Studio Blue. It was a studio with analog tools. My experience in that place is memorable. I had no choice but to call my project “Studio Blue”.

PAN M 360: Can you tell me more about what the cover of “Studio Blue” means?

L.TEEZ: For this project, I wanted an artist to create in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist I like a lot. Most of the elements on the cover are references to my personal life. First of all, there is a nod to African Montreal entrepreneur Rufus Rockhead, who owned Rockhead’s Paradise, a jazz club that opened in Montreal many years ago. All the jazz greats came there in the past and few people know it. It’s a little tribute to this mythical place. Then, there is also a steaming pot that refers to the many dimsums I ate with my father. Food is a big part of my life, I have been working in the restaurant business for many years. Besides, we find on the cover a penguin with a bottle of wine which makes reference to that. Another element is the cannon that represents Arsenal, my favorite soccer team. In short, there are a lot of symbolic elements and I am very happy with the final result.

PAN M 360: 5680 Rue Bach, a piece that pays tribute to your grandfather, is in two parts. Why did you make this choice? 

L.TEEZ: I wanted to have a musical break in the middle of my album. I wanted strings for an interlude. Also, I wanted to do a tribute song to my grandfather. So I combined the two to make 5680 Rue Bach. At first, the two parts were one. The separation was made to make it easier for my listeners to hear. I thought that by separating the instrumental part from the rap part, they would be able to listen better to the part they wanted to hear. 

PAN M 360: Why do you think rap and jazz fit so well together ?

L.TEEZ: Rap and jazz have had a love affair for a long time. I think they mix so easily because of their common roots. They are both very emotional genres. People relate to rap and jazz. I think that’s why the combination of the two is so perfect. 

PAN M 360: There’s also plenty of soul on “Studio Blue”. So how did the song Never Thought come about with Clerel?

L.TEEZ: I’ve been a big fan of Clerel for many years. He’s probably my favorite singer in the city right now. We first met at a jam session in Montreal. Jessie Reyez’s producer, and I built the instrumental, I wanted to put the whole thing on it, then I asked Clerel if he was interested in this track. He agreed and came to the studio. He wrote the chorus very quickly and we finished the song. I am very proud of the result.

This week in Montreal, the American-Colombian maestra Lina González-Granados conducts the Orchestre Métropolitain in 4 different venues including the Maison symphonique. The colors will be Andean, Mexican, Spanish, starting with the East European soloist MILOŠ in the famous Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra by Joaquín Rodrigo. 

Miloš Karadaglić has become one of the most illustrious virtuosos of the classical guitar, performing in the most important concert halls and festivals around the world.  His first three recordings for Deutsche Grammophon certainly helped to make him an authentic guitar hero of classical music, starting with the recording of the Aranjuez Concerto with the London Philharmonic under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Today, Miloš is recorded by Decca Classics. He lives in London and performs on a 2007 Greg Smallman guitar.

Miloš has also been involved in crossover music, performing the Beatles’ repertoire in his own way, with duets with singers and musicians such as Gregory Porter, Tori Amos, Steven Isserlis or Anoushka Shankar. 

In Canada, Miloš has already joined the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa in May 2019 to perform another concerto written especially for him, The Forest by Howard Shore. In 2021, Miloš released his sixth album “The Moon and the Forest”, which includes Talbot and Shore concerti as well as Ludovico Einaudi’s “Full Moon” and Robert Schumann’s “Traumerei”.

A true spokesman for the classical guitar worldwide, Miloš regularly acts as a radio and television presenter. He is also an avid promoter of music education, being the patron of the Mayor of London Fund for Young Musicians and the Awards for Young Musicians. 

Reached in New York before his OM concert series, MILOŠ discusses the challenges of being a classical guitarist playing with a symphony orchestra, as well as his responsibility as a soloist and promoter of his favorite instrument.

PAN M 360: The main melodic theme of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is widely known beyond the classical audience. In the jazz world, it has been adopted by Chick Corea (“Spain”) and Miles Davis (“Sketches of Spain”). So now you are one of the leading soloists in the classical world to perform this essential concerto with a symphony orchestra.

Miloš Karadaglić: Well, it’s a piece that has followed me throughout my career, and throughout my growth as an artist. Yes, because I first learned it when I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. And, and I remember, it was very nice to have it in my fingers the first time, because it’s such an iconic work. And it’s perhaps the most recognizable work for the classical guitar in the repertoire. It’s also a challenging piece, because you know, everybody knows this piece for its beautiful melodies in the second moment. But actually, Joaquín Rodrigo himself was not a guitarist. So, although he was able to write sounds that were perfect for the guitar, he didn’t always manage to write very dramatically so that it would work very well on the guitar. So, as is always the case with his music, every musician has to find their own way with any of his songs. There is almost no standard way to play and do any of his work. Nevertheless, it has been over the years a rite of passage for so many young artists. Whenever you are invited to play with an orchestra, the Aranjuez Concerto will probably be the first piece for me. Personally, I felt I was really ready to play it when I recorded it for Deutsche Grammophon in 2014, which was with the London Philharmonic. So that was an important moment for me. But what’s the interesting thing about this performance? I never felt like this piece locked into one version; I felt like it was always evolving into a different version depending on the orchestra and the conductor and the ensemble and the circumstances of the performance. And I think that’s also partly because we guitarists very rarely have the privilege of playing with a big orchestra.

PAN M 360: Yes, there are not so many pieces for classical guitar and orchestra, even for the best instrumentalist to get a few concerts with a large orchestra, because of the small number of works and also because of the very nature of the instrument whose natural volume is relatively low for a symphonic construction.

Miloš Karadaglić: You know, classical guitarists don’t have many great opportunities to play with symphonic orchestras. So I felt a huge weight on my shoulders in the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, when I was on tour. Suddenly, in my calendar, I had the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the L.A. Philharmonic, Rome, Munich, London, etc. It was an incredible responsibility for me, and of course a dream to play with these orchestras. I learned so much from these experiences but I was not always comfortable, because these big orchestras are not always used to accompanying a guitar that often needs to be amplified. As such, I really had no one to learn from. At that time, I didn’t travel with my own little amplification, I relied more on the ensemble and how it sounded, the sound engineer in the room and the conductor. And that kind of puts you in a very vulnerable position. Because when you’re there, you’re supposed to be making music. But what always happened was that the moment you went to a concert, you were making music, and people responded to that music in such an intense and wonderful way. So I think for any guitarist, it takes a long time to develop the level of confidence that when you’re in front of a big orchestra, you can say, “Okay, I know exactly what I’m doing. And I know exactly how I want each note to sound.”

PAN M 360: You had the opportunity to think about it more during the pandemic, so what happened?

Miloš Karadaglić: It was maybe the only time in my career, and I think it’s the same for a lot of musicians, where we were able to recap, recalculate, calibrate, and re-evaluate everything we learned. And also realize that what we’re doing is an incredible luxury. And that the joy of making music is more important than any approval, or anything that normally surrounds our lives as artists. So now when I go to play, there are these concerns, I feel very different than I did a few years ago, because I feel like now I know exactly what I’m doing. And I know exactly what’s going to happen. And that’s a really great feeling and very rewarding.

PAN M 360: Playing an acoustic guitar with a large orchestra is always a challenge because of the volume differences. That also explains why the instrument itself is not used much in large orchestras. So now, maybe the problems can be different. How do you see the role of a classical acoustic guitar soloist changing with large ensembles?

Miloš Karadaglić: I take it very seriously. For example I have to intervene with the artistic directors, because I feel that we have evolved so much and there are now so many more individual possibilities. For that, you have to know how to solve this equation of the volume of the instrument: it’s not just sticking the mic on the guitar anymore because the volume of the guitar depends also on the way you play it. And if you’re a soloist on an international tour, the sound is very, very different from a guitarist competing in front of a jury. You have to play in front of 1000 to 2000 people. Often you’re not amplified and so that means you have to amplify the sound in the way you play. And that means a lot more power and tension in the fingers and hands. And you really have to know how to balance that tension, that action and reaction in the hands. And it’s, it’s like learning to play again. And, for me, it’s been such an amazing transformative process, which has really happened playing with all these orchestras and playing in these big, big, big concerts over the years.

PAN M 360: Do these adjustments have a real impact?

Miloš Karadaglić: Absolutely. And then you have to take stock of everything you’ve learned and then use the influence you generate as an artist to inspire the next generation of composers to write new orchestral works for solo guitar. It’s a very exciting process, very exciting! So, we need to continue to expand those barriers, and that beauty that we’ve gained can attract an audience to the guitar. And then it’s your role as an artist to take that audience with you on a journey further into another repertoire.

PAN M 360: Have you ever worked with the Colombian-American maestra Lina Gonzalez-Granados who will be conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal with you?

Miloš Karadaglić: I have never worked with her but I have heard wonderful things about her from my colleagues and friends. As for the OM, I have only worked with Yannick Nézet-Séguin (with the London Philharmonic) but I feel in good hands with his orchestra. Because even if I have never worked with this orchestra, it is thanks to Yannick that I feel particularly close to it. So I have to say that what impresses me the most is that the OM has organized this concert in four different places in the city. Many orchestras wait for the public to come to them, which is not the case with OM. Knowing Yannick, I realized that it must be his initiative, because he is that person who always goes to the public. He has this incredible gift. So I am very impressed that there are four performances with OM.

PAN M 360: Do you still have a strong connection to Montenegro where you were born and raised?

Miloš Karadaglić: I left Montenegro a long time ago, 23 years ago, yes. But I never lost my ties to my native country, simply because I realized that I could give a lot back. And, and the things that I’ve learned doing what I do, I can share and it’s, it’s a very small country, and in a country, which is the smallest country there is, you kind of become a national hero because it’s such a small country. And I think you can experience that in different ways. But the way I use it is to open people’s minds, to educate the younger generation, to inspire them with your own actions, and to try to support them if they’re trying to go study abroad or get a scholarship. And, and this gives me immense pleasure. I’m actually in the process of starting my own foundation. And it’s really the project of a lifetime, because I think that we should support the talented young people in this region of the Balkans, which is so troubled by politics. I was lucky to have a better life elsewhere; to have discovered the guitar, so young, in Montenegro in the 90s, was for me an exceptional chance. It opened up a world radically different from mine, and it changed my life completely. And that’s the power of music: wherever you live and whatever the circumstances, you are able to create this beautiful world around you. It has nothing to do with the outside world. A true gift of life!

PAN M 360: Do you think you have a responsibility in this sense?

Miloš Karadaglić: It’s something I take really seriously. I think the key is to educate people towards music, not that everyone has to become a world or classical music star, absolutely not. On the contrary, there are less and less opportunities to succeed, our music industry is in danger. I rather think that access to education allows you to be sensitive to music opens your eyes in a multitude of ways. Yes, it starts with education. And it starts with ideas like the Orchestre Métropolitain performing the same program in four different venues.

Formed in 2018, Montreal-based female trio Les Shirley unveils their second album More is More this Friday.

Raphaëlle Chouinard (vocals; guitar), Sarah Dion (bass), and Lisandre Bourdages (drums) are back with an opus tinged with vulnerability and feminism. Moreover, the group does not hesitate to denounce male privilege. “In recent years, the feminist movement has grown, and I think we are going in the right direction. However, when we look at our neighbors in the United States, we quickly understand that it is not won. We like to send this message,” says the singer of the trio.

While still influenced by punk rock and grunge, Les Shirley explores more introspective topics such as love and anxiety in More is More. “We’re showing a darker side of Les Shirley. I think people will recognize themselves in the lyrics,” says Raphaëlle.

The guitarist makes it clear: “It was lacking in girl power at the time. With this album, Les Shirley created music that they would have loved to hear as teenagers. “When a woman writes, it brings a completely different perspective on events. We would have loved to hear our music when we were young,” adds Raphaëlle Chouinard.

Throughout the creation of More is More, Marie-Pierre Arthur acted as co-director. Her expertise instilled more confidence in the three women and greatly contributed to the development of the project’s eleven tracks. “We’ve always been big fans of Marie-Pierre. It was incredible to have someone like her with us during the creation of our project!“

Pan M 360 spoke with the trio’s singer and guitarist, Raphaëlle Chouinard, about their creative process and their new album More is More.


PAN M 360: How was Les Shirley created?

RAPHAËLLE: Before Les Shirley, Lisandre and I had done an electro-pop project together. When that ended in 2018, we still wanted to play together. We already knew Sarah, but she was basically a drummer just like Lisandre. So, Sarah decided to play bass. At the beginning of our formation, we didn’t really take ourselves seriously. During our first shows, we noticed that the crowds really liked our project. That’s when we realized that Les Shirley wasn’t a joke.

PAN M 360: What are you talking about with More is More?

RAPHAËLLE: Unlike our first project, we deal with deeper subjects. We show the darker side of Les Shirley. We mix these themes with our pop melodies and our musical style. More is More was written during a time of pandemic and reflects what was going on in my head during that time. It talks about things like anxiety and lack of motivation. I think people will relate to the lyrics.

PAN M 360: You say you create songs that you wish you had heard when you were younger. Would you have liked to have heard the messages you are conveying in this project?

RAPHAËLLE: It lacked girl power back then. There were almost no female bands back then. Not many women were sharing their experiences through music. I think that side of the musical story is missing. When a woman writes, it brings a completely different perspective on events. That’s something that was missing when we were young.

PAN M 360: Throughout the album, you have a denunciatory and feminist tone.  Is it a desire for you to engage with this generation?

RAPHAËLLE: During the pandemic, I got closer to my emo roots and my writing became more and more engaged. In the last few years, the feminist movement has grown, and I think we’re going in the right direction. However, when you look at our neighbors in the United States, you can quickly see that it’s not a given. It is important to continue in this direction to make things change. It’s a message we like to send. For example, in the song It’s Time, we say “It’s time for your wake-up call.” It’s a message to men that it’s time for women to take their place. The goal is not to divide, but to find a middle ground that appeals to everyone.

PAN M 360: Tell me about Marie-Pierre Arthur’s involvement as co-director. How did she contribute to your project?

RAPHAËLLE: Marie-Pierre brings a great energy to the studio. She was always there to guide us and answer our questions. She brought her pop touch to our album. We’ve always been big fans of Marie-Pierre. It was amazing to have someone like her with us. Also, it’s very helpful to have someone who is not entirely part of the creative process. This person makes you question the structures of the songs and many details to improve. Also, I would say that his expertise gave us more confidence in our abilities.

PAN M 360: How do you see the recent renaissance of punk rock?

RAPHAËLLE: Several artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly are contributing to the renaissance of this musical style. I think it’s good. A lot of people say that it’s very pop or even too pop. In my opinion, it’s as pop as what Avril Lavigne and Blink-182 used to do. If these artists can make young people discover more of this musical genre, that’s great. It’s going to inspire a lot of them to push further into rock.

PAN M 360: How did the title Do it Again come about?

RAPHAËLLE: We often do write retreats in a cottage. I think I already had the guitar riff in my head. I wrote the song during the pandemic. This dark period of our lives brought back many bad habits in all of us like consumerism. This song unfolds as an internal dialogue. It’s about those behaviors that you want to stop, that your heart tells you to stop, that your friends tell you to stop, but that you never stop.

Photo Credit : Stéphanie Dinsdale.

AN ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY FOR MORE IS MORE WILL TAKE PLACE IN MONTREAL ON NOVEMBER 24TH AT THE THÉÀTRE FAIRMOUNT!

For some years now, jazz fans have been citing Makaya McCraven, son of African-American drummer Stephen McCraven, and Hungarian singer Ágnes Zsigmondi.

A masterful percussionist, composer and bandleader, Makaya McCraven is one of the true game changers in jazz, a musical genre that has been steadily regenerating itself since its name was first coined in the late 19th century.

The latest chapter in jazz is being written all over the world, and Makaya McCraven is certainly one of its visionaries. His thoughts on groove, modern jazz, and, most importantly, the digitized integrations of the electronic and hip-hop families into his own compositional context now position him as one of the essentials.

His albums In The Moment (2015), Universal Beings (2018), We’re New Again, a brilliant retelling of the late Gil Scott Heron’s I’m New Here, and Deciphering the Message (2021), precede the release of the recently released In These Times, which is more inclined to chamber jazz given its generous instrumentation including guitars, bass, drums, strings, vibraphone, brass, woodwinds and reeds.

PAN M 360 was finally able to get in touch with Makaya McCraven and reach him in Chicago for the following interview.

PAN M 360: You’re in Chicago right now, aren’t you?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Yes. I live in Chicago, I have a few things going on there. I’m running my studio, doing a little bit of media, getting ready to hit the road, rehearsing and arranging, taking my two kids to school, picking them up, going to soccer practice, and spending as much time as possible with my family. I’ve been busy my whole career as a musician I’ve always had a lot of gigs, a lot of work, a lot of bands, and a lot of projects. But, you know, where, where I think I was, it was a difficult time when my kids were very young. Now we’re finding a new balance with them. We’re trying to figure out how to do it all with the amount of travel and the type of schedule that I have, and also on my wife’s side who is a very busy person.

PAN M 360: So you chose Chicago, after living in different parts of the United States. So why did you choose this city in the first place?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: I followed my wife (Nitasha Tamar Sharma) to Chicago, she is a full professor at Northwestern University – African American Studies and Asian American Studies. When I met her, I was very busy with my music career on the East Coast, in Western Mass, and I had a lot of things I was pretty young and she moved here during that first period of almost a year, you know, I was just visiting Chicago every month, maybe just to stay and I started laying the groundwork to move here and after about a year, I came and moved in with her.

PAN M 360: We’re not going to recap your artistic approach as we’ve done many times on PAN M 360, but it’s very clear that what you’re doing musically is very different, and perhaps considered one of the important aesthetic turning points in jazz of our time. You have been credited with integrating very sophisticated grooves into very creative contemporary instrumental music and also into a perfectly assumed digital environment. How does this remain connected to the jazz idiom?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: A lot of my desire to do things with contemporary sounds and processes has to do with how I view the heritage of jazz music because that’s still the best term we can use to describe it. But the idiom itself, for me, is much broader than one musical genre. It’s a way of looking at a musician’s practice in different eras of music. Many of the great musicians I admire have had their own problems with the word jazz because they felt it put them in a box.

PAN M 360: Miles Davis edited a lot of his music sessions in the early 70s, so this process is not really new. But today, digital culture is dominant and has led you to use the tools of digital culture to transform your own recordings of instrumental music. Where do you stand today?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Jazz wasn’t designed to chop up eras and styles through recording sessions. But I think it’s a given now. Inevitable, right? The progressive musicians of today are like the progressive musicians of yesterday, in that they are inspired by what has gone before. They look for new sounds and new things to learn. Sixty years ago, for example, it was bossa nova. It was a fusion, it was new, and it was fresh. Now it’s part of standard jazz. Today, in my own way, I want to imitate that moment of inspiration, being close to my time is part of my inspiration.

PAN M 360: So capturing the moment, capturing the time, is crucial for you.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Yes, of course, I can learn the notes and the language of bebop, I can learn the music of Charlie Parker. But what I think is most important is to ask what it was that Charlie Parker did that was so special about his time. And what made such an impact. It was that he had created a new strain, organically embedded in the community across the racial lines of the time. He was making music that spoke to people but playing it at a very high level but taking it to new things. And not watering it down to just being popular, but rather creating something substantial and provocative.

PAN M 360: So taking the popular music of a period is not copying it.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: The heritage of jazz is not a series of mimicry of styles, it is a spirit of recreation. And I can relate to Charles Mingus imploring “Don’t call my music jazz” or Miles Davis chanting “Don’t call my music dead”. That’s why I’m sure to participate in the tradition and try to follow what they did.

PAN M 360: So your approach is not different from previous generations of jazz?

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN: Well, not really. Let’s take electronics: I wasn’t the one who started experimenting with electronic tools. A lot of jazz-related artists did it in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. People experimented with things and connected them to what was there before. Since the beginning of jazz, it’s been like that. Drums and musical instruments are also machines, the drum kit is an assortment of drums and cymbals invented by jazz musicians. Over time, popular or classical repertoires have continued to influence jazz. It’s in line with what all the greats have done before us. We’re not reinventing the wheel.

PAN M 360: As you say, you don’t reinvent the wheel. But you do add things to it. Jazz always offers an opportunity to capture the times we live in, by injecting rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and textural proposals. This is what you do yourself because you are sensitive to electronic music and hip hop, while maintaining the propensity of modern jazz to take up the French impressionist music of 125 years ago. So you’re not only doing new things, you’re also including different types of acoustic jazz from the eras before yours, from Miles Davis to the groove jazz of the CTI label in the 70s. So you’re not just in one period of music, one style. It’s the diversity of material that makes your music so interesting and makes you a creator in your own right.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Yes, these are variables that I gravitate towards. I have to take a very open and broad approach to the things I hear and connect with. I challenge myself to learn them and encourage younger musicians to do the same. You know, it can put so much weight and pressure on a musician, they can feel like they have to do this or that, that they have to fit in. That’s why I tell young musicians that adapting to the present is like having unique guests while learning about the past. I tell them that they have to look at what’s out there and what’s coming, but they also have to know their music and be able to support it. When you create, you find the things that really speak to you. And if you go through a young person’s record collection, there will probably be all kinds of results, all kinds of music and sounds. I’ve also experienced through my record collection and my parents’ record collection everything from Indian or Arabic music to rock to Jamaican reggae to Eastern European folklore. It continues.

PAN M 360: After the release of the Universal Beings album, what led you to In These Times?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: After we did Universal Beings, which was a collection of small bands, playing in different places, we put on a couple of big shows for the release of the record. We invited all the musicians from the smaller bands to the same set. I had a larger orchestra to draw from. And the concept started to take off because I did more and more concerts like that. When it really became a part of my thing, I worked on my compositions that I played with all the different bands. I ended up getting more regular orchestras where, for example, I would play music from my regular band and a string quartet in the context of a multimedia performance. We did that at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Hall, among others. And so I just followed the course of opportunities and venues for this broader orchestral expression in instrumentation.

PAN M 360: Have these opportunities been conducive to the evolution of your musical language?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Absolutely. What a chance to flesh out my music in these spaces! So we were able to record these shows and then work on them in the studio and finalize the arrangements for the new album. More precisely, I took the arrangements originally planned for these concerts and mixed them with other sessions recorded in the studio. These orchestrations and arrangements were rethought, turned upside down, and sideways. The production process generated new forms to the pieces. So now it’s part of my language to record live and reimagine afterward. In a way, I can take all my previously recorded music and transform it into a cohesive proposal, a statement that sums up where I am at. So there is the composition, the editing, and the performance on stage, a kind of culmination of the work done.

PAN M 360: Musicians of previous generations often made their mark early in their careers, which is not the case with you. A long “gestation” process for you?

MAKAYA McCRAVEN: Yes, Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams or Wayne Shorter’were in their early twenties when they emerged internationally. I’m about to turn 40, I’m almost twice their age, and I’m not a young lion. The process takes longer in my case. But if you really want to see where so-called jazz music is going, I think I’m in the right place.

Formed by producers, songwriters, and remixers Zacharie “Soké” Raymond and Yannick “KNY Factory” Rastogi, the duo Banx & Ranx has unveiled its new track “Balenciaga,” on Friday, October 21st. And why should we write about a combo that releases a single song? Well, read on!

They have more than three billion online streams, all platforms combined. However, they’re mostly unknown to the public. The two men have been working in the shadows for nearly seven years. They have been responsible for many international hits such as Kiss and Make Up with Dua Lipa and Contra La Pared with Sean Paul and J Balvin. Under license from Universal Music, they recently worked as musical directors for the Cirque du Soleil show MÜV.

With Balanciaga, Banx & Ranx brings its listeners back to the middle of July. This collaboration with the artists Demarco and Konshens is tinged with dancehall and reggaeton. In fact, it was Demarco who established contact with the duo. “He wrote to us on Instagram, because he liked the work we did with Sean Paul. Then we sent him a bunch of instrumentals,” Zacharie says. “When Demarco sent us his recordings on the Balanciaga beat, it was unequivocal: we absolutely had to release this track as a single,” he adds.

Born in Paris, Yannick moved to Guadeloupe at the age of three. Later in life, he moved to Montreal and started posting tracks on SoundCloud. Zacharie also started posting at a young age on the platform. “We both liked the music the other was creating and we decided to get in touch,” says Yannick. That conversation turned into several meetings in Montreal, and then countless recording sessions that led to the birth of Banx & Ranx in 2014.

Recently, they have made it their mission to make Canadian artists shine. Through their record label 31 East, Banx & Ranx have brought emerging Canadian artists like Rêve and Preston Pablo to the forefront. “We realized that it was important to grow Canadian artists. It quickly became a priority for us,” says the duo.

PAN M 360: What are your influences and what are you currently listening?

ZACHARIE: We are inspired by many different things. Obviously from music, but also from our lifestyle. We like to go out to bars, party, and meet new people. We love to travel, and we incorporate elements from the different cultures we come across. I would even add that visual arts and fashion inspire us. I listen to many different genres of music, but most of the time I listen to our own tracks to make sure the mix is right.

YANNICK: I listen to many different genres of music. Some days I only listen to music from the 70s, and other days I only listen to Caribbean music. I enjoy the music of Guadeloupe, the Zuke. This style of music makes me happy. I have countless different playlists on my Spotify.

PAN M 360: What software do you use to create? Do you have a favorite plug-in?

BANX & RANX: We’ll give away one of our secrets: we often use the metronome sound from Logic Pro as the basis for our bass line. We modify the metronome sound in our own way. Then, we like to try several different plug-ins. Of course, we reuse some of them, but it’s important for us to differentiate our tools. It’s also very important for us to have a mix of acoustic, organic, and electronic.

PAN M 360: In a previous interview, you said, “we want every music producer to be able to find the Banx to their Ranx.” How do you complement each other?

BANX & RANX: Our personalities are very different; we complement each other very well. We are like Yin and Yang. We have been able to develop a very efficient way of working. Now, it’s like we are one brain, and we are the two hemispheres. Together we can achieve our goals faster. Not many people think about it, but to travel together is very nice. It’s nice to be able to experience things together because we always have someone on our side to understand. It really makes it easier to navigate through the ups and downs of life.  It also helps to push each other out of our comfort zone.

PAN M 360: Tell me about your new title Balenciaga. How did you get in touch with DeMarco and Konshens. How did the creation process go?

BANX & RANX: We created the instrumental for Balanciaga two years ago. At first, this song was intended for Bad Bunny. Some time ago, Demarco contacted us on Instagram because he liked the work we did with Sean Paul. Afterwards, we sent him several instrumentals and he chose the one for Balanciaga. When he sent us his recordings, it was unequivocal: we had to release it as a single. Konshens joined the track soon after. As far as lyrics are concerned, Jamaican artists don’t worry much about them. They improvise a lot. We’re willing to bet that he was wearing Balanciaga brand clothes during the recording. That’s probably where he got his inspiration from.

PAN M 360: What advice would you give to young producers who listen to you?

BANX & RANX: We have several pieces of advice we’d like to give. One is to visualize success and mentally project yourself into the future. We’ve done that a lot and we’re sure it’s helped us get to where we are today. Secondly, it’s very important to surround yourself with good people and to have a manager that you trust. We’ve had the same manager for eight years now and it’s worked out great. The entourage allows us to get out of our comfort zone and get outside opinions on our creations. Third, I would tell young producers that it’s important to give 100% and work with passion. You’re going to work on music every day, you’re going to dream about it. If you are not motivated by passion, you will not make it.

PAN M 360: How do you judge the freedom and space you must give to the artists on your tracks? When you create, do you imagine a specific artist who could pose on your tracks?

BANX & RANX: At the beginning of our career, we had prepared about 100 beats, but we were not able to record good tracks with artists, because our music was too condensed. As a music producer, you tend to want to show everything you can do in one song. At one point, we decided to hire a songwriter to accompany us in our creations. It allowed us to improve on that level. It’s certain that when we create, we imagine that a specific artist will play on our songs. However, artists rarely look for the instrumentals that we think they are looking for. You must adapt and find the perfect artist for each song.

PAN M 360: In the past, you have collaborated with many great artists. Is there an artist you have never worked with, but would like to work with?

BANX & RANX: We would like to work with artists like Post Malone, Drake, and Justin Bieber. Right now, we love working with young artists. It’s always special to work with them, they have a special energy and always feel like they must prove themselves. You don’t always find that energy with popular, established artists. We realized that it was important to grow local artists and it became a priority for us. Recently, this is what we tried to accomplish with Rêve and Preston Pablo.

PAN M 360: What can we expect from Banx & Ranx in the future? BANX & RANX: For sure we would like to do an album with many collaborations one day. It’s a dream for us. We’ve been talking about this possibility recently, but nothing is concrete yet.  Hopefully, something like that will happen in the next couple of years. Now, we are constantly in the studio looking for new sounds. We hope to release many more tracks in the next few months. 

At just 22 years old, Charlie Houston is writing the kind of vulnerable pop music that sticks with you weeks after your first listen. It’s nice to see and hear music/lyrics that have no filter; music that is completely a true snapshot into the artist’s state of mind, something a lot of modern pop music is missing nowadays.

Charlie is still early on in her career and was kind of flying under the radar with her first release I Hate Spring, but eventually got messaged by the Grammy-nominated, electro-pop duo, ODESZA, to collaborate last year. She just wrapped up a tour with them and is gearing up to tour with Charlotte Cardin for a string of shows in Quebec this November. On top of that, she just dropped her Bad Posture EP last week, via Arts & Crafts, as she focuses on her Philosophy major studies.

We spoke with Charlie Houston as she was on tour with ODESZA about her thought process, vulnerability, and motivations.

PAN M 360: You’re on tour with ODESZA still right?

Charlie Houston: Yeah I’m in Sacramento, California on tour with them.

PAN M 360: And I saw that you did a little collaboration with them last year. How did that happen?

Charlie Houston: They reached out to me last summer, just on Instagram, actually. They DM’d me, super out of the blue. And they were just like, ‘do you want to make a song together?’ And I’m a huge fan of them. So I obviously said yes. And then the beginning of this year, they asked if I wanted to come on tour with them.

PAN M 360: What was the experience like collaborating with them?

Charlie Houston: It was cool, but it was remote. I didn’t get to have an in-person session with them, which I mean, I definitely would have preferred because I definitely like collaborating more in person. But they basically like we had a few calls together. And then they sent me some just like instrumental stuff that they were working on. And then there was one track that I really liked. And then I essentially just wrote the top line to it. And then we kind of sent it back and forth and workshopped a little bit.

PAN M 360: You have this new EP, Bad Posture, out now. I relate so much to that title. Being a writer, my posture is shit. Where did the idea for the title come from?

Charlie Houston: I haven’t reached the point in my career where I’ve made a body of work that had kind of a cohesive concept, per se. And so and I didn’t want to like force a meaning to kind of attach all the songs together. Thus far, all of the projects I’ve released have just kind of been like collections of songs that I’ve written at a specific time period, but they weren’t necessarily all about the same thing, or whatever.

But my mental state is obviously changing as I grow up. And I have really bad anxiety. And that translates into me grinding my teeth at night when I sleep and then just naturally having all of my tension and stress, and just that emotional state existing in my neck. Like it manifests itself physically in my jaw and neck. And a lot of stuff I write about is stuff to do with, my anxiety and kind of negative emotions to do with relationships and breakups. So ‘Bad Posture’ made sense.

PAN M 360: Were the songs in Bad Posture written during the same writing period as I Hate Spring?

Charlie Houston: No they were written after and I think they’re definitely a progression. Maybe not a progression, but they were written at a different point in my life. I feel like I’m getting more comfortable with being vulnerable in my writing. My song “Comfortable” is extremely important to me and “Lately,” is about my anxiety about dying.

PAN M 360: And you’re only 22 right? With that much anxiety.

Charlie Houston: Yeah like I think of I Hate Spring as writing about that stuff to be relatable for other people, but I feel like now, I’m writing stuff I’m just thinking about if that makes sense.

PAN M 360: Do you ever think about maybe being too vulnerable in your writing or on the flip side, not vulnerable enough?

Charlie Houston: I mean, it’s interesting. I feel like when it comes to writing about things … just kind of like internal feelings, I don’t really think of a filter when it comes to that. I’m just kind of writing directly what I’m feeling and so I feel like I’m normally pretty honest and true to those emotions. But I definitely find when it comes to writing about experiences with other people, I’m definitely not as vulnerable. I get self-conscious about writing very specific details about like, my relationship with someone. And so I feel like that’s definitely something that I would like to become more comfortable with but at the same time not become more comfortable with.

PAN M 360: Have you been writing on tour at all?

Charlie Houston: No. I mean, like a little bit? This is only my second time touring. And this is by far, much larger than what I was doing before. And so I feel like, for the first few weeks, I was very overwhelmed a lot of the time. And I’m also a very retrospective person in my brain. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t really process things until after they happen. In the moment, I just can’t. I couldn’t explain to someone how I feel about something when it’s happening. And so right now, I feel like I’m almost like, on my emotions feel like they’re on autopilot.

PAN M 360: That makes sense. You’re in tour mode.

Charlie Houston: I’m also in school right now. And it’s like the beginning of the school year. And I’m also about to end this tour. And so, before the tour started, I 100% was like, ‘I’m gonna write so much on tour,’ just because I thought that’s what people did. But I feel like I definitely, like just don’t have the mental capacity right now.

PAN M 360: What are you taking in school?

Charlie Houston: I’m majoring in Philosophy.

PAN M 360: Man, I took a few of those classes in University, and most made me feel like smashing my head against a wall.

Charlie Houston: That’s pretty on-brand. I would say with all classes I take, it’s wanting to smash my own head against the wall.

At just 22 years old, Charlie Houston is writing the kind of vulnerable pop music that sticks with you weeks after your first listen. It’s nice to see and hear music/lyrics that have no filter; music that is completely a true snapshot into the artist’s state of mind, something a lot of modern pop music is missing nowadays.

Charlie is still early on in her career and was kind of flying under the radar with her first release I Hate Spring, but eventually got messaged by the Grammy-nominated, electro-pop duo, ODESZA, to collaborate last year. She just wrapped up a tour with them and is gearing up to tour with Charlotte Cardin for a string of shows in Quebec this November. On top of that, she just dropped her Bad Posture EP last week, via Arts & Crafts, as she focuses on her Philosophy major studies.

We spoke with Charlie Houston as she was on tour with ODESZA about her thought process, vulnerability, and motivations.

PAN M 360: You’re on tour with ODESZA still right?

Charlie Houston: Yeah I’m in Sacramento, California on tour with them.

PAN M 360: And I saw that you did a little collaboration with them last year. How did that happen?

Charlie Houston: They reached out to me last summer, just on Instagram, actually. They DM’d me, super out of the blue. And they were just like, ‘do you want to make a song together?’ And I’m a huge fan of them. So I obviously said yes. And then the beginning of this year, they asked if I wanted to come on tour with them.

PAN M 360: What was the experience like collaborating with them?

Charlie Houston: It was cool, but it was remote. I didn’t get to have an in-person session with them, which I mean, I definitely would have preferred because I definitely like collaborating more in person. But they basically like we had a few calls together. And then they sent me some just like instrumental stuff that they were working on. And then there was one track that I really liked. And then I essentially just wrote the top line to it. And then we kind of sent it back and forth and workshopped a little bit.

PAN M 360: You have this new EP, Bad Posture, out now. I relate so much to that title. Being a writer, my posture is shit. Where did the idea for the title come from?

Charlie Houston: I haven’t reached the point in my career where I’ve made a body of work that had kind of a cohesive concept, per se. And so and I didn’t want to like force a meaning to kind of attach all the songs together. Thus far, all of the projects I’ve released have just kind of been like collections of songs that I’ve written at a specific time period, but they weren’t necessarily all about the same thing, or whatever.

But my mental state is obviously changing as I grow up. And I have really bad anxiety. And that translates into me grinding my teeth at night when I sleep and then just naturally having all of my tension and stress, and just that emotional state existing in my neck. Like it manifests itself physically in my jaw and neck. And a lot of stuff I write about is stuff to do with, my anxiety and kind of negative emotions to do with relationships and breakups. So ‘Bad Posture’ made sense.

PAN M 360: Were the songs in Bad Posture written during the same writing period as I Hate Spring?

Charlie Houston: No they were written after and I think they’re definitely a progression. Maybe not a progression, but they were written at a different point in my life. I feel like I’m getting more comfortable with being vulnerable in my writing. My song “Comfortable” is extremely important to me and “Lately,” is about my anxiety about dying.

PAN M 360: And you’re only 22 right? With that much anxiety.

Charlie Houston: Yeah like I think of I Hate Spring as writing about that stuff to be relatable for other people, but I feel like now, I’m writing stuff I’m just thinking about if that makes sense.

PAN M 360: Do you ever think about maybe being too vulnerable in your writing or on the flip side, not vulnerable enough?

Charlie Houston: I mean, it’s interesting. I feel like when it comes to writing about things … just kind of like internal feelings, I don’t really think of a filter when it comes to that. I’m just kind of writing directly what I’m feeling and so I feel like I’m normally pretty honest and true to those emotions. But I definitely find when it comes to writing about experiences with other people, I’m definitely not as vulnerable. I get self-conscious about writing very specific details about like, my relationship with someone. And so I feel like that’s definitely something that I would like to become more comfortable with but at the same time not become more comfortable with.

PAN M 360: Have you been writing on tour at all?

Charlie Houston: No. I mean, like a little bit? This is only my second time touring. And this is by far, much larger than what I was doing before. And so I feel like, for the first few weeks, I was very overwhelmed a lot of the time. And I’m also a very retrospective person in my brain. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t really process things until after they happen. In the moment, I just can’t. I couldn’t explain to someone how I feel about something when it’s happening. And so right now, I feel like I’m almost like, on my emotions feel like they’re on autopilot.

PAN M 360: That makes sense. You’re in tour mode.

Charlie Houston: I’m also in school right now. And it’s like the beginning of the school year. And I’m also about to end this tour. And so, before the tour started, I 100% was like, ‘I’m gonna write so much on tour,’ just because I thought that’s what people did. But I feel like I definitely, like just don’t have the mental capacity right now.

PAN M 360: What are you taking in school?

Charlie Houston: I’m majoring in Philosophy.

PAN M 360: Man, I took a few of those classes in University, and most made me feel like smashing my head against a wall.

Charlie Houston: That’s pretty on-brand. I would say with all classes I take, it’s wanting to smash my own head against the wall.

After a first degree in art history obtained in France, Jessica Ekomane decided to take advantage of a university exchange program to discover Berlin and undertake a course in sound studies. Still living in the German capital, she has found her place and her mode of expression: experimental music. After having experimented with sound installation, it was during her first concert in a Berlin bar that her interest in the form was confirmed. Invited to Montreal by AKOUSMA, the composer will present Manifold, a piece commissioned by INA-GRM, written for the acousmonium (orchestra of speakers).

PAN M 360: Please introduce us to “Manifold”, the piece you will perform at Akousma

Jessica Ekomane: I always have a hard time talking about this piece because I feel like it brings together a lot of things I’ve been working on over the last few years, including developing melodies, polyphony and rhythm, all at the same time. I also use a lot of “tuning”, tuning that is not the European piano tuning, well equal temperament as we know it. I use a “heptatonic” tuning that comes from Malawi. It is a family of tuning that is found in different countries and also in the diasporas. I try to go in this direction, to break a little bit of this very reduced choice of notes with which we have been making music for a very long time. Moreover, as I use Max/MSP (editor’s note: musical software of sound synthesis), I am really in the field of the frequencies. It’s not notes so it doesn’t really make sense to limit myself to those few frequencies.

PAN M 360: You played a DJ set for the 31st anniversary of the legendary club Trésor in Berlin,

Jessica Ekomane: So when I do DJ sets, I don’t play music to make people dance, it’s more experimental stuff. It’s true that it changes me from what I usually do, it’s a much lighter side and it also allows me to share the music I like, to listen with others. We listen together. I like to make mixes because it’s an opportunity to put forward artists who are less known. I don’t intend to make a career out of it, I rarely do it because I really want to keep this fresh side, not too professionalized.

PAN M 360: What are the elements that had an impact on you you when you discovered the Berlin experimental music scene? 

Jessica Ekomane: What’s interesting about this city and what I discovered when I moved here is the openness, compared to, for example, some French institutions that seem very closed and elitist. In Berlin, there are spaces to start with where people are just interested and rather encouraging, even if they give criticism or feedback. Except for the fact that it was a lot of white men, it was always experimental music. If people see that you’re doing something, they’re willing to give you an opportunity. That’s how I got my first gig at Madame Claude’s bar, which hosts both known and unknown experimental music artists.

PAN M 360: How do you perceive the place of women in the experimental scene in Berlin?

Jessica Ekomane: It has improved a lot in the last few years. I’m also in dialogue with women from the previous generation who tell me that they used to be alone and they really see the evolution, not only on the level of musicians, on the level of sound engineers for example. It’s possible to have women or non-binary people as sound engineers. Of course there is a lot of progress to be made, but when I leave Berlin or come back from other places, I realize how far ahead it is. Maybe it’s also because I’ve created a bubble for myself, an environment where I don’t have to deal with it as much, because it’s a lot to bear sometimes. I hope that progress will continue because historically speaking, we are at a time when there are many questions about identities that can also create friction or a reverse effect with people who want to go against that.

PAN M 360: Are there any female composers, singers, who inspire you by their background or their music?

Jessica Ekomane: I really like Éliane Radigue, I really like Mariana Maché. Recently, I’m starting to listen to Mary Lou Williams more too, she’s an Afro-American composer and pianist who comes  from jazz, she did some great vocal compositions, Nina Simone too. I also listen to a lot of music that is not necessarily gendered, for example the music of the pygmies who are between the Congo and Cameroon. That’s where I learned the most about how to think about polyphony.

JESSICA EKOMANE SE PRODUIT CE JEUDI 13 OCTOBRE À L’USINE C, 21H, DANS LE CADRE DU FESTIVAL AKOUSMA. POUR INFOS ET BILLETS , C’EST ICI

Andrew Boudreau is an active member of the creative jazz scene in North America. An adept pianist and composer, Andrew will be presenting music from his 2022 album, NEON, as part of the L’OFF Festival de Jazz. His performance at L’OFF is something of a homecoming for the artist who once studied at McGill’s own Schulich School of Music. We spoke to him about his music, his upcoming performance, and his thoughts on the creative scene. 

PAN M 360: Andrew, thanks so much for being with us. I suppose the first thing I’ll ask you is how the hell do you manage to play a 13/8 ostinato while keeping 4/4 in your right hand.

Andrew Boudreau: Haha that’s a good question. I’m not sure I know the answer. If I find out I’ll let you know.

PAN M 360: Thanks for indulging me. So what is your relationship with Montreal? I understand you studied music here.

Andrew Boudreau: I’m originally from Nova Scotia. I moved to Montreal to do my bachelor’s degree in music at McGill. I stayed in the city for three to four years after my studies. 

PAN M 360: So you must be familiar with the L’OFF Festival de Jazz?

Andrew Boudreau: Oh yeah. I think the first time I played might have been in 2013, a long time ago, but always as part of other people’s projects. I think one of the cool things about this festival is that the big mission is to celebrate the scene here. I think that involves some kind of collaboration with those outside of the scene with musicians that are from here and that is a really beautiful thing to witness. It’s one of the reasons that October is a great month to be in Montreal. 

PAN M 360: Well let me ask you, what exactly is the nature of your quartet and your album NEON?

Andrew Boudreau: It’s a quartet with three of my friends, Neta Raanan on Saxophone, Simón Willson on Bass, and Eviatar Slivnik on Drums. We all met in Boston where I went to do my master’s and now we all live in New York City. They are heading up to meet me here, and for some of them, it will be their first time in Canada, which is really exciting. As far as the nature of the music goes, I definitely wrote these compositions with these three people in mind. There are some parts of it that are really specific in terms of composition and notation, but also parts that are quite open-ended. I think that is because of their strengths as musicians playing stuff you write and stuff you don’t write. 

PAN M 360: What sources of inspiration are you drawing from here?

Andrew Boudreau: For the music on the album, I started working on it, in a way a long time ago, but also during 2020 and 2021 which were obviously quite intense for a lot of people … I suppose that left a bit of a mark on the music. Some of the music is connected to geography. One of the compositions on the album is titled “Mile-Ex.” I used to live in the Mile-Ex and when I did, no one would know what you were talking about, and now it’s pretty trendy, now that I’m gone ha. I’ve been inspired by a lot of visual artists. One of my favourite artists is Nova Scotian, Maud Lewis. She lived in a tiny house on the coast and no one really paid attention until she passed away, unfortunately. Musically speaking, I’m pretty omnivorous, I’m always looking to hear new stuff. Some of what I listen to has piano, bass, drums, and saxophone, and some of it doesn’t at all. It changes by the day.  

PAN M 360: How would you best describe your presentation at L’OFF this year?

Andrew Boudreau: I would describe it as a collection of individual compositions. It’s not that there is one frame of reference, writing only about one writer, painter, or event. For me, it’s more about piecing together a collage or a narrative through a bunch of pieces or compositions. What we’ll be playing is some assembly of this music that I’ve written. I like to rearrange them in different ways, so they can be somewhat different each time, even if we have recorded these nine pieces a certain way. What we’ll be doing is creating an arc through some arrangement of those pieces, finding new ways to sequence them and present them. 

PAN M 360: Modern jazz can be a bit daunting for some, is there anything you would want people to be aware of going into your show or not really. 

Andrew Boudreau: I don’t know what I’d tell them to listen for in advance … I would say that for me, it’s less about word painting. It’s almost to me that all the titles are subtitles or something. I think theme and variation apply to all the music here, otherwise, I suppose it’s more about creating a mood or an atmosphere and seeing how that can evolve, devolve, and change. But I suppose rather than giving instructions, I would just be curious to hear what people have to say. 

ANDREW BOUDREAU IS PERFORMING THIS THURSDAY OCTOBER 13TH, 10PM AT DIÈZE ONZE

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