Interviews

An architect of Detroit techno since the 1980s, Jeff Mills has been at the forefront of electronic music for over 30 years. During his prolific career, the “Wizard” has collaborated with symphony orchestras and explored futuristic jazz, with his band Spiral Deluxe, and electronic jazz, with the late Tony Allen and France’s Jean-Phi Dary. Today, Jeff Mills joins forces with Detroit multi-instrumentalist Rafael Leafar. With The Override Switch, Mills and Leafar offer a musical conversation in which horns and machines answer each other, taking the listener into a musical future that goes beyond the usual stylistic boundaries. A journey that Jeff Mills opens up about in this interview.

PAN M 360: After reading about Rafael Leafar and you, listening to the album, I have the impression that you share a common vision of music. On Rafael Leafar’s website, music is described as a vehicle, and the creation process is seen as a journey, which seems to resonate with your approach of music. Furthermore, the title of Axis’ webzine, The Escaped Velocity, induces, too, the idea of movement in space, in time. It makes me wonder, what place does this concept of movement hold in your personal creative process? And how is it expressed through The Override Switch?

Jeff Mills: I recognize music as a vessel and a carrier of not just information in the sounds we receive, but also, the soul and spirit. I think it’s a general understanding that would not be difficult to find in Detroit among musicians, as many of us were taught to respect what you feel, not just what you learn. Most modern and popular forms of music derive from blues, so the idea of using music to take someone somewhere or to use music as the excuse to reach a higher level of consciousness comes from channeling thoughts about what sets us free. To re-connect to where we’re originally from—the stars. To be able to communicate through ways that had been taken away and suppressed—harmonics. And, to have a sense of more purpose in the time and space we’ve been given. We both understand this.   

PAN M 360: I understand The Override Switch is about experimentation. To what extent is it an improvisational album? Was it a lot of trial and error? Was the mix of your creative thoughts organic?

Jeff Mills: Actually, it is more about the intricacies of communicating than trying to find new ways to translate. I think we knew what the objective was and how to get there. I think experimenting is a consideration when there is no apparent goal. We reacted accordingly and in a natural way, in a musical conversation about what it might take to overcome obstacles in life. We improvised the same way you would with a stranger about weather. Creating the mixes were the third and final step in that conversation. They were only designed to emphasize points of the discussion.

PAN M 360: If I am correct, the album was recorded in studio, but due to the pandemic, you weren’t together. How do you manage to create an undisturbed environment while being apart from each other? How would you describe the interaction you had with your own instruments or machines while working with what the other produced?

Jeff Mills: We both have private studios, the right gear and method that enabled us to record individually. So, we were free to apply whatever we felt made the compositions address the subjects. There wasn’t much verbal or written discussion. All compositions were created in three steps. One, I created the foundation of the track. Two, Rafael recorded all horn parts, and three, I mixed all the tracks down to master version.

PAN M 360: I read that you were introduced to each other by Mike Banks. Can you tell me more about a musician or players in the field who act or have acted as a bridge between different musical spheres and opened new horizons in music?

Jeff Mills: Yes, it was through Mike Banks that Rafael and I met. It was just by chance and good timing. Rafael was staying Mike’s place for a short time and I was regularly talking to Mike about finding musicians to work with. Detroit has a rather tight-knit community of musicians, that also includes DJs and many people that are connected to music. If we’ve never met, we’re about only one person away from knowing them, so it’s easy to connect.

We’ve always and often shared information and ideas about Music. I think this directly comes from the legacy of Berry Gordy’s Motown. Like Nashville, Chicago and New Orleans, Detroit is one of those special cities in America where you can find generations of people that are well connected to the industry of music – that understand it in deeper sense. Not just in the frame of a popular commodity. So, there are many bridges. 

PAN M 360: The relationship, the bond you each have with the city, and of course to Detroit in particular, seems very important. Can you think about a place in Detroit that has been structuring in your work or has the potential to be structuring (or inspiring) for the next generation of Detroit musicians?

Jeff Mills: Well, not exactly. There is no specific place. It would be more of a mindset. And just about anyone can possess it because it’s always been accessible. Meaning that, any and everything that has ever been released under the category of Detroit techno is probably available to find. In hindsight and looking back, I think one of the most important qualities of Detroit techno was that all those independent labels weren’t signed up, compiled and shelved by larger media companies. We still remain loose and flexible to chart our own courses. So, future artists can come at any time, from anywhere for any reason. 

PAN M 360: Will you be presenting this album live? In what kind of physical spaces do you think The Override Switch would fit the best?

Jeff Mills: We would like to present the album in a live performance. Rafael is such an incredible musical force, that I think if you ever have the opportunity to see him play, you should not hesitate. I can’t really suggest a specific type of setting because how would we really know, but like the album, I think the subject connects to any and everyone.

As the pandemic destroyed many planned objectives of bands across the world, the two masterminds behind Calgary’s indie post-punks Sunglaciers, Evan Resnik and Mathieu Blanchard, found themselves in a strange but happy dream—having access to a bunch of amazing gear (used by huge names in the music world like Elton John) and able to write music every day. 

During the heart of Canada’s lockdown, in a commercial voiceover studio, Evan and Mathieu wrote and recorded a bunch of songs that would make up their upcoming sophomore album, Subterranea, co-produced by their hometown hero Chad VanGaalen and mixed by acclaimed engineer Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire, Yves Jarvis, The Unicorns).

Subterrenea is due sometime in 2022 out via Mothland, but the single “Draw Me In,” a psychedelic downer dance beat in the same vein as MGMT, dropped a week ago, paired with a trippy visualizer created by Anthony Lucero, using machine learning techniques. 

Sunglaciers have been going nowhere but up since forming in 2017, steadily growing in popularity and sharing stages with acts such as Omni, Preoccupations, and Daniel Romano, while topping the charts of campus radio stations in Western Canada.
Sunglaciers are playing a show with Motorists and Split Layer on Oct. 22 at l’Hemisphere Gauche and have another appearance during Mothland’s showcase during M For Montreal in November.

PAN M 360 had time to chat with Evan and Mathie, as they basked in picturesque Toronto sunrays (fitting for a band called Sunglaciers), right after they got back from their tour in the United Kingdom. 

PAN M 360: You just got back into Canada today right? How was the tour?

Evan Resnik: We flew into Toronto yesterday around 4-ish and got to where we’re staying at like six or seven, and kind of crashed early. Today we’re enjoying a little chill day. The tour was amazing. It was really, really, fun. The promoters were all really great, crowds excellent and so enthusiastic and really supportive and pretty much every show just got better and better. It kind of came and went in a flash and I’m feeling really good about it. 

PAN M 360: But it was originally planned for Europe as well, right? 

Mathieu Blanchard: Yeah, we had a two-week EU component as well back at the start of 2020. But obviously with all the all the COVID recoveries being different in every country, we we just decided to keep it to the UK this time. 

PAN M 360: I hear they treat you really well when you tour in the U.K. 

Mathieu Blanchard: I just made a post this morning about how well the promoters treated us, like literally two hours ago (laughs). Yeah, every promoter was honestly, like Evan just said, I think better than the last, or they were just all …

Evan Resnik: They just really prioritized our comfortability, so it was a great experience. 

PAN M 360: And you probably only got like trickles of it, but I what’s the U.K. scene like? Canada is so small in comparison. 

Mathieu Blanchard: What was crazy was neither the promoters nor the bands really knew other bands at their same level in other cities that were just like an hour or two away. The crew we hung out with that were great and the bands were so good. There was this one band, Rongorongo, that was so sick, and they didn’t know any bands from like Newcastle, where we were just the day before, which is just like two, three hours away. Like Manchester and Liverpool were half an hour away and nobody knew of anyone. And we thought that was weird because of what you just said in Canada. After you’ve been playing for five, six years or whatever, you kind of know people from all across the country, right?

Evan Resnik: Yeah, I think it’s because a three-hour drive is considered so ridiculously long and unacceptable (laughs). A lot of the bands hadn’t toured much outside of their immediate proximity. 

PAN M 360: That makes sense. So our readers don’t really know your origin story so how did you guys form?

Mathieu Blanchard: So Chris Dadge [musician from Calgary in a number of projects] is the one who kind of linked us up in 2017. I was playing with a couple of bands, Catholic Girls and Crystal Eyes, and then I stopped playing with those bands, and Evan was looking for a drummer. He was getting Dadge to drum on the EP and I was looking for a drummer for the band, and so I joined up and then we started writing songs for the next couple of EPs. After that we started writing the songs for the full-length Foreign Bodies that we put out a couple years ago. Then we got Kyle from DRI HIEV on bass and Nyssa who is from Hag Face and a bunch of other cool projects, and yeah, we just got to write a shit-ton during COVID for the follow-up LP coming out. 

PAN M 360: And most bands and artists didn’t really get that opportunity to jam during the lockdowns. 

Mathieu Blanchard: Well, it was just Evan and I in the same cohort. We had just gotten the studio maybe like a month before COVID and we were supposed to get another jam room and people literally got kicked out the day we were moving in. They got evicted, the band Napalmpom. The room had been there for like 15 years. I moved to Calgary in 2012 and always wanted a room there forever and finally, the day were supposed to start jamming for the first time, the restaurant upstairs got it cancelled cause of COVID. 

Evan Resnik: From there, one of our friends is a part-owner of a commercial voiceover studio and we had always thought about doing like no-trace jamming there, and the studio was into it for a bit of extra cash. 

Mathieu Blanchard: We got like two or three jams in with Nyssa and then COVID happened. 

Evan Resnik: So all of a sudden we had access to all of their gear and nobody from the studio was coming into work during that first lockdown, which was really intense. 

Mathieu Blanchard: So Evan and I were just always hanging out and constantly writing songs and jamming non-stop. When we would go outside it was so fucking quiet and just bizarre. That studio was so sick. It does like WestJet on-hold calls…

Evan Resnik: Or like auto parts call directories for air filters, and it’s all on tape still. 

PAN M 360: That’s crazy that they’re still using tape.

Mathieu Blanchard: (laughs) It is! It’s like the hospitals still using pagers. So the other co-owner is just this old guy who has been in studios for years and he’s rented gear to like Elton John, and the mics for the first Chili Peppers record are all his. So this guy has a ton of gear and once he got more comfortable with us, we had access to all of it, so we just started recording everything. 

PAN M 360: And some of those recordings became songs on your upcoming LP Subterranea?

Mathieu Blanchard: Yeah, exactly. 

PAN M 360: And after a first listen, it kind of seems like you guys leaned more into the synths on this one more than on Foreign Bodies? 

Evan Resnik: I think we both have loved synths for a long time and just wanted to kind of get out of our comfort zones a bit, from a writing perspective. So we just did a lot of jamming on synths and drum machines and stuff, seeing which ways our brains would take us if we didn’t have guitars and drum sticks in hand.  

Mathieu Blanchard: We had talked about what we wanted to do after we wrote the first record and we decided we wanted to try and write songs differently. Instead of Evan on the guitar and me being on drums, we would not use either of those instruments to write songs and would just pick up whatever. So we kind of made it a mission to not write songs with the guitar. And there’s still songs that were written on guitar or transposed from synth to guitar, but it was to just to get a different vibe. Portishead had done that for Third and I’m sure tons of bands have done that for more inspiration and creativity. 

Evan Resnik: And then for the next record we got Chad VanGaalen to add a bunch of other cool shit on top of what we had already done. 

PAN M 360: Like for the latest single, “Draw Me In”? It’s more indie pop, but lyrically bleak as hell. 

Evan Resnik: (laughs) That’s the semi-charmed life approach to songwriting. 

Mathieu Blanchard: (laughs) It’s the line we want to be towing for sure. But the indie pop vibe was all Chad, who added that very cool synth with some extra drums. And he really made it just better.

Evan Resnik: And quickly too, as if it was so easy. 

Mathieu Blanchard: Yeah. It was humbling working with people who were kind of at a much different level than us.

PAN M 360: And do you guys write lyrics together?

Evan Resnik: So I sing the vocals but I will often come to Matt with a bunch of ideas and a bunch of raw stuff and we’ll flesh it out together. I think as time goes on we’re becoming more and more just like equal parts and just kind of kind of both approaching it together. 

PAN M 360: And I kind of get the sense that some of the lyrics are really stream of consciousness?

Evan Resnik: Yeah, it can be kind of like stream-of-consciousness rambling, like from me or we really simplify it, just focus on a few words that have maybe either vague or kind of universal meaning and are accessible from different points. Personally, I love interpreting songs. I love the fact that the way I interpret a song is almost certainly different from the intention of the songwriter.

Mathieu Blanchard: Evan’s thing is that he has a million ideas, you can probably see that from Foreign Bodies. And the lyrics initially are the same so it’s really just pairing it down a finding a specific theme.  

PAN M 360: And so how do these songs translate live? It sounds like there’s lots of room to experiment?

Mathieu Blanchard: It’s been really fun. We just expanded the setup and got a drum machine, essentially a sampling pad that is up front that sometimes I use, sometimes Evan uses, sometimes Nyssa uses, and we added a synth as well. And Evan and Nyssa kind of nice rotate between those two. 

PAN M 360: And so all of you guys are just switching instruments?

Evan Resnik: Yeah, even Kyle plays synth, so we’re all kind of flip-flopping, kind of like Sloan used to do. Like when I saw them in the late ’90s, they would just throw their guitars at each other. Maybe we’ll get there. 

With Motorists and Split Layer at l’Hemisphere Gauche (221 Beaubien E.), Friday, Oct. 22, 8:30pm

Traversing most of Latin America in their resources, Chicago’s Dos Santos have cultivated a mature and considered strain of alternative rock, one that’s resonantly reflective of the borders they have crossed—and returned to. The contents of City of Mirrors, their new album on the hot Chicago label International Anthem, are to an extent a variant of Americana with the whitewash stripped away, revealing fragments and echoes of much vaster map of the misnomered “new world”. The sounds are richly textured, at times a dreamlike haze, at others with a gritty sharp focus. It’s also music that is deeply literary and learned, to be expected given that bandleader, singer, and lyricist Alex Chavez is also an author, and an associate professor of anthropology at Notre Dame. PAN M 360 corresponded with Chavez, to gain more insights into substance and subtleties of City of Mirrors.

PAN M 360: Borders are imaginary lines across the continuity of Earth’s surface that can nonetheless be very real as they entrap and entangle, wound and deny. In many cases, they are the invisible lines that separate the privileged from those who struggle. City of Mirrors returns to borders often, as things to be explored, challenged and transcended. Do you feel that’s an accurate assessment?

Alex Chavez: We have always explored the issue of borders and their crossings through our music, both in terms of subject matter—lyrically/creatively—and musical composition, as we have always sought to incorporate our various transhemispheric influences. This is at once—always—cultural, political, and social. It is what we know and who we are.

PAN M 360: Borders define space, but time can also have figurative borders. I hear this in City of Mirrors, and not just in the different musical eras it touches on, and they are many. It’s in the themes too. Some songs, like “Crown Me”, are pressingly current. Others are timeless, or rooted in memory—“that was then, this is now” is probably one of the clearest temporal borders. Any thoughts on that?

Alex Chavez: Temporality is always a key in dimension of any border crossing, for the self is both emplaced and embodied, and the two are bound through what French philosopher and public intellectual Maurice Merleau-Ponty refers to as reversibility. In other words, the body not only reaches places but also bears the traces of the places it has known—these residues are laid down within the body, and this incorporation ultimately shapes both body and place, for places are themselves altered by our having been in them. At last, these embodied memories of place ring out, especially during performative moments that occur across time.

PAN M 360: The title track is a love letter to Puerto Rico, but it’s inspired by the great Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, who certainly knew how to blur those borders in time I mentioned. Do you think the idea of magical realism, of which he is among the greatest practitioners, has had an influence on the music you make with Dos Santos?

Alex Chavez: Perhaps not always, but certainly on this record. Yes, indeed, “City of Mirrors” is a love song to Puerto Rico amid the aftershocks of disasters past and present, historical and ongoing. Inspired by Gabriel García Marquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude, we imagined Puerto Rico in the image of Macondo—the city of mirrors—a place of beauty and trauma, of struggle and triumph. We feel the Caribbean embodies the extremes of such dichotomies borne of the violent legacies of colonialism and an invented “new world,” while remaining a cherished place of beauty, refusal, and freedom dreams to remember. And so, we asked, what luminous echoes between love and solitude, hope and absurdity, euphoria and mourning are necessary in holding onto the places you cherish, those you call home in the face of oblivion, always. Perhaps, an oblivion in the form of the noisy city in the depths of José Arcadio Buendía’s slumber? And when he asked what city it was, “they answered him with a name that he had never heard, that had no meaning at all, but that had a supernatural echo in his dream: Macondo”— the city of mirrors. A place of beauty and dread, “secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love.”

PAN M 360: The brief track “Jaguar de Rosas” welcomes the Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral, who reads a fragment of her poem “Recado a Lolita Arriaga, en México”. It would be rewarding to know a bit more about her.

Alex Chavez: This is a historical recording written and performed by Gabriela Mistral, the audio courtesy of the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, Library of Congress (1950). We are fans of her work. She was South America’s first ever Nobel Laureate in Literature.

PAN M 360: On City of Mirrors, you’ve enlisted the help of two of the architects of the American Afrobeat revival, Elliot Bergman of NOMO and Martín Perna of Antibalas. Both of whom have a history of dipping into experimental sounds, I’ll add. What prompted you to invite their participation?

Alex Chavez: Elliot Bergman is a friend of the band and based in Chicago. When we made the decision to work with a producer on this record, he was at the top of our list. We subsequently reached out to him, and he accepted—and then we embarked on the journey of making this album, most of which was recorded out in Los Angeles, California. During one of those sessions, Martín Perna of Antibalas—who collaborated on the previous Dos Santos record, Logos—reached out to Alex Chavez to catch up, they have known one another for years. Perna mentioned he was also in Los Angeles, and thus in this quite serendipitous way he ended up coming by the studio and playing on the album. It was a wonderful coincidence.

PAN M 360: “Palo Santo” is a political song, but its title refers to the “holy wood”, bursera graveolens, burned for purifying purposes since Incan times. The word palo can also mean, in Spain, a robbery or a flamenco dance. In Peru, it can mean a lie, in Puerto Rico, an alcoholic drink, an advantage, or a success of some sort. In Argentina, a million pesos, or an erection. Any of these can be anointed with holiness by adding “santo”, and become, at the very least, the start of a very good story. Do you think any of these variations of palo santo apply elsewhere on City of Mirrors? “White. Lies”, perhaps?

Alex Chavez: That song, yes, is a commentary on the contemporary lived politics of race in the United States, and movements for social justice in response. We imagine these movements as part of a larger struggle to change and transform, to usher in a new day in this country. The title “Palo Santo” is invoked with reference to its ethnobotanical use in Mexico and other parts of Latin America as central to ritual purification, much as these movements are also spaces of sacred congregation to purify and change the world.

Photo: Victor Duarte

Released digitally a few weeks ago, We Are The Times, the eighth album from Buffalo Daughter, has just landed in vinyl and CD versions in the record shops. It must be said that the Japanese trio took its time with We Are The Times. Since the release of Konjac-tion in 2014, Buffalo Daughter have been rather discreet, prioritizing concerts and tours over studio sessions. 

We Are The Times brings back the Tokyo band as we’ve always known them since Captain Vapour Athletes, their first full-length album on the now-defunct Beastie Boys label Grand Royal in 1996: eclectic, adventurous, flirting with electronica, new wave, avant-garde pop, leftfield hip-hop and post-rock with a strong experimental bent. Still composed of suGar Yoshinaga on guitar, Yumiko Ohno on bass and MoOoG Yamamoto on machines and turntables, Buffalo Daughter draws up, over nine tracks, a dark assessment of the world and humanity on We Are The Times.  

Born from an improvisation session with Masaya Nakahara, as part of a tribute to Takahiro Muramatsu (Smurf Otokogumi), the album was conceived over several years, evolving and changing with the moods of the band members. Although We Are The Times was created during a tumultuous time, when the trio found themselves, like everyone else, facing the Covid-19 pandemic, it suggests that there is still hope, that music does indeed soften the blow. With this new effort, Buffalo Daughter sought to create an energetic, upbeat and anxiety-inducing project to combat the turmoil.

Reached at her home in Tokyo, suGar Yoshinaga spoke to us in broken English about the genesis of this long-form album, about Kid Koala, featured on one of the album’s tracks, about the Shibuya-kei movement and the power of music, among other things; an interview punctuated by the singing and calls to play of her parrot Popcorn. 

PAN M 360: We Are The Times is the title of your new album. What’s its meaning?

suGar Yoshinaga: We sing it in the song “Times”, the second track on the album. The song is about the current world we live in. There are so many different opinions battling each other. There is red and blue. Blue people have their opinions and red people have a different one. These opinions are completely different and quite often, these people are debating. There are some conflicts happening all over the world. Right wing versus left wing… they are debating but there is no common ground. This polarization became worse, or more obvious, during the pandemic and maybe even the Trump years.

PAN M 360: Is it a Covid album? Was it influenced and created during the pandemic?

suGar Yoshinaga: We started to work on the album in 2017. We made most of the album before the pandemic. But we gathered all the pieces during Covid. So obviously, we were greatly influenced by Covid, but most of the tracks were made before. So it is a mix of before and during the pandemic.

PAN M 360: The lyrics were written before as well?

suGar Yoshinaga: Two songs were written during the pandemic, “Music” and “Times”. The first two songs on the album.  

PAN M 360: The song “Music” starts with the words “music is the vitamin”. Did music save you or keep you sane during these hard times ?

suGar Yoshinaga: Oh yes, definitely! During Covid, we had to stay home forever, we couldn’t do shows and tour anymore. Everything changed in one day. Like everybody else, we are worried by the future and what is happening right now. It is the last song we wrote for this album. There are so many things we are worried about, like global warming and all that stuff. Looking at the whole album after it was done, we thought it was very dark, like there is no way out. Then we said to ourselves, will it be a good album with so many dark songs?. Then we wrote the last song, “Music”. Looking back at our lifestyle—the Buffalo Daughter lifestyle, I mean—music is our way to communicate to the world and between each other in the band. Music is our biggest relief and biggest passion. So that’s why we say that music is the vitamin. It saved me during the pandemic.

PAN M 360: You mentioned global warming earlier. You have a song on the album, “Global Warming Kills Us All”, that you wrote four years ago during an extremely warm summer. Kid Koala is featured on that song. How did you hook up with him ?

suGar Yoshinaga: We’ve known Kid Koala since the late ’90s when we toured together with the Money Mark band through Europe and the USA. I think we went to Montreal too. By the way, I really love Montreal, it’s one of my favourite cities in the world… So Kid Koala came to Japan just before the pandemic for his Nufonia Must Fall show. We went to see it and we were so moved and impressed by what he has done with his music and characters, this muppet show live with the music… So when we started thinking about a video for “Global Warming Kills Us All”, we instantly thought of him. Because global warming is killing us all. That’s a strong statement and it’s a very, very serious issue. But we didn’t want the video to be dark and depressing because we don’t want to give up our hope. We wanted to express the feeling that we are really in danger, everybody on Earth, humans and animals, this global warming might kill us all in the near future. So we thought that his personality, just like his characters that he draws or his muppets that are so cute, might make people take it more seriously, that they would react more to seeing these innocent and cute little characters than to seeing sinister images. 

PAN M 360: What was his contribution to the song?

suGar Yoshinaga: We tried to show how critical the situation is and that we need to do something, even if it’s small things like avoiding plastic and stuff like that. So we chose to sing using a vocoder, to give us a kind of a robot voice. Because it gives an impression that we are more in [imitates a robot voice] danger—and even that the robots are in danger!

PAN M 360: The title “Don’t Punk Out” is intriguing. Can you tell us more about it?

suGar Yoshinaga: It’s a song about a person like me, or the other band members, struggling in this world, in these times. We are all getting older. When we started the band, we were so young, but after 25 years, we are not so young anymore! In fact, we are going to become old and bitter! (laughs) So the feeling we have now is totally different from when we were in our early twenties. We had our worries, our struggles when we were 20, 40 and now. Life can seem long, but it can also seem very short. But despite the passage of time, we will always have battles to fight. We still have to get through it all. So don’t punk out! Do what you have to or what you want to. That’s kind of what we’re trying to say in this song. 

PAN M 360: What other subjects do you touch on in the album?

suGar Yoshinaga: I think the whole album is about struggling. Struggling in life, with global warming and all the stuff we are facing. We all have personal struggles too. And especially during this pandemic period. We wanted to express those struggles and what we can do about it or to get through it. And for us, the best way to get through it is through music. Music is our vitamin, we take it every day, it excites us and makes us feel good.

PAN M 360: Besides Kid Koala, there are also other guests on the album…

suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, there are a few, including Atsushi Matsushita, the drummer who plays on “Don’t Punk Out”. He played with John Zorn and many others, he is probably the best session drummer in Japan. There is also Ricardo Dias Gomes, who sings and speaks on the song “Jazz”, he is Brazilian and lives in Portugal. He came to Tokyo two years ago for sessions with a famous American singer whose name I forget. He played at the Blue Note jazz club in Tokyo and Yumiko knew the drummer of this American singer’s band, so we went there. Ricardo was the bass player that night. Since we liked Ricardo Gomes’ albums a lot, we asked him if he wanted to sing on one of our songs. He happened to like what we did with Takako Minekawa [the Roomic Cube album] in the ’90s. 

PAN M 360: Your previous album was released in 2014, what has happened in the last seven years?

suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) Yeah, seven years seem like a long time… We didn’t really idle, we did a lot of touring throughout Europe and the US for three years and then, in 2017, we thought it might be time to make a new album, so we started working on it. But we also had other things to do, for example Yumiko was touring with Cornelius, so it was not easy to be in the studio together. So we agreed to meet at least once a month all together in the studio, it was a promise we made. We did sessions with different musicians like Masaya Nakahara, who plays modular synth, he is credited on the album too. Anyway, it was a very long process; one day a month is not much. That said, we always did as much as we could during these sessions. We documented these early sessions with a few videos on Youtube and a few songs on Soundcloud.

PAN M 360: So after a long silence of seven years, you resurfaced in 2021 with two releases, the digital EP Continuous Stories of Miss Cro-magnon (20 Years Later), available on Bandcamp, and this new album! Were you running after lost time?

suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) You could say that. Regarding the EP on Bandcamp, we had a concert last July in Tokyo and we wanted to mark the event with something special. We hadn’t played for a long time and we could only do one show. We thought that a t-shirt would be ordinary, so we thought of an EP with three songs. We released it on July 8. I don’t know if you know this, but July 7 is the Festival of Stars in Japan, the Tanabata. So on this date, the seventh day of the seventh month, the myth says that a man and a goddess meet on the Milky Way. It’s very romantic and we think about the stars, the space and the universe during this day. So we wanted to make an EP that would touch this theme. We did the three songs and mixed the album in two weeks. 

PAN M 360: One of the songs, “Son of Altair”, was already released before, right?

suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, we re-recorded it. The others (“Cosmic Dance”, “Interstellar Journey”) are new compositions though. Actually, the third song of the EP, “Interstellar Journey”, shares the same source as “Serendipity (Tsubu)” on our new album. “Serendipity” is an alternative version, let’s say.

PAN M 360: Buffalo Daughter has often been associated with the Shibuya-kei movement, but I have read here and there that you don’t feel so close to the other artists in this movement. 

suGar Yoshinaga: We think that musically, we are quite different from other artists in this movement such as Pizzicato 5, Cornelius, Flipper’s Guitar and all the others. Our music doesn’t sound like theirs, but they are all very good friends! There’s something trendy about this movement, something a little bit stylish, while we’re more of this indie band that tours in a van, you see? We feel different. And that stuff is a little bit out of fashion, it was popular years ago. But there are quite a few bands that are inspired by the Shibuya-kei sound and are starting to be known in Japan.

PAN M 360: You also play with another band, Metalchicks. Can you tell us a little bit about this project?   

suGar Yoshinaga: Metalchicks is me on guitar or bass and Yuka (Yoshimura) on drums. The idea was to make something really hard, like metal. That’s something I can’t do with Buffalo Daughter, and that’s why I started this band. 

PAN M 360: Is this your answer to Babymetal?

suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) Actually, they came long after Metalchicks! But I like Babymetal, I think they are quite original.

PAN M 360: I’ve been hearing a bird chirping since the beginning of the interview. Do you have a parrot at home?

suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, she calls me to go and play with her. Her name is Popcorn, do you want to see her?

PAN M 360: Uh… yeah, why not, I’ve had several birds previously…

What follows is a lively discussion about parrots and other small, talking, winged creatures. But as PAN M 360 is not an ornithological site, we’ll stop here…

Photo credit: Enno Kapitz, digitally modified by Kosuke Kawamura

There could easily be a film about the life of electro hip hop/afrobeat artist, Obi Bora. At age 23, the man chose to escape his home country of Nigeria, a place at the time plagued by violence, and lived a life in exile, wandering the desert, enduring hunger and thirst and fleeing the bandits who chase migrants.

Obi travelled through Morocco and found himself in Spain, bouncing between refugee camps until he reached Switzerland. He was then thrown in a Swiss prison twice for not having immigration papers. In prison Obi met a man who invited him to France. Out of options and doubt, Obi showed up in Lyon, France—his home to this very day.

Through all of this, Obi was slowly writing songs about his experience. This September he released his debut LP, Black Prayers, hip hop/afro-beat tracks sung in English, French, and Igbo, that were originally composed on his laptop while he lived in squat houses. After finding multi-instrumentalist, Cédric de La Chapelle, Obi recorded Black Prayers, and started gaining traction in France and Europe.

A few years ago, Obi had never played live on a stage and now he is touring through France, playing shows with hundreds and thousands of people. He never dreamed of playing music professionally, but now he knows nothing else. As he says, he chose music to be his “last territory.” Obi had some time to chat with PAN M 360 about his musical journey while on tour in France.

PAN M 360: How are you Obi? Did you ever dream of touring in France?

Obi Bora: (laughs) All I can say is thank god. We are doing our best and it’s my first tour ever. Everything moves so quick and nobody knows what happens tomorrow. We all have to work on our belief and be ready for anything that comes our way. Life is about being ready. I never believed I would ever tour, but it came and I’m happy for it.

PAN M 360: Just learning about your story, it seems you’ve done enough travelling for a lifetime?

Obi Bora: Yeah I can say that I’m tired. I’m tired of moving from place to place. I just want to move with my music. I can’t be running up and down anymore. I’m not getting any younger. Now I’m just smiling about the opportunities I have now.

PAN M 360: So back then you basically had to escape Nigeria?

Obi Bora: Yeah (long pause) I hope you understand what you mean by escaping because if you see what is going on in Nigeria now you know it was really escaping. If you watch the news you know that Nigeria is like the oil in the frying pan. Everything is burning, but Nigeria is ok. It’s all finished.

PAN M 360:  Right now, but back then?

Obi Bora: Back then everything was underground. If anything would happened to you nobody would talk or say anything because if they did, something would happen to them too. Now that is over. Nobody is arguing anymore. Everybody disagrees with the government and they are still killing. The government recruits the army to be killing. Killing is not a job. It’s easy with a gun. You can go and pop pop pop and people are dying everyday. I really survived in Nigeria and thank god. I like your statement about escaping, that is what I want to say from now on.

PAN M 360: You can keep it! And when you were in Switzerland they threw you in jail because you didn’t have papers. How long were you there?

Obi Bora: So Switzerland put me in jail two times. The first time it was three months and the second time it was six months. So the first time I got my computer, they put me in jail because I was illegal. After I came out for the first time and I continued to make my music and I didn’t have too much time or places to go to sleep so I made my music.

After I got out the first time I thought ‘OK you can’t take your time for granted.’ I struggled to make the money to go to France because my friend invited me. I wanted to make money so I wasn’t stressing anybody out when I go to France. So after I tried to make some money they arrest me again. So I’m in jail again and I meet a guy who tells me how to raise funds in prison. So I start working in the prison to save some money and he says you should come to Paris if you’re making music. It all went very fast and I said OK and I added him on Facebook. He got released and two months after I messaged him and met him in Lyon. And that’s how I’m living in Lyon now.

PAN M 360: And when you first started making music on your laptop did you think about releasing it to the world or was it just a project for you?

Obi Bora: Well the first time I started to live in France, I didn’t have a place to stay. My situation was very tough and I had some challenges that other people that make music, people like DJs or songwriters, didn’t really have. It was kind of like a fight for myself. So I kind of had to make the music personal because lots of people would say ‘Oh you can’t do this’ or ‘He can’t do this.’ I proved to them that I could do it and it had to be personal.

PAN M 360: And many of the songs on Black Prayers are about the migrant experience and also Black Lives Matter. So now that you’ve released the album has it kind of taken on a new meaning?

Obi Bora: Yes. To my people where I started this … it’s for my Black friends because we were like 500 immigrants in the squat a day. With no documents, no houses. I just looked at our situation and felt bad. So I had my laptop and my microphone and I write something like “Slave We” for them. And them something like “Light ‘N’ Darkness,” because it was all about that experience and that passage in time of what I was going through. I felt like I needed to motivate my brothers and my colleagues. Music is all about what you have and you don’t have to think that someone else is better than you. You have to dig yourself out. I did the songs to prove to my people to prove to myself because it was not easy for me. I want people to feel that in all the songs. I want them to feel like they are part of my soul, you are in my shoes.

PAN M 360: Did you know what you wanted the production of the songs to sound like from the beginning? There is like afrobeat, reggae, dub, hip-hop and trap with your rapping.

Obi Bora: So these days it’s a different type of afrobeat. It’s not the same as the 1990s and there are different types of trap music too. Like there is just a different sound of Afro music in the market and it’s very good. Like I don’t know if you’ve listened to somebody like Burna Boy. I knew I wanted the some of the afrobeat sounds, but I couldn’t do it myself. I just started with what I had on my computer. I had my sample beats on Logic and I couldn’t wait for someone to give me the instruments that I wanted, but now I want to go with this new king od afrobeat sound on the market.

PAN M 360: So maybe later on you wont be using only Logic but actual instrumentalists in a studio?

Obi Bora: Yeah this is what I prefer. The first time I went to a studio and saw it being done. I had the idea OK even if I can’t go to the studio because I don’t have the money to be paying the producer, maybe one day I will be able to work on something in the studio.

PAN M 360: Did you play music in Nigeria at all when you were growing up?Obi Bora: Yeah but it wasn’t my own music. So i heard 2Pac’s “Do For Love” so I said ‘OK I will sing it. I will sing it like I’m the one who wrote it.’ I was like 14 and then I eventually switched to my own music and I showed it to some of my brothers and they started laughing (laughs). But life is life and you are what you want in life so I kept going. There’s never the wrong time to start doing what you love. Look at me I’m from Africa and I’m doing it. It is what it is.

After too long a wait—the inaugural edition was in 2019, and the of course the pandemic happened—the Norté Tropical is back at last, and then back again. The 2021 edition makes up for the missing year with two nights, each distinct in its sounds yet both following an exciting formula. The soirées are overseen by Boogát, a Latin-music leader in Quebec—a rapper, singer, DJ, producer and radio host, though he’ll be doing little of any of that, as artistic director, truly a task for an octopus what with the incredible array of local Latin talent on hand, in all aspects of the productions. PAN M 360 connected with self-described “Mexicanuck” Boogát, aka Daniel Russo Garrido, for a painstaking review of everyone involved in the wild weekend ahead.

PAN M 360: What’s the overall theme or intention of the Norté Tropical shows?

Boogát: The intention is to celebrate the incredible Latin music scene that we have in Montreal right now, and that has been blooming in an unprecedented way recently. This year, Norté Tropical is two nights, but we could have easily—with the right budget—done four or five nights with the talent that is around, and I don’t think that this—the amount of quality Latin music projects in Montreal right now—ever happened before. The point of Norté Tropical is to create unique shows with two Latin bands that merge into a monster ensemble for the last set of the night—that’s the trademark, the descarga/palomazo and live collaboration aspect of it, with an open-minded, inclusive and diverse spirit.

PAN M 360: The first night’s focus appears to be South American sounds – cumbia, champeta, reggaeton – crossed with hip-hop. What can you tell me about the two main acts, Sonido Pesao and Ramon Chicharron, and their special guests for the evening, Baby K, Noé Lira and Elo Sono, and of course DJ Pituca Putica?

Boogát: Sonido Pesao are good friends of mine, I had the chance to co-produce their last record Todo Revuelto. They’re Montreal’s Latin-scene OGs, veterans, respected, active and involved in the community. Their main composer, Ian Lettre, is also part of the Japanese psychedelic surf rock band Teke Teke. Loopy Monster, their bassist, is a great finger-drummer on the Maschine pad, and also involved with Loop Sessions. Luny and Chellz, the vocalists, are involved in the label Norté Rec and used to be in Heavy Soundz and other great projects. They have a killer show that has a feel of Rage Against the Machine mixed with Cypress Hill. I love their music.

Ramon Chicharron is a Colombian from Medellin who immigrated 10 years ago and played every week at l’Escalier, that alternative bar at Berri-UQAM, for almost six years straight. He’s now blowing up provincially, with an ADISQ nomination, and nationally and internationally with his last record Pescador de Sueños which I also produced. His music and show are elegant, modern, dancey, romantic and sensual but without the kitsch aspect of those last two. A crowdpleaser.

Baby K is Chellz’s sister, one of the greatest Spanish rappers to ever touch a mic in Montreal, some kind of Salvadorian Lady of Rage (The Chronic). Noé Lira is a multitalented artist, a really good actress and an incredible dancer who’s also starting a music career. There’s a chill Lhasa feel to what she does with a happier, younger, refreshing twist of the new generation to it. Elo Sono is one half of El Son Sono, a group she has with her brother, the great guitarist and singer Tito Sono. She has a smooth, beautiful, raspy and smoky voice that can remind one of Alejandra Ribera. Of Québécois and Peruvian decent, she brings that Andes feel to our scene that is mostly Caribe. Finally, there’s Pituca Putica, also of Peruvian origin, from the new generation, a really cool DJ who is part of the new international Latin-urban scene, dembow, digital, neo-perreo, reggaeton, etc.

PAN M 360: The second night leans to the Central American, or rather the Caribbean. You’ve got Andy Rubal’s Cuban sounds, and the Nuyorican salsa of Lengaïa Salsa Brava, joined by guests Esmeralda, Noderlis and Stéphanie Osorio, and DJ Zarah Kali in between.

Boogát: The second night leans towards the most popular sound of the Gran Caribe: salsa. Andy Rubal is originally from La Habana. He’s the greatest salsa pianist I ever had the chance to work with. He’s been a great showman since his early childhood, when he was performing with the band Baby Salsa. He recorded several of his records at the EGREM studios (Buena Vista Social Club), then fell in love with a Montrealer and is now right here, working a lot, always inspired, prendido. His music is really Cuban, timba-oriented… ¡Un vacilón!

Lengaïa Salsa Brava is a milestone in Montreal. To my taste, the best salsa band to perform their own material, not covers, in Canada. They’ve also been the backing band for some of the greatest salsa artists in the game, including Ismael Miranda and Yoko Mimata. They’ve been nominated for the last Junos, and are signed to Toronto’s Lula World Records. They’re 12 in the band, it’s big and loud and powerful.

Esmeralda is a really talented singer and guitarist with a crystal voice who toured a lot with Samian and was around Montreal’s hip-hop scene in her beginnings. She leans more toward nueva trova now, performing her own compositions. Noderlis is a great Cuban singer, involved in the show Fiesta Cubana at NAC last summer in Ottawa. Great powerful voice, the real deal. Stéphanie Osorio is the main singer of the Colombian music band Bumaranga, which explores Afro-Colombian sounds. DJ Zarah Kali is the woman behind Provoxmtl, a really cool multidisciplinary space that also streams shows, and she also happens to be an amazing old-school salsa and cumbia DJ.

PAN M 360: The visual aspect of these two soirées is very developed. There’s a VJ, Eli Levinson, lighting design by Chele, the photographer Carlos Guerra, and overall mise en scène care of Carmen Ruiz. How is that side of things shaping up?

Boogát: It’s shaping up great. I don’t think we can do big musical events in 2021 without thinking about the visual aspect of it. The idea is to do something tropical but northern at the same time. We’re lucky that we have a lot of talent right here. Carmen Ruiz is the artistic director for Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra. They have crazy shows. Having Carmen to do the mise en scène was just natural, she said yes right away. Same for Eli Levinson, he’s one of the hottest music producers in Montreal with his project Oonga, but also happens to be a kickass VJ too. He did amazing visuals for Afrotronix’s last tour and he was part of the first Norté Tropical night back in 2019, so it’s just a natural fit to have him doing that. Chele is my favourite MC but also a great tech who studied lighting. We do a lot of projects together so having him designing the lights feels like home.

Carlos Guerra and myself became friends after a trip to CDMX and Oaxaca back in 2017 to film two videos for mySan Cristobal Baile Inn record. Since then he became one of the most prolific video directors in Québécois hip-hop, also shooting for French artist Kaaris and winning a Gémeaux prize—the Oscars for québécois TV shows—for theCannabis Illégal documentary in collaboration with Simon Coutu for Vice, he even acted in a movie recently. He just never stops and has the best eye around. We’re blessed to have the privilege to all work together for two nights, makes us all proud. Everybody is really talented and respects each other as artists. Feels increíble y inspirador.

PAN M 360: I was going to ask, why aren’t you yourself performing, or even just hosting – it’s Elkin Polo from CISM who’ll be the MC for the nights – but I imagine as artistic director of the events, you’ll have your hands full!

Boogát: I think Elkin Polo will have way more fun than myself MCing both nights, and the more fun someone is having on stage, the more fun to watch and listen. He’s been doing his radio show nonstop since 2013 and has hosted several events, so he’s the man for the job. I’ll be dropping verses here and there both nights, though. This Norté Tropical thing is like doing features without going to the studio, creating the excuse to work with people I appreciate on an artistic and human level. But to answer your question, yes, it’s a lot of work to do this, but it’s beautiful to come together to do something we all love, live Latin music, and celebrate our heritage with pride.

Andy Rubal photo: Marion Brunelle; Ramon Chicharron photo: VictorineYok

At Le National (1220 Sainte-Catherine E.) on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 15-16. Each night $25 (+taxes and service) or both for $40 (+taxes and service). More info here.

Born to Rwandan parents, Shadrach Kabango became Shad, one of Canada’s most resonant artists of diversity. Since the mid-2000s, Shad has established himself as one of the country’s most eloquent rappers, as evidenced by his seventh album, the excellent TAO, released in October on Secret City Records. In the media, Shad is also known for his hosting skills, noting his key positions at CBC and his most important achievement, the series Hip Hop Evolution, produced and broadcasted by Netflix. PAN M 360 caught up with him to get an update on his career and his new album.

PAN M 360: Tao is the central theme. What does it mean?

Shad: For me, the spiritual side of Tao is just one side. In fact, the title also refers to the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. That really inspired the album, and that book made me remember The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. So both of those books have the acronym TAO in their title. And also, The Abolition of Man discusses the Taoist religion in it. I felt it was a good title, because it makes reference to social and philosophical issues, but also the spiritual. And I think ultimately it is a spiritual album, because it’s about connection.

PAN M 360: Can you comment on those connections you’ve explored?

Shad: I was reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, an excellent, essential, vital book. This book tells the story of the last 20 years, with Google and Facebook, and makes us see how much these companies have changed our lives, our worlds, our humanity, the way we think. It’s a treasure trove of data! Ultimately, it’s up to us, the people, to decide what we want, whether these technologies should serve us and humanity and what our vision of humanity is. And that made me think of The Abolition of Man, that book was written in 1943. But it deals with technology and science and what happens when we are reduced to data points, when we see ourselves as objects of science and not as something sacred. That’s where the connection between the two books happened, and really made me want to write an album about different aspects of our humanity today. 

PAN M 360:  Very few rappers are referring to such books as a major inspiration. How did it become an art form?

Shad: For me, it was a fun creative challenge, and that’s what I needed at this stage of my career. It got me out of bed every morning! So yes, I had to turn these big ideas into lyrics and music, into something that was first a feeling, an emotion. I also like to inject humour into what I do, as much as possible. Musically, I like to keep it dynamic, so that it’s amazing, in a world where you don’t know what’s going to happen. As a producer, I tried to keep things interesting. So yeah, it was fun for me to try to bring all these things to life. And also to break it down into smaller pieces, each aspect can be a song, following this concept of looking at the different aspects of our humanity. An aspect can be a song, so it’s digestible that way. So these are different ways that I tried to approach it, making sure that it’s fun to listen to, that it’s music.

PAN M 360: About the beatmaking and composition , where do you see yourself?

Shad: I worked with many of the same people for the most part. I followed the same process of trial and error until I got the sound I wanted. What changed this time was that I approached the technology in a different way. When I presented the Hip Hop Evolution series on Netflix, I learned an amazing thing: hip-hop is electronic music first, and also represents the evolution of technology. In this series, we often look at hip-hop as a geographical land, how the music has moved and how the culture has changed, because the music has moved to different cities and mixed with different cultures. And it’s also the history of technology, as krautrock and German electronic music embodied the ’70s. From drum machines and turntables, hip hop evolved to more sophisticated sampling machines, and so on. All that to say, it really inspired me in terms of beatmaking, even in terms of the general approach, right down to my vocal treatment. In a song like “Slot Machines”, I transformed my voice and I used a lot of digital distortions, things that might sound wrong to hip-hop purists. But then hip-hop is also about technology, so I embrace it a lot easier than I would have five years ago.

PAN M 360: Where do you see yourself in hip-hop culture right now?

Shad: I would say that what I do is pretty traditional. When I started, I was labeled very alternative, now I would say I’m pretty much rooted in tradition, even though I experiment a lot. There are songs on this album that have an industrial sound to them, others are a bit ’70s retro. It goes all over the place, and there are some very new sounds. But what I’m doing, compared to what a lot of people are doing in 2021, is relatively traditional, even though it’s experimental in many ways. For example, I don’t really sing, I rap, which is different from a lot of hip-hop today, where the line is very blurred between what is singing and what is rapping. Personally, ’90s hip-hop is in my DNA, I also like jazz, funk… What characterizes hip-hop is this real connection with the history of music. Personally, I like when music is modern but also rooted in a culture and a tradition. The Roots, Outkast, A Tribe Called Quest and others have always done that, they have integrated the music they grew up with. They’ve dug all the grooves in Black American music while adding a new piece to the tapestry.

PAN M 360: Between tradition and seeking new sounds.

Shad: That’s it. I don’t think there is an opposition between those options. The more you’re rooted in the history, the more you can expand its parameters. You actually have a better perspective on that. And that has always excited me, as a composer and as a fan of this music. I always wanted to explore and experiment and incorporate different sounds of the music that I love outside of hip-hop.

PAN M 360: Who are the crucial colleagues on TAO?

Shad: DJ T.Lo has produced a few songs and is still my tour DJ; Ric Notes has been working with me for several years; pHoenix Pagliacci is a rapper, singer and songwriter who comes up with ideas very quickly in the studio. These artists are among my privileged interlocutors. I also like to perform with musicians, each of my albums includes a dozen of them. Concerning the upcoming line-up on stage, I’m still thinking about it for the next tour. We will have to adjust to the Covid rules. We don’t know if our dates will be cancelled, and that’s a big risk. I would love to have a trumpet, a saxophone, a DJ, a bass, keyboards, a drummer with me but… I have to consider what is possible.

PAN M 360: What’s more important for you? Your artistic life, or your media life as a host and a true reprentative of Canadian diversity?

Shad: I still think of music as the core of what I do. And I think about it as the way that I get to tell people what I’m thinking in my own terms, in a kind of regular-updating sort of fashion. When I get asked to host this show or that show, I represent something. There is a line between this and my art form. I can become a symbol for certain things, still to have a little bit of space to say what I’m thinking about. It is still an important part of the puzzle for me. But my artistic career is still where I’m most comfortable. Music is how I would say it. In the age of social media, I’m not comfortable putting out my thoughts through this, it doesn’t capture what I’m really trying to say. I need music, I need stories, I need metaphors, I need space. When I’m hosting Hip Hop Evolution, for example, I really don’t see it as my platform, it is other people’s platform in hip-hop. I’m there as a guide, as somebody to help them do that. It’s not about me and telling my story, even if my face is on this. Of course I feel grateful to be part of it. We ended the series in the middle of 2000s decade. There is no plan for another season, I guess we need more distance. But yeah, I’d love to do it again.

Photo credit : Justin Broadbent

Experimental jazz pianist and composer Emilio Reyna originally cut his teeth in Mexico City, but has been slowly carving out a career for himself in Montreal. He’s studied piano at McGill University and his latest single in May, “Llegarán suaves lluvias” (“soft rains will arrive”), features a saxophonist from Montreal and two revered Mexican instrumentalists. 

Reyna is the type who takes displeasure in genre labels. He realizes why his music is classified as jazz, but feels the label does not fit the live experience properly. His point is to create an experience that is musically technical, but also accessible for his audience.

Before his performance at the OFF Jazz Festival on Friday with his quintet, Emilio took the time to chat with PAN M 360 about his origins, love of improvisation, and what other music he has on the way. 

PAN M 360: How did you get into playing experimental jazz music?

Emilio Reyna: I’m from Mexico City, but I took some lessons with a guy here and I’ve studied studied piano at Berklee, which was kind of a big deal in Mexico. And it showed me a lot of the theory, the piano playing, and I was able to learn a bunch of music, from the classics like Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, and then somehow I ended up starting and studying music in Montreal. I guess when I came to Montreal I was already really into the jazz music path.

PAN M 360: And did you play music in Mexico City at all?

Emilio Reyna: Yeah, I grew up with some friends who were also interested in music and I started playing, kind of like prog-rock type stuff. I was very influenced by classical music, but I feel genres are a way to organize music in our music libraries. But it’s not a very accurate way to describe music, and I find they’re just symbols to help us organize stuff, but it’s really hard to actually describe the music with those symbols.

PAN M 360: Yeah, for sure. You’re playing the OFF Jazz Festival, but there is so much that falls under the umbrella of jazz music and it really changes every year.

Emilio Reyna: Totally. I agree, and one of the important things about jazz music is that its biggest element is improvisation. Musicians that play jazz have to approach it as composers and have a very deep knowledge of harmony, rhythm, composition and melody. Improvisation is like composing in the moment, and I find jazz music is this amazing gift, you can just take elements from any genre and make it.

PAN M 360: Right, and you have to play with musicians you trust, and have them trust you.

Emilio Reyna: The guys I’m gonna play with Friday are people that I grew up with, studying at McGill. I have a lot of confidence and trust. I’ll be able to stretch out, and everything’s gonna be fine. They will follow, or I will follow whatever they come up with.

PAN M 360: Are some of those players on the recording “Llegarán suaves lluvias”?

Emilio Reyna: No. One of the guys, Ted Crosby, the saxophonist, he was in Montreal. I met him in Montreal when we were studying at McGill, but he just moved to Toronto. And the other two guys are Hernán Hecht, who has a huge trajectory in Mexico City as a drummer and Benjamin Garcia is a great bassist.

PAN M 360: So now that you’re playing it with different players live, it must be different every time?

Emilio Reyna: Oh, yeah! I would argue that every time that you perform any type of music, even if it’s classical music where every note is written, there are so many things you cannot translate in the scores. It only comes alive when you play it live. And again, in jazz music, because of that element of improvisation, there’s a regent structure and form in the kind of theme with melodic or rhythmic or harmonic parts. But once it’s actually played, I would say it’s a unique thing of the present moment.

PAN M 360: And what about naming a piece of music. I find that also influences the theme?

Emilio Reyna: Yeah, I mean, it depends. Sometimes I do have a concept in mind that for the certain type of composition, there’s like a motive driven by that concept. But sometimes I find naming a tune is really hard, and at the same time, very relevant. There’s no right and wrong.

PAN M 360: And some of your music has vocals in it. Are we going to hear that during Friday’s performance?

Emilio Reyna: Yeah, we’re gonna be playing with an amazing singer, Eugénie Jobin-Tremblay. She’s one of my favourite singers in the world and has her own project called Ambroise. She has a bunch of records that are so gorgeous. Her voice is very airy and kind of angelic, I find. She’s been a friend of mine for a few years and she’s gonna be singing in Spanish. 

PAN M 360: Great. And you have a new album on the way?

Emilio Reyna: I have a few things im working on. So there’s a piano solo album that’s probably coming up in the next couple of months. I have a sextet album that has a couple of recordings, and I have a few recordings that I’ve been listening to and I need to decide what works and what doesn’t. It’s a very painful process to be honest because I don’t have a producer or label helping me to shape those things. 

PAN M 360: And to be relevant now you need to always be releasing something or have immediate plans with things like Spotify. 

Emilio Reyna: Yeah, and that part of the music industry … It’s great that we have so much music available from a few clicks on our computer or cell phones, but it’s quite different from what I grew up with. I find our attention spans have shrunk because we’re receiving so much information all the time. It’s here to stay and it’s gonna be part of life now, but I guess I’m still a little bit of a romantic, trying to adapt to the circumstances.

At Dièse Onze ( 4115 St-Denis) on Friday, October 8, 10pm, $15

With autumn here and the temperature dropping by the day, any opportunity to store up some heat and light is worthwhile. Jazz bassist, composer and educator Summer Kodama splits her time between Montreal and Las Vegas, and will be bringing her Sun Warriors ensemble to the OFF Jazz Festival. PAN M 360 connected with Kodama to find out more about the Sun Warriors’ tactics and strategies, as well as her own active dedication to diversity in her musical realm and beyond.

PAN M 360: What is the guiding principle or intention of Sun Warriors?

Summer Kodama: This ensemble encourages vulnerable expression, risk-taking improvisations, the visibility of a diverse representation of artists, and the showcasing of original compositions. The guiding musical principle of this project is to encourage a sense of honesty and liberation through improvisation. The group explores creating compositions from narratives and guidelines together in real time–always with a sense of continuity, intention, and structure. 

PAN M 360: You released a single this past spring, “Birds of a Feather, Free from a Tether”. The two sax players in the sextet, Montrealers Allison Burik and Claire Devlin, will also be with you on Oct. 8 at Resonance Café. Is this single a good indication of what listeners can expect that night?

Summer Kodama: Yes.  The representation of the band that performed “Birds of a Feather, Free from a Tether” is something I wanted to replicate for OFF. From a compositional standpoint, some of my most recent works are inspired by poems and literature. 

PAN M 360: You are involved in this performance as a bass player, but also as composer. What are your personal priorities as a composer? What makes you call a piece you’ve written a keeper?

Summer Kodama: I believe honesty is the most important component of self-expression. I try to convey this idea through my moments of playing and improvising as a bassist, and through being a composer–like Charles Mingus. I love that he was never apologizing for what he had to say, because I’ve been through stages of apologizing all the time for no reason in real life. I think if a composition accurately reflects a feeling, recollection, or moment in time, that’s the first step for me to realize that I have something to work with and expand upon. 

PAN M 360: Inclusivity and diversity, making sure everyone has a voice in jazz (and elsewhere), is clearly of vital importance to you. What are your strategies for achieving that? You’ve been working with Nevada School of the Arts and Jazz Outreach Initiative to this purpose, and also founded the Healing Hearts Cooperative.

Summer Kodama: I recently wrote a grant proposal for an initiative. I also wrote an article recently about considering equity in alternative models of mentorship. My pursuits recently regarding the matter have been toward engaging the community. Actively creating the space and opportunity for underrepresented young musicians to succeed is crucial to initializing a culture of equity. 

At Resonance Café (5175A du Parc) on Friday, October 8, 5 pm, suggested contribution $8

This has been said since the 1950s: the more demanding music tends to come together over time. Thus, the Western classical school is gradually opening up to other currents, and contemporary jazz is certainly on the shortlist of alliances. Except for the most narrow-minded, it is now common to appreciate a classical musician integrating themselves into a project involving improvisation, or to hear a jazz musician exploring the repertoire of written music of the Western tradition.

This is certainly the case with Philippe Côté, who takes the stage at the Off Festival de jazz de Montréal in concert with American pianist Marc Copland and the Saguenay Quartet. Chamber music and jazz go hand in hand in the imagination of the Montreal artist, as will be demonstrated on stage this Saturday, October 2, and on disc on November 5: the works Bell Tolls Variations and Fleurs Revisited will be performed during the festival.

Saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, conductor, Philippe Côté is currently completing a doctorate at McGill University under the direction of John Hollenbeck and is also the coordinator of the McGill Conservatory Jazz Program, which is part of the university’s community school. In addition, the Montreal musician has received numerous awards, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. He has composed for orchestras and chamber ensembles such as the Orchestre national de Jazz de Montréal, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra and the Ensemble Paramirabo. 

All reasons to justify this exchange with PAN M 360.

Philippe Côté + Marc Copland + Quatuor Saguenay Recording from Philippe Côté on Vimeo.

PAN M 360: How were these works conceived? 

Philippe Côté: The Bell Tolls, the piece by Marc Copland who I think is a great jazz pianist, was complete in itself before I worked on it—recorded in 2009 with drummer Bill Stewart and bassist Drew Gress. Originally played as a trio, then, this piece is very well constructed, super rich, very subtle. This is a respectful recomposition of this piece; I don’t transform it too much, I bring it a more classical dimension, very tonal even if contemporary. For Fleurs Revisited, my own piece, I allowed myself to explore jazz and contemporary music more, while remaining influenced by today’s popular trends. So the sound design is more contemporary.

PAN M 360: What about the choice of instrumentation?

Philippe Côté: The idea of this project was to compose and arrange for a string quartet, a piano and myself on bass clarinet and soprano saxophone. I didn’t choose a double bass or drums, this was intentional, these elements are nevertheless in the music. So I decided to make chamber music without denying my musical nature; I like jazz, rhythm, percussion, groove. The idea of this instrumentation is based on the idea that it can work acoustically in the context of chamber music built on jazz pieces. In contemporary jazz, piano trio and string quartet projects are often dominated by drums and bass, to the detriment of acoustic balance. In the case of these revisited works, the jazz side of the affair is represented more in the improvisational sequences and in some of the grooves than in the orchestral construction per se. The written material stimulates the improvisation, in fact. 

PAN M 360: However, the strings don’t really improvise. What is their role?

Philippe Côté: The strings do not improvise but they are not relegated to the role of wallpaper at the service of the soloists, as is too often the case in jazz. Since there are no drums or bass, the strings are at the heart of the music, they are an integral part of it even if I don’t ask them to improvise or do other things they don’t master.

PAN M 360: You chose the Saguenay Quartet, why?

Philippe Côté: The Quatuor Saguenay is a very nice ensemble that has a very nice sound.  Initially, the demo of the project was recorded with musicians from McGill, but then I wanted a permanent quartet that has a real sound. And I really liked the sound of the Saguenay Quartet, whose first violin has been replaced since the recording—Laura Andriani has been replaced by Marie Bégin. Luc Beauchemin, viola, Nathalie Camus, second violin and David Ellis, cello. Super nice people! This music was first recorded in a studio in 2016, I wasn’t happy with the result so I re-recorded it in a concert hall, at Domaine Forget in 2017, after which I led several other projects, the pandemic delayed the public release.

PAN M 360: What are your other projects?

Philippe Côté: I have another project in progress with François Bourassa (piano) and Jacques Kuba Séguin (trumpet), another in duo with François Bourassa and also a commissioned work for April with the Canadian National Jazz Orchestra in Calgary, which will be conducted by Christine Jensen. I am also a conductor for different ensembles. So… during some phases I play more, compose and conduct more during other phases. If I have to put a number one?  I’m more of a composer than a player, but it’s all connected.

Marc Copland, Philippe Côté and the Saguenay String Quartet perform at Gesù, 20h, Saturday October 2, at the Off Festival de jazz de Montréal

When a little-known or even unknown jazz musician takes the lead of an ensemble made up of seasoned musicians, it is worthwhile to take a first look. That’s why, for the 22nd Off Festival de jazz de Montréal (from September 30 to October 9) , PAN M 360 connected with the excellent pianist Kate Wyatt, who has no album, no Bandcamp page, a few videos online… and yet could be one of the top artists of Montreal, Quebec or even Canadian jazz.

PAN M 360: First, the basics. Where are you from? When did you settle in Montreal? Where were you trained  as a piano player? With whom have you studied?

Kate Wyatt: I come from Victoria, BC originally. By chance I ended up going to a high school that had a Jazz Performance program. At that point, I had already taken piano lessons for seven years, but by the age of 14 was losing interest. However, the teacher of my band program was looking for someone to fill the piano chair in the school’s big band and I agreed to do it.  As it turns out, that’s what sparked my career! Playing in the big band rekindled my love of piano and music, and I became heavily involved in the jazz program. It was a natural extension that after high school, I carried on with my jazz studies at McGill University. There I studied with Andre White and Tilden Webb, a great pianist now living in Vancouver, as well as composition with Joe Sullivan.

PAN M 360: You work in the Montreal scene for a while.

Kate Wyatt: Yes, in fact it’s over 20 years now! I graduated from McGill in 1998 and have been working professionally since then.

PAN M 360: Your approach is close to the acoustic modern or contemporary piano. Can we know a little more about it? What is your pianistic vision?

Kate Wyatt: I’m very much a piano player, as in I’m not really interested in keyboards, or gear, or anything like that.  I love exploring the instrument, and the depths of sounds that can be created.  I try to use the entire instrument, and not limit myself to conventional left-hand voicings with right-hand melodic lines.

PAN M 360: How do you see yourself in your pianistic personality? What is specifically Kate Wyatt music in your piano playing?

Kate Wyatt: Hmm… that’s a difficult question.  I’ve come to believe over the years that all jazz musicians play their personality—you can hear who they are in how they play.  So, perhaps what you would hear in my playing is my fun-loving nature and sense of humour, the importance I put in listening to others, my love of puzzles and problem solving. It is very hard to quantify.

PAN M 360:  It may be a cliché but…. Do you sometimes think about being a female jazz musician in a musical genre where we don’t exactly see parity? Maybe it is not relevant for you, and maybe you do not think about a “female touch” in improvisation music. Or composition. Or performance. Please feel free in answering.

Kate Wyatt: Yeah, I think being a woman in jazz has greatly influenced my career, and quite possibly how I play as well. In my case, I had children when I was in my twenties, before I really had a chance to launch my career as a solo performer. I worked all those years mostly as a side person, accompanying others. Maybe it’s from that experience as an accompanist that I’ve come to place such an importance on listening to and supporting the other musicians I play with. It could also be that as women, we are socialized to take a back seat, and work in supporting roles. I guess it would be impossible to say, really. But overall I have to think that my career would look quite different if I weren’t a woman and a mother.

PAN M 360: Do you relate to specific piano players of the previous generations, or your own generation?

Kate Wyatt: There are so many piano players that I love to listen to, but I’m not sure that you’d necessarily hear them in my playing. There are some jazz musicians who, when you listen to them, you can really pin down their influences. I don’t think it’s as obvious in my playing. I place the most importance on developing my own voice on the instrument.

PAN M 360: Your ensemble is the same musicians as CODE Quartet except for Christine Jensen. Pure coincidence? Of course, the result is quite different because you play a harmonic instrument…

Kate Wyatt: I’ll tell you the story of how my quartet came about.  It actually has a lot to do with the pandemic. Back in March 2020, it was right around the time when everything first shut down. Lex had a gig booked at Upstairs with Jim, Adrian and another piano player.  People were all starting to get very nervous about this new virus, and the piano player decided that he wasn’t comfortable performing in a packed club, so Lex ended up calling me to sub in. It was the first time that we had played in this formation, with these band members, and the chemistry was fantastic. We had an amazing night!  

So, following that, during the next period of lockdowns and various restrictions, the four of us got together to play as much as possible. We played in backyards, and later in our houses, when it was allowed. Because there were no gigs and limited teaching, we suddenly had as much time as we wanted to play and explore music. It was very freeing! I feel like we really developed a group sound.

So, I guess to summarize, it’s not like I set about hiring the musicians from CODE Quartet, minus Christine. We came together in a much more organic way, simply from the love of playing together. They are the obvious choice of who I want to have playing my music.

PAN M 360:  You founded a jazz family with bassist Adrian Vedady. Jazz parents with kids, ideal mutual comprehension…  It seems to be the perfect deal! Isn’t it?

Kate Wyatt: I have to say, that it’s pretty great!  We love playing together, and have so much in common. All of our shared life experiences probably strengthen our musical connection as well.

PAN M 360: Are you also involved in other musical genres?

Kate Wyatt: I’ve played some other stuff in the past, but at this point I really just focus on jazz.

PAN M 360: Are you also teaching? What are you actually studying?

Kate Wyatt: Yes, I do a lot of teaching! I work at Marianopolis College, and I have many private students. In the summer I teach at a couple of different jazz camps.

PAN M 360: What are your next projects? Hope we hear to a lot more of your  own music!

Kate Wyatt: Thanks! I actually received a Canada Council grant to write and record a new album of my music with the quartet. We recorded in July at Boutique de Son with George Doxas, and are in the process of mixing and mastering, and finishing the artwork and all of that. I plan on releasing it in the spring. It will be called Artifact.

As part of the Off Festival de jazz de Montréal, the Kate Wyatt Quartet is playing at Upstairs on Sunday, October 3

Roland Pemberton, known in the hip hop world as Cadence Weapon, has been creating subversive bangers since 2005. He had humble beginnings in Edmonton, AB, and started rapping at the age of 13. He pursued journalism studies (he still writes for publications like Hazlit to this day) but then dropped out to focus on his music career.

Since then, he has become a force of nature in the rap world, using his wicked hot flow and experimental beats to change the minds of his generation. His latest album, Parallel World, nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, is his most politically conscious album yet, touching on themes of gentrification, systemic racism, inequality, and technological surveillance.

Roland took a moment to speak with PAN M 360 before his performance at POP Montreal, about the inspirations behind his new album and some of the tracks, his impact on social media. He also teased his upcoming book, Bedroom Rapper, which will be on shelves May of next year.

PAN M 360: One of the reasons I really enjoy your albums is because you can just throw them on and they’re banging hip hop songs, but if you really read into the lyrics, you’re like, ‘Holy shit, there’s so much thematic substance here.’ I mean, you’re obviously a well-read guy, a poet, and a journalist, and I guess you make what you could call, I don’t know, “thinking man’s rap”?

Roland Pemberton: (laughs) I’m glad you observed that because I love to have music that works on different levels. I wanted to have something that you can appreciate just on the surface level, if it’s like playing at a vintage clothing store or something, and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ Then if you actually listen to the lyrics, I want there to be multiple levels that even go deeper. That’s a big thing for me—I want to have music that has a lot of depth. I feel like depth gives music longevity. I construct my albums similar to a book or something. I really want something that people could come back and listen to 10 years later and really enjoy it.

PAN M 360: Gentrification, surveillance, and systemic racism have been themes in your music before, but with Parallel World, you just went hard with those themes. It’s definitely your most politically-charged album to date. Was that kind of your plan from the beginning with this one?

Roland Pemberton: Well, before I made this record, I wasn’t planning to put out an album or anything. I didn’t really have like a big concept in my mind, but it was really just during the pandemic—I was just reading a lot of books and doing more research—but also thinking about what was happening with the George Floyd protests last summer, and just the kind of systemic upheaval that we were all going through as a society. That really just spurred me on to really feel like, ‘okay, I’ve always made these different kind of connections between institutions, and I’ve always wanted to like dig deeper and learn more about these things.’ I find that the pandemic really just lit a spark. And that really made me feel like an urgency to release something that was really of the moment. I’ve always been kind of subversive about these things in the past. You know, briefly touched on them in a line here and there, but I really wanted to have a whole concept record talking about these subjects.

PAN M 360: And the George Floyd protests, while it was the whole world kind of recognizing, there are so many stories that just get no coverage or mention. 

Roland Pemberton: Oh yeah, for sure. I think the really big thing about George Floyd was this was the first time in my life where something happened like that and people reached out to me. Like my friends, my white friends were all kind of like, ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ I realized it wasn’t just me and my family having these discussions, it wasn’t just something that it’s like, ‘oh, here we go again.’ We kind of broke through the colour barrier. I’ve always thought about microaggressions and the kind of systemic racism that I experience every day, but I was just really amazed that it was being acknowledged on television—and being acknowledged on this large scale that is never had been before. It really emboldened to be like, ‘okay, now’s the time to really just go all in.’

PAN M 360: So it was kind of catalyst for you?

Roland Pemberton: Yeah. We’ve been going through different uprisings in recent years. There’s just so much inequality in our society and #metoo was a big thing like that. It’s happening. Racism, sexism, and these things are really starting to get broken down and deconstructed in a much more nuanced way than they used to be.

PAN M 360: There were protests here weekly in Montreal so I assume there were in Toronto? Were you a part of any of them or did you just kind of  witness them?

Roland Pemberton: I couldn’t really watch the video—that repetitious cycle of Black death. It was kind of hard for me and obviously with the pandemic, there’s a lot of fear around that. So I wasn’t really physically at a lot of the protests. But I think the thing that happened with me is I realized what my role could be as an artist. So I got more into crowdfunding and signal boosting other people’s initiatives. I made some posts about Little Jamaica here in Toronto I made this one post, “The Tale of Two Torontos”—comparing the Adamson BBQ guy, his GoFundMe, with the GoFundMe for Black business grants and that went totally viral. And I posted the GoFundMe and got thousands of dollars for the Black business grants. That weirdly was a real turning point for me with what I was doing with my album because I was just like, ‘wow I really am so much more powerful than I thought.’ (laughs)

PAN M 360: You realized you had a voice and people listened. 

Roland Pemberton: Yeah. I used to use Twitter kind of just for jokes. I didn’t really think of it as an organizing tool the way that I do now. 

PAN M 360: I saw Questlove’s movie, Summer of Soul, recently and one of the things it talks about is all of these artists like Sly and the Family Stone, and The 5th Dimension, they had a message to promote through their music, and it kind of got me thinking, ‘What if these guys had Twitter back then?’ 

Roland Pemberton: (laughs) Yeah, totally. It’s funny ‘cause obviously they’re playing this crazy festival in Harlem and their message lives on through time in a different way, but I do feel like there’s something that’s really instantaneous about it. It’s the good side of groupthink. It’s the good side of crowdsourcing. It was about empowering people.

PAN M 360: And I mean Sly has the album There’s a Riot Goin’ On. All of the music is pretty feelgood, but back then, he had an agenda for sure. 

Roland Pemberton: I love that record. It actually inspired this album. That was one of the records that I kind of studied as oneg of the great records that come from times of upheaval and come from a sociopolitical lens. The music is like really cool and it can very chill, but if you delve into it, there are some very dark themes. I love how its kind of subversive that way.

PAN M 360: “On Me” is one of my favourite tracks on Parallel World, but it’s truly terrifying with its truth about how normalized surveillance has become. After listening to it the second time, I was afraid to pick up my phone.

Roland Pemberton: (laughs) That’s funny. Sorry about that. I just started noticing how insidious surveillance has become in our society. We’re at a point where you can give your friend your login for the Find my iPhone thing, and they can know where you are, and be like ‘hey  I see you’re over there. Are you hanging out with what’s-his-name?’ And that to me is like, ‘oh god, we’re beyond the pale.’ It really shows you that the true purpose of the phone is a tracking device.

PAN M 360: You mentioned that you kind of wrote this album and all your other albums as kind of a book, but you’re actually writing a book called Bedroom Rapper? Is it all finished?

Roland Pemberton: It’s in the final stages, but I am still writing it. It’s mostly chronological, like a memoir style, but there are also some detours and essays about other subjects. Now I have a whole chapter that’s just all about DJing. I have a chapter about trap music and how it took over the world and just like my perspective on it. I have a chapter about Canada, what I call the Myth of Canada, just kind of deconstructing the cliches and stereotypes around the country, and why they exist and how they’ve affected me and my career. So there’s a lot of stuff that people would expect, but also some stuff that maybe they wouldn’t expect.

PAN M 360: “Ghost” is another of my favourite tracks and I think it might be because I like I just saw Backxwash live for the first time recently. The song is just so dark. What was it like collaborating on that one? 

Roland Pemberton: It just hit her up. I was such a big fan of their last record that won the Polaris. I get so excited when I hear weird rap coming from Canada—just something that’s a little bit different. I love to see it succeed. So one of the first things that I thought of for this record was, ‘I gotta get Backxwash on a track.’ “Ghost” is a trapped-out banger in some ways, but it’s also about African cultural memory. The idea that my ancestors live through me and it connects all the way back to the motherland. So I’m trying to tap into that, just be kind of proud of that history, and just thinking about the ghosts of my ancestors. 

PAN M 360: Has the live show changed over the years? When I’ve seen you it was mostly a DJ and you rapping. 

Roland Pemberton: Yeah, so for this show at POP, I have a band. So the first half of the set is electronic and triggering the tracks. And then the second half is with the band. So there’s gonna be different vibes for sure.


Cadence Weapon plays POP Montréal on Friday, September 24th at 8 p.m., at L’Entrepôt 77 with Nora Toutain (3:30 p.m.), MAGELLA (4:30 p.m.), Waahli (5:40 p.m.) and Leila Lanova (6:50 p.m.).

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