Pan M 360 : Hello Jean-Félix! How did you come up with the idea of a musical show based on the figure of Leonardo da Vinci?
Jean-Félix Mailloux : In truth, it was a commission from Wonny Song, artistic director of the Orford Arts Centre. We spoke at the Opus Prize ceremony in 2018. I offered to go and play our Debussy album, but he thought it didn’t fit in with the theme of the 2019 festival, which was to be centred around Italy. He then asked me if I would be willing to build a show inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and the music of the Italian Renaissance. I thought about it, and finally said yes! We premiered the show in July 2019.
Pan M 360 : Were you familiar with this musical universe at the time?
Jean-Félix Mailloux : Very little! I had never had the opportunity to play it. That said, it’s music and a period that I’ve loved for a long time, thanks to albums by Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras. I’ve also listened to a lot of Gesualdo, as well as modern musicians influenced by this period: Pärt and Stravinsky (his three madrigals on Gesualdo, his Pulcinella inspired by Pergolesi, among others, and even his Persephone, rather atonal, but still linked to this period, etc.), and several others.
Pan M 360 : The addition of a voice (Coral Egan’s, magnificent!) in such an extensive way is new for a Cordâme album. Why, and how did you come to choose Coral?
Jean-Félix Mailloux : Coral had already worked with me on pieces for Solawa (another ensemble founded and directed by Jean-Félix, editor’s note), and we really enjoyed our collaboration. I had been looking for a long time to integrate her into a Cordâme project. So when the idea of the Da Vinci show started to take shape, I thought of her. I don’t really like operatic voices with a large vibrato. I wanted a voice that was better suited to the early music repertoire, a pure voice with little or no vibrato. Coral has the perfect instrument for that! An exceptional talent with an infallible technique, a fluid plasticity thanks to her work in jazz, an impeccable accuracy of classical baroque level. It’s exactly what I needed!
Pan M 360 : What are the main elements that make it possible for you to create music that is both new (because all the compositions are yours!) and so evocative of the Renaissance, all without being a pastiche?
Jean-Félix Mailloux : The rhythms are very important. They make me think of folklore, because it’s music that was part of the daily life of the people at the time. I listened a lot to Jordi Savall, and the use of percussion instruments like tambourines is very present. There are also the simple, insistent motifs and the use of old harmonic modes, such as the melodic minor. I also used a lot of parallel fourths and fifths, techniques that sound “old”. It’s very technical and musicological, but the result is satisfying, both new and traditional, at least I think so.
Pan M 360 : Compared to your previous albums linked to the world of classical music (Debussy, Satie), how does Da Vinci compare in terms of difficulties and challenges?
Jean-Félix Mailloux : It’s a different job. For Satie, the connection was quite natural, because his music is quite similar to what we were doing at that time. Debussy was more difficult, because his music is perfect in itself, very directed in the writing. Debussy knew what he wanted. It was more difficult to ‘get out’ of the imposed framework. With Da Vinci and the Renaissance, it was actually easier. Once I had assimilated the basic concepts (which I mentioned earlier), I had a lot of freedom. Da Vinci composed music, as we know, but no documents have come down to us. I was therefore able to invent as I pleased sound worlds that he “could have” conceived himself! This is the central idea of the show and the album. I’m happy with the result, and I think I’m going to love these pieces for a long time.
Pan M 360: Would you have considered tackling this musical universe on your own if Wonny (Song) hadn’t challenged you to do it?
Jean-Félix Mailloux: I’m not sure, no. But in retrospect, I’m very happy! I have the impression that doors are opening for Cordâme thanks to this concept. Doors that I was knocking on without any answer. There aren’t many shows like this on the stage at the moment. I feel that we can use it to showcase our originality and play on stages or at festivals that we have never visited before. I am very happy, and I thank Wonny for that!
Pan M 360: I would like you to tell me about the lyrics that Coral sings. Who are they from and how did you find them?
Jean-Félix Mailloux: For the project, I did some research to find texts that could have been read and appreciated by Leonardo da Vinci. At first I thought of Petrarch, but I fell in love with a certain Gaspara Stampa, who lived about the same time as Leonardo. I was won over by her very strong and poetic texts, full of pearls and little wonders. She is an unknown poet outside Italy, but her work resonates with passion and is tinged with a rock’n’roll life full of emotions. She was married to a man who was away at war for a long time, so the themes of absence, of waiting, of love imagined rather than experienced, permeate her work almost everywhere.
Pan M 360: A great discovery, then?
Jean-Félix Mailloux: Yes, so much so that I’m currently working on an upcoming show centred around women authors from different eras, which I will set to music specifically for Coral Egan. In addition to Gaspara Stampa, there will be Louise Labbé, Catherine Pozzi, Louis de Vilmorin, Emily Dickinson, and others.
Cordâme ensemble- left to right : Sheila Hannigan, Coral Egan, Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau, Marie Neige Lavigne, Jean-Félix Mailloux
Pan M 360: Another project related to classical music?
Jean-Félix Mailloux: Yes. The next one will be devoted to Ravel. The work on this one is very advanced and will complete the French trilogy (with Satie and Debussy), but then (I’m already thinking about it!), I intend to tackle Stravinsky!
Pan M 360: But before all that, you’ll be performing (in front of an audience!!) in several places in Quebec, right?
Jean-Félix Mailloux: Absolutely. We’re really looking forward to seeing real humans in front of us! We’ll be in Saint-Prime on July 3rd, in Sorel-Tracy on August 8th, in Trois-Rivières on August 22nd. Other dates and locations may be added soon, thanks to the relaxing of sanitary measures. The public can visit our Facebook page to stay informed.
Pan M 360: Thank you!
Formed in Perth, Australia in 1978, the Scientists first established themselves as a punk band with pop tendencies before a personnel reshuffle (the first of many) in the early ’80s, which saw the band dive into disturbing swamp rock, tinged with Beefhearty crazy blues, Cramps-like dissonant ’60s fuzz-rock, Suicidal hysteria, Stoogian proto-punk, and apocalyptic Birthday Party-style post-punk. Raw, lo-fi sound, primal and hypnotic rhythms, dangerously simple riffs, it’s particularly this second incarnation of the Scientists that has left its mark and influenced numerous bands including the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Mudhoney. The incendiary “We Had Love”, recently heard by many in the movie Rock n Rolla, could be considered a classic of the Scientists sound.
They’ve been crowned the godfathers of grunge, but the Scientists were far more twisted, unhealthy and sinister than anything that came out of Seattle or Sub Pop. After relocating to Sydney, then London, and six landmark albums between 1982 and 87, the Scientists faded away… only to return with the same spirit. First sporadically, then much more seriously since the beginning of the 2000s.
The current formation, still centered around the singer and guitarist Kim Salmon, gathers all the musicians of the second incarnation: guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic and drummer Leanne Cowie, who joined the band in December 1985. If the Scientists have toured a lot since this reformation, they have on the other hand released very little new material, Salmon preferring to focus on concerts. After a single released in 2017, then another for the Los Angeles label In The Red the following year and an EP for the same label in 2019, the band was convinced to make a new album. Negativity, released on June 11, brings the Australian band back to almost where they left off in 1987. They haven’t mellowed out a bit, always seemingly fueled by bad acid and cheap beer, and they’re still in the same bad mood that suits them so well. To emphasize the point, PAN M 360 reached Salmon at his home in Melbourne, where it’s almost winter. The very friendly leader of the band gave us a long interview, in which he talks about the Scientists reformation, the creation of Negativity,and his passion for drawing and painting.
PAN M 360: When the Scientists called it quits in 1987, did you leave on a bad note? How did you get back together?
Kim Salmon: It was sort of a natural process when we ended the Scientists in ’86, there wasn’t any point in pursuing it, it seemed okay to do it, we couldn’t see any reasons not to…
PAN M 360: Had you thought about coming back together for a while before making it real?
Kim Salmon: Not really. It was one of those understood kind of things. Tony was a bit reluctant about it because of certain things that did occur in the past. He was a bit embittered about some things that had nothing to do with the band, but more about the band not being as successful as he had hoped. We were kind of on the verge of breaking into the mainstream in the ’80s but it just never quite happened for various reasons, and he was maybe more disappointed than us about that. Anyway, we succeeded in persuading him to restart the band.
PAN M 360: Were you adamant about having the old line-up back together?
Kim Salmon: The band had a few line-ups. We reunited one of the earlier line-up with James Baker, Ian Sharples and Ben Juniper to perform a show on some rooftop somewhere in Perth for quite a bit of money in 1995, but that was just a one-off thing. And there was the line-up we had for Human Jukebox in 1987 with myself, Tony and a guy named Nick Combe, so that was another line-up as well. I like it but I don’t think it was the Scientists line-up. It’s just that people were more interested in this actual line-up, which is the one we had in the early to mid-’80s. Leanne joined in late ’85. She was the one who fit best with this line-up after Brett Rixon left in ’85. People think we got back together in 2006 but it was actually in 2002, when we were offered to tour Australia. At this point, we had tried two different drummers. One night, we played a show in Sydney and we asked Leanne if she would like to join us on stage for a song. That was a pivotal moment because that’s where we realized that we really needed her in the band, it just wasn’t the same without Leanne on drums.
PAN M 360: How did this new album came together?
Kim Salmon: In 2017, we had the opportunity to do some touring in Australia and we had at that point reissued all our catalogue on a label called Numero. We had many, many reissues over the years, but Numero was really the most successful, and really brought the band back to life, so we went on that tour. In those days, Tony got me involved in some recording he was doing for someone’s birthday and he wanted me to sing on it. He actually did a pretty good job with my vocals and we thought that maybe we should do some more tracks with the rest of the band, so we did this single, which was a cover of Jacques Dutronc’s “Mini Mini Mini” and “Perpetual Motion”, an obscure Scientists song from the ’80s that we never officially recorded. We were’nt too much into recording new stuff like old bands do because its always fraught with disaster. So for us a single was alright. But then we found ourselves touring Europe a year after, and then the USA, so we did another single, with In The Red this time, and then In The Red persuaded us to do an EP and another tour of the U.S.
After that, we were offered a third tour of the USA but the label needed more new recordings so we finally agreed to do another album… that’s how Negativity came about! So we put the album out, but we were never able to tour… We still have an open visa until June 2022, so we’ll see how things go. Negativity was basically done through the Internet. I would come up with a rhythm on the drums, send it to Tony in London who would come up with a riff and send it to me. If I liked the riff, I would come up with something to sing on it. Then we would add the bass and send it to Leanne to add the drums. But since I had already found a beat, it was not easy for her to play over it. So we basically recorded it at Sumo Studio in Perth. We added some stuff here and there, violin, trombone, my daughter sang a bit and played some piano…
PAN M 360: Would you say that Negativity is the logical follow-up to Human Jukebox, that last album you guys recorded together in 1987?
Kim Salmon: In some ways. I think it’s more polished than Human Jukebox which is much more rough and ready. This new record sounds like it’s more produced to my ears. And there aren’t a lot of Scientists records that sound well produced, aside from Weird Love (1986) and maybe You Get What You Deserve (1985); generally, we had pretty garage-y records. We usually recorded on a low budget. I think our recording history is bizarre because our first album is very different, with a pop-punky kind of sound; Blood Red River is quite an extreme sounding record and You Get What Deserve is also different… I can hear a sort of aesthetic somehow, I think that they share some things. We’re still pursuing that minimalist sort of structure in our songs, that’s what we’ve always done. The structures are very simple in terms of notes and keys and melodies. That said, the artist is the last person to be talking about his work. But If I can draw a parallel between those two albums, it’s mostly about Tony’s involvment. Usually, I was writing most of the songs, but on Human Jukebox, Tony contributed to a lot of the music, as well as on Negativity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXHR69POI2E
PAN M 360: Why did you choose the title Negativity?
Kim Salmon: We’ve always been a band with a dark side, we’ve never done anything very positive and upbeat – without being goth, that I want to say (laughs). So this word came to me in one of the songs of the album, on “Dissonance” I think, and I thought it would make a good title. I did something positive with Negativity (laughs)
PAN M 360: Aside from the band, you teach music and you also paint and draw.
Kim Salmon: When I was 19, I studied fine arts for a year, painting was my primary interest. Then I took what they call a gap year… and that gap year lasted until now (laughs). But all along, I kept being interested in drawing and art, but aside from a few drawings and cartoons here and there, and a few record covers I illustrated, I never really focused on this. It’s after my last solo album in 2015 that I got more into it. In order to do the album, I had a Gofundme, but instead of doing a private show or something like that for the people who helped me, I decided to send them a card with some drawings I made. Then someone approached me about doing an exhibition of my work. So I did my first exhibit in 2018 which included a little bit of everything I’ve done since I was 16. I sold quite a few works and the following year I did another one, mostly drawings and watercolours. Again, I sold a lot of them. Then I exhibited at Mick Harvey and his wife’s gallery. Again, a big success as I sold 14 of my works. At the opening, I sold five works that I had done in a week while I was in quarantine in Perth! Since the confinement, I really immersed myself in painting and drawing. I have been quite productive and have made a lot of progress. I really love painting and drawing, I’m really excited about it and will definitely do more of it.
(photo credit: Andrew Watson)
I’ve met with Ben Reimer, drummer and initiator of this new festival.
https://youtu.be/2-GKgdeLpcA
Video interviews with many artists participating in the Undrum fest 2021
Pan M 360 : Hello Ben! How did you come up with this great idea for a concert series?
Ben Reimer : well, it was years in the making, at least in my mind! Since I am a drummer and also a member of Architek percussion group, I am well aware of the possibilities of drums in avant-garde and contemporary music, added to those in jazz, improv, metal, pop, rock and so on. I am a fan of all kinds of music, big range. So I wanted to bring together all those great people, musicians and thinkers of new music, that use the drum kit in innovative ways and contribute to ‘’undo’’ the usual ways of playing the instrument and shake the public’s conventional idea of music making with drums.
So with the help of my friends at Architek and also Peter (Burton) from Suoni per il popolo, everything was put in place this year to inaugurate this series within the festival and we called it Undrum, for obvious reasons! I am aware there are a lot of drum fests already out there (right here in Montreal, there is a very good one!), and they’re great, but I wanted to showcase styles and musical ideas that are less well represented in these gatherings, individual voices that express themselves in unconventional ways through drum kit playing. That’s the goal.
Pan M 360 : May we call you the Tim Brady of drums?
Ben Reimer : LOL! Well, I haven’t done a piece for 100 drums yet, so, I don’t know… But hey, just for the principle of it, that would be an honor! And that wouldn’t be so far from the truth. I have my (drumming) hands in art and vernacular music-making, be it metal and rock, and also contemporary opera and drum kit concertos, which I have done! The difference is that I do not compose. I play others’ music, and I like it that way. I love the relationship I develop with composers (like Nicole Lizée for example). That’s my thing.
Pan M 360 : Can you drive us through some of the shows coming next in the series?
Ben Reimer : Sure! This Sunday is Part 2, and it starts with Greg Harrison from Toronto. Great artist, also associated with Jeremy Dutcher. He plays these wonderful grooves where he doubles as a synth player while drumming! Some very ambient, accessible atmospheres mixing delicate drum kit with entrancing bass lines. That’s something to look for.
Then there’s Montreal’s Mili Hong who is well versed in beautiful straight ahead jazz, but here will dazzle with incredible free improv, with purely acoustic drum kit. She knows how to invent great textures with her instrument.
Ian Chang from Sun Lux will also be there. He is like a one man DJ-orchestra! Drumming and also triggering all kinds of sound effects with simultaneous electronics. It’s shocking to hear what can come from a single person on a stage!
Jason Tait will entertain a second set. He comes from The Weakerthans, from Winnipeg.
Pan M 360 : And later on in the month, legendary names will be in town : Susie Ibarra, from Tzadik/John Zorn fame and also Glenn Kotche from Wilco! Was it difficult to bring them along ?
Ben Reimer : No, not at all! I was introduced to Glenn via David Cossin from Bang on a Can in New York, with whom I collaborated on some work by Lukas Ligeti (drummer and son of the famous composer Györgi Ligeti!). Glenn did some lectures for my students at McGill. Like me, he is part of the ‘’popular’’ and ‘’classical’’ worlds. I never met Susie, but I know about her work, of course, and she has an idea of my own, so there is a lot of respect. She also is a wonderful lecturer, researcher and scholar of her instrument. I can’t wait to hear them and see the public’s reaction to their incredible playing.
They are wonderful and very generous individuals. So, no, it wasn’t difficult at all to bring them to the roster.
Pan M 360 : What’s the state of the drum kit as a popular instrument, considering that nowadays, popular and far reaching radio, tv and digital waves have been taken over by rap and hip hop, where the drums aren’t a usual feature?
Ben Reimer : Oh, that is a massive question! It depends if you’re a scholar, a teacher or a player. But I’d say that for sure it’s a different landscape out there from 20 or 50 years ago. I meet some students that have a surprising lack of knowledge of the historical figures of the instrument, and rock music! That being said, they are curious, and once there in the game, they come up with questions about Keith Moon and so on, so then we talk and discuss and they drink it, you know. And, as much as the internet can be a pain, it can also be a way for them to listen and discover lots and lots of things that we didn’t have access to decades ago. So, we have to tamper a bit the idea of lack of knowledge.
That being said, there is a new brand of young drummers arriving with academic and literate credentials. They come from university programs, like McGill in jazz, and they are very well trained and hungry for originality. I’d love to see more classical programs also giving space to the knowledge of drums, and the possibilities of this instrument in a more avant-garde context. But things are evolving. I gave lectures on drum history to classical percussion students. So things are changing.
Pan M 360 : Would you say that walls between ‘’pop’’ and ‘’classical’’ music-making are going down?
Ben Reimer : I think we’re getting there! You know, with pioneering work and advocacy done in the last 25 years or so by ensembles like Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, or right here by Architek, mentalities are going in the right direction, I’d say. But there is still some separation.
Pan M 360 : What artists are blowing up your mind these days?
Ben Reimer : Oh, many, many! All those at Undrum, of course, but also some recent metal drumming. There are incredible drummers out there. So I get inspiration from them, I practice and I even get some new music based on that from Nicole Lizée!
Pan M 360 : What does the drum kit brings to music-making that other percussion instruments don’t?
Ben Reimer : Technically, you have the option of having four things happening at the same time, so it creates a multi-limbed independance which is at the core of what makes a drum kit performance. And also, what I love about it, is the fact that you have all those great individuals, creating their own personal sound world but all tied in with the 100 year-history and knowledge of this instrument. It’s all tied-in with the politics and social fabric of the last 100 years! Yeah. And, best thing, in my mind : you can create such great grooves with it! That’s the beauty of the drum kit : playing it makes people wanna get up and dance!
Pan M 360 : Thanks Ben, and all the best with the series!
Ben Reimer : Thanks to you!
Cavalcade, the highly anticipated, newly released second album from black midi, takes the now British trio back to the paths of unbridled progressive alt-rock music. Like the previous Schlagenheim of 2019, which revealed to the world a group of young virtuoso musicians, capable of incredible technical prowess, digging without restraint into punk, jazz, experimental music and progressive rock like children with a box of candy, Cavalcade, aptly titled, is a surprising, ambitious at times, difficult record, on which all kinds of influences and ambiances jostle together. The delirious first single “John L”, released last March, and the equally crazy video that accompanied it, furiously set the tone for what was to come: Cavalcade is an unbridled ride from which one does not emerge unscathed.
It’s at 2 p.m. that we had an appointment with Geordie Greep at his place in London. Comfortably seated in an armchair in the basement of his house, wearing a shirt, tie and a baggy jacket (a bit like the photo in this article), the guitarist and lead singer of black midi looks like he’s about to be interviewed for a job selling used cars. Unpredictable and sometimes irascible, the talented musician is in a pretty good mood. Without going into too many details and anecdotes, he talked to PAN M 360 about Cavalcade, the new opus of the London combo featuring bassist Cameron Picton and the prodigious drummer-percussionist Morgan Simpson, completed by saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and keyboardist Seth Evans.
PAN M 360: How would you describe Calvacade in your own words?
Geordie Greep: Non-stop thrills, adventure, action, drama, comeday, romance… it’s got it all! The highest highs and the lowest lows.
PAN M 360: The word “drama” pops up often in your interviews and even your press releases…
Geordie Greep: It’s a less limiting term than say… noise-rock or R&B or something like that. When you have a more vague and emotional term like “drama”, it doesn’t mean you have to do a specific type of music, it just means that you can use it as a guide to make music that has a form of trajectory or tension to it. And I think drama is a good thing to keep in my mind because you always want the music to be exciting, to have the serene or melodic moments still have that threat there, the tension, the drama, and to still be able to go back to a quiet moment…
PAN M 360: The cover seems to represent quite well the contents of the record, it’s a dense and intense cover but with a lot of blue, blue being a more meditative colour, not too aggressive. You chose to work again with David Rudnick, who did the cover art of your first album. Would he be your main artist for the covers, someone who creates a style that will fit the band like Vaughan Oliver did with 4AD, Peter Saville with Factory, or Malcolm Garrett with the Buzzcocks?
Geordie Greep: Well, we like what he did on the first album, even though he had a very limited amount of time to finish that cover, he did it in about a week. So now we had more time and we thought that if he could do what he did in a week for the first album, let’s see what he can do for this one in a couple of months! He has a similar approach to his art to the one we have for our music. You get someone that you like and get him to do something that he really believes in, and not try to water him down but instead let him follow what he thinks is the right thing to do.
PAN M 360: How do you build the songs? Is it lyrics first, or do you work on the music before you add the vocals?
Geordie Greep: It’s two separate things for us. We work on the songs together or someone does that alone at home and brings it in, and then we decide who’s gonna do vocals. And whoever is going to do vocals looks for every word they can think of that fits best to the song. So it may not be the best method because there isn’t necessarly an intelligent design in how the lyrics and the song fit together a lot of the time, it’s more like a coincidence, like what words fits more with the song rather than constructing each side by side. But there are a couple of songs on this album where the words and the music were kind of done at the same time, built around each other, but most of the time they’re done completely separately and just put together afterwards.
PAN M 360: It seems the music stems less from jams than the previous album.
Geordie Greep: On the first album the way we would actually make the songs in the first place was to just jam out untile we had a verse or until we had a kind of chorus. On this new album, it’s more one guy sitting down and thinking, “okay, let’s make a verse and make the verse fit with the chorus,” that kind of thing…
PAN M 360: What are the main differences between Shlagenheim and Calvacade?
Geordie Greep: I hope that the main difference is, there ius much more nuance to it and more dynamics, I hope there are more colours involved. It’s just a more interesting album, I think. The songs are more melodic and have more longevity, meaning that you can listen to them longer without getting bored.
PAN M 360: What did you try on this album that you haven’t tried before?
Geordie Greep: I don’t know… It was a fairly similar method of recording and everything. Aside from the songs written completely differently, we used a click track on a couple of songs, which is something the we never did because there were bits in those songs that had to be recorded separately, and there were also songs that didn’t rely so much on the push-and-pull tempo, like a lot of our other songs.
PAN M 360: You used different instruments too, for the new album, no?
Geordie Greep: Yeah, we used different instruments. It was the same as the first album though, we took advantage of what was in the studio. You know, if there is an instrument laying around, it’s best to use it whenever possible, it’s good to make the most of the place you’re in. But I think a lot of those overdubs and strange instruments are much more apparent on this album because on the first album, a lot of the time all these different instruments we used were buried in the mix, or sounded more like something else. It was less obvious that there was a wide range of instruments on the first album.
PAN M 360: So what about that wok, how and on what song was it used?
Geordie Greep: Oh, yeah (laughs). I think it’s on “Diamond Stuff”, and I think what Morgan (Simpson) was doing there was just using a bow on the side of this bowl or frying pan to make a kind of a ghostly sound like you do with the cymbals, so it’s more that kind of thing than hiting on the thing.
PAN M 360: Tell us a bit about the recording. I understand you guys went to a studio in Ireland just to record a kind of a demo, but ended recording most of the album there.
Geordie Greep: We went there to record a few tracks, just to see how it is to work with John Murphy, the producer of the album. But the atmosphere was really good and the songs sounded really good too, so we ended up recording all the tracks on the album to a kind of half-finished degree. We did it all in between lockdowns. You know, we had this free time so it would have been a tragedy to not take advantage of it. If we would have stayed home and did nothing, that would have been such a waste of time.
PAN M 360: Did Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin help on the album before he took a break from the band?
Geordie Greep: (hesitant)… It kind of happened before we recorded it and even writing the tunes. He did work on two songs that we wrote a few years ago and put on the album, but for the rest he did not take part in any of it.
PAN M 360: How did you cope or adjust to his departure?
Geordie Greep: The whole situation with Matt has been developing for a long time, so there wasn’t really a sudden change. But it was quite cool on some of the tracks to lean into kind of the trio aspect, a kind of a more spacious element, on tracks like “Dethroned”, it’s like kind of a power-trio sort of thing, like Jimi Hendrix’s Experience or The Police, it’s great to have fun with that sort of space sometimes. It probably did change the writing process as well, because there is one less cook in the kitchen, you know?
PAN M 360: Your label has this Golden Ticket contest, where a ticket will be inserted into a Cavalcade album in the U.S. and another one in the U.K., and will give the winners the chance to either have black midi as a band for an event of their choice, or a day in the studio with the band for a creative collaboration, or tickets for two to all future black midi worldwide shows for 10 years, but there is also a pretty special flexi-disc that comes with some of your albums – what is it about exactly?
Geordie Greep: We did a poll asking different independent record shops from around the world to do a list of ten songs that they like, and get their customers to vote for the one they prefer so we could cover it. Then that song will be on a flexi-disc that will come with our album, but only available at the store that voted for the song we covered. So there are as many songs as there are different record shops, meaning it’s not going to be the same songs on every flexi, depending of the store where you buy the record. It was really fun doing it because there was quite a range of songs. We did songs like “Nothing Compares 2 U” from Prince, “21st Century Schizoid Man” from King Crimson, “Psycho Killer” from Talking Heads, “Love Story” from Taylor Swift, a Captain Beefheart song… quite a funny mix.
Pan M 360: Hi Nadia, how do you feel before these two concerts in one of the first festivals to come back after the pandemic?
Nadia Labrie: I feel very excited! I must say that the June 8 concert (where I will be playing Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp) is a special challenge. I will be playing it on a classical period flute, made of wood. To do this I had to relearn how to play, because not only the instrument is different, but also the fingerings, the way of blowing, the way of projecting the sound, and many other details.
Pan M 360: Is it difficult to do this?
Nadia Labrie: It is very demanding. I have been working on it for about a year and a half. The other difficulty is that at the beginning I had to work on a baroque flute, which has its own differences from the classical flute. The reason is that I ordered a classical type flute from a maker, but I received it in 2021 only. I couldn’t start my ”relearning” only a few months before the concert, so I had to start with the baroque instrument, and then go to the classical one. So there you have it, it was a past year full of new training! In this regard, I must say a huge thank you to Claire Guimond who guided me well along this path.
From left to right : Antoine Bareil, Isaac Chalk, Nadia Labrie, Benoît Loiselle for the concert Flute Passion Mozart
Pan M 360: Did you come up with the idea, or were you challenged to do it?
Nadia Labrie: I was dared (laughs)! But I accepted with enthusiasm because it’s been a long time since I wanted to play this concerto, and a long time, also, that I wanted to dive into the universe of the ancient flute. I never had the courage to try it before, because I come from Rimouski and at the Conservatory there, there are no ancient instruments. My contacts with this world remained limited. This time, it was an opportunity to get me out of my security zone, and as I am an avid learner, I found it a perfect opportunity to launch myself into this adventure. As a result, I discovered a second passion that I never knew existed before.
Pan M 360: Enough to consider the possibility of eventually recording with early instruments?
Nadia Labrie: Yes, not right now, but one day, it is very possible. In the meantime, I am preparing a new concert where I would like to present the history of the flute through repertoire ranging from early music to modern music. I will take the opportunity to use the flutes I own (I have several!).
Pan M 360: What does Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp mean to you?
Nadia Labrie: Oh dear, it is a dream for me! Since I was a teenager I’ve known it and I loved it. It is so beautiful, especially the slow movement. This extraordinary melody touches us right there (the heart, the guts). Again, coming from Rimouski, forget about it, there was zero harp there. It was not possible to do this concerto. Now that I am able to do it, I don’t hesitate. I can’t wait!
Nadia Labrie
Pan M 360: You told me, when you were presenting your album Flute Passion Schubert, that this music corresponded perfectly to your state of mind. You needed it to move forward. Same thing for the Bach that followed, and now, you are clearly in a Mozart phase, right?
Nadia Labrie: Indeed! The light of Mozart is in perfect adequacy with the serenity, the joy and the happiness that I feel in my life right now. I even have a dog that I named Mozart! Schubert happened in a dark period of my life, but it made me feel good. Then, Bach “fit” with my need for solidity, regularity, to feel “grounded”. Mozart, now, feels like the sun!
Pan M 360: Are there other composers who seem to be just as luminous to you, to continue on this beautiful path?
Nadia Labrie: Vivaldi! His concertos please me enormously.
Pan M 360: The concert of this Sunday, May 30, is the entire album Flute Passion Mozart, right?
Nadia Labrie: Yes, absolutely. With musicians that I love, it will feel good throughout, as much for me as for the public!
Pan M 360: We have to thank Marc Boucher of the Classica festival who made this kind of collective event revival possible…
Nadia Labrie: Absolutely! Marc and the whole team were great. A lot of festivals have been pulling the plug and that left us with nothing, but Classica has been able to reschedule most of the 2020 concerts in December, and in 2021, that’s one of the the first festivals to make that kind of commitment. Wow. That’s fantastic.
Pan M 360: We agree! Greetings to the entire Classica team! Thank you Nadia for this great interview.
Nadia Labrie: Thank you very much!
With two EPs in the bag in addition to a split released last year with Japanese legends Acid Mothers Temple, Yoo Doo Right concretizes its cosmic epopee with a long-awaited first album under the cryptic title Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose. As true romantic warriors, the trio demonstrates on this album a mastery of the striking force of Can and NEU! as well as the art of hermetic phoenixology of the Berlin school – Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel – while remaining as relevant as their contemporaries 10 000 Russos, or Gnod and their album JUST SAY NO TO THE PSYCHO RIGHT-WING CAPITALIST FACIST INDUSTRIAL DEATH MACHINE. To better understand what’s behind the deterministic title, PAN M 360 met with guitarist Justin Cober and bassist Charles Masson, who welcomed us at their small workshop, Mile End Effects, not far from the Godspeed! headquarters, where condos are growing like bad weeds. Located in an old building said to have been used as a weapons factory during WWII (and possibly haunted by a ghost from that same era), Cober set up his own workshop to build a completely different form of electric weaponry: effects pedals.
Crédit: Delphine Snyers, Justin Cober
PAN M 360 : Your first EP was released in 2016, but before that, there’s not much information about the band. So, first thing first, when did the three of you meet each other, and when did you start playing together?
Charles Masson: About 10 years ago, Justin was living in Toronto and I was in Montreal. A show was set up for my band in Toronto and I immediately clicked on Justin’s band called New Wings. We kept contact after that. About six or five year later, Justin moved to Montreal and brought his new friend John, who’s from Edmonton and was living in Montreal to study. We started playing together and started the band right away. Three month later, we were playing our first show.
PAN M 360: Where did you play your first show?
Charles Masson: It was in a DIY venue in Pointe-Saint-Charles called Bad Lunch. It was with two jazz bands. It was on the last floor of a house, in a tiny mezzanine, it was very small and very strange but it was a very nice first show. DIY spaces are what we prefer.
PAN M 360: Your music tends to create a sort of wall of sound on stage by using amps from the ’70s and effect pedals, almost reaching the dangerous level of 140 dB. What made you want to reach this heavy volume?
Justin Cober: I mean, it’s transcendental, really. When you’re actually able to feel the vibrations of this ball of fury coming from a stage, it’s so overwhelming. It’s quite magical.
Charles Masson: We got so used to it while practicing at these high volumes. We created textures that won’t come out as much as we would have liked when you turn the volume down. Our songs are created for high volumes, it’s hard to compromise about that. Somebody said, finally, a Yoo Doo Right album – we can finally turn the fuck down.
Justin Cober: I would kind of quote Kevin Shields, when he was talking about My Bloody Valentine’s stage volume. He was basically saying that, when they were first rehearsing, they were playing at volumes that enters you into this kind of trance state. By the end their rehearsals, they would all be laughing in a state of euphoria. That’s a very apt description of how it feels. When we’re playing sometimes, we finish a song and we kind of sit back, take a few breath and we’re all just laughing. It feels really good. We’re all pretty soft-spoken people, so I think it’s really cool to be that much of a force, it’s like a voice outside of our own. Having your eyeballs vibrating inside your head… Hearing certain frequencies at such devastating volumes is just a ton of fun. If that’s not magic, I’m not sure what is.
PAN M 360: Your music is notably influenced by the German krautrock movement from the ’70s and its rhythmic patterns. What did you find interesting in this period of German culture?
Justin Cober: A lot of it has to do with the sociopolitical climate of Germany in the late ’60s. In North America and particularly on the West Coast of the United States, there was this whole hippy movement that was born out of a rejection of their parents’ view point of the world. But in Germany, it seemed to be a lot more of a rejection of what their parents stood for. If they weren’t actively engaged in the Nazi mindset, they were at least complicit in a lot of that. As they were rebuilding the structures of Germany, and the bombed-out cities, they also decided to rebuild a cultural identity. It was ferociously political and anti-fascist. There were a lot of interesting collectives which could be considered domestic terrorists, they were just hellbent on rebuilding Germany in a way their parents couldn’t. That for me really stuck out. I feel history tends to repeat itself. We have constantly found ourselves in situations where people are being commodified and oppressed. I really appreciate this feeling that was found in krautrock. And it’s also very good music.
PAN M 360: How do you think the German psychedelic movement differs from the American countercultural movement?
Justin Cober: For better or for worse, the counterculture movement in the USA was very much an aesthetic thing. When you look now, all the anti-capitalist hippies grew up in their own big corporations and are still fucking up the world. A lot of it had to do with the very thin veil of image and aesthetic whereas in Germany I think it was a lot deeper than that, it meant a lot more than just putting flowers in people’s hair, listening to The Byrds or whatever.
PAN M 360: Their message was indeed much more political. Amon Düül even once said that he wanted to perform for free in factories at some point, for example.
Justin Cober: Even in the way all that music sounds, it can be very harsh and industrial. There is that sort of statement being made in a sonic way. It’s almost like two tectonic plates shifting and grinding against each other. It’s like creating this primordial rebirth of culture and mentality.
PAN M 360: Your album title Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose is a strong statement, particularly for artists. In a way, this reminds me of Julian Cope saying that Krautrock was an “Explore-the-god-in-you-by-working-the-animal-in-you Gnostic Odyssey”. Do you identity with this statement?
Justin Cober: In a way, yes. The idea is about building a life for ourselves that we don’t need to escape from, finding purpose and meaning in endeavours that aren’t necessarily considered to be viable financially in terms of a carrier. Or considering whether or not you’re a productive member of society under very specific capitalistic means. We’re trying to find value and fulfillment in our communities and in our personal endeavours that make us wake up in the morning. You’re finding purpose in yourself, not by working for someone else and doing something you absolutely hate, being exploited and valued for your monetary worth. It’s a very good quote and it very much connects to the album, I guess.
PAN M 360: What does it look like for each one of you to build a life that you don’t need to escape from?
Charles Masson: I’ve been unemployed for the last two years and I’ve been trying to make my way out of this situation by creating my own little company, possibly a little grocery store. You have to be able to take some steps back to see what is attracting you to your actual life endeavours.
Justin Cober: Injecting as much purpose and intention into what you’re doing as an extension of who you are as a person, and finding a way to be able to do that. Charles and I are in a very privileged position in a sense that we have been able to work towards something that we love to do. It’s a very nice place to be. Good for you if you have the means to try and follow what you think your purpose is in life. A lot of people don’t have that. There is no delusion there, but we’re trying to promote this idea that people are worth a lot more than their day jobs or the worth placed on them in a capitalist sense. Passions and feelings are more valuable than the paycheques they bring in despite obviously needing to exist in this framework that we exist in.
PAN M 360: In the video for the title song, you used the movie Cosmic Zoom by Eva Szasz. It well illustrates the lyrics that are about someone trying to find something bigger than themselves, during a moment of insanity where they lost touch with reality. Would you like to elaborate?
Justin Cober: The lyrics are about somebody who thinks that they are basically an ambassador for humans on our planet to some extraterrestrial community. It’s very much born out of their mental illness. They just wait to be beamed up, but they increasingly grow more paranoid that people are going to find out their secrets.
PAN M 360: You also say that this person has been chosen to solve the problems of our species. To you, what would be the problems that this person has to face?
Charles: The rambling of people who don’t know shit.
Justin Cober: How many hours do you have? Fuck, I don’t think we need to count the ways so to speak. There are so many problems that we face and that we have always faced. There is a bit more immediacy. Every time I meet another dilemma that our species and every other species of this planet encounters, my thought processes are like little rivers that all go into the same big ocean that is our ending doom. We are so fucked. There are so many things we have to face and it’s heart-breaking to think about it. The solutions are driven by the exact same thing that are getting us into this predicament. The ground we sit on is based on this idea of oppression and harming people to gain for ourselves.
Charles Masson: In the name of growth.
Justin Cober: The moment our care for others was over ridden by this idea of growth and what it means to be successful, it’s when we became doomed, we enslaved people and animals. How do you take a step back and realize that it is at the basis of these problems that we face? The commodification of life is fucked up, it’s hard to think about it. A lot of people don’t think about it, because they would rather not and I understand that.
PAN M 360: Another way to see it is that if something doesn’t work out biologically in nature, nature tends to get read of it. So, if our species has to disappear, it could be according to nature’s rules.
Justin Cober: There is this amazing George Carlin quote: “Mother Earth, the planet, is gonna be here, its gonna be fine. We’re the ones who are fucked. The planet is gonna sneeze us off like a bad cold”. The planet is probably gonna be here. If its inhabitable for us is another story. Maybe that could be the best thing. Maybe our species dying is like the Earth overcoming cancer and going into remission.
PAN M 360: To finish on a lighter note, after finding your purpose, what is the next step for Yoo Doo Right?
Justin Cober: We’ll keep just jamming.
I took the opportunity of this outing to speak with the Montreal composer. A luminous meeting where one feels privileged to be in the presence of such a kind, visionary, simple, discreet, inspired and important human being for the history of music, all music!
Tim appears in the Zoom window, and I quickly ask him why he released three albums at once?
Tim Brady : The pandemic has left me with a lot of time on my hands, just like everyone else! I took the opportunity to create and polish a lot of material and go back into my archives. I had enough for three records, but I figured it would be boring to spread it out over three years, so I released them all at once! That’s the practical reason, but there’s also a more symbolic reason. In 40 years of career, the media in general have never been able to put me in a category (they like categories!). So I wanted to thumb my nose, in all kindness of course, at this divisionist obsession by putting on the market a large package of works of a very different nature from each other, and therefore unclassifiable as a group!
Pan M 360: So new and old material?
Tim Brady : Yes. The set is divided into three parts, like the number of records. The first part is my solo work, with sampling and other electronic fiddling, the second is my three-instrument concerto Triple Concerto: Because Everything Has Changed (me on electric guitar and programming; Helmut Lipsky on violin and Shawn Mativetsky on tabla and percussion). The third one is focused on my chamber band compositions. As you can see, the more we go on, the more musicians we have!
Pan M 360: About the archives, what are they and why did you choose them?
Tim Brady :Revolutionary Songs is a 1995 recording that I’ve always loved. But I was unhappy with the mastering. I reworked it extensively several times, in 2007 and again in 2013. This time, I thought it was worth releasing. As I said, I really like this piece. As it Happened, also on the 3rd album, is an extraordinary moment captured live by mistake! The Record button was activated when I and the musicians started playing for 30 minutes without error, in a perfect way, and it was captured. It had to be available!
Pan M 360: As someone who grew up with improvisation, how has your use of the art changed since you started?
Tim Brady : It’s interesting. Forty years ago, I was concerned about labels. Do I play jazz, free improv, contemporary written music, musique actuelle? Today, I want to use the kind of sound, the kind of rhythm, the kind of technique that I want at the right time for me to express the things I feel strongly about at the time I need to express them, regardless of the label. If I feel for an F major chord there, then a 39-note cluster here, followed by an improv somewhere else, I do it. Improv is a tool in my palette, not necessarily a way of life.
Pan M 360: What is the most central element of your music, then?
Tim Brady : Structure. You’ll notice in all of my work an organization, a structural skeleton that organizes the different elements, whether they’re written or improvised, tonal or atonal, etc.
Pan M 360: The musical world has changed a lot in the last 40 years. In 1980, we were still in the Guitar Hero era. Today, Hip Hop and Rap have taken over. Are there any Guitar Heroes left? Is there still a relevance to it, and what is the future of the electric guitar?
Tim Brady : That’s a fascinating question. Today, Youtube is where rock and great guitarists get their exposure. Radio is pretty much dead for them. Rock is becoming a source of reflection for top guitarists. It’s no longer just a goal, an objective linked to popularity or the hit parade. Take the example of indie rock : the line between rock and contemporary chamber music is often thin. I receive several emails a year from young guitarists asking me about my approach. Recently, an Italian guy contacted me, he is doing a PhD on my music!
Of course, the musical base of the electric guitar will remain linked to blues, jazz, metal and a form of rock, but I am convinced that art music will become a new pole of expression, which will certainly create links with the others. Forty years ago, there were at most a dozen guys on the planet doing what I do. Today, the number is exploding. The electric guitar, like rock, is going down in history. In this process, there is an intellectualization and a search for depth that comes with it and transforms the way of perceiving the instrument and all its paradigms.
Pan M 360: How do you feel about this phenomenon, especially considering that you are one of the “pioneers” of its scholarly side?
Tim Brady : It’s fun, I must admit. I was reading the Wikipedia article on the instrument one day, and I saw my name mentioned. I’m proud of it, for sure. There’s even an Italian (another one), Sergio Sorentino, who wrote a book on the history of the electric guitar and included a section on me in it, along with Fred Frith, Scott Johnson, and others as important. It’s ego-boosting, of course, but more importantly, it makes me happy to know that I’ve made a positive contribution to something lasting!
Pan M 360: In your music, you use electronic drapery in a broad, full, almost symphonic way. Am I wrong? And if not, why is it so?
Tim Brady : You are right! But I’d go even further: when I compose for an orchestra, I’m constantly trying to recreate a guitar sound with pedals, and related effects! That’s where it comes from: I’m an electric guitarist, and I always play electric guitar. I try to play at least two hours a day. Many composers eventually give up playing their instrument, and develop a more “abstract” conception of orchestration. I’m never far from my instrument. It rubs off on my orchestral scores, and conversely, it also rubs off on my electronic writing, which looks like, as you say, an orchestra that looks like a guitar with pedals, fuzz, and all the rest! I build with masses, with densities, or on the contrary, I build solo lines. But I do very little counterpoint. All this comes from the nature of my instrument, imprinted in me, and the fact that it is always at the center of my practice.
Pan M 360 : Let’s go back to your beginnings : did you ever want to be a Guitar Hero?
Tim Brady : I had that desire, as did probably every teenager of that time who played (even if only strumming) the guitar! My idol was Duane Allman.
Pan M 360 : Why did you change your path?
Tim Brady : The truth comes out in two parts. First, I’m the straightest guy in the world! I don’t smoke, I have no interest in drugs and I don’t drink. It’s always been that way, even when I was young! So the rock culture didn’t appeal to me at all.
The other thing is that to be a good rock musician, you also have to be a good songwriter. You have to come up with melodies that are catchy, and that can say the essential in 8 bars. I’m more comfortable with longer forms. I accepted it rather early in my life, rather than fighting against a desire finally not compatible with my character.
Pan M 360 : Do you remember the first time you realized that this was YOUR way?
Tim Brady : Yes, I do. I was 27 or 28 years old. One of my works was recorded by the CBC. It was for strings and a trumpet improviser, the great Kenny Wheeler in this case! I remember thinking to myself as I listened to the musicians play: “Geez, that’s my music! I’m the one who created these sounds that go great together! That’s what I want to do! I became aware of the expressive power of music, at least as I saw what creative power is like. I’ve never forgotten that.
Pan M 360 : What are you working on that is more substantial in the foreseeable future?
Tim Brady : Something big and crazy. A cycle of four operas, entitled Hope (and the Dark Matter of History). The four operas will be linked by a central character that recurs in each one: a time traveler. This will allow me to visit four different eras: 1939, 1970, 2051 and 2056.
The 1939 opera will take place in New York City and will be set in the minutes before Charlie Christian, the founding father of electric guitar playing, takes the stage at Carnegie Hall! The opera will even feature Rufus Rockhead, a Montreal jazz icon and founder of the famous Rockhead’s Paradise in Montreal!
Pan M 360 : And unacknowledged (in my opinion) inspiration of the Jazz fest!
Tim Brady : A great character indeed! The second opera will take place in 1970 in Montreal, the 3rd in 2051 in Toronto during a climate catastrophe involving humans and artificial intelligence beings and the last one will take place in 2056 in a Martian colony. If all goes well, the operas will be created in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026
Pan M 360 : Wow! I can’t wait to see this tetralogy! Thank you and good luck!
Tim Brady : Thank you!
The young London-based band is made up of seven musicians from a variety of backgrounds: singer, lyricist and guitarist Isaac Wood, bassist Tyler Hyde, saxophonist Lewis Evans, violinist Georgia Ellery, keyboardist May Kershaw, drummer Charlie Wayne and guitarist Luke Mark harbour a sincere ideal of creative democracy.
Ninja Tune’s recent release of the album For the First Time confirms the septet’s reputation for intense, theatrical, fiery performances in front of a live audience. But… for obvious reasons, we’ll have to be patient before we have the proof in the flesh.
In the meantime, PAN M 360 connected with Hyde and Wayne in London.
PAN M 360: Black Country, New Road proposes a very particular expression and a mix of genres: post-punk, post-rock, Crimsonian prog, noise, polka rock, but also contemporary chamber music, american minimalism and free jazz. How do you see this wide eclecticism?
TYLER HYDE: First of all, I would say that it is not the result of planning. All we wanted to do was make music with friends. It’s really hard for us to list our influences because we are 7 people with very different tastes. We share some similar references but also so many different ones. The only way for us to illustrate them was to articulate them in our music and our playing. So this mix is not the result of a spoken conversation but of a musical conversation. This music is based on very strong friendships and an equally strong passion for music.
PAN M 360: Of course, mixing influences cannot be a plan or a recipe when it comes to artistic creation. Rather, it is an expression of the unconscious, the dynamics of artistic interaction and emotional relationships between the artists involved in the creative process. But… once the unconscious has expressed itself, can we get a glimpse of what has been achieved?
TYLER HYDE: Yes, we can express it now. Accidentally, we had created the music for For the First Time. We hadn’t thought about a planned and consistent collection of these songs, several random elements successfully came together. For our second album in the making, we thought more about what we wanted to do at the beginning, what would be appropriate for us. We thus implemented a concept album, totally distinct from the first one.
PAN M 360: What’s also very interesting about Black Country, New Road is the mix between pop culture references and more complex music. Where does that interest come from? TYLER HYDE: The group is made up of self-taught musicians and others educated in music schools. The educated musicians don’t put pressure on the self-taught musicians to reach an ideal technical level, we prefer to find common ground, everyone should feel comfortable. So we don’t make any separation between the two groups, rather we try to create a common language.
PAN M 360: To be more precise, how do you see the group’s progress since its beginnings?
CHARLIE WAYNE: We are still aware of the good things that have been accomplished, but we want to make important changes to our work. We need to move on. Structurally we’re the same band, but we’re trying to write more concise songs now. We want songs sculpted from the same material rather than building piece by piece, section by section. That’s very important to us. For the first album, seven musicians assembled eclectic concepts while for the second one, this time we wanted to be less random, to propose better defined and perennial structures, more succinct, more dense. This next album may be less dissonant, it may be as strange for some people, but not for the same reasons.
TH: We’re now trying to generate intensity without betting on a post-punk aesthetic, without exaggerating on the distortion pedal, without playing all at the same time. Intensity can also come out with reduced sound information, with gradual introductions, with different tensions produced by each instrument involved. So we have been thinking about these new creative strategies since our beginnings. Not playing in front of a crowd during the pandemic also led us to this reflection because we could no longer test our hypotheses on stage, there was no longer this guinea pig allowing us to better understand our sound. This is why the composition process this time was much more meticulous. Thus, we learned how to generate intensity and emotions without the feedback of the live performance. This is why our sound is already very different from what it was before the pandemic. We are almost finished with the songs for this second album, we want to record and release it as soon as possible.
PAN M 360: Could you provide an example of a creative session in your band?
CW: Okay. Somebody can submit to the band some fragments of a song or a basic structure. It can come from Isaac, but it can also come from any member of the group. From this skeleton, it’s up to each of us to make this first vision come true by giving it additional parts. The intention is therefore very different from a group in which there is a central composer, it is excluded to tell anyone what to do. Once the structure is accepted, each member of the group can blossom and bring the song to life.
TH: It’s possible to do this because we know each other well, because we know how we play, because we now know what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, musical conversations are possible and can multiply. For the performances we are in a way co-pilots. We all have partial information that naturally overlaps. I may know, for example, what Charlie and Luke are doing by my side, but I may not know what Lewis is doing or can propose so that my playing can be in symbiosis with his. This then has an impact on our writing process. So we have to try to improve our listening to each other, we have to constantly evolve this conversation.
CW: I could listen more to Tyler, Tyler could listen more to Luke and I, Luke could listen more to Isaac and so on and so forth, so it all flows together, we become listening to each other, we can then move forward.
PAN M 360: So it’s a real collective work and ideal. Is it always like that?
CW: As much as possible, we try to avoid giving the composition to only one leader. We don’t think that would be particularly useful for this group. We think everyone’s idea is valid. We all know each other’s instruments, so everyone can come up with something very creative, based on their own talent, knowledge and sensibility.
PAN M 360: It’s a great ideal to want to achieve the perfect balance of creativity within a collective. But how do you maintain this balance?
TH: It’s difficult, but we try to make it work. If someone in the room has been silent for a while, we ask, ‘hey, what do you think?’ We do that knowing that everyone decides to express themselves or not in certain contexts.
CW: And don’t hesitate to use this interview as an example in the case of lawsuits between creators (laughs).
PAN M 360: What about the lyrical aspect?
TH: The lyrics of our pieces come 100% from Isaac, it’s a separate dimension of the music. I think Isaac’s goal is to write lyrics that anyone, at any given moment, can understand and relate to.
CW: Tyler and I are not perfectly comfortable talking about what Isaac writes. It’s not really our area. But we like this mix of inspiration from great lyricists like Leonard Cohen and allusions to pop culture, which we think is a powerful evocation tool because pop culture belongs to the collective imagination. It unites us.
PAN M 360: How will the new material be adapted on stage after the pandemic?
CW: We’re really looking forward to it! Having said that, it was a luxury for us not to do a show and to focus on ourselves, our sound, our compositions, our university studies for some. So we took this year to finish this life before starting our new life. And there’s nothing like playing live. We’re really looking forward to coming back with our new music and playing the music from our first album as well.
TH: If at the first return concert we hear our fans singing songs from the first album after this break and this transformation, it might be weird, but it might also be overwhelming.
Since it’s now impossible to turn away from ourselves or get caught up in the whirlwind of distractions offered by consumer society, the isolation of quarantine forces us to draw new ideas from past experiences, be they distressing or enriching.
This cryptic search can be experienced as a descent into the hell of the depths of an internal mourning experience. In the same manner as Dante in The Divine Comedy, Blanck Mass reconstructs this inner journey in the form of a personal sonic travel log and takes us on a tour of the various echo chambers of his mind, with the help of sound recordings captured while travelling and touring. Each piece is composed of abstract emotions and cinematic memories that blend with different, sometimes heart-rending drone textures or lighter melodic lines composed on the synthesizer. PAN M 360 reached the artist at his studio in Scotland to fill in the spaces between the lines of the recordings.
PAN M 360: The main subject of In Ferneaux revolves around pain in motion and its utility through inner work. When did you start this process?
Blanck Mass: It was very internal. I was conscious of not wanting to put out a lockdown record for the sake of putting a lockdown record. For the past ten years or so, touring has involved making a lot of field recordings, even when I just travel. I wanted to use these field recordings as the basis for an actual space outside the space that I found myself in constantly whilst recording In Ferneaux and kind of use these to tell a story of what’s happening internally within me, my inner dialogue, but using these actual existing spaces outside which bring back all kind of personal memories. Trying to repurpose them into some kind of cathartic experience. Sharing it with people is pretty intimidating because this is some of the most raw that I’ve felt at all for my whole life, some of the worst periods of my life.
PAN M 360: This album is more cinematographic, abstract and minimalist compared to your previous works. There are only two tracks, Phase I and Phase II. What was the vision you had for the album?
BM: There was a first version of In Ferneaux with just the unmanipulated field recordings. It was like library music that I was thinking about doing with the raw files. That was something that I was thinking about doing for a long time because I have hundreds and hundreds of these field recordings. There was a switch, for me personally and globally, and the project morphed into something different. Although the field recordings hold a lot of weight for me emotionally, I felt I wanted to add some more contemporary synthesizer sounds and repurpose it into one continuous whole. The emotional weight found within those recordings, and with the synthesizers, obviously sent me down a road where I have been before, with regards to layering and squeezing as much emotions as I can. It was extremely cathartic. With a record like this, it’s really difficult to say when it’s done. There’s no beginning or end to each song. I found it difficult to say when the job was done. But what needs to be said has been said.
PAN M 360: When you say that the misery and the blessing are one, do you mean that the album should be experienced in a nonlinear way?
BM: I don’t really like naming tracks and asserting my perceived aesthetic, but I understand it’s a necessary tool. I’m a huge fan of film scores. Narrative is always an important part of the things that I do, the journey it takes you on throughout. I thoroughly encourage listening to it in a nonlinear way. It’s a collection of my internal dialogues without the aid of syntax. If you want to go on a journey, it’s there for you to go on. I want you to experience it in your own way.
PAN M 360: You actually produced a film score yourself for the Irish crime drama movie Calm With Horses, which was directed by Nick Rowland and released in March 2020.
BM: It is something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and will continue to do so. I’m really happy that when I’m not touring, I can score movies. I feel very lucky to be in this position at this point in time. I’m looking forward to the next one.
PAN M 360: You wrote that In Ferneaux was about the trauma of a personal grieving process. The result is a collage of sounds which is organized like a playlist of sounds that are linked to one another to make a story, but that you could also shuffle and would still make sense.
BM: That’s really interesting. It’s like an open-source experiment. I’m glad you get that from it, actually. It doesn’t need to follow the particular timeline which it does. These can be almost like stages of my grief but people might experience it in a different order. Sharing your experience during these difficult times is quite bold. It was super cathartic and intimidating to share this but it’s part of the growth process.
PAN M 360: At the heart of the album, you present the encounter you had with a person you call a prophetic figure that you met on the streets of San Francisco. Why was it so memorable to you?
BM: I feel this person actually presented me with this whole new perspective on my experience. I was going through a lot personally when I met this person. They told me, “you don’t know how to handle the misery on the way to the blessing.” Going away and thinking about that, I completely see what they meant. I’m within this position and there is nothing I can do apart from utilizing the pain and trying to create something from that, which would be the blessing. That’s what gave me the push over the edge to create In Ferneaux after a long reflection, to actually use this as a tool and these collections of recordings I created throughout the years, to process my misery, to present it and bring something outside of it. To me, that is the blessing and that’s what In Ferneaux is all about. I have a lot to thank this person for. They shaped the process for me. It’s the one field recording which has not been manipulated. There is maybe more weight in that than on other recordings that are heavily manipulated. That’s a particularly profound moment, like a game-changing moment.
PAN M 360: There is also a very danceable party side to your project, which can be found on your album Animated Violence Mild or the songs you produced with Kite, for example. The bright, hyperpop, holographic sounds remind me a lot to the music you hear during some openly queer-friendly parties. Where does that influence come from?
BM: I don’t feel any shame in embracing that side of thing, I do have a lot of friends who are queer as you say, that’s a big part of my social group. With Animated Violence Mild, there was a kind of political statement of intent as well. I was talking a lot about capitalism and I was using these very over-the-top melody lines in a tongue-in-cheek way. Referring to the ’80s and the explosion of capitalism, and using particular synthesizers of that kind of time, were not in a nostalgic sense but more in a kind of low blow to poke fans. I try not to take it too seriously myself as well, I like to troll myself a little. But I love that kind of music, working with Kite is something that I love, they are really close friends now. There is a real queer-friendly kind of aesthetic and mentality, I tend to gravitate towards that. There is a freer side of things that I definitely feel an affinity towards. Even though I’m a goth, I’m not scared of a little bit of colour, you know.
https://youtu.be/wCQApdGoS_Q
PAN M 360: You seem very close to the queer artistic community. What makes you sensitive to it?
BM: On my last tour, I’ve taken along some very close friends who are drag queens, Frans Gender and Purpledisgrace. It’s very easy for electronic musicians to take themselves a little bit too seriously, and to take another electronic musician that sounds similar. It doesn’t really interest me, there’s a lot more going on in the world than just your particular little space. I pay to go to drag shows myself, you know. It was a lot fun to have a drag show every night.
Fondé en 2001, le VICO était le projet visionnaire… d’un Montréalais, le compositeur Moshe Denburg! Formé dans la rigueur intellectuelle et académique de la musique savante occidentale, Denburg avait également à cœur d’inclure dans sa démarche créative les autres traditions savantes du monde entier. Le résultat a été la fondation du VICO, un orchestre de chambre digne des Nations Unies, qui interprète autant de la musique de type populaire que savante. Violons, violoncelles, hautbois, flûtes, etc. côtoient tar, santur, oud, erhu, shona, et bien d’autres.
Le 18 février 2021, sur le site du festival Montréal Nouvelles Musiques (MNM), le VICO donnera un concert tout contemporain avec deux créations et un arrangement de Pulau Dewata de Vivier! Oh là là que j’ai hâte de découvrir la ‘’bibitte’’ fabuleuse que ça risque de produire! Pour ceux qui ne pourront y être le soir même, pas de panique! Tous les concerts seront disponibles six mois après leur première diffusion. Et tout cela gratuitement!
En attendant, j’ai parlé avec Mark Armanini, directeur artistique et de production de l’orchestre.
Pan M 360 : Il y a 20 ans, la création de cet orchestre unique était-elle un acte de foi ou une démarche visionnaire?
Mark Armanini : Je dirais qu’il s’agissait du résultat naturel de ce que Vancouver était alors (encore plus aujourd’hui), doublé d’une idée visionnaire du Montréalais Moshe Denburg.
Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO)
Pan M 360 : Comment l’orchestre a-t-il évolué en 20 ans?
Mark Armanini : Au début, nous étions un peu plus orientés vers la musique populaire, mais avec le temps, nous avons introduit de plus en plus de musique contemporaine et de commandes. Il y a eu évolution en termes de répertoire, donc, mais aussi en termes d’interprétation et de techniques de jeu. Chaque fois que nous commandons une pièce contemporaine ou un arrangement (nous jouons encore souvent des pièces populaires adaptées pour nous), c’est une occasion d’apprendre les uns des autres, compositeur.trices et musicien.nes. Les styles d’improvisation constituent aussi une base de nouvelles connaissances car chaque culture musicale possède des techniques d’impro différentes des autres.
Et puis, les origines culturelles se sont également étoffées. Au début, nous avions principalement des artistes aux racines chinoises, mais depuis, nous avons intégré les cultures persane, moyen-orientale et japonaise.
Pan M 360 : Pourquoi avez-vous évolué vers une programmation contemporaine? Quelle était la nécessité?
Mark Armanini : L’intention est d’abord venue des compositeur.trices, qui dirigent en majorité le VICO! La plupart souhaitait pouvoir explorer de plus importantes dimensions de la création musicale et sonore. Il y avait aussi une volonté certaine de la part de la direction d’amener les instrumentistes à se perfectionner en leur offrant de la musique plus exigeante. Cela étant dit, nous ne faisons jamais de concert tout contemporain comme celui du MNM. Ce sera une première!
Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO)
Pan M 360 : Plusieurs des musicien.nes provenant de traditions où l’improvisation est très présente, est-ce que cela signifie qu’un.e compositeur.trice doit nécessairement inclure cette technique dans ses partitions?
Mark Armanini : Oui. C’est une question d’adaptation et de développement de nouvelles techniques d’écriture. En plus, chaque style d’improvisation est différent et comporte des exigences particulières, en plus des limites de chaque instrument. Autant les interprètes doivent s’adapter à de nouvelles formes de musique, autant les compositeur.trices doivent aussi modifier leurs réflexes d’écriture en fonction de tous ces paramètres.
Pan M 360 : Tout le monde doit être familier avec la notation occidentale?
Mark Armanini : Pas obligatoirement. La plupart des compositeur.trices le sont, mais à des degrés différents. Nous leur offrons de l’aide dans les cas où ils en ont besoin. Les interprètes ont par contre des parcours plus disparates. Alors, oui nous devons accompagner certains d’entre eux ou elles dans le développement de cette particularité de notre musique. Mais nous devons également accompagner les musicien.nes classiques! Dans plusieurs pièces, ils sont confrontés à des principes issus de traditions non-occidentales, desquels ils ne connaissent parfois absolument rien! C’est toute la beauté de cet orchestre, un espace d’échanges qui n’est pas unidimensionnel. C’est un partage de connaissances et d’apprentissages.
Pan M 360 : Comment s’est présentée l’idée d’arranger Pulau Dewata de Vivier pour le VICO?
Mark Armanini : C’est Walter Boudreau qui m’a lancé le défi de faire l’adaptation! En tant que musicien, j’aime prendre des risques, alors j’étais heureux de me lancer dans l’aventure, mais lorsque j’ai lu la partition, je me suis dit Oh mon dieu, ça va être difficile! En fin de compte, à mesure que j’avançais dans le travail, je me suis aperçu que ça allait mieux que je pensais. C’est tellement bien écrit! Les lignes sont claires et bien définies, la logique d’ensemble est impeccable, alors il a été facile de déterminer quels types d’instruments et de couleurs je pouvais donner à chaque ligne et chaque partie. C’est du côté des musiciens que le défi à relever a été plus ardu. Mais je pense qu’ils l’ont relevé avec brio. Ce fut un apprentissage exceptionnel. Vivier était un prophète. Ce qu’il a écrit à cette époque, inspiré par Bali, était déjà parfait en termes de création de textures et de couleurs, mais dans la version que nous présenterons, c’est comme si tout se mettait en place naturellement pour exprimer une vision de l’oeuvre qui était latente, sous-entendue. Ce sera un Pulau Dewata en version 4K!
Pan M 360 : Décrivez-nous rapidement les autres pièces du concert
Mark Armanini : Gypsy Chronicles est basée sur une chanson de troubadour, et offre au tar, au santour, au oud et à plusieurs percussions comme le darbouka et le tabla de très belles lignes d’expression. La pièce a une texture plutôt rugueuse. C’est une œuvre en quatre mouvements, comme une symphonie de chambre.
À cette époque-là est une suite concertante, elle aussi en quatre mouvements. Il s’agit d’un concerto habillé de sonorités moyen-orientales, et chaque mouvement évoque un type de tapis persan traditionnel. C’est une pièce très diversifiée en termes de textures et de couleurs!
Pareidolia ressemble à une œuvre européenne contemporaine. Elle est abstraite, mais poétique et plutôt évocatrice, comme les sommets brumeux des montagnes dans des peintures chinoises.
As the first spring blossoms awaken through the snow est une très douce, très chouette petite pièce. Elle est constituée de portions assez importantes d’improvisation, mais dans un contexte contrôlé. La compositrice utilise des techniques élaborées pour mettre en évidence le setar et le oud en explorant leurs possibilités sonores insoupçonnées. Le public sera surpris car il ne reconnaîtra pas les instruments traditionnels. Cela prouve également que ces derniers ont une étendue de possibilités sonores immense, et encore mal explorée.
Pan M 360 : Ce sera le premier concert entièrement consacré à la musique contemporaine pour VICO, disiez-vous. D’après-vous ce sera un concert plus exigeant que ce que vous avez l’habitude de faire?
Mark Armanini : Oui absolument. Le secret dans ce genre de collaboration c’est de chercher à ce que les musiciens se sentent le plus confortable possible. Nous leur demandons beaucoup d’efforts, mais dans le respect de leurs traditions et de leur héritage culturel. Le résultat final est excellent parce que, justement, ils acceptent de prendre des risques qui leur permettent d’évoluer. C’est pour cela qu’ils sont si bons!
Pan M 360 : J’avoue être un peu jaloux. Il faut un ensemble comme celui-ci à Montréal!
Mark Armanini : Mais oui, j’espère que ce sera le cas un jour!
Pan M 360 : Je vous souhaite le meilleur pour le concert et pour l’avenir. Ce que vous faites est très inspirant.
Mark Armanini : Merci beaucoup pour l’invitation.
As the curfew has come to put a little more weight on the pandemic in our daily lives, it becomes difficult to fully project ourselves into a new album, to try to escape the same four white walls of our flats and try to live an intimate and meaningful personal experience. But some albums have the gift of being able to transform small, insignificant moments into something more grandiose than our little selves. The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings falls into this category.
On the eve of my interview, during my daily neighbourhood tour at nightfall, I walk around with the Besnard Lakes between my ears. It’s windy, the storm is biting my face and my boots are sinking deeper and deeper into the snow. But music accompanies my journey and my thoughts and I simply let myself be guided by fate. Finally, I decide to stop and simply watch the snowflakes fall through the light of a street lamp and let myself be soothed by this magnificent symphony that intertwines Jace Lasek’s falsetto voice with the rich and powerful guitar swells. “With love there is no death,” says “The Father of Time Wakes Up”. I’m shivering.
The Besnard Lakes have certainly succeeded in composing their own Dark Side of The Moon and offer a breathtaking one-hour album that pushes us to learn how to die in order to be better reborn and feel alive. PAN M 360 spoke with Jace Lansek to better understand what pushed him to follow this inner path.
PAN M 360: If I had to explain to someone how to imagine Montreal during the winter, I would probably talk about Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Dears, and The Besnard Lakes. Cold and melancholic on the outside but heartwarming and humble on the inside. Do you relate to this feeling?
Jace Lasek: I do, actually. I love going outside, feeling the cold. I feel like those are the things that make you feel most alive when you feel all those changes that are happening and that is what the music is about. Our music takes you to places, it always takes you somewhere. You have to have tough skin to live in the northern areas. It can also actually be hot here. I love that we can experience all the extremes. We live about 45 minutes outside of Montreal in a town called Rigaud. We go ice-fishing in the winter time because we’re very close to the river. We go skiing. I was very happy when the snow finally came.
PAN M 360: The falsetto, the vocal harmonies and the sophisticated chords are heavily influenced by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. The album even sounds like a shoegaze symphony, with three guitars at some point. Where does this huge influence come from?
JL: When I was a kid, my dad was a huge music fan. He had an 8-track player in his car, he would play the Beach Boys, he would play Endless Summer all the time. He had the Best of the Bee Gees Volume 2, that’s a collection of Bee Gees music that’s pre-disco. They were kind of trying to be the Beatles a little bit at that time, so it’s like pop music. I grew up on that stuff and they have a lot of vocals there, and they’re orchestral as well. I love those kinds of things from a very early age. He was the one who would play those albums for me when I was a kid. When I got older, I actually searched them out again and discovered a new appreciation for them.
PAN M 360 : There is something mystical and sacred in this album that makes me think of Brian Wilson, Spiritualized and Talk Talk. This aspect of your music is even more present on this album compared to the previous ones. Have you ever thought of playing in a cathedral?
JL: Yes, many times! It’s really hard to organize shows in spaces like that but we’ve talked about it so much, playing shows in places that have this grand experience, just to be in them. It would be such a beautiful experience in this beautiful surroundings. It also compliments the music.
PAN M 360 : You also had, in 2018, a small solo project in which you played organ. Where did you learn to play it?
JL: Well, I didn’t (laughs). I submitted a grant application to the Canada Council and they gave me the grant to build the machine. I wanted to make a Hammond organ played through four Leslie speakers rotating in a room at the same time. The box to make that happen didn’t exist so I had to get my friend Tim, who is an amazing electronic engineer and also the drummer in Godspeed. All I did was improvise. The big thing for me is creating the drones. I feel like the organ has just such amazing overtones, I often get lost just pressing down a couple notes. I don’t really play it as a conventional instrument making melodies. I mostly play it to create these overtones. It’s maybe one or two notes during maybe half an hour. It’s more of a meditation. It’s loud but it’s not harsh, you kind of feel it in your chest more than you hear the harshness, We keep the bright noises down so it’s coming from inside. It’s very soothing, it’s pretty awesome.
PAN M 360: The album can be lived as a pilgrimage or a journey. Was that your intention? How would you describe it?
JL: Whenever we make a Besnard Lakes record, the concept sort of presents itself to us. When we started making this record, we realised pretty quickly that we were dealing with a lot of ideas of death and life. You know, my dad had passed away, Prince had passed away, Mark Hollis had passed away, they were big musical inspiration to us and my dad passing away was a pretty intense experience. We wanted it to be a concept album to begin with. We realised that the album was taking this arc, passing through life into death, after death back to life again. We really developed this idea. We had a few incarnations of the album before we settled on this sequence because we wanted to have this arc. Right at the end, we wrote “Christmas Can Wait”. After that, everything felt into place. That was sort of the climax of the record, the height of where death happens and the beginning of the trip that happens after death.
PAN M 360 : You say that being on your deathbed must be the most psychedelic experience you could ever have. What do you mean by that?
JL: Watching your father die a slow death – he had cancer – was a bizarre experience. I felt myself thinking a lot about what was going through his mind, because he knew he was dying. When people are in those situations, the doctors give them morphine, so my dad was on some pretty heavy doses of morphine during his last days of his life. He woke up in this morphine high moment, he looked at me and he said, “do you want to know what I see right now?” And I was like, fuck yes, I do. He told me that on his blanket there was a window. And inside was a carpenter who was carving small intimes and making small things. And he went back to sleep. I still think about that a lot.
When you die, the body releases DMT, which is another psychedelic drug. So at that point of death when you’re getting to this moment, because it is something that no one has ever experienced before and your brain is dealing with this moment that it can’t understand, you don’t understand, it’s a lot like an acid trip. When you’re on acid or mushrooms, your brain is confused and you try to make sense of things that are happening in much the same sense your brain might be confused when you try to grasp the idea of death. You don’t know what is over there. In the same sense, taking psychedelic drugs, you don’t know what’s over there either, you’re taking a risk everytime you do it, you don’t know what your brain is gonna show you. With death it is the same thing, you don’t know what your brain is gonna show you in those last moments when your body is dying and your brain is releasing DMT.
PAN M 360: Your live shows have a significant amount of lasers and fog to create an immersive set. When I experienced it, it felt like getting in touch with my inner space in a magical way. What have you planned for remote live shows?
JL: That’s the way we want people to experience it, that’s perfect. We planned the same thing (laughs). We have the fog and the lasers. I built a wall of strobe lights behind us. Of course it’s not gonna be the same as having an audience, but we wanted to approach these shows as if we were playing in front of an audience.
PAN M 360: The artwork was done again by Corri-Lynn Tetz. Is the painting about a specific event or subject? JL: I saw a paiting a couple years ago, it was almost a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It kind of looked like what the pits of hell would look like. I showed her the painting and I asked her to paint this cliff on either side coming down into a river. Usually I don’t give her much more information, just the basic stuff. The painting is georgous. Todd Stewart, who does our EP artwork, the illustrator, I asked him to do a mirror image of her painting in the inside gatefold, but more sort of like a purgatory, like the ugly side, the inside is tearing apart, the innards of what’s going on inside. On the inner sleeve you have all the elements from all the older albums. The artwork encompases all what we’ve done so far, almost like a family portrait.
PAN M 360 : You called this album a thunderstorm warning. What do you both see in this thunderstorm?
JL: This title comes from when I was a kid, before the internet, when there was a thunderstorm warning, they would put it on the TV. It would flash blue and red and it would interrupt whatever TV program you were watching. I always felt so excited when there was a thunderstorm warning. It’s mostly being in awe of this storm that’s coming. It’s nature and its awesome power, it interrupts your day. How we go through life all the time not realizing nature is all around us and at any moment, it can completly disrupt what we’re doing. We’re so consumed by the speed of news, technology, and social media, we don’t really pay attention to those things that could create massive change.
We made this concept record that’s an hour long in which we want people to lose themselves. In the meantime, there is Spotify and Apple Music and everybody wants to listen to their one song. Albums aren’t really cool. We feel like we are one of the last of the antiquated system and album-focused.
Frontman and mastermind of the ferocious, longstanding punk soul revue King Khan and the Shrines, Berlin-based former Montrealer Arish Ahmad Khan, welcomes the new year with an album of back-to-basics, no-frills punk rock. It caps a pandemic year that was incredibly productive, even by the standards of this human tornado. Cosmic jazz for departed comrades, cartoon hijinx, and the next step for his famous Black Power Tarot were all on the table when PAN M 360 reached King Khan, who looked back at a strange year, and ahead to a future “ as devastating as it is enlightening”.
PAN M 360: Let’s start with the latest thing, your new album Opiate Them Asses. From start to finish, it’s a celebration of simple, snotty punk rock from the end of the ’70s, a kind of golden age for punk, wouldn’t you say?
KING KHAN: “Indeed! I grew up on punk rock and this album is an attempt to analyze modern times through the eyeballs of an electric eel. My band is entirely from Bordeaux, France. Les Magnetix (Looch Vibrato and Aggy Sonora) on drums and guitar, and Fredovitch (from the Shrines) on bass. I have been playing music with these folks for over two decades, and not only are they fierce players, but I have seen each of them display incredible feats of absolute magical nonsense. I saw Looch Vibrato take a sip from a can of beer which was full of piss and then grab the pair of glasses off the face of the culprit who passed it to him and eat his glasses without blinking. I knew from that moment on that I had to play in a band with this man.”
PAN M 360: The cover art is again by Mike Diana, a controversial and tragic character from the pre-Internet days of snail-mail zine culture. Are you two in touch frequently? The 2018 documentary about him suggests that he’s really a very sweet and reasonable person.
KING KHAN: ” Mike Diana is a wonderful man and I have been an admirer of his art since back in the Montreal days. I imagine it must be difficult for him to get his art out there in this modern world of cancel culture and all that bullshit. I have been buddies with Cynthia Plaster Caster for many years, so I have even held Mike’s plaster penis in my hands once. I guess that makes us more than just friends.”
photos crédit : Orestes Rovakis for Viva Con Agua
PAN M 360: Let’s go back to late last year, and your excellent album The Infinite Ones. That was you exploring psychedelic jazz, to great success. The album is obviously a tribute to Sun Ra, including participation by long time members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. But it’s also a collection of salutes to amazing friends of yours who are now part of the cosmos.
KING KHAN: ” I have been buddies with the Sun Ra Arkestra since 2005, when I stayed with them on a couch in their living room for three days while we played at the NXNE festival. That was when I first got my dose of spiritual jazz training from Yahya Abdul Majid. He spoke to me for what seemed like an eternity, while he burned a mini-volcano of myrrh and frankincense in a makeshift receptacle of two empty sardine cans on top of each other. The smoke filled the room and he told me about learning discipline from Sun Ra and Islam. He told me about his travels around the world living with Tuvaan throat singers, meanwhile he played a Chinese harp and jammed along to Tuvaan throat singing on a small CD player with mini portable speakers.
” He passed away recently, but I was able to send him “Theme of Yahya” which was a song I wrote for him. I even have four harps playing in a stereo circle on the track because of that first meeting with Yahya. It made me very happy when he got to hear the track, he said he was proud of me.
” Danny Ray Thompson was another amazing man who was with Sun Ra since the ’60s, and he loved it when I would read his tarot. Whenever we met at different festivals all over the world, he would grab me and ask me to read his cards on the spot, no matter where we were, even on a sidewalk. “Tribute to the Pharoah’s Den” was a requiem I wrote for him.
” When I began working on my jazz album, I asked myself who I would want to do this with, and Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott immediately came to mind, so I called them up and they were in. We even recorded the tracks in the Sun Ra House in Philly, with Marshall’s old microphones, during the pandemic!
” Sun Ra’s music mutated me from when I first delved into it, and I believe that it has lots to do with following the path of illumination. Hal Willner is another important cosmonaut who left our planet because of Covid. Hal and I had worked on many projects together and I met him with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in Australia a while back. Hal and I produced the Let Me Hang You LP with the “unspeakable parts” Naked Lunch recited by Old Bull Lee himself! He really meant the world to me and the last song on the jazz album is a requiem to him. I tried to imagine him walking through the streets of old New York City in busy traffic, and recreate it. I miss him every day.
” I called the album The Infinite Ones because these people will always live on for eternity in music, in memories, and most of all in my heart and mind, they shaped the being that I am today. I have actually almost finished the sequel to this album and it’s dedicated to the fight for environmental peace and justice. It’s called The Nature of Things and even has a strut I wrote for David Suzuki. I hope to release that later this year.”
PAN M 360: These are just two of the many recordings you’ve put out in the last year, in what seems like a burst of COVID-quarantine cabin-fever creativity. Despite the social isolation, they still involve a lot of interesting and important collaborations. You seem to get a real kick out of what happens when creative weirdos get together to make something.
KING KHAN: ” I am so lucky to have so many creative weirdos in my universe, I guess we are spiritually drawn together by some sort of alien magnetism, or perhaps some sinfully flexible imaginary tongue keeps us bound together playfully for life. Bipolarity helps as well, sometimes it can feel like a superpower. But the forced isolation actually gave me a chance to get healthier thanks to my wife guiding me through it. All those 20 or more years of constant touring really took a toll on my health and I am grateful that I was able to repair things before it was too late.”
PAN M 360: 2021 also brings the news that you’re doing voice-acting work for the forthcoming animated feature film Schirkoa, alongside Asia Argento and Gaspar Noé. It’s directed by Ishan Shukla, expanding on his own short film of the same title, and promises to raise the profile of India’s animation industry. Got more info on that?
KING KHAN: ‘ So, I’ve been doing stuff for Rapid Eye Movies for a few years now. The last project was that I got to score some music for a softcore japanese “pink film” from 1968 called Blue Film Woman. It was a dream job, I made music to a very odd and amazing film, and the scenes I scored mostly involved naked gogo-dancing women with 8mm pornography projected on their naked dancing bodies. So when I got asked to be a part of Schirkoa, I met with Ishan and we bounced around tons of ideas and the story was really inspiring. He also wanted my character to be very much like me, so that wasn’t too hard to pull off. In my sessions with Ishan, we were discovering each other’s madness like two dogs sniffin’ butts. I didn’t realize it at the time but he seems to be reinventing cinema and anime, and taking it into a new frontier. I guess the natural next step would be to get plastic surgery and just get my forehead sculpted into the Klingon way I was born to be.”
PAN M 360: You’ve become an animated cartoon character yourself, in the past year. The animated short film The Tandoori Knights vs. The Desaturators features your duo with the marvelously disgraceful Bloodshot Bill. Can you tell us more about that?
KING KHAN: ” I find most of what little kids watch these days is so atrocious, really mediocre, thoughtless drivel! My kids were raised with SpiderMan from 1967, Fat Albert, Barbapapas, the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and lots of really wonderful old-school cartoons. I wanna create an animated show inspired by this golden age of toons. I have known Bloodshot Bill since I was 14 and our life together really is worthy of animating. The biggest challenge now is how can we hogtie Norm Macdonald and get him on the show.”
PAN M 360: Let’s talk about your Black Power Tarot. How would you explain the project, and what’s the latest news there?
KING KHAN: ” I have been a Black Power advocate since I was 12 and my father gave me The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I have always been very inspired by the civil rights movement, and especially the music that accompanied and strengthened it. For almost a decade, I was working on the film soundtrack and score for a documentary about The Invaders, a Black Power group of young black folks from Memphis in the late ’60s. They caught the attention of Dr. King and eventually became a part of his Poor People’s Campaign. Their story had never been told, and I hope the film comes out sometime this year.
” The Black Power Tarot came from a dream I had years back about my guru Alejandro Jodorowsky, asking me to show him “a card that is weird”. I woke up from that dream realizing that I had to make a new deck based on the Tarot De Marseilles and Black Power. Jodo has been my teacher for the past 10 years, he invited me to his house and gave me the Tarot de Marseilles and began my training. Since then I would send him ideas, poems, movie outlines and all sorts of stuff, and he in return would send me books, comics, teachings and life advice. When I told him I wanted to make this new tarot, he was thrilled by the idea and advised me to not use my ego, and supervised the whole shebang.
” During this time, thanks to the dance of reality, Michael Eaton reached out to me from Belfast. Besides being an amazing artist, he also worked on the art for Game of Thrones. When I saw his art, I knew he was the one I needed to work with for the Black Power Tarot. Since 2015, I have done lots of exhibitions all over the world with huge door-sized prints of the deck. I asked the galleries to fly in John B. Smith from The Invaders to many of these exhibitions, and gave him a chance to tell young people about his activism, his work with Dr. King and his amazing life.
” I also began working with Malik Rahim, a Black Panther from New Orleans, and we started the Global Solidarity Forever organization. During the pandemic, I raised a bunch of money to help Malik avoid homelessness by reading cards for people all over the world, and selling tarot and T-shirts on my Hello Merch store. I actually got the blessings of the New Orleans branch of the Social Medicine Consortium and right now, we are trying to build a community centre in Algiers, 15th Ward, New Orleans, where we will help Malik, with a team of doctors and healthcare workers from New Orleans, in organizing diabetes education programs to help diabetics learn on how to properly deal with their ailment.
” Malik also wants to continue his Save The Wetlands initiative to plant tall grass in the Wetlands, to help absorb the impact of hurricanes. I think all this work is very important, especially since so many businesses are going broke everywhere, building this community centre, which we call the Just Insulin House, is meant to bring hope to a devastated community.
” Algiers is very important as it is one of the birthplaces of jazz and even the Beat movement. William S. Burroughs lived there in 1948-49, and his house was written about in On The Road by Kerouac. New Orleans R&B was also one of the biggest influences on me starting the Shrines over twenty years ago, so I see this as a way I can give something back.
” I never imagined the scope of what happened and continues to happen with the Black Power Tarot – besides being loved and used by many people from all walks of life, it even made it into a Taschen book all about Tarot! Michael Eaton and I also just released a new collection called the Dots & Feathers Flash Cards. I worked with eight amazing First Nations healers and helpers from all over America, from several different tribes (Mohawk, Osage, Cree, and Inuit) and even got the blessings of Tanya Tagaq and Buffy St. Marie, who are included in the deck. The Painter Joe Coleman even guided us on one of the cards.
” I really believe that the tarot is a tool that we need right now to help us follow a path of illumination. It has guided me for over two decades and I look forward to where it shall take us. The world is finally ready to evolve into something new, and its as devastating as it is enlightening. The most important thing is to be a part of the change and make sure its for the good of all humanity.”
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