Interviews

Photos: Marie Belzil

Occupied as a filmmaker and a sculptor of bizarre toys, and the oversight of his family’s restaurant Ta Chido (try the tortas!), Mexican-born Montrealer Mariano Franco still finds time to make music. He’s made a lot of it over the years, in fact. Installed in Montreal in the mid-’90s, he began with the metal band Mi Santa Sangre, followed by a series of bands and projects that kept pace with the cool new Latin music wave hitting the Americas. At each stage, Franco, his constant collaborator Fernando Pinzón, and their recurring associates flew the flag for Latin counterculture in the north, while indulging in a surrealist, cinematic sensibility. Franco’s latest concoction sees him adopting the moniker of Papi Chulo. Taking his introductory bow in 2017 with La tierra promitida, an electro-centric album of sexy, sinister tropical bass. Papi Chulo now returns with Ritmo de lo Habitual, a follow-up album that’s anything but habitual in its sci-fi mutations of mambo, champeta, cumbia, and more. PAN M 360 spoke with Franco to find out more, and to give some visibility to his Grupo Invisible.

PAN M 360: You handle most of the vocals on the record. For listeners with little comprehension of Spanish, how would you describe what you’re doing lyrically?

MF: Just like my music, the lyrics are also weird. They are images translated to words, like long haikus that talk about love, anger, passion, and metaphysical ideas in a surreal, satirical way. There’s the song “Dispárame al corazón”, for example, which is a love song about this guy asking his love to kill him very fast because his heart is not beating anymore. “Satánico” is like a prayer, a song about passion, sweat, and cellular fusion if that makes sense, and “El Encuentro” is a poem about two worlds colliding.

PAN M 360: There’s a strong taste of Italian horror-movie music from the 1970s in a lot of the synthesizer parts. And the synth line in “Pa Que Lo Sepas” totally reminds me of the ninja-Light theme from Shogun Assassin. You’re a filmmaker yourself – how much of an influence are film soundtracks on your sound?

MF: I really love films and their soundtracks, especially those from the ’60s and ’70s. I just bought the Planète Sauvage soundtrack on vinyl because it drives me crazy with all its weirdness and psychedelic sound. I think that what I do is somehow a soundtrack, because when you make music for film, you’re creating feelings, conveying images, and you’re not constrained by structure or music formulas. You’re just going on a trip to enhance the visuals, and Papi Chulo’s music has some of this. I don’t consider myself a musician, often I don’t know what I’m doing and, because of my musical ignorance, I rely on feelings and moods rather than structure, and it all results in this weird universe called Papi Chulo.

PAN M 360: Your band includes Fernando Pinzón on bass. The two of you have worked together through a succession of bands, for a couple of decades now. What makes your partnership so solid?

Mariano Franco: Fernando is a longtime collaborator. I think he really understands what I’m trying to say musically. We’ve collaborated in so many projects since the late ‘90s that I think he really knows how my brain works, and he’s become some sort of an external ear for me, a way to know if I’m going in the right direction with something, he’s my Jiminy Cricket. He says that I have a weird way of making music, mixing stuff that should not go together, but he encourages me to go ahead, as he thinks that is at the same time beautiful.

PAN M 360: The brass arrangements by Etienne Lebel are great, really effective and often with a strange flavour to them. The percussion work by Omar Diaz, from Panama, adds so much to the record too. What can you tell me about them and their contributions?

MF: Originally, I did program all the percs and horns, and I was going to release it as an entirely electronic music album. Then, the pandemic came and it hit the scene hard, but also created a beautiful world of artistic collaborations. Etienne and Omar, who’ve played with Papi Chulo in the past, reached out and say, hey let’s record all that stuff and make it sound real. So they took my arrangements and made them theirs and this creates a very interesting sound. Etienne would record from his house in Montreal, and Omar all the way from Panama City! These guys are great musicians and I’m grateful to them for their collaboration and support.

PAN M 360: You have a trio of features from guest vocalists Ultra K, Stephanie Osorio, and Nagano Morro, who sounds mad as hell on “Corriente Alterna”. Could you tell us more about them?

MF: It’s the first time I’ve invited others to sing my songs. I felt that these songs did not want me. I wanted Ultra K for “El Encuentro”, because her voice is really something unique and gives the song a perfect ethereal and dark sound. For “Chispas”, which is a kind of cumbia, I wanted a voice that echoes the mix of African, Spanish, and Indigenous voices, the sound of the Caribbean. Stephanie Osorio, who sings with Bumaranga, really takes us there, we can almost see the sunset behind palm trees as we listen to the song. “Corriente Alterna” is a song about being different and wild, it’s a punk song. I’ve known Nagano for a long time and after listening to his new funk-metal project DéKorà – Tira Barrio, I knew he was perfect for this song. He really went the extra mile. I sent him the track and he sent me back about five tracks of vocals!

PAN M 360: The cover art by the Serbian artist Mihailo Kalabic is really outstanding. How did you arrive at that image?

MF: I was checking my Instagram and I saw Mihailo’s crazy work, and I knew that it was what I wanted for this album. I sent him a message and the music, and he said “I’m pretty busy but I love the music and I’m willing to make a space for your cover.” I sent him another message recounting a trip on mushrooms about 15 years ago, when I saw myself being reconstructed and guided by African spirits, and he sent me this sketch that magically portrays the feeling and the setup of my experience. I was in shock! It is like he’d had the trip with me. I love the cover because it truly represents my world, and reflects also the times during which the album was conceived, dark times of pandemic and dark politics, this was really my landscape and Mihailo’s art truly translates that, my desire to see beyond the ordinary into an universe of magical and infinite possibilities.

PAN M 360: As I mentioned, you and Fernando have been in a series of bands and projects together, including Psychotropical Orchestra, and the Sonido Nordico DJ crew, also with Marie Belzil. You were early heralds and northern representatives of the cumbia revival that began about 15 or 20 years ago. It turns out that revival had staying power, and cumbia is more widespread and diversified. What’s your read on where cumbia is at right now, worldwide?

MF: Cumbia has really reached places no one knew back then, when we were experimenting with it in the 2000s. From famous DJs and producers around the world to mainstream artists, cumbia has reached a well-deserved place in the hearts of people who love to make music and dance. When we started, we thought that cumbia would just fade away and go back to what it was for a long time, a music for the fringe of Latin-American society, but it emerged and took its place as the queen of our music, the musical gene that we share from Argentina to Mexico and that now is recognized even in Japan. I don’t know what the future of cumbia is, it’s been mixed with rock, with hip hop, with electronic music, it has been over-instrumented by big bands and stripped down to the minimal by experimentalists. I guess it will live forever.

Bar Farouk is a colourful, multidisciplinary show presented at the Metro Al Madina space in the Hamra district of Beirut. Its audiovisual version is broadcast as part of Montreal’s Festival du Monde Arabe, allowing a virtual plunge into downtown Beirut, the hard-hit capital of 2020. A crucial artist in this show is singer Yasmina Fayed, who connected with PAN M 360 from Lebanon.

PAN M 360: Tell us about the genesis of your show, which is about the nightlife of Beirut before the civil war.

Yasmina Fayed: Seven years ago, Metro created a new show called Hishik Bishik. We tried to assemble the “greatest hits” of the golden era in Egypt, songs that were loved by the whole Arab world, along with a certain story to link these songs together. As the two-hour show progresses, the songs do too, chronologically, meaning that during our research, we tried to choose songs that were the hits of the years between the 1920s and the 1970s. The show was a success, and it’s still running for the seventh year. Hicham Jaber, the director of the show, thought it was inevitable to give the same salute to the songwriters and artists of Lebanon, so Bar Farouk, with the same group of actors and musicians, was created.

PAN M 360: How is the show put together, and staged?

YF: Beirut has always been a vibrant city, witnessing the arrival of artists and intellectuals from all over the Arab world.The name Bar Farouk was inspired by Theatre Farouk, which actually existed in the old Beirut, downtown. The theatre presented various shows, and the most promising artists from Egypt and Syria gathered there to discuss art and give performances. As the years went by, and war was looming in the air, la decadence was mirrored in the grand theatre’s performances. Pioneers were replaced by amateurs.

The director tried again to copy the images and colours of the city. Progressing again from the ’20s to the year 1975, when the Lebanese civil war started. The audience is transported in time, through the songs, melodies, and costumes. The show takes place in the famous theatre, and with each song, the characters of the show are revealed, introducing the femmes fatales of the cabaret, along with the usual band, the romantic singer, the comic duo, and the abaday, meaning the strong fellow that everyone fears, the Robin Hood of the Beiruti streets (every street in Beirut had its own abaday). The visuals playing in the background are essential because they play the role of the sand clock, that gives the audience an indicator of time passing by.

PAN M 360: Who handles the musical direction?  

YF: Ziad al Ahmadiya is in charge of the musical arrangements in both Hishik Bishik and Bar Farouk. Musically, some of the original songs were performed at the Lebanese radio station, so they had an orchestra playing with the singer. In Bar Farouk, Ziad tried to preserve the spirit of the different eras presented through his arrangements.

PAN M 360: Who are the main soloists, singers, and musicians?

YF: The performers and musicians are Ziad al Ahmadiya (oud and vocals), Ziad Jaafar (violin and vocals), Bahaa Daou (percussions and vocals), Samah Abi El Mona (accordion and vocals), Diaa Hamza (accordion and vocals),  Bachar Farran (bass), Wissam Dalati (costumes, vocals, and performance), Roy Deeb (vocals and performance), Ahmad al Khatib (vocals and performance), Randa Makhoul (vocals and belly-dancer), Lina Sahhab (vocals and performance), and Yasmina Fayed (vocals and performance).

PAN M 360: How has the show evolved? What changes have been made over time?

YF: Each member of the band did their own research about the character he or she was playing. A lot of one-on-one meetings were held with the director, and we discussed costumes, and the characters’ attitudes. The show is not just about singing; every person on stage represents a certain character that the Lebanese audience relates to. As time went by, the characters we were playing were continuously developing, and asides began to be heard, revealing each of the characters’ own world. For example, you could hear a dispute between the “girls”, or advances from one of the male characters to one of the girls in the cabaret. It’s as if we’ve always known what the show is about, and with time, it all fell into the right place.

PAN M 360: Is this show a source of nostalgia for the Lebanese who lived through the great years of modern Beirut?

YF: Indeed it is! The audience is transported through time with every song, and every tune. The songs were carefully selected to create that impact. You’ll see someone in the audience smiling, or rushing to whisper in someone else’s ear that he remembers this song. Nostalgia is the main driver of the show, we revived a lot of musicians and performers that only few knew about, and brought to light some of the greatest artists that were forgotten, intentionally or unintentionally, over time. I guess that’s why the show turned out to be a hit.

PAN M 360: How have younger audiences reacted?

YF: When Metro opened its doors eight years ago, the younger audience were seen flocking to see the shows and get a glimpse of what was happening in the capital. They were, and still are, curious. They want to see what’s new, they want to see new shows. So when the idea came to revisit a bygone era, the younger audience manifested love and appreciation, and you could see them coming again to see the show twice or more, inviting their parents and friends.

PAN M 360: Do you see an international potential for the presentation of this show? How do you think it could reach audiences around the world?

YF: I consider the audience to be my own “guests”. They are visiting us to see us dance and sing, and they sing along and dance too. Many people from different nationalities have come to see Bar Farouk, and their reaction was as overwhelming as any other Lebanese or Arab. So I think that taking part in this celebration is very important. People will be reintroduced to the forgotten face of Lebanon – the Lebanon that had la joie de vivre!

PAN M 360: How did you adapt Bar Farouk as an audiovisual production?

YF: For us on stage, we tried to perform as if we had a full house. We had the cameras to look at, keeping in mind that a big audience will be watching behind those lenses. What the cameras were trying to catch was the little details that are happening in the corners of the stage; they tried to capture every move of every character so that the people watching online could get into the mood, as if they were seated inside the theatre.

PAN M 360: Can you tell us the history of your troupe, of your artistic direction?

YF: We have always been friends, all of us, really. We knew each other by name, or because we’ve had some work in common during our time at university. When Metro decided to produce Hishik Bishik, everything fell into its right place, as if we were meant to come together. And here we are, still performing both shows. 

PAN M 360: Recent events in Beirut have been very difficult, and come on top of the hardships experienced by the Lebanese. What’s your state of mind?

YF: I think I speak on behalf of a lot of us when I say we are tired. We are depressed. During the first days of the revolution, someone had written that the Lebanese people are the happiest depressed people you’ll ever meet, and that is very true. We know the situation we are in, and we are trying to make the best of it. We’ve decided to move on. I am writing to you now, thinking about the deteriorating economic and political situation, about the people who have lost their homes after the 4th of August port explosion, and about rain. It’s raining in Beirut and so many people haven’t had the proper help needed to restore their houses. They know they won’t get the help needed from the government. I think about our performances, about joy, songs and dancing, depression, lockdown, bankruptcies… I think these are great topics for a new show! We have to move on. We need to move on.

PAN M 360: There was a lot of vigour for protest among Beirut’s young people before the explosion, some now speak of gloom and discouragement… what do you think?

YF: Lebanon has always had its ups and downs, but the young ones have always managed to pick up the pieces and carry on. Youth from all over the Arab world have come to Beirut to experience freedom of speech and get a taste of art and fantasy. I am afraid that this time it’s different. We tried to raise our voice, it was unheard. We tried to carry on, and thought that through hard work we will have it our way, and then came the explosion.

PAN M 360: What are your plans for the future? Stay in Hamra? Move? Work for the cultural reconstruction of Beirut?

YF: Being Lebanese is hard nowadays. As I said earlier, we are tired… constantly worried. Thinking about what’s to come, knowing that we have only ourselves to count on. I cannot leave Lebanon or Beirut, though I dream of peace of mind! But this is where we belong. We have learned how to zigzag through it all. Build our small world, through performing arts or small businesses. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Surviving through it all, while keeping your head above water.

In Algeria there is an orchestra, the only one of its kind, made up entirely of women, called the L’Orchestre féminin Cheikh Sadek el-Bejaoui. Its mission is to perpetuate the tradition of a music that is more than a thousand years old, inherited from the kingdom of al-Andalus. Al-Andalus is the whole of the territories of the Iberian Peninsula and some in the south of France that were, at one time or another, under Muslim rule between 711 (date of the first landing) and 1492 (date of the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in the territory). As part of the Festival du monde arabe de Montréal (FMA), the ensemble offers an exclusive show that only festival-goers will be able to see and hear.

PAN M 360 connected with the energetic Madina Yahiaoui, co-leader of the orchestra, a title she shares with Sonia Bouyahia, Sadek el-Bejaoui’s granddaughter.

PAN M 360: Let’s start, if you will, by explaining to the readers who Sadek el-Bejaoui is.

Madina Yahiaoui: Sadek el-Bejaoui is a great pedagogue, composer, performer, and perpetuator of the tradition of Arab-Andalusian music, Algerian classical music. He has taught several generations the love of this tradition. He has also founded an association with which L’Orchestre féminin is associated. We are thus pursuing the master’s mission by playing his music (he has composed nearly a thousand pieces in the style of this age-old music) and by perpetuating his teaching and his method of interpretation.

PAN M 360: The orchestra was founded in 2008. What is its importance in the Algerian musical landscape, in your opinion?

Madina Yahiaoui: The importance goes beyond the strictly artistic register. With the orchestra, another side of the Algerian woman is shown. A woman who knows how to be modern while at the same time having at heart the maintaining of traditions. This orchestra is also a struggle. A social, political, and historical struggle.

PAN M 360: Is the new generation listening to and practising this tradition?

Madina Yahiaoui: Honestly, it’s difficult. It’s a bit like in Europe or America: traditional or classical music is neglected. Pop, hip-hop and commercial music take up a lot of space. This is the role of the Ahbab Sheikh Sadek el-Bejaoui association and others like it. It is not a conservatory, but it does a conservatory’s job. 

PAN M 360: What musical training do the musicians of the orchestra have?

Madina Yahiaoui: Training acquired in the Association’s curriculum. It is not the same type of training as a European classical curriculum, although some “modern” elements are taught there, such as solfège. It is primarily an oral tradition. That said, some musicians are increasingly trying to write this music, in order to ensure its preservation in a more certain way. There’s a debate in the field, but I think it’s a good thing.

PAN M 360: Do you live professionally from this activity?

Madina Yahiaoui: We all have other professional occupations, if that’s what you want to know. Many of us are studying, and not in music! I, for example, am studying in the financial world. Others are pharmacists, computer scientists, linguists, etc. But be careful! For us, music is not an occasional hobby. It is at least as important in our lives as our studies or full-time jobs. We want to bring our heritage to life and share it all over the world!

PAN M 360: What kind of repertoire will be played for the November 18 broadcast on the FMA website?

Madina Yahiaoui: A repertoire mainly from the compositions of the master, Sadek el-Bejaoui (who died in 1995). There will also be some pieces from the distant tradition, that of the Middle Ages, from the ninth to the 15th centuries. It will be a journey out of the ordinary and out of time!

PAN M 360: This concert will be like no other you’ve given before, and it seems exclusive to the FMA – why?

Madina Yahiaoui: Because of the pandemic, a majority of the musicians have remained in Algeria and a few, including me, are confined to Paris. The solution we have found allows us to offer something unique. Part of the concert is played by the musicians who are in Algeria. This part is very traditional, with the costumes and everything. Here in Paris, I have recruited classical musicians from the conservatory, including a pianist and a drummer. This part is far from pure tradition, it has a very different character, because of the instrumentation, but also because of the training of the musicians, which has nothing to do with Arab-Andalusian music. We have edited both, because it is not a live performance, and the broadcast of the 18th will be the first. Friends of the FMA will have an exclusive. Two different images for the same tradition, in a single concert!

PAN M 360: In the end, has the pandemic opened a door that you never thought you would get through?

Madina Yahiaoui: Yes and no. I’ve had the idea of doing this kind of collaboration for a long time. It’s important for me to meet as many musicians as possible from other traditions. Let’s say that the pandemic has forced us to act in this way.

PAN M 360: Thank you very much for introducing us to this wonderful musical tradition!

Madina Yahiaoui: Thank you very much for allowing us to talk about it. And thank you especially to the FMA, who have the courage to maintain their programming despite the current difficulties. We are very grateful for this. And we are especially looking forward to being able to come to Montreal for real one day!

While Paul Jacobs often finds himself surrounded by several musicians on stage, it’s all by himself that he enjoys composing, creating, and recording his music. Just as adept with drums (we saw him behind the kit with Pottery), guitar, keyboards, and mixing console as he is with drawing and animation, the Windsor musician, who has been exiled in Montreal for the past few years, presents his eighth album on stage as part of M For Montreal. While waiting for the record, which will be released sometime next year, he unveils “Thanks”, a first track from the Sounds From Mothland Vol. 1 compilation – the crew behind the Distortion festival, among other things – for which Paul Jacobs illustrated the cover. 

PAN M 360 took a virtual meeting with this prolific and versatile artist, in his home studio.

PAN M 360: You have a rather atypical background. From drummer for metal bands, you ended up in a one-man garage band, then singing and playing guitar with seven or eight people on stage in a kind of psychedelic noise supersonic maelstrom.

Paul Jacobs: I was playing drums in a lot of metal bands. In Windsor, where I’m from, there were a lot of metal and hardcore-punk bands. So I didn’t want to play such crazy music all the time and do stuff like the Beatles, play drums like Ringo Starr and stuff, so I just decided to learn guitar in 2010, I guess. And then I just started making songs from there, stuff I kinda like more. But drums are my main instrument, so when I started Pottery, it was mostly because I wanted to play drums again. 

PAN M 360 : You’ve recorded a lot of demos over the last few months, some of which were used to create your forthcoming album… 

PJ: I’ve just finished an album and I’m starting the next one because I’ve got so much time at home. I play and I record here, whenever I want.

PAN M 360: We already know quite a bit about your next album, which will be released on the Montreal label Blow The Fuse in 2021, but we can’t reveal everything. Top secret! So, without risking revealing too much, can you tell us more or less what it will consist of?

PJ: Sure! My last release was from two years ago, I think. I feel I kind of went through a transition period with the music I wanted to make – something less crazy, a more defined sound, something recorded a bit better. I recorded this album with all the exact same gear as my other albums, but I focused on mixing a lot better, going for more clarity and less noise. In between this new album and my last, I was more into folk and I started off writing a lot of folk songs but then, as time went on, I brought in a lot more of the psychedelic stuff, like the synths, the drums, and other stuff. So it’s like a mix of folky-type songs and psychedelic rock ’n’ roll kinda stuff. It was good that I took that little break because it helped me figure out where I wanted to go, because if I had not done that, I would have ended up releasing a folk album. 

PAN M 360: So like your other albums, did you do everything by yourself or did you have a little help this time? 

PJ: No, I just did it by myself, like I did all the other ones. I also did the recording and the mixing here at home, but I got the mastering done by Oliver Ackermann from Death By Audio/A Place To Bury Strangers.

PAN M 360: Since it is different from the previous ones, what were the sources of inspiration for this album?

PJ: The reason I wanted to change the sound is because of the animation videos I make. I find that it’s easier and better to make videos for songs that have more emotion, instead of punk songs. You can put more feelings in them. I also listen to more stuff like Cass McCombs, Kurt Vile, things like that. So I wanted to make songs that are closer to that. I also listen to a lot of Gene Clark, the Byrds, Tucker Zimmerman, especially in the way that this guy writes lyrics… Folky stuff like that, you know? 

PAN M 360 : So did you first build the album by imagining videos or pictures?

PJ: A little, yes. That’s what pushed me to change my sound. I was looking to make music that would be more in line with my style of drawing, which would be easier to illustrate. Something that actually corresponds to what I listen to when I’m drawing.

PAN M 360 : You’re still in charge of illustrating your covers and making your videos, aren’t you?

PJ: Yes, but I worked with other people for some clips. I do all the animation, though. I think the music and the illustrations should mix with each other, I always try to merge the two. It’s my passion project if you want, making music and drawing, that’s all I want to do and now I have the possibility to do both, and to bring them together. Plus I can do it all from home, which is even more fun. I also did the cover art for the Mothland compilation, the Pottery album and the videos, and also a video clip for Elephant Stone… I like to work on other projects, it’s kind of a challenge I give myself, trying to do something that’s not too much me, if you know what I mean. I also make some t-shirts for different bands. But when it comes to making animation clips, I get offered to do it from time to time but it’s really much too time-consuming, it’s a bit crazy. I prefer to spend that time doing stuff for myself. 

PAN M 360 : You said earlier that you are already working on another album? Would you like to tell us about it ?

PJ: It’s going to be pretty much in the same vein as what I’m listening to at home right now. I want to make music that I would like to listen to at home. And again, it’s pretty much drum-based. The drums are really present and I’d like to do something a little bit darker, in a way. Something more serious, more dreamlike but darker. No dream-pop but more like a weird dream thing, you know? It will be quite different from the record that will be released on Blow The Fuse, the production will be better, I think. With each album I’m getting better at producing, with the recording techniques and all that. It’s going to be the best I’ve done so far in terms of production I’d say; I’ve got new mics, new interfaces…

PAN M 360 : What kind of concert will you present at M For Montreal?

PJ: I’m doing roughly the same show I gave at the last Taverne Tour, but with six musicians instead of seven. It’s pretty sweet. I play mostly songs from my next album and a track from my previous one, Easy. 

PAN M 360 : And as for Pottery, what’s the news?

PJ: Not much, to tell you the truth. Because we can’t tour, everyone went back home. I would say the band is on a break right now. The band is not dead, a band never really dies! Everybody’s just taking a little break, that’s all. There are bands that can’t work if there’s not a tour, if there’s not something to put some wood in the fire.

Photo: Julien Faugere

Quebec soprano Karina Gauvin has been named artist-in-residence of the Mécénat Musica program until 2022! The artist is a true world star in opera singing. There’s no exaggeration to say that, let alone an ounce of chauvinism. It’s the strict truth. Which makes this announcement all the more exciting because it means that Gauvin will be on our stages much more often than in recent years, virtually, or even physically, when the pandemic has subsided.

PAN M 360 spoke with the soprano. Here are her reactions to this nomination.

PAN M 360: Hello, Karina! What is your role as artist-in-residence at Mécénat Musica?

Karina Gauvin: I’ll be available to take part in concerts and fundraising events for the 40 or so organizations that are partners of the Mécénat Musica program.

(Note: The Mécénat Musica program encourages individuals to make a $25,000 donation in perpetuity to a cultural organization that is close to their heart (and $250,000 or $2,500,000 for families). Donations are matched by Mécénat Musica and then matched by matching funds from government programs. With the associated federal and provincial tax credits, the net cost to an individual is only a fraction of the amount invested (approximately $6,000 for a donation of $25,000). If an organization receives, for example, 10 donations of $25,000 from individuals, in the end, it could raise up to $2 million in a fund in perpetuity! This program is unique in the world.)

PAN M 360: Who will decide what kind of activities you’ll participate in?

Karina Gauvin: It will be on a case-by-case basis. Interested organizations can already contact me. We will discuss their needs together and how I can best contribute. Afterwards, we’ll decide on a musical program.

PAN M 360: In the context of the pandemic, how did you react when you were offered this partnership?

Karina Gauvin: Very happy! It’s a way of returning to my country and reconnecting with the audience back home, because I have spent most of the last few years in Europe. Having said that, it is also a breath of fresh air because I have lost everything because of the pandemic. It has been a clean slate for me. So it’s the best of both worlds, because I’ll be able to do what I love the most and at the same time, contribute to the sustainability of many music organizations that need it!

PAN M 360: How important do you think this programme is?

Karina Gauvin: Very! The pandemic has turned everything upside down, you know that. Artists have been hit hard. What else can we do but get organized, stick together, help each other, and develop new business models to survive? That’s what this initiative, unique on the planet, offers, which I hope will perhaps inspire some small ones elsewhere.

PAN M 360: Because elsewhere in the world, the situation is no better…

Karina Gauvin: Not at all! In Europe, I worked with several organizations that were already struggling before the arrival of the virus. What will it be like afterwards? Many will go bankrupt, I’m afraid. The repercussions of this tragedy will be felt far beyond any victory against the virus itself. It will never be the same again. Never. Many artists will give up the profession. 

PAN M 360: That isn’t your case – do you have any plans in the pipeline?

Karina Gauvin:Yes, some exciting projects. I’m participating in the completion of the complete melodies of Jules Massenet, more than 300 of them, many of them previously unreleased, with the ATMA classical team. An all-Quebec production, with Marie-Nicole (Lemieux), Étienne (Dupuis), Julie (Boulianne), and nine other local singers. This project will be a world premiere! The irony is that the pandemic allowed us to accelerate the pace of the recordings, because we were available! I also have projects with Ensemble Caprice, among others. I keep myself as active as possible, even though I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time at home.

PAN M 360: Karina, the greatest success with Mécénat Musica, and in all your other projects. Thank you for your involvement!

Karina Gauvin: Thank you very much!

A suite in four parts – “Acknowledgement”, “Resolution”, “Pursuance”, “Psalm” – the music of A Love Supreme is considered the most outstanding work by John Coltrane and his famous quartet of drummer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner, and bassist Jimmy Garrrison. Recorded in 1964 and released in 1965 on the Impulse! label, the album is without a doubt a great classic of contemporary jazz. The program includes melodic-harmonic and rhythmic explorations, incantatory and paroxysmal phrases, conducive to individual and collective expression. The saxophonist’s inspiration was the result of an intense quest, as different forms of mysticism and the discovery of new sound dimensions had led him to create this extraordinary work. 

Guitarists John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana had tackled the first movement together in the context of the album Love Devotion Surrender, released in 1973. Since then, many musicians have given it a shot, and it’s a must for any self-respecting jazzophile. In recent years, guitarist Henry Kaiser and drummer John Hanrahan have been bringing together different groups and casting a new, electrified light on A Love Supreme. 

An album finally bears witness to this ongoing experiment: the guitarist and drummer are joined here by saxophonist Vinny Golia (tenor, soprano, baritone), keyboardist Wayne Peet (Hammond B3, Yamaha YC-450) and bassist Mike Watt.

Reached in California, Henry Kaiser explained the process to PAN M 360.

PAN M 360: For the past few years, you and John Hanrahan have been performing electric versions of John Coltrane’s Meditations and A Love Supreme suites, with different musicians. I watched a few concerts by those bands on YouTube, with your explanations. Can you explain your relationship with this masterpiece?

Henry Kaiser: Actually, I never have listened to Coltrane a lot! The albums I enjoyed most and did listen to are Meditations, Ascension, Live at the Village Vanguard Again and the two Live In Japan albums. So the more free-jazz-type Coltrane, with Pharaoh Sanders also on sax, is what I relate to. I spend a lot more of my “free jazz time” listening to Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, and Albert Ayler.  I see Coltrane as being an immensely important feature in the whole landscape of ’60s free jazz. I am not so much of a Coltrane fetishist myself. I’ve probably spent fifty times as many hours listening to Cecil Taylor.

PAN M 360: The Love Supreme recording on Impulse! is one of the rare modern jazz albums that had an impact on a very large audience, beyond jazz. Hippies and psychedelic-rock fans in the ’60s loved it, and the following generations loved it too. Up to today, it remains one of the rituals any music lover must undertake. How do you explain this huge impact over the years and decades?

HK: I think it is an amazing landmark in free jazz that appealed to a mainstream audience. A magic album in magic times! Now… I wonder why that’s so, in the spiritual sense? Of course, when he made his spiritual invocation on A Love Supreme, he was likely thinking of the God of Baptist Christians. However, a Korean traditional musician recently asked me why and how Coltrane could be playing gugak (Korean traditional music) phrasing on A Love Supreme. I took a look at discographies of Korean traditional music releases in the USA at the time of A Love Supreme and before — and there was nothing that Coltrane could have heard to get that from. My theory is that he unknowingly invoked the spirits that animate Korean shamanic music. Very powerful spirits, which I have experienced when playing shamanic music with Korean musicians. And that they led Coltrane down paths of musical expression that made the music so successful.

PAN M 360:  All your life, you’ve never been a straight-ahead jazz musician. You’ve mostly been dedicated to improvisation in a general way, and a lot of experimentation. What motivated you to do this cycle of reinterpretation of Coltrane’s mid-’60s music?

HK: It seemed like both a fun thing to do and an interesting challenge. Also, the things I learned studying Miles Davis music in the 1973-1975 period, in my Yo Miles! band with Wadada Leo Smith, provided an intriguing key for decoding Meditations. I think Agharta  and Pangaea have a lot more in common with Meditations than anyone who was not in the Yo Miles! band would realize.

PAN M 360: What are the music qualities of the music of A Love Supreme – harmonic structures, rhythm, interaction, solo or collective improv, etc. – that led you to make something different with this music that’s more or less considered classic today?

HK: It’s not the Western concepts of melody, harmony, and rhythm. It’s things like narrative, storytelling, timbre, timing, space, proportional rhythms vs. divisional rhythms, shamanism, the teleology of music, and the psychedelic qualities of music without drugs. Those kinds of considerations are what I was thinking about and acting on.

PAN M 360: This music is based on open structures, where the improvisational vocabulary and individual expressions are quite important. What did you want to add? Also, how did electric instruments change the music? About an electronic approach for the future?

HK: Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin pointed the way to an electric interpretation of A Love Supreme on their Love Devotion Surrender album. I saw that band twice, before I played guitar professionally on their promo tour. And that stuck with me. Meeting the drummer John Hanrahan led me to performing and recording the entire suite, and once I studied things more closely, I felt that A Love Supreme and Meditations were two parts of the same story. And that is something that’s essential for the listeners to understand in this release.

PAN M 360: When we listen to your personal versions, we feel a deep respect for the initial forms. So what is the tension between the original recording on Impulse! and your different versions?

HK: We don’t even think about it. There is no planning. The music just plays us. We don’t play it. I’m sure that was true for Coltrane with ALS and Meditations – the alternate takes support that. There is no road map or flight plan; it’s a different exploration into new territory every time.

PAN M 360: You’ve played with different musicians since you started the project. Can you describe the main ensembles, and explain briefly what you have achieved with each of them?

HK: Mainly, it’s me and drummer John Hanrahan. It’s different players most every time.  You can see another band here by going to the Cuneiform Records YouTube page and looking through my Weekly Solo series.

PAN M 360: Why has this line-up been chosen for the recording? Maybe it’s just a matter of availability?

HK: We were playing A Love Supreme Electric gigs with different players every two or three months, and Wayne Peet, the organ player on the album, had his own recording studio, so it was easy to record.

PAN M 360: Playing Coltrane music puts you under a different spotlight: you could face different reactions from people that don’t exactly know your work and love A Love Supreme. Do you enjoy the challenge?

HK: There’s not much challenge. It’s become second nature to approach this music for us. And there have never been complaints from the audiences. We all just have a very good time.

PAN M 360: You’ve been always seeking new forms, new languages, new ways for composition, improvisation, playing. What did this project bring into your general musical language?

HK: Applying elements, both musical and sociological, from Korean shamanic music to the Coltrane material.

PAN M 360: Can you describe your other current and future projects?

HK: I am just now, today, mastering an album with Stein Urheim, Benedicte Maurseth, Danielle DeGruttola and myself for the Norwegian Jazzland label called Be Here Whenever.

Forthcoming releases in 2021 are:
A new quartet album with Ray Russell.
A trio album with Wadada Leo Smith and Alex Varty.
A new solo guitar album.
A fusion album with me, Andy West, Chris Muir, Lukas Ligeti, and Stephan Thelan.
A free-improv quintet album with me, Danielle DeGruttola, Lisa Mezzacappa, Soo-Yeon Lyuh, and Nava Dunkelman.
An ambient guitar duo with Anthony Pirog.
A cover of Steve Lacy’s album THE WIRE with me, Bruce Ackley, Andrea Centazzo, Michael Manring, Tania Chen, and Danielle DeGruttola.
A quintet album with me, Binker Golding, Eddie Prevost, N.O. Moore, and Ollie Brice.
And I’ve probably forgotten two or three others in the pipeline…

My weekly video show at Cuneiform is always here.

Photo: Gabrielle Demers

With this third full-length album, the second since the Montreal trio found itself on the Montreal label Lisbon Lux, Le Couleur have decided to “open up the couple”, as its members like to say. After some twelve years as a ménage à trois, the synth-pop band wanted to change its formula by inviting several musician friends to participate in the album. The result was beyond their expectations, breathing new energy into the band. The fruit of its musical frolics in the studio, Concorde flirts with myth, loss, and death in a sexy, bewitching, and very aesthetic sound universe. There’s a bit of Michel Colombier in there, some David Holmes, Sparks, Air, and Stereolab, among others. PAN M 360 spoke with the trio – drummer and tinkerer Steeven Chouinard, his partner and singer Laurence Giroux-Do, and bassist Patrick Gosselin – on the eve of its webcast performance at the CCF.

PAN M 360: Tell us about the concept of Concorde, because there seems to be one!

Steeven Chouinard: Concorde was the first song we made for this record. Our music always comes before the lyrics. So Pat and I recorded the piece and then Laurence wanted to write something related to the Concorde. She was fascinated at the time by that plane and the tragedy that ended its history. 

Laurence Giroux-Do: We felt that the whole aesthetic of Le Concorde was in line with the image we wanted to give to the record, that slightly vintage but at the same time quite futuristic side, the beauty of the object, the myth, the dream, the sensuality…

SC: It was still a sexy plane! It wasn’t ordinary, travelling at almost twice the speed of sound on top of that. So, from there, we started to compose other songs. The second one we did was “L’Aube du 3e soleil”, and given the mood of the song and what we heard in it, what it inspired us, that’s when the words came. It’s quite cinematographic, our stuff. In fact, for this record, we were also influenced by images, more than by other bands; a lot of porn films from the ’70s like Emmanuelle and Bilitis, the sensuality of Francis Lai’s music for example, Gainsbourg… All this slowness, this sensuality, this little lo-fi side that is also present in these films. So we realised that it was tragic, that it talked a lot about death and absence… That’s a bit like the concept of the record, without it being too explicit or too personal.

LGD: Take “Silenzio”, for example. This piece refers to the death of a mafia man who was shot, who didn’t respect the omerta. “Oiseau sauvage” is about a schizophrenic… So the record revolves around death, myth, and absence, those are the three main themes of the album. There is something fascinating about how we see death and how we see ourselves dying, I think. 

SC: We’re all afraid of it, but we’ve realised, having a four-year-old daughter with whom we watch cartoons, that there are several ways of seeing death. In the animated film Coco, they talk about the Day of the Dead in Mexico, which is a very festive and colourful event. It gives another perspective on our perception of death in our society.

PAN M 360: You’ve chosen a good year to release a record with this kind of theme. Was releasing the album on September 11 also part of the theme?

LGD: We were supposed to release the album on April 18, but for reasons you know, we preferred to postpone the date. So we thought, why not September 11? The crash of the Concorde on September 11, in the middle of the pandemic at the end of the world…

SC: And we thought it was certain that the journalists would ask us about it when we did interviews. So there you go! (laughs)

PAN M 360: How does this record differ from the previous ones?

LGD: In the way it was recorded, I would say.

SC: The ideology was different for this record. It’s the first time we decided to open it up, if I may put it that way. We invited quite a few musicians. Because basically, it’s Laurence, Pat, and I who make all our records. It’s happened too often that it’s one person from the band who records a whole song, so we wanted something more collaborative. We called on people we know, friends. We wanted them to add their touch: a percussionist, a keyboardist, and several guitarists came by. We finally decided to do it live. I’d say that two thirds of the record is live. We were seven musicians at the same time. We’d never tried this kind of experience before and we really tripped. This sharing of ideas, this common passion… Just being in a gang, drinking beers together, submitting ideas… For me, it’s all very positive. It’s sharing, it’s love, it’s art. So that’s what makes it different from other records where I often found myself alone behind the computer or a synth to program everything. Pat would come and do a little thing, Laurence would put her voice down and that was it.

LGD: I didn’t think we could function this way. We had done our rounds, but with this record, it seems that it rekindled the flame, it gave us the desire to continue the adventure in a different way, a new way of emancipation.

SC: It was positive! It was fun to have the opinion of the other musicians. Even if I’m very directorial in the way I perform, I let them go and I liked their faults. That’s also why we hired them: the defects, the tics of people, all that can be heard on the record. There are things I’ve been doing for ten years, and we’ve heard enough of them, that the keyboardist we hired doesn’t do. He has his own way of playing and he’s a thousand times better than me, on top of that. It’s the sum of all these things that makes us still on our honeymoon with this record, one year after having finished it. It’s been two months since it was released and this honeymoon has continued because we’ve also managed to play it on stage.

PAN M 360: And who are these guest musicians? 

Le Couleur: There’s Sheenah Ko, from Besnard Lakes on the organ, the gang from Paupières who co-wrote songs and did backing vocals, Louis-Joseph Cliche from Beat Market, Valence, Jean-Nicolas Doss from Wizaard, and Paul Hammer, who’s the son of Jan Hammer, the composer of the music of Miami Vice and an ex-member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. 

PAN M 360: You’re going to do another concert, this time as part of Coup de coeur francophone. How is that going to work, what are you going to present? 

SC: It’ll be what we presented at the launch, as well as at the Festif and the FME. We’re among the lucky few who managed to do these little festivals towards the end of the summer.

LGD: We play mostly Concorde songs, but we’ve still kept some classics. We’re there now. We’re going to dig into our best-of and do them a little differently.

SC: The show is stronger. We are six musicians on stage. We toured with three at the very beginning, then with four for the last five years, but now, with six, it’s different. These are beautiful people who play, who get high, it’s really cool. And the comments we’ve received are very good. There’s energy flowing everywhere. There’s a segment that looks a bit like what we’ve done in the last five years, notably a 15-20 minute non-stop electro/DJ set, that we didn’t want to leave out. But otherwise, it’s more paused, there’s more staging, there are ballads, there are interruptions between songs, because before, it was 1-2-3-4 and we only stopped at the end of the show. There were no real breaks between songs. So now we adopt a more classical formula, mixed with what we used to do before. 

PAN M 360: Do you have plans for 2021?

LGD: Of course! A tour in Brazil, another one in Mexico… ah no! it’s true, everything has been cancelled! (laughs)

SC: We had great plans for Latin America, Mexico, and the United States, and of course everything fell through. So, for the coming year, we will try to work on something else.

LGD: In 2021, it could be very difficult to play abroad. We’re going to try to turn to Quebec, which we’ve perhaps neglected a little too much. You know, we’ve played many times in Paris or Berlin, but we’ve never gone to play in Chicoutimi or Terrebonne. So, no doubt like all the other Quebec artists, we’re going to try to develop that. We also had the idea of releasing a small EP.

SC: We want to do the complete opposite of what we did for Concorde, all this sharing between musicians, and focus more on the three of us, something very spontaneous and minimalist, bordering on piano and voice, nothing fancy or too thoughtful. 

Photos: Eldad Menuhin

Time heals all wounds. This includes the excruciating heartache and howling void in the auditory canals of retro synth-funk afficionados, who’ve had to wait eight years for a new album from Israel’s Group Modular, following their fascinating debut, The Mystery of Mordy Laye, in 2012. The core of Group Modular is Jerusalem’s Markey Funk, founder of the Delights label, and Tel Aviv’s Harel Schreiber, AKA Mule Driver, mastermind of the Confused Machines imprint. The two busy musicians, producers, and DJs share an intense enthusiasm for the strange and wonderful sounds of obscure (and often anonymous) soundtrack and library music from the glory days of vinyl. This they’ve channelled into the Group Modular project, which now presents its new album, Time Masters, created with contributions from numerous friends. PAN M 360 corresponded with the pair to talk about Time Masters, and everything else they’ve been up to lately.

PAN M 360: Group Modular is a celebration of older-generation, analog electronic musical instruments. There’s still so much love out there for the sounds of those devices – so familiar, yet exceedingly strange! Why do you two appreciate them so much?

Mule Driver: When I started on my way with electronic music, VSTs or software synth sounds weren’t as good, and were too heavy on the CPU, and midi controllers with assignable knobs were not as available as today. So in order to have real-time control over the instrument – I always liked to play live – and have more decent sound, I bought my first synth, a Roland SH09. Back then, vintage synths were less expensive than nowadays. I also like the limitations in some of them – it allows you focus and squeeze more from the machine. As for that old-school analog sound – today it can be achieved with digital or modern instruments (or software), so the most important thing to me is an intuitive instrument that I could start playing straight away.

Markey Funk: I think that to me, it’s a matter of a certain aesthetic that I gravitate to. And yes – a certain amount of nostalgia too. There’s something very unique about the sounds of the Space Age era, this romance and anticipation of how far the technology is going to take us in the not-so-distant future. Besides, I tend to believe that there’s still a lot of unrevealed potential in all these instruments. I mean, over the last 60 years, a lot of great ideas, sound- or genre-wise, had been abandoned long before they’d been fully explored – just for the sake of progress and changing trends. And now, we can take a few steps back and follow those old paths again a bit further – and from a very different, broader perspective.

PAN M 360: Even though this is an album about retro electronics, the key element is the drummers – the “time masters” of the title – who build the foundations of the pieces. They include Matan Assayag of Afrobeat powerhouse Hoodna Orchestra – who hits hard, as expected! Tell me about that creative strategy, and what the different drummers brought to the table.

MD: Since you’ve mentioned Matan, I must admit that I wanted to work with him for a very long time. I met him at a dinner with his brother and we had an interesting talk about polyrhythm, African and electronic music. So, although we still didn’t get to play together in the same room, and only created tracks based on his drumming, it’s great to finally release something in collaboration with him. For the main question: each drummer brought his own feel, energy, and style – which later had an effect on what Markey and I overdubbed in the studio.

MF: After finishing the Mordy Laye album, we realized that drums are very much a driving force behind our creativity in the studio (both cuts on our 45 started off as a drum recordings by our friend, Sagi Sachs). Now, given the Audio Montage connection, we were literally surrounded by the crop of Israel’s finest groove drummers – that’s how the idea of working with more than one drummer on the next album came along. We didn’t have particular parts to record, only a small bunch of genre references that didn’t really impact the recording. After all, every player just brought his distinctive style, picked the BPM for each take and played along with the metronome (and sometimes, without it as well).

Everyone approached the session differently. For instance, Ori Lavi was switching patterns every few bars within the same take, Sagi recorded a lot of five- to six-minute loops, and Matan had come up with a very clear song structure in each take – A and B parts, a solo/drum-break part, a beginning and end – all made up in the moment. So yeah, every stickman had his own unique character, which was setting a backbone not only for our playing, but for the whole arrangement.

PAN M 360: In addition to the drummers, you have a vocalist on just one track of the otherwise instrumental album. No lyrics, just celestial atmospherics on the final part of “The Phantom Mazone”, care of Zohar Shafir. I think that’s my favourite moment on the record.

MD: Thank you! Zohar, AKA Nico Teen, is a very interesting and talented singer. I would recommend checking out her releases, and if possible, her live shows. Over the years, I had worked with her many times – from releasing her music on my label to mixing and playing live – but I think it’s the first time we’ve been actually recording something together. It was Markey who suggested that she do the vocals on “The Phantom Mazone”, and apparently it turned out good.

MF: As we were making progress with this tune, Harel suggested adding vocals – and Zohar was my immediate candidate! I had no doubt it would turn out good and I’m glad she agreed. I guess we’re both big fans of her work. 

PAN M 360: The title is a tip of the hat to French animator René Laloux, whose films were so representative of a certain psychedelic science-fantasy sensibility of the late ’70s and early ’80s, which goes hand in hand with the sonic aesthetics of that era’s electronic music. Any thoughts on that – and on your amazing cover artwork, by Nick Taylor of Spectral Studio in the U.K.?

MF: Actually, the project got its codename “Time Masters” at the very early stage, when we were still scheduling recording sessions with each drummer. The title refers to two different films: first, of course, is René Laloux’ 1982 animated feature of the same name, Les Maîtres du temps, which deals a lot with the topic of time travel. And the other one is the 2000 documentary by B+, Keepintime, which focuses on the drummers behind classic hip-hop breaks. So basically, our “time masters” were the drummers, because they set the time for each track – but also the leading rhythm behind our own journeys in time, exploring sounds of the past.

As much as library and early electronic music is a meeting point between us, it’s also clear that we both grew up with certain sci-fi references, which include plenty of animation. In fact, more than half of the track titles on the album are taken from the 1970s and ’80s animated films and series.

Both Harel and I are strongly attached to visuals. Harel is a full-time designer, while I’m more of an amateur with a strong aesthetic vision. We’ve been both fans of Nick Taylor’s work for years, so when Polytechnic Youth, whom Nick often works with, offered us a deal and confirmed that he would be doing the artwork, our excitement was through the roof! Working with Nick was a pure joy – it took us a few days of ping-ponging references until he came up with two options, the second of which is what you see on the cover. Our sync was immediate – it was like finally meeting someone else who speaks the same obscure language as we do.

PAN M 360: Sticking with the theme of time, it’s been eight years since Group Modular’s first album, The Mystery of Mordy Laye. Since then, you’ve only released one single, on Markey’s Delights label, for International Synthesizer Day 2018. You’ve both been busy with other things, of course – what are some recent projects of yours that PAN M360’s readers might dig?

MD: Eight years is really a long time… we’ve been working on Time Masters for the last few years. Since The Mystery of Mordy Laye, I’d done quite a lot – played a lot and released an album with my industrial band, Mujahideen; launched a label called Confused Machines, which focuses on the raw side of electronic music, from less functional club music to other electronic experiments; and had a few releases (and many live shows) under my Mule Driver moniker, including an EP on the infamous Creme Organization last April. Recently, I’ve also dropped an album under the name Max Schreiber, which is more about experimental and improvised electronic music

MF: As you’ve already mentioned, I’m running my own imprint called Delights, where I release 45s by contemporary artists inspired by ’60s and ’70s film and library music. This year, we’ve dropped the second seven-inch by London-based Project Gemini, which was followed by SimfOnyx (my own collaboration with a super-talented artist and good friend from Haifa, Shuzin), and a new title is dropping right now, featuring two of my remixes for local bands. In general, 2020, with all its madness, turned out to be my collabs year: besides SimfOnyx and Group Modular, I’ve also released a limited cassette of a library-themed improv session with two friends in Berlin, called Aquasonic Research Society, and a whole bunch of other collaborations is in the pipeline for 2021 (fingers crossed!).

Photo: Yo Yang

Since 2010, Taipei-based quintet Prairie WWWW have explored the complex and often obscured roots of Taiwanese identity with their haunting, electro-mystical art-rock. Not long after the early-October release of their new EP Formosan Dream, the band premiered a filmed performance of the material at Audiotree International, the American concert-streaming platforms’s wing for interesting indie music from around the world. The session is embedded below, for the gratification of your eyes and ears.

PAN M 360 corresponded with Prairie WWWW (the four Ws are silent, by the way – “serving as a pictogram for a waveform, as well as the imagery of the grass that blowing in the wind,” the band explains), and learned more about the live session and the EP from drummer White Wu, percussionist Yi-Zhi, and bassist Apple.

PAN M 360: What were the circumstances of this live session? Where was it filmed, and why was that site chosen?

Apple: We wanted to capture a certain atmosphere and the colours of the summer sun, so the shooting had to be finished before noon. Because it happened to be the hottest month in Taiwan, and always raining in the afternoon, when taking a break, we had to use many umbrellas to let the equipment dissipate heat. Many difficulties needed to be overcome during this video shoot.

It was located at a traditional building called a sanheyuan, owned by our agent’s grandmother. Sanheyuan are really rare now, and that fits well with our new songs. We stood in a circle in order to shoot everyone playing their instruments, also to show this beautiful building from all angles.

White: As Apple said, before the shoot, we had worried about the heat and sunburn. (I can’t stand the heat – no joking, summer in Taiwan is killing me!) In fact, the front yard of the sanheyuan is designed for farmers to dry crops, so the direct sunlight there was actually fierce for people. Once finishing one take, we had to go into the shade, drink water, and cool down our equipment. Although almost everyone had heat stroke after shooting, it went more smoothly than I expected, an unforgettable experience for me. Fortunately, we finally did it.

The traditional sanheyuan is considered to be quite a representative architectural style in Taiwan. In my opinion, it seems that few Taiwanese bands shoot live sessions in such venues; that’s why we chose it. We also want to show the uniqueness of Taiwan’s traditional architecture to fans overseas.

PAN M 360: How would you say Formosan Dream is different from Pán and other, earlier Prairie WWWW recordings?

Yi-Zhi: Half of the songs from Pán had been written and edited for about 10 years, and they tended to be composed with strong rhythms and beats. The story in Pán is also more complicated, combining the life experiences from the five members.

However, Formosan Dream is a new beginning for us. We began to re-collect and investigate Taiwanese folk tales, legends, and the context of traditional music, trying to reorganize these stories buried in Taiwan’s colonial history and politics into our own creation. 

Photo: Yu Jhu

PAN M 360: The lyrics and music of the track “Formosan Dream” both strike me as being about the past, or more specifically, about all the futures that didn’t happen. Maybe they still could?

Apple: The lyrics of “Formosan Dream” are about the disappearing ethnic groups of Formosa Island. They are all part of Taiwan’s forgotten history, and this is how we dream of the island. We live for our past, for our ancestors, and for ourselves. Only when we understand our past can we have a future. We think our future is about national and territorial identity. Here’s a translation of the prologue from The Mystery of the Dwarf, by Taiwanese historical novelist Wang Jiaxiang:

“People said there are still mysterious and invisible tribes living on mountains, completely isolated from civilization. In archaeology, ethnography, and the oral history of Taiwanese aborigines, they have existed so truly; this is an excellent source and subject matter for fiction authors. One day, I hope that Taiwanese teenagers can start to use the power of imagination to look at Taiwan. Only a Taiwanese is able to imagine their own land with honour, pride, identity, and sense of history to impress people; only when the Taiwanese begin to understand ourselves can we walk into the future.”

PAN M 360: “Whales’ Bones” is an interesting interlude, a bridge between the two main tracks – but that bridge goes over something deeper and bigger than the story of human beings.

Yi-Zhi: The sound effects from “Whales’ Bones” are a foley of the mountains and jungles in ancient Taiwan. “Whales’ Bones” is an abstract space-time passage between the two songs, “Formosan Dream” and “Shells”. You can imagine “Whales’ Bones” as an archaeological layer, like the memories piled up by various historical events. This song was also inspired by Taijiang Inland Sea, the place where whales once gathered in ancient Tainan.

Photo: Yo Yang

PAN M 360: “Shells” is, to my ear, about memory, both to be cherished and to be wary of. How would you explain it?

Apple: Every time I think about myself and my soul, I start to wonder: where my soul will go after life? Will my consciousness still exist? Is it like falling asleep without dreaming, nowhere to go? The only thing left of life is bone-like objects, or like fruits, turning into mud. Life in shells disappeared, but they still flow around the world with the current. No one remembers, no one knows their past, only shells themselves can prove their being.

Yi-Zhi: “Formosan Dream” symbolizes the lost ethnic groups, species, languages, culture, and the environment. The past history of Formosa Island cannot be fully reproduced or proved. “Shells” stands for that which still faintly exist today, like remains, bones or memories.

Photo: Keith Marlowe

It’s with a rather worried Lance Phelps that we spoke the day after the American presidential elections. The drummer of the Kalamazoo, Michigan band The Spits didn’t hide his distress at the unsettled situation in that key state, where numerous extreme right-wing militias lurk, armed to the teeth. Rather than holding his breath while waiting for the official results, he talked about VI, The Spits’ new album released nine years after their previous one, V. The 10 songs on VI, most of them under two minutes long, are a panoply of pleasure, pure, dirty, lo-fi punk-rock in the vein of what the band has always done since their debut on record in 2000. Produced by the prolific and versatile Erik Nervous on a simple four-track, VI proves in just 17 short minutes that no, The Spits haven’t changed one iota… and no one will complain. 

PAN M 360: Well, first of all, is this really your sixth album? There are more than that on some pages about you.

Lance Phelps: It’s probably more like the eighth, really. If you count 19 Million A.C., which was a bunch of singles and stuff that hadn’t been widely released, and also Kill The Kool, which is also the same format… so if you add those two, it could be the eighth album! Those two have names and the others have numbers, so VI is the sixth.

PAN M 360: VI is your first full-length studio album in nine years. Why did it take so long?

LP: To be frank, everytime I leave the band no songs get recorded. A couple of years ago, Erin (Wood) and I started talking about a new Spits record. He wanted to know if I would be interested in working with him again. I said I was, so we started trying to work on it and get some material together. It wasn’t going very well and we took a little break, and later came back at it and then things seemed to come together. But Shawn and his brother Erin have a difficult working relationship (laughs). Maybe I’m saying too much, but they have a hard time getting along, so my job over the years has always been some sort of intermediary between the two of them, to smooth things out. They have a hard time getting things done, just the two of them, too many differences. It doesn’t take them very long to start fighting if you leave them in a room together. It’s kind of a cliché. Anyway… At least we got together and we were able to accomplish something and we’re actually very happy with how it turned out. So far the feedback seems to be very positive, it’s selling very well [at the time of writing, the album is out of stock, a few days after its release]. It’s like a shot in the arm because now we have a couple of ideas as far as putting out a couple of EPs, some shorter releases in the next year. So we’ll do our little spurt of creativity and probably all scatter to the winds again.

PAN M 360: I read that you recorded this record in a basement. So where and how exactly did you make VI?

LP: Normally our records are recorded over months and they’re never recorded completely in one place. So we’ll go to two or three different studios, but this is the first album that we recorded 100 percent ourselves in Erin’s basement in Michigan. It was pretty much a DIY labour of love. 

PAN M 360: But didn’t you record it with Erik Nervous?

LP: We started recording before he came into the picture. Erik is 30 years younger than the rest of us and pretty tech savvy, especially compared to us. So having him there to command, and press buttons and all the technical side of stuff was super helpful, and we get along well. Sometimes, when you go into a studio and you go to really established engineers, they want to put their stamp on it, but we didn’t have to deal with that at all. Erik is a talented kid, he knows a lot about computers and software and recording. So even though we weren’t using big, state of the art, 64-track recordings boards and stuff, we don’t need so many overdubs anyway. It’s a new era, I don’t think bands need to use these middlemen anymore. There’s so much software stuff available for recording that you can learn by yourself to use these devices. I’m not saying you’re gonna be Phil Spector at the end of the week, but our needs are not that sophisticated, you know. 

PAN M 360: Do you always record with such limited means?

LP: No, we’ve worked with some really good producers in some really good studios. But we would always try to find a studio that still recorded on two-inch tape, and used a lot of analog stuff. But for that one, I really insisted on recording it ourselves, I didn’t wanna go in a studio. So that was something I had to negotiate because nobody really believed that we could pull it off ourselves. 

PAN M 360: It’s clear that the production of your records is something very important to you. You have your own sound and style that seem to have worked well from one record to the next. It’s pretty impressive. So how do you get such a distinctive sound?

LP: I think that just like anybody else, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants. We have our influences, our tastes, so it’s simply a matter of what sounds good to our ears. So if things are too clean, if guitars don’t have enough distortion or they sound cheesy or overproduced, it’s not what we’re looking for. It’s really a song-by-song thing, how we want it to sound, trying to dial in the sound we have in our heads. But it always comes out to be the same thing: kind of muddy, shitty sounding (laughs). I guess that’s our signature sound!

PAN M 360: In the press release for VI, it says that the group’s returning to its roots. It’s a bit strange because it seems to me that you have never strayed very far from your sources, have you?

LP: I don’t think we could even if we tried. I think we said that in an interview a year or two ago. Maybe that was the intention that we had, but once you go down the path of actually writing and recording songs, they kind of turn into whatever they turn into. We may have intended to go back to our roots, whatever that means. But this is what we ended up with and we’ll just leave it to the audience to decide. It’s very hard to write and to play in any style that’s not your natural voice. Every time we try to do something that’s outside of the box, it still ends up sounding like us anyway, so I don’t know why we bother.

PAN M 360: With all the social unrest you’ve experienced in the United States, your dangerous president and the pandemic affecting us all, would you say that the year 2020 is a punk year?

LP: We’ve been writing songs about the decline of civilization since we started, it’s kind of our schtick. I think it’s punk in a dystopian way, but it’s not very punk as far as having fun. If it’s punk, the punk revolution doesn’t seem to be getting much traction. I wish it was more of a punk year. I wish they were storming the White House and dragging the president out across the yard, that would be punk. What I see in America is not such a punk year. The worst traits of the American people are on display. It’s now been normalized to show what a racist, sexist, bigoted, ignorant piece of shit you are, and to take pride and wave that flag for everybody to see. Hopefully there’s going to be more people and artists being punk and being more vocal, organized, and fighting back against this sickening trend. I’m getting to a point in life, and I think we all are, where it’s very hard to figure out what punk is, or if it’s even a thing, you know? 

Photo: Romain Garcin

Did you know that the cactus produces a flower – and that Sofiane Pamart plucked one from the tree of rap? He’s the go-to pianist for this musical genre, working until now in the shadow of names such as L’Or du Commun, Scylla, and Vald. And even if his flow has no words, his new album Planet Gold speaks to more than one, here and there. Pamart spoke with PAN M 360 about this and more.   

PAN M 360: Why this album?

Sofiane Pamart: You see, Planet was released last year, and we added six new songs to reach 18 with Planet Gold. I’ve been playing piano since I was very young, it was time for me to make my solo piano album. I decided to do it to talk about my relationship with travel. This album is both my first solo piano album and at the same time, it represents my love for travel and for this country.

PAN M 360: Your ideas flow from rap music, no? 

SP: Yeah. I find rappers super inspiring because of their lifestyle, their way of representing themselves in relation to the world, their spontaneity. My lifestyle as a pianist is much more like a rapper’s. I play the piano, but they are the ones I feel most comfortable with, even in the videos, in the things we have. My style of communication is comparable to a rapper’s, because of the similarities in taste. More than ideas, we do the same thing. I’m a pianist, but I’m treated like a rapper among rappers.

PAN M 360: What are two decisive influences for you?

SP: The first is travel. Otherwise, it’s also a family story. I come from a non-musical family and I’ve been playing the piano since I was a child. For me, it’s a strong symbolic gesture, and a pride in the accomplishment of all the work we’ve done since we were very young. Today, I have a life as an artist, centered on the piano, and this life is possible because since I was a child, we have had a whole organization around music. It is a first strong founding gesture that I have towards my family, to pay them back and pay tribute to all the efforts that my parents and grandparents, who never made music, had to make for me. 

PAN M 360: Often, people who’ve just left the conservatory tell me that naturally, that their parents are musicians.

SP: In fact, you see, when you come from that milieu, you already have the right references, the codes. We didn’t have them and we went about it differently. So, for me, it’s even more of a source of pride. Coming from a family of non-musicians, at the conservatory, that means a lot. 

PAN M 360: What is your view of the conservatory sphere and its elitist side? 

SP: It’s true that going to the conservatory means understanding its codes and the big competition that’s played out both in terms of your level of music, but also in terms of your more classical cultural references. Something that you have is one type of person more than others at the conservatory. As for me, I managed to go all the way to the conservatory, but living in an environment that has nothing to do with it, I’m very comfortable, in my life, to move from one world to another. I take the good things from both worlds. I create a kind of link between them. My audience would not have taken the step of listening to a solo piano album. Around me, a lot of people were interested in the piano because I played it, but even more so now that I have visibility. They like this approach because they have the impression that they would have done like me. 

PAN M 360: How do you respond to the classical purists, who remain unconvinced?

SP: The relationship to music in criticism and analysis, which is meant to be very cerebral, I find boring, really boring. That’s my personal approach. I don’t want to frustrate people who want to have an intellectual approach to it, but it’s not my temperament. So I’m quite happy not to be in that environment. I’m happy to evolve between several worlds where we see things in a more positive way. First of all, you see things from a cool angle. The important thing is to touch, to be moved. That goes beyond the technical repertoire. That comes later. It’s interesting to understand how an artist creates, but that comes later. I’m very happy to move away from that. If it does you good to tell you that there are winks at Debussy, I’m very happy, and if you have no classical references and it makes you think of film music or something else, I’m very comfortable with that. 

PAN M 360: For the track “Madagascar”, what did you have in front of you and what did you think about? 

SP: I love Madagascar, it was a really incredible experience. I loved going there. Even if there were moments that were a little sad. The country is beautiful, but there’s a lot of poverty, and you see some things that really mark you. But in fact, what I tried to translate in this song is more the wonder I had. You see, it’s a cascade of notes, because in fact I think it’s really a magnificent place, imposing by its beauty. It’s very magisterial for me, the theme of Madagascar, you see. Because that’s the impression I had when I arrived, and I wanted to communicate that. I was in Madagascar and also in Nosy Be, which is a bit more “paradisiacal”, but I did both. 

PAN M 360: Overall, rap is a rich compendium of a multitude of horizons, what do you intend to bring through the piano? 

SP: It’s broader than just rap. In my way of working, I bring together people who don’t have the codes of the piano, but I talk to anyone who’ll be moved by the music. I like it when someone explains to me that they learned the piano young, and that it makes them want to play again, or start playing. I like it when they make a personal story out of a track. Either it makes you want to go further, to play, to create a reproduction, or you’re just in the process of escaping. That’s why I have an album about travelling. I think it’s something we can all have, escape through the imagination, it’s an inner journey. Since there are no words, it leaves room for you to make your own story. 

PAN M 360: A gold medal from the Lille Conservatory, a rich rap repertoire, a cutting-edge style, a company, YouPiano, a law graduate in Lyon, an MBA in management – what are your flaws?

SP: (laughs) Well, no, afterwards, you know, it’s normal that as an artist, you show your best face, your best assets. You’re going to keep your flaws secret. Being very emotional is sometimes a quality, sometimes a flaw. For me, my flaws go hand in hand with my qualities. Being very emotional can turn against you, and you’re less in control of what you want. Being very productive makes you obsessive about working, which can be a flaw. Moreover, I really enjoy life, travelling. I can’t hold on if I stay in one place for too long. We have flaws in our qualities, it goes hand in hand. 

PAN M 360: Are you a bit hyperactive?

SP: Yes, very much so. Especially as a child, now I manage better, but as a child, it was too much. 

PAN M 360: Does the piano channel your energy?

SP: The piano channels it in a serious way because at that moment I’m focused, I forget everything. 

PAN M 360: Do you play other instruments?

SP: Only the piano. On the other hand, what’s good, and what I do a lot with beatmakers, is to go from the keyboard to many other types of instruments. 

PAN M 360: What is your mood for future musical projects, and do you plan to have guests?

SP:I haven’t yet thought about inviting other pianists. The most natural thing for me would be with my sister, Lina. For me, she would be the first guest. My sister has chosen a different path, she’s a diplomat, but on the other hand, she’s at a very high level on violin. She’s younger. She also does a lot of concerts with me. Recently, we composed together the music for the commercial for [the video game series] Assassin’s Creed. 

PAN M 360: Just the family so far?

SP: Just the family. 

PAN M 360: Who are your favourite pianists at the moment? 

SP: I love Chilly Gonzales. He’s a character! As a pianist, he breaks codes, with his humorous, joking side, it’s really something of his own. That and Tigran Hamasyan, and Henri Barda, a master I had in classical music. He plays Chopin like nobody else. 

PAN M 360: And YouPiano, what is it? 

SP: Before, when I still had time to teach piano, I had developed a way of learning the piano without going through solfège. My preoccupation was an approach to the piano that everyone could work with, and that’s reflected in my music. My relationship to learning is the same, learning without going through music theory, with rewarding results. In a short while, I’ll be posting lessons linked to my pedagogy. I’m very close to the start-up ecosystem, ideas are flowing from everywhere. 

PAN M 360: And what about your scores, do you release them? 

SP: Not yet, but it’s in progress, I’m asked for them every day. 

PAN M 360: Anything to add? 

SP: I can’t wait to come and play in Canada. I already played two years ago in Montreal. As soon as the borders open. There, everything is on hold, the Olympia is still closed, we’ll see. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. 

Last March, Dakka Dembélé was due to launch his album Petit bateau on the Nuits d’Afrique label, but COVID 19 decided otherwise. Here we are, nine months later and in the red zone, and the launch show finally takes place without an audience, though an audiovisual recording allows us to attend remotely. On Petit bateau, the singer fully plays his role of reggaeman and decries the very risky journeys of migrants on overloaded boats, which can lead them to drowning rather than to the promised land. On the other hand, Dakka Dembélé offers us a most convivial roots reggae cruise, with a mix of West African colours, a worldly sound system imagined in Montreal. 

PAN M 360: How do you explain the importance of reggae in Ivory Coast, where you were born? After Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly, other reggae is emerging in West Africa, as it is also the case in Mali, where your parents come from. We could also mention the late South African Lucky Dube among your influences… Explanations?

Dakka Dembélé: Alpha went to Jamaica, where he met Bob Marley and was inspired by reggae music. He then returned to his country, Ivory Coast, where he made a first album, very inspired by his Jamaican experience, and he was the precursor of this style in Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast is also a country that is very open to the world, unlike other, more conservative African countries, so it was a fertile breeding ground for becoming a hub of African reggae. My main influences in African reggae are definitely Lucky Dube, Alpha Blondy, Ismael Isaac, and Koko Dembélé. These are the reggae artists that rocked me throughout my childhood and adolescence. Tiken Jah arrived a little later, and he’s also a source of inspiration.

PAN M 360: How do you place yourself in relation to Jamaican legends? Who are your favourite reggae artists from Jamaica or the Jamaican diaspora?

DD: My favourite artists from Jamaica are Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Culture, Burning Spear, Gregory Isaac, etc. They are music that I listened to as much during my childhood and adolescence. For me, they are really the founding fathers of reggae, and I have a lot of respect for them. 

PAN M 360: Before migrating to North America, how did you learn the profession of musician, author, composer and singer?

DD: Although I was born into a family that was opposed to my musical career, music has always been present in my life. At the age of nine, my family was struck by poverty; I continued school, but I went to shine shoes at the train station. The songs of Bob Marley and Alpha Blondy accompanied me during this period, and I felt the need to denounce injustice and discrimination. I started to compose and write in secret. As a young adult, I founded my first successful group, DakkaGounga, in Abidjan. But in 2003, I was forced into exile in Mali because of the civil war. Thirteen years after my arrival in Quebec in 2007, the release of the album Petit bateau marks a major milestone in my journey as an artist.

PAN M 360: How would you describe the African touch in your reggae? Is there a link with your more specific cultural origins? What ethnic communities do your parents come from?

DD: My parents are Dioulas, so I sing in French and in Dioula. The Dioulas are descendants of Mali. They are generally traders and have always travelled throughout West Africa. My reggae is definitely part of my African history. For the most part, I deal with themes related to Africa, but also to my experience as an immigrant here in Quebec. I make reggae with West African sounds and mixed influences. 

PAN M 360: How do you distinguish yourself from your predecessors and contemporaries? 

DD: I’m part of the tradition of francophone and Mandingo reggae. I want to offer a voice to the marginalized and the most disadvantaged, wherever they live. I deal with issues related to inequalities, I sing about peace, hope, and the contrasts between my Africa and my Quebec. My Canadian reality has profoundly transformed my identity, and it also colours my current compositions. I distinguish myself from other African reggaemen by a very personal touch to my compositions, that comes from my own history and my personal rhythm. 

PAN M 360: How would you describe your creative process?

DD: My creative process is unique in itself. I always start as a solo artist; I begin by working on the lyrics and melodies. As mentioned, I write in French and Dioula, and as Dioula is a tonal language in which the pronunciation of the syllables of a word is subject to a precise tone (at a specific pitch or a characteristic melody), when I compose, I base myself on the melody and the word inseparably. Once the skeleton of the song has been built, I play it back to my collaborators, who work on the composition and arrangements. 

PAN M 360: When you arrived in Quebec in 2007, you were working as a shoemaker. Where did you receive your training, and do you still work as a shoemaker, to make ends meet? 

DD: I started shining shoes in Abidjan train stations and then I became an apprentice to a master shoemaker in Trechville, Abidjan’s red-light district. One thing leading to another, I mastered the trade. I have always practised the trades of shoemaker and singer at the same time. I opened my own shoemaking shop in Montreal in 2011 (Cordonnerie Dakissa). I’m located in Plaza St-Hubert. 

PAN M 360: Since 2013, you’ve played with Abdoulaye Koné, the Rootsteppers, David Mobio, Namori, Ons Barnat and Solid Ground. How has the Montreal scene changed your musical approach?

DD: When I arrived in Montreal, I discovered a musical scene of such richness as I’d never imagined, where cultures and styles mix and mingle. The Montreal scene and its diversity have always inspired me. This scene has helped me to further perfect my stage presence and my composition work. I have collaborated with all these artists at different levels and they have all brought me new learning and a fresh look at my compositions.

PAN M 360: Is the musical direction of your concert the same as that of your album? What about the contribution of guitarist and producer Guy Kaye, the contribution of bassist and producer Apotcho Strong? Can you describe the musicians in your team?

DD: The musical direction of the concert is provided by the Ivorian arranger and producer Apotcho Strong. It was he who set the guidelines for the interpretations. Guy Kaye only worked on the album, in collaboration with Apotcho Strong; Apotcho brought all his expertise in the sounds of African reggae, while Guy Kaye brought all his experience and expertise in world music and funk. Guy was also the mastermind of the mixing. For the band, I went looking for musicians with extensive reggae experience: Ons Barnat (keyboards), Botty Pottinger (guitar), Sylvain Plante (drums), and David Sergeti (guitar), as well as Apotcho (bass). The backup singers, Mélissa Pacifico and Mélanie Charrier, also worked on the album. 

PAN M 360: Your team is multicultural and Montreal-based, how has that changed your music?

DD: Yes, indeed, I have a mixed team (Quebec, France, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, etc.). Everyone really brings a very special touch to the interpretation, which creates a unique overall sound.

PAN M 360: What is your link with Montreal, Quebec, North America, the West? Has living in Montreal transformed you? And if so, in what way?

DD: Yes, living in Montreal has completely transformed me. It gave me a different view of the world. Especially multicultural Montreal: I’ve gotten to know other cultures and I feel really good about it. 

PAN M 360: What do you plan to play at the Nuits d’Afrique on Thursday, November 5?

DD: Thursday’s show is also the launch show for my album. I was supposed to do this launch at the Ministry on March 13, but history has dictated otherwise. So this show gives all the space to Petit bateau’s compositions with three compositions from my repertoire that are not on the album. There are also several guest artists: King Shadrock, Emde, Slim Samba, and John Kerkhoven. 

PAN M 360: What are your plans for the future?

DD: I’m working on an acoustic video project that will be launched on social media in the autumn. I’m already working on a second album. I will enter research and development in the winter of 2021, with the goal of releasing the next album in the fall of 2021. Of course, I’d like to plan tours, but it’s rather difficult in the current context. 

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