Pan M 360: Hi Nadia, how do you feel before these two concerts in one of the first festivals to come back after the pandemic?
Nadia Labrie: I feel very excited! I must say that the June 8 concert (where I will be playing Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp) is a special challenge. I will be playing it on a classical period flute, made of wood. To do this I had to relearn how to play, because not only the instrument is different, but also the fingerings, the way of blowing, the way of projecting the sound, and many other details.
Pan M 360: Is it difficult to do this?
Nadia Labrie: It is very demanding. I have been working on it for about a year and a half. The other difficulty is that at the beginning I had to work on a baroque flute, which has its own differences from the classical flute. The reason is that I ordered a classical type flute from a maker, but I received it in 2021 only. I couldn’t start my ”relearning” only a few months before the concert, so I had to start with the baroque instrument, and then go to the classical one. So there you have it, it was a past year full of new training! In this regard, I must say a huge thank you to Claire Guimond who guided me well along this path.
From left to right : Antoine Bareil, Isaac Chalk, Nadia Labrie, Benoît Loiselle for the concert Flute Passion Mozart
Pan M 360: Did you come up with the idea, or were you challenged to do it?
Nadia Labrie: I was dared (laughs)! But I accepted with enthusiasm because it’s been a long time since I wanted to play this concerto, and a long time, also, that I wanted to dive into the universe of the ancient flute. I never had the courage to try it before, because I come from Rimouski and at the Conservatory there, there are no ancient instruments. My contacts with this world remained limited. This time, it was an opportunity to get me out of my security zone, and as I am an avid learner, I found it a perfect opportunity to launch myself into this adventure. As a result, I discovered a second passion that I never knew existed before.
Pan M 360: Enough to consider the possibility of eventually recording with early instruments?
Nadia Labrie: Yes, not right now, but one day, it is very possible. In the meantime, I am preparing a new concert where I would like to present the history of the flute through repertoire ranging from early music to modern music. I will take the opportunity to use the flutes I own (I have several!).
Pan M 360: What does Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp mean to you?
Nadia Labrie: Oh dear, it is a dream for me! Since I was a teenager I’ve known it and I loved it. It is so beautiful, especially the slow movement. This extraordinary melody touches us right there (the heart, the guts). Again, coming from Rimouski, forget about it, there was zero harp there. It was not possible to do this concerto. Now that I am able to do it, I don’t hesitate. I can’t wait!
Nadia Labrie
Pan M 360: You told me, when you were presenting your album Flute Passion Schubert, that this music corresponded perfectly to your state of mind. You needed it to move forward. Same thing for the Bach that followed, and now, you are clearly in a Mozart phase, right?
Nadia Labrie: Indeed! The light of Mozart is in perfect adequacy with the serenity, the joy and the happiness that I feel in my life right now. I even have a dog that I named Mozart! Schubert happened in a dark period of my life, but it made me feel good. Then, Bach “fit” with my need for solidity, regularity, to feel “grounded”. Mozart, now, feels like the sun!
Pan M 360: Are there other composers who seem to be just as luminous to you, to continue on this beautiful path?
Nadia Labrie: Vivaldi! His concertos please me enormously.
Pan M 360: The concert of this Sunday, May 30, is the entire album Flute Passion Mozart, right?
Nadia Labrie: Yes, absolutely. With musicians that I love, it will feel good throughout, as much for me as for the public!
Pan M 360: We have to thank Marc Boucher of the Classica festival who made this kind of collective event revival possible…
Nadia Labrie: Absolutely! Marc and the whole team were great. A lot of festivals have been pulling the plug and that left us with nothing, but Classica has been able to reschedule most of the 2020 concerts in December, and in 2021, that’s one of the the first festivals to make that kind of commitment. Wow. That’s fantastic.
Pan M 360: We agree! Greetings to the entire Classica team! Thank you Nadia for this great interview.
Nadia Labrie: Thank you very much!
With two EPs in the bag in addition to a split released last year with Japanese legends Acid Mothers Temple, Yoo Doo Right concretizes its cosmic epopee with a long-awaited first album under the cryptic title Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose. As true romantic warriors, the trio demonstrates on this album a mastery of the striking force of Can and NEU! as well as the art of hermetic phoenixology of the Berlin school – Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel – while remaining as relevant as their contemporaries 10 000 Russos, or Gnod and their album JUST SAY NO TO THE PSYCHO RIGHT-WING CAPITALIST FACIST INDUSTRIAL DEATH MACHINE. To better understand what’s behind the deterministic title, PAN M 360 met with guitarist Justin Cober and bassist Charles Masson, who welcomed us at their small workshop, Mile End Effects, not far from the Godspeed! headquarters, where condos are growing like bad weeds. Located in an old building said to have been used as a weapons factory during WWII (and possibly haunted by a ghost from that same era), Cober set up his own workshop to build a completely different form of electric weaponry: effects pedals.
Crédit: Delphine Snyers, Justin Cober
PAN M 360 : Your first EP was released in 2016, but before that, there’s not much information about the band. So, first thing first, when did the three of you meet each other, and when did you start playing together?
Charles Masson: About 10 years ago, Justin was living in Toronto and I was in Montreal. A show was set up for my band in Toronto and I immediately clicked on Justin’s band called New Wings. We kept contact after that. About six or five year later, Justin moved to Montreal and brought his new friend John, who’s from Edmonton and was living in Montreal to study. We started playing together and started the band right away. Three month later, we were playing our first show.
PAN M 360: Where did you play your first show?
Charles Masson: It was in a DIY venue in Pointe-Saint-Charles called Bad Lunch. It was with two jazz bands. It was on the last floor of a house, in a tiny mezzanine, it was very small and very strange but it was a very nice first show. DIY spaces are what we prefer.
PAN M 360: Your music tends to create a sort of wall of sound on stage by using amps from the ’70s and effect pedals, almost reaching the dangerous level of 140 dB. What made you want to reach this heavy volume?
Justin Cober: I mean, it’s transcendental, really. When you’re actually able to feel the vibrations of this ball of fury coming from a stage, it’s so overwhelming. It’s quite magical.
Charles Masson: We got so used to it while practicing at these high volumes. We created textures that won’t come out as much as we would have liked when you turn the volume down. Our songs are created for high volumes, it’s hard to compromise about that. Somebody said, finally, a Yoo Doo Right album – we can finally turn the fuck down.
Justin Cober: I would kind of quote Kevin Shields, when he was talking about My Bloody Valentine’s stage volume. He was basically saying that, when they were first rehearsing, they were playing at volumes that enters you into this kind of trance state. By the end their rehearsals, they would all be laughing in a state of euphoria. That’s a very apt description of how it feels. When we’re playing sometimes, we finish a song and we kind of sit back, take a few breath and we’re all just laughing. It feels really good. We’re all pretty soft-spoken people, so I think it’s really cool to be that much of a force, it’s like a voice outside of our own. Having your eyeballs vibrating inside your head… Hearing certain frequencies at such devastating volumes is just a ton of fun. If that’s not magic, I’m not sure what is.
PAN M 360: Your music is notably influenced by the German krautrock movement from the ’70s and its rhythmic patterns. What did you find interesting in this period of German culture?
Justin Cober: A lot of it has to do with the sociopolitical climate of Germany in the late ’60s. In North America and particularly on the West Coast of the United States, there was this whole hippy movement that was born out of a rejection of their parents’ view point of the world. But in Germany, it seemed to be a lot more of a rejection of what their parents stood for. If they weren’t actively engaged in the Nazi mindset, they were at least complicit in a lot of that. As they were rebuilding the structures of Germany, and the bombed-out cities, they also decided to rebuild a cultural identity. It was ferociously political and anti-fascist. There were a lot of interesting collectives which could be considered domestic terrorists, they were just hellbent on rebuilding Germany in a way their parents couldn’t. That for me really stuck out. I feel history tends to repeat itself. We have constantly found ourselves in situations where people are being commodified and oppressed. I really appreciate this feeling that was found in krautrock. And it’s also very good music.
PAN M 360: How do you think the German psychedelic movement differs from the American countercultural movement?
Justin Cober: For better or for worse, the counterculture movement in the USA was very much an aesthetic thing. When you look now, all the anti-capitalist hippies grew up in their own big corporations and are still fucking up the world. A lot of it had to do with the very thin veil of image and aesthetic whereas in Germany I think it was a lot deeper than that, it meant a lot more than just putting flowers in people’s hair, listening to The Byrds or whatever.
PAN M 360: Their message was indeed much more political. Amon Düül even once said that he wanted to perform for free in factories at some point, for example.
Justin Cober: Even in the way all that music sounds, it can be very harsh and industrial. There is that sort of statement being made in a sonic way. It’s almost like two tectonic plates shifting and grinding against each other. It’s like creating this primordial rebirth of culture and mentality.
PAN M 360: Your album title Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose is a strong statement, particularly for artists. In a way, this reminds me of Julian Cope saying that Krautrock was an “Explore-the-god-in-you-by-working-the-animal-in-you Gnostic Odyssey”. Do you identity with this statement?
Justin Cober: In a way, yes. The idea is about building a life for ourselves that we don’t need to escape from, finding purpose and meaning in endeavours that aren’t necessarily considered to be viable financially in terms of a carrier. Or considering whether or not you’re a productive member of society under very specific capitalistic means. We’re trying to find value and fulfillment in our communities and in our personal endeavours that make us wake up in the morning. You’re finding purpose in yourself, not by working for someone else and doing something you absolutely hate, being exploited and valued for your monetary worth. It’s a very good quote and it very much connects to the album, I guess.
PAN M 360: What does it look like for each one of you to build a life that you don’t need to escape from?
Charles Masson: I’ve been unemployed for the last two years and I’ve been trying to make my way out of this situation by creating my own little company, possibly a little grocery store. You have to be able to take some steps back to see what is attracting you to your actual life endeavours.
Justin Cober: Injecting as much purpose and intention into what you’re doing as an extension of who you are as a person, and finding a way to be able to do that. Charles and I are in a very privileged position in a sense that we have been able to work towards something that we love to do. It’s a very nice place to be. Good for you if you have the means to try and follow what you think your purpose is in life. A lot of people don’t have that. There is no delusion there, but we’re trying to promote this idea that people are worth a lot more than their day jobs or the worth placed on them in a capitalist sense. Passions and feelings are more valuable than the paycheques they bring in despite obviously needing to exist in this framework that we exist in.
PAN M 360: In the video for the title song, you used the movie Cosmic Zoom by Eva Szasz. It well illustrates the lyrics that are about someone trying to find something bigger than themselves, during a moment of insanity where they lost touch with reality. Would you like to elaborate?
Justin Cober: The lyrics are about somebody who thinks that they are basically an ambassador for humans on our planet to some extraterrestrial community. It’s very much born out of their mental illness. They just wait to be beamed up, but they increasingly grow more paranoid that people are going to find out their secrets.
PAN M 360: You also say that this person has been chosen to solve the problems of our species. To you, what would be the problems that this person has to face?
Charles: The rambling of people who don’t know shit.
Justin Cober: How many hours do you have? Fuck, I don’t think we need to count the ways so to speak. There are so many problems that we face and that we have always faced. There is a bit more immediacy. Every time I meet another dilemma that our species and every other species of this planet encounters, my thought processes are like little rivers that all go into the same big ocean that is our ending doom. We are so fucked. There are so many things we have to face and it’s heart-breaking to think about it. The solutions are driven by the exact same thing that are getting us into this predicament. The ground we sit on is based on this idea of oppression and harming people to gain for ourselves.
Charles Masson: In the name of growth.
Justin Cober: The moment our care for others was over ridden by this idea of growth and what it means to be successful, it’s when we became doomed, we enslaved people and animals. How do you take a step back and realize that it is at the basis of these problems that we face? The commodification of life is fucked up, it’s hard to think about it. A lot of people don’t think about it, because they would rather not and I understand that.
PAN M 360: Another way to see it is that if something doesn’t work out biologically in nature, nature tends to get read of it. So, if our species has to disappear, it could be according to nature’s rules.
Justin Cober: There is this amazing George Carlin quote: “Mother Earth, the planet, is gonna be here, its gonna be fine. We’re the ones who are fucked. The planet is gonna sneeze us off like a bad cold”. The planet is probably gonna be here. If its inhabitable for us is another story. Maybe that could be the best thing. Maybe our species dying is like the Earth overcoming cancer and going into remission.
PAN M 360: To finish on a lighter note, after finding your purpose, what is the next step for Yoo Doo Right?
Justin Cober: We’ll keep just jamming.
I took the opportunity of this outing to speak with the Montreal composer. A luminous meeting where one feels privileged to be in the presence of such a kind, visionary, simple, discreet, inspired and important human being for the history of music, all music!
Tim appears in the Zoom window, and I quickly ask him why he released three albums at once?
Tim Brady : The pandemic has left me with a lot of time on my hands, just like everyone else! I took the opportunity to create and polish a lot of material and go back into my archives. I had enough for three records, but I figured it would be boring to spread it out over three years, so I released them all at once! That’s the practical reason, but there’s also a more symbolic reason. In 40 years of career, the media in general have never been able to put me in a category (they like categories!). So I wanted to thumb my nose, in all kindness of course, at this divisionist obsession by putting on the market a large package of works of a very different nature from each other, and therefore unclassifiable as a group!
Pan M 360: So new and old material?
Tim Brady : Yes. The set is divided into three parts, like the number of records. The first part is my solo work, with sampling and other electronic fiddling, the second is my three-instrument concerto Triple Concerto: Because Everything Has Changed (me on electric guitar and programming; Helmut Lipsky on violin and Shawn Mativetsky on tabla and percussion). The third one is focused on my chamber band compositions. As you can see, the more we go on, the more musicians we have!
Pan M 360: About the archives, what are they and why did you choose them?
Tim Brady :Revolutionary Songs is a 1995 recording that I’ve always loved. But I was unhappy with the mastering. I reworked it extensively several times, in 2007 and again in 2013. This time, I thought it was worth releasing. As I said, I really like this piece. As it Happened, also on the 3rd album, is an extraordinary moment captured live by mistake! The Record button was activated when I and the musicians started playing for 30 minutes without error, in a perfect way, and it was captured. It had to be available!
Pan M 360: As someone who grew up with improvisation, how has your use of the art changed since you started?
Tim Brady : It’s interesting. Forty years ago, I was concerned about labels. Do I play jazz, free improv, contemporary written music, musique actuelle? Today, I want to use the kind of sound, the kind of rhythm, the kind of technique that I want at the right time for me to express the things I feel strongly about at the time I need to express them, regardless of the label. If I feel for an F major chord there, then a 39-note cluster here, followed by an improv somewhere else, I do it. Improv is a tool in my palette, not necessarily a way of life.
Pan M 360: What is the most central element of your music, then?
Tim Brady : Structure. You’ll notice in all of my work an organization, a structural skeleton that organizes the different elements, whether they’re written or improvised, tonal or atonal, etc.
Pan M 360: The musical world has changed a lot in the last 40 years. In 1980, we were still in the Guitar Hero era. Today, Hip Hop and Rap have taken over. Are there any Guitar Heroes left? Is there still a relevance to it, and what is the future of the electric guitar?
Tim Brady : That’s a fascinating question. Today, Youtube is where rock and great guitarists get their exposure. Radio is pretty much dead for them. Rock is becoming a source of reflection for top guitarists. It’s no longer just a goal, an objective linked to popularity or the hit parade. Take the example of indie rock : the line between rock and contemporary chamber music is often thin. I receive several emails a year from young guitarists asking me about my approach. Recently, an Italian guy contacted me, he is doing a PhD on my music!
Of course, the musical base of the electric guitar will remain linked to blues, jazz, metal and a form of rock, but I am convinced that art music will become a new pole of expression, which will certainly create links with the others. Forty years ago, there were at most a dozen guys on the planet doing what I do. Today, the number is exploding. The electric guitar, like rock, is going down in history. In this process, there is an intellectualization and a search for depth that comes with it and transforms the way of perceiving the instrument and all its paradigms.
Pan M 360: How do you feel about this phenomenon, especially considering that you are one of the “pioneers” of its scholarly side?
Tim Brady : It’s fun, I must admit. I was reading the Wikipedia article on the instrument one day, and I saw my name mentioned. I’m proud of it, for sure. There’s even an Italian (another one), Sergio Sorentino, who wrote a book on the history of the electric guitar and included a section on me in it, along with Fred Frith, Scott Johnson, and others as important. It’s ego-boosting, of course, but more importantly, it makes me happy to know that I’ve made a positive contribution to something lasting!
Pan M 360: In your music, you use electronic drapery in a broad, full, almost symphonic way. Am I wrong? And if not, why is it so?
Tim Brady : You are right! But I’d go even further: when I compose for an orchestra, I’m constantly trying to recreate a guitar sound with pedals, and related effects! That’s where it comes from: I’m an electric guitarist, and I always play electric guitar. I try to play at least two hours a day. Many composers eventually give up playing their instrument, and develop a more “abstract” conception of orchestration. I’m never far from my instrument. It rubs off on my orchestral scores, and conversely, it also rubs off on my electronic writing, which looks like, as you say, an orchestra that looks like a guitar with pedals, fuzz, and all the rest! I build with masses, with densities, or on the contrary, I build solo lines. But I do very little counterpoint. All this comes from the nature of my instrument, imprinted in me, and the fact that it is always at the center of my practice.
Pan M 360 : Let’s go back to your beginnings : did you ever want to be a Guitar Hero?
Tim Brady : I had that desire, as did probably every teenager of that time who played (even if only strumming) the guitar! My idol was Duane Allman.
Pan M 360 : Why did you change your path?
Tim Brady : The truth comes out in two parts. First, I’m the straightest guy in the world! I don’t smoke, I have no interest in drugs and I don’t drink. It’s always been that way, even when I was young! So the rock culture didn’t appeal to me at all.
The other thing is that to be a good rock musician, you also have to be a good songwriter. You have to come up with melodies that are catchy, and that can say the essential in 8 bars. I’m more comfortable with longer forms. I accepted it rather early in my life, rather than fighting against a desire finally not compatible with my character.
Pan M 360 : Do you remember the first time you realized that this was YOUR way?
Tim Brady : Yes, I do. I was 27 or 28 years old. One of my works was recorded by the CBC. It was for strings and a trumpet improviser, the great Kenny Wheeler in this case! I remember thinking to myself as I listened to the musicians play: “Geez, that’s my music! I’m the one who created these sounds that go great together! That’s what I want to do! I became aware of the expressive power of music, at least as I saw what creative power is like. I’ve never forgotten that.
Pan M 360 : What are you working on that is more substantial in the foreseeable future?
Tim Brady : Something big and crazy. A cycle of four operas, entitled Hope (and the Dark Matter of History). The four operas will be linked by a central character that recurs in each one: a time traveler. This will allow me to visit four different eras: 1939, 1970, 2051 and 2056.
The 1939 opera will take place in New York City and will be set in the minutes before Charlie Christian, the founding father of electric guitar playing, takes the stage at Carnegie Hall! The opera will even feature Rufus Rockhead, a Montreal jazz icon and founder of the famous Rockhead’s Paradise in Montreal!
Pan M 360 : And unacknowledged (in my opinion) inspiration of the Jazz fest!
Tim Brady : A great character indeed! The second opera will take place in 1970 in Montreal, the 3rd in 2051 in Toronto during a climate catastrophe involving humans and artificial intelligence beings and the last one will take place in 2056 in a Martian colony. If all goes well, the operas will be created in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026
Pan M 360 : Wow! I can’t wait to see this tetralogy! Thank you and good luck!
Tim Brady : Thank you!
The young London-based band is made up of seven musicians from a variety of backgrounds: singer, lyricist and guitarist Isaac Wood, bassist Tyler Hyde, saxophonist Lewis Evans, violinist Georgia Ellery, keyboardist May Kershaw, drummer Charlie Wayne and guitarist Luke Mark harbour a sincere ideal of creative democracy.
Ninja Tune’s recent release of the album For the First Time confirms the septet’s reputation for intense, theatrical, fiery performances in front of a live audience. But… for obvious reasons, we’ll have to be patient before we have the proof in the flesh.
In the meantime, PAN M 360 connected with Hyde and Wayne in London.
PAN M 360: Black Country, New Road proposes a very particular expression and a mix of genres: post-punk, post-rock, Crimsonian prog, noise, polka rock, but also contemporary chamber music, american minimalism and free jazz. How do you see this wide eclecticism?
TYLER HYDE: First of all, I would say that it is not the result of planning. All we wanted to do was make music with friends. It’s really hard for us to list our influences because we are 7 people with very different tastes. We share some similar references but also so many different ones. The only way for us to illustrate them was to articulate them in our music and our playing. So this mix is not the result of a spoken conversation but of a musical conversation. This music is based on very strong friendships and an equally strong passion for music.
PAN M 360: Of course, mixing influences cannot be a plan or a recipe when it comes to artistic creation. Rather, it is an expression of the unconscious, the dynamics of artistic interaction and emotional relationships between the artists involved in the creative process. But… once the unconscious has expressed itself, can we get a glimpse of what has been achieved?
TYLER HYDE: Yes, we can express it now. Accidentally, we had created the music for For the First Time. We hadn’t thought about a planned and consistent collection of these songs, several random elements successfully came together. For our second album in the making, we thought more about what we wanted to do at the beginning, what would be appropriate for us. We thus implemented a concept album, totally distinct from the first one.
PAN M 360: What’s also very interesting about Black Country, New Road is the mix between pop culture references and more complex music. Where does that interest come from? TYLER HYDE: The group is made up of self-taught musicians and others educated in music schools. The educated musicians don’t put pressure on the self-taught musicians to reach an ideal technical level, we prefer to find common ground, everyone should feel comfortable. So we don’t make any separation between the two groups, rather we try to create a common language.
PAN M 360: To be more precise, how do you see the group’s progress since its beginnings?
CHARLIE WAYNE: We are still aware of the good things that have been accomplished, but we want to make important changes to our work. We need to move on. Structurally we’re the same band, but we’re trying to write more concise songs now. We want songs sculpted from the same material rather than building piece by piece, section by section. That’s very important to us. For the first album, seven musicians assembled eclectic concepts while for the second one, this time we wanted to be less random, to propose better defined and perennial structures, more succinct, more dense. This next album may be less dissonant, it may be as strange for some people, but not for the same reasons.
TH: We’re now trying to generate intensity without betting on a post-punk aesthetic, without exaggerating on the distortion pedal, without playing all at the same time. Intensity can also come out with reduced sound information, with gradual introductions, with different tensions produced by each instrument involved. So we have been thinking about these new creative strategies since our beginnings. Not playing in front of a crowd during the pandemic also led us to this reflection because we could no longer test our hypotheses on stage, there was no longer this guinea pig allowing us to better understand our sound. This is why the composition process this time was much more meticulous. Thus, we learned how to generate intensity and emotions without the feedback of the live performance. This is why our sound is already very different from what it was before the pandemic. We are almost finished with the songs for this second album, we want to record and release it as soon as possible.
PAN M 360: Could you provide an example of a creative session in your band?
CW: Okay. Somebody can submit to the band some fragments of a song or a basic structure. It can come from Isaac, but it can also come from any member of the group. From this skeleton, it’s up to each of us to make this first vision come true by giving it additional parts. The intention is therefore very different from a group in which there is a central composer, it is excluded to tell anyone what to do. Once the structure is accepted, each member of the group can blossom and bring the song to life.
TH: It’s possible to do this because we know each other well, because we know how we play, because we now know what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, musical conversations are possible and can multiply. For the performances we are in a way co-pilots. We all have partial information that naturally overlaps. I may know, for example, what Charlie and Luke are doing by my side, but I may not know what Lewis is doing or can propose so that my playing can be in symbiosis with his. This then has an impact on our writing process. So we have to try to improve our listening to each other, we have to constantly evolve this conversation.
CW: I could listen more to Tyler, Tyler could listen more to Luke and I, Luke could listen more to Isaac and so on and so forth, so it all flows together, we become listening to each other, we can then move forward.
PAN M 360: So it’s a real collective work and ideal. Is it always like that?
CW: As much as possible, we try to avoid giving the composition to only one leader. We don’t think that would be particularly useful for this group. We think everyone’s idea is valid. We all know each other’s instruments, so everyone can come up with something very creative, based on their own talent, knowledge and sensibility.
PAN M 360: It’s a great ideal to want to achieve the perfect balance of creativity within a collective. But how do you maintain this balance?
TH: It’s difficult, but we try to make it work. If someone in the room has been silent for a while, we ask, ‘hey, what do you think?’ We do that knowing that everyone decides to express themselves or not in certain contexts.
CW: And don’t hesitate to use this interview as an example in the case of lawsuits between creators (laughs).
PAN M 360: What about the lyrical aspect?
TH: The lyrics of our pieces come 100% from Isaac, it’s a separate dimension of the music. I think Isaac’s goal is to write lyrics that anyone, at any given moment, can understand and relate to.
CW: Tyler and I are not perfectly comfortable talking about what Isaac writes. It’s not really our area. But we like this mix of inspiration from great lyricists like Leonard Cohen and allusions to pop culture, which we think is a powerful evocation tool because pop culture belongs to the collective imagination. It unites us.
PAN M 360: How will the new material be adapted on stage after the pandemic?
CW: We’re really looking forward to it! Having said that, it was a luxury for us not to do a show and to focus on ourselves, our sound, our compositions, our university studies for some. So we took this year to finish this life before starting our new life. And there’s nothing like playing live. We’re really looking forward to coming back with our new music and playing the music from our first album as well.
TH: If at the first return concert we hear our fans singing songs from the first album after this break and this transformation, it might be weird, but it might also be overwhelming.
Since it’s now impossible to turn away from ourselves or get caught up in the whirlwind of distractions offered by consumer society, the isolation of quarantine forces us to draw new ideas from past experiences, be they distressing or enriching.
This cryptic search can be experienced as a descent into the hell of the depths of an internal mourning experience. In the same manner as Dante in The Divine Comedy, Blanck Mass reconstructs this inner journey in the form of a personal sonic travel log and takes us on a tour of the various echo chambers of his mind, with the help of sound recordings captured while travelling and touring. Each piece is composed of abstract emotions and cinematic memories that blend with different, sometimes heart-rending drone textures or lighter melodic lines composed on the synthesizer. PAN M 360 reached the artist at his studio in Scotland to fill in the spaces between the lines of the recordings.
PAN M 360: The main subject of In Ferneaux revolves around pain in motion and its utility through inner work. When did you start this process?
Blanck Mass: It was very internal. I was conscious of not wanting to put out a lockdown record for the sake of putting a lockdown record. For the past ten years or so, touring has involved making a lot of field recordings, even when I just travel. I wanted to use these field recordings as the basis for an actual space outside the space that I found myself in constantly whilst recording In Ferneaux and kind of use these to tell a story of what’s happening internally within me, my inner dialogue, but using these actual existing spaces outside which bring back all kind of personal memories. Trying to repurpose them into some kind of cathartic experience. Sharing it with people is pretty intimidating because this is some of the most raw that I’ve felt at all for my whole life, some of the worst periods of my life.
PAN M 360: This album is more cinematographic, abstract and minimalist compared to your previous works. There are only two tracks, Phase I and Phase II. What was the vision you had for the album?
BM: There was a first version of In Ferneaux with just the unmanipulated field recordings. It was like library music that I was thinking about doing with the raw files. That was something that I was thinking about doing for a long time because I have hundreds and hundreds of these field recordings. There was a switch, for me personally and globally, and the project morphed into something different. Although the field recordings hold a lot of weight for me emotionally, I felt I wanted to add some more contemporary synthesizer sounds and repurpose it into one continuous whole. The emotional weight found within those recordings, and with the synthesizers, obviously sent me down a road where I have been before, with regards to layering and squeezing as much emotions as I can. It was extremely cathartic. With a record like this, it’s really difficult to say when it’s done. There’s no beginning or end to each song. I found it difficult to say when the job was done. But what needs to be said has been said.
PAN M 360: When you say that the misery and the blessing are one, do you mean that the album should be experienced in a nonlinear way?
BM: I don’t really like naming tracks and asserting my perceived aesthetic, but I understand it’s a necessary tool. I’m a huge fan of film scores. Narrative is always an important part of the things that I do, the journey it takes you on throughout. I thoroughly encourage listening to it in a nonlinear way. It’s a collection of my internal dialogues without the aid of syntax. If you want to go on a journey, it’s there for you to go on. I want you to experience it in your own way.
PAN M 360: You actually produced a film score yourself for the Irish crime drama movie Calm With Horses, which was directed by Nick Rowland and released in March 2020.
BM: It is something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and will continue to do so. I’m really happy that when I’m not touring, I can score movies. I feel very lucky to be in this position at this point in time. I’m looking forward to the next one.
PAN M 360: You wrote that In Ferneaux was about the trauma of a personal grieving process. The result is a collage of sounds which is organized like a playlist of sounds that are linked to one another to make a story, but that you could also shuffle and would still make sense.
BM: That’s really interesting. It’s like an open-source experiment. I’m glad you get that from it, actually. It doesn’t need to follow the particular timeline which it does. These can be almost like stages of my grief but people might experience it in a different order. Sharing your experience during these difficult times is quite bold. It was super cathartic and intimidating to share this but it’s part of the growth process.
PAN M 360: At the heart of the album, you present the encounter you had with a person you call a prophetic figure that you met on the streets of San Francisco. Why was it so memorable to you?
BM: I feel this person actually presented me with this whole new perspective on my experience. I was going through a lot personally when I met this person. They told me, “you don’t know how to handle the misery on the way to the blessing.” Going away and thinking about that, I completely see what they meant. I’m within this position and there is nothing I can do apart from utilizing the pain and trying to create something from that, which would be the blessing. That’s what gave me the push over the edge to create In Ferneaux after a long reflection, to actually use this as a tool and these collections of recordings I created throughout the years, to process my misery, to present it and bring something outside of it. To me, that is the blessing and that’s what In Ferneaux is all about. I have a lot to thank this person for. They shaped the process for me. It’s the one field recording which has not been manipulated. There is maybe more weight in that than on other recordings that are heavily manipulated. That’s a particularly profound moment, like a game-changing moment.
PAN M 360: There is also a very danceable party side to your project, which can be found on your album Animated Violence Mild or the songs you produced with Kite, for example. The bright, hyperpop, holographic sounds remind me a lot to the music you hear during some openly queer-friendly parties. Where does that influence come from?
BM: I don’t feel any shame in embracing that side of thing, I do have a lot of friends who are queer as you say, that’s a big part of my social group. With Animated Violence Mild, there was a kind of political statement of intent as well. I was talking a lot about capitalism and I was using these very over-the-top melody lines in a tongue-in-cheek way. Referring to the ’80s and the explosion of capitalism, and using particular synthesizers of that kind of time, were not in a nostalgic sense but more in a kind of low blow to poke fans. I try not to take it too seriously myself as well, I like to troll myself a little. But I love that kind of music, working with Kite is something that I love, they are really close friends now. There is a real queer-friendly kind of aesthetic and mentality, I tend to gravitate towards that. There is a freer side of things that I definitely feel an affinity towards. Even though I’m a goth, I’m not scared of a little bit of colour, you know.
https://youtu.be/wCQApdGoS_Q
PAN M 360: You seem very close to the queer artistic community. What makes you sensitive to it?
BM: On my last tour, I’ve taken along some very close friends who are drag queens, Frans Gender and Purpledisgrace. It’s very easy for electronic musicians to take themselves a little bit too seriously, and to take another electronic musician that sounds similar. It doesn’t really interest me, there’s a lot more going on in the world than just your particular little space. I pay to go to drag shows myself, you know. It was a lot fun to have a drag show every night.
Fondé en 2001, le VICO était le projet visionnaire… d’un Montréalais, le compositeur Moshe Denburg! Formé dans la rigueur intellectuelle et académique de la musique savante occidentale, Denburg avait également à cœur d’inclure dans sa démarche créative les autres traditions savantes du monde entier. Le résultat a été la fondation du VICO, un orchestre de chambre digne des Nations Unies, qui interprète autant de la musique de type populaire que savante. Violons, violoncelles, hautbois, flûtes, etc. côtoient tar, santur, oud, erhu, shona, et bien d’autres.
Le 18 février 2021, sur le site du festival Montréal Nouvelles Musiques (MNM), le VICO donnera un concert tout contemporain avec deux créations et un arrangement de Pulau Dewata de Vivier! Oh là là que j’ai hâte de découvrir la ‘’bibitte’’ fabuleuse que ça risque de produire! Pour ceux qui ne pourront y être le soir même, pas de panique! Tous les concerts seront disponibles six mois après leur première diffusion. Et tout cela gratuitement!
En attendant, j’ai parlé avec Mark Armanini, directeur artistique et de production de l’orchestre.
Pan M 360 : Il y a 20 ans, la création de cet orchestre unique était-elle un acte de foi ou une démarche visionnaire?
Mark Armanini : Je dirais qu’il s’agissait du résultat naturel de ce que Vancouver était alors (encore plus aujourd’hui), doublé d’une idée visionnaire du Montréalais Moshe Denburg.
Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO)
Pan M 360 : Comment l’orchestre a-t-il évolué en 20 ans?
Mark Armanini : Au début, nous étions un peu plus orientés vers la musique populaire, mais avec le temps, nous avons introduit de plus en plus de musique contemporaine et de commandes. Il y a eu évolution en termes de répertoire, donc, mais aussi en termes d’interprétation et de techniques de jeu. Chaque fois que nous commandons une pièce contemporaine ou un arrangement (nous jouons encore souvent des pièces populaires adaptées pour nous), c’est une occasion d’apprendre les uns des autres, compositeur.trices et musicien.nes. Les styles d’improvisation constituent aussi une base de nouvelles connaissances car chaque culture musicale possède des techniques d’impro différentes des autres.
Et puis, les origines culturelles se sont également étoffées. Au début, nous avions principalement des artistes aux racines chinoises, mais depuis, nous avons intégré les cultures persane, moyen-orientale et japonaise.
Pan M 360 : Pourquoi avez-vous évolué vers une programmation contemporaine? Quelle était la nécessité?
Mark Armanini : L’intention est d’abord venue des compositeur.trices, qui dirigent en majorité le VICO! La plupart souhaitait pouvoir explorer de plus importantes dimensions de la création musicale et sonore. Il y avait aussi une volonté certaine de la part de la direction d’amener les instrumentistes à se perfectionner en leur offrant de la musique plus exigeante. Cela étant dit, nous ne faisons jamais de concert tout contemporain comme celui du MNM. Ce sera une première!
Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO)
Pan M 360 : Plusieurs des musicien.nes provenant de traditions où l’improvisation est très présente, est-ce que cela signifie qu’un.e compositeur.trice doit nécessairement inclure cette technique dans ses partitions?
Mark Armanini : Oui. C’est une question d’adaptation et de développement de nouvelles techniques d’écriture. En plus, chaque style d’improvisation est différent et comporte des exigences particulières, en plus des limites de chaque instrument. Autant les interprètes doivent s’adapter à de nouvelles formes de musique, autant les compositeur.trices doivent aussi modifier leurs réflexes d’écriture en fonction de tous ces paramètres.
Pan M 360 : Tout le monde doit être familier avec la notation occidentale?
Mark Armanini : Pas obligatoirement. La plupart des compositeur.trices le sont, mais à des degrés différents. Nous leur offrons de l’aide dans les cas où ils en ont besoin. Les interprètes ont par contre des parcours plus disparates. Alors, oui nous devons accompagner certains d’entre eux ou elles dans le développement de cette particularité de notre musique. Mais nous devons également accompagner les musicien.nes classiques! Dans plusieurs pièces, ils sont confrontés à des principes issus de traditions non-occidentales, desquels ils ne connaissent parfois absolument rien! C’est toute la beauté de cet orchestre, un espace d’échanges qui n’est pas unidimensionnel. C’est un partage de connaissances et d’apprentissages.
Pan M 360 : Comment s’est présentée l’idée d’arranger Pulau Dewata de Vivier pour le VICO?
Mark Armanini : C’est Walter Boudreau qui m’a lancé le défi de faire l’adaptation! En tant que musicien, j’aime prendre des risques, alors j’étais heureux de me lancer dans l’aventure, mais lorsque j’ai lu la partition, je me suis dit Oh mon dieu, ça va être difficile! En fin de compte, à mesure que j’avançais dans le travail, je me suis aperçu que ça allait mieux que je pensais. C’est tellement bien écrit! Les lignes sont claires et bien définies, la logique d’ensemble est impeccable, alors il a été facile de déterminer quels types d’instruments et de couleurs je pouvais donner à chaque ligne et chaque partie. C’est du côté des musiciens que le défi à relever a été plus ardu. Mais je pense qu’ils l’ont relevé avec brio. Ce fut un apprentissage exceptionnel. Vivier était un prophète. Ce qu’il a écrit à cette époque, inspiré par Bali, était déjà parfait en termes de création de textures et de couleurs, mais dans la version que nous présenterons, c’est comme si tout se mettait en place naturellement pour exprimer une vision de l’oeuvre qui était latente, sous-entendue. Ce sera un Pulau Dewata en version 4K!
Pan M 360 : Décrivez-nous rapidement les autres pièces du concert
Mark Armanini : Gypsy Chronicles est basée sur une chanson de troubadour, et offre au tar, au santour, au oud et à plusieurs percussions comme le darbouka et le tabla de très belles lignes d’expression. La pièce a une texture plutôt rugueuse. C’est une œuvre en quatre mouvements, comme une symphonie de chambre.
À cette époque-là est une suite concertante, elle aussi en quatre mouvements. Il s’agit d’un concerto habillé de sonorités moyen-orientales, et chaque mouvement évoque un type de tapis persan traditionnel. C’est une pièce très diversifiée en termes de textures et de couleurs!
Pareidolia ressemble à une œuvre européenne contemporaine. Elle est abstraite, mais poétique et plutôt évocatrice, comme les sommets brumeux des montagnes dans des peintures chinoises.
As the first spring blossoms awaken through the snow est une très douce, très chouette petite pièce. Elle est constituée de portions assez importantes d’improvisation, mais dans un contexte contrôlé. La compositrice utilise des techniques élaborées pour mettre en évidence le setar et le oud en explorant leurs possibilités sonores insoupçonnées. Le public sera surpris car il ne reconnaîtra pas les instruments traditionnels. Cela prouve également que ces derniers ont une étendue de possibilités sonores immense, et encore mal explorée.
Pan M 360 : Ce sera le premier concert entièrement consacré à la musique contemporaine pour VICO, disiez-vous. D’après-vous ce sera un concert plus exigeant que ce que vous avez l’habitude de faire?
Mark Armanini : Oui absolument. Le secret dans ce genre de collaboration c’est de chercher à ce que les musiciens se sentent le plus confortable possible. Nous leur demandons beaucoup d’efforts, mais dans le respect de leurs traditions et de leur héritage culturel. Le résultat final est excellent parce que, justement, ils acceptent de prendre des risques qui leur permettent d’évoluer. C’est pour cela qu’ils sont si bons!
Pan M 360 : J’avoue être un peu jaloux. Il faut un ensemble comme celui-ci à Montréal!
Mark Armanini : Mais oui, j’espère que ce sera le cas un jour!
Pan M 360 : Je vous souhaite le meilleur pour le concert et pour l’avenir. Ce que vous faites est très inspirant.
Mark Armanini : Merci beaucoup pour l’invitation.
As the curfew has come to put a little more weight on the pandemic in our daily lives, it becomes difficult to fully project ourselves into a new album, to try to escape the same four white walls of our flats and try to live an intimate and meaningful personal experience. But some albums have the gift of being able to transform small, insignificant moments into something more grandiose than our little selves. The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings falls into this category.
On the eve of my interview, during my daily neighbourhood tour at nightfall, I walk around with the Besnard Lakes between my ears. It’s windy, the storm is biting my face and my boots are sinking deeper and deeper into the snow. But music accompanies my journey and my thoughts and I simply let myself be guided by fate. Finally, I decide to stop and simply watch the snowflakes fall through the light of a street lamp and let myself be soothed by this magnificent symphony that intertwines Jace Lasek’s falsetto voice with the rich and powerful guitar swells. “With love there is no death,” says “The Father of Time Wakes Up”. I’m shivering.
The Besnard Lakes have certainly succeeded in composing their own Dark Side of The Moon and offer a breathtaking one-hour album that pushes us to learn how to die in order to be better reborn and feel alive. PAN M 360 spoke with Jace Lansek to better understand what pushed him to follow this inner path.
PAN M 360: If I had to explain to someone how to imagine Montreal during the winter, I would probably talk about Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Dears, and The Besnard Lakes. Cold and melancholic on the outside but heartwarming and humble on the inside. Do you relate to this feeling?
Jace Lasek: I do, actually. I love going outside, feeling the cold. I feel like those are the things that make you feel most alive when you feel all those changes that are happening and that is what the music is about. Our music takes you to places, it always takes you somewhere. You have to have tough skin to live in the northern areas. It can also actually be hot here. I love that we can experience all the extremes. We live about 45 minutes outside of Montreal in a town called Rigaud. We go ice-fishing in the winter time because we’re very close to the river. We go skiing. I was very happy when the snow finally came.
PAN M 360: The falsetto, the vocal harmonies and the sophisticated chords are heavily influenced by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. The album even sounds like a shoegaze symphony, with three guitars at some point. Where does this huge influence come from?
JL: When I was a kid, my dad was a huge music fan. He had an 8-track player in his car, he would play the Beach Boys, he would play Endless Summer all the time. He had the Best of the Bee Gees Volume 2, that’s a collection of Bee Gees music that’s pre-disco. They were kind of trying to be the Beatles a little bit at that time, so it’s like pop music. I grew up on that stuff and they have a lot of vocals there, and they’re orchestral as well. I love those kinds of things from a very early age. He was the one who would play those albums for me when I was a kid. When I got older, I actually searched them out again and discovered a new appreciation for them.
PAN M 360 : There is something mystical and sacred in this album that makes me think of Brian Wilson, Spiritualized and Talk Talk. This aspect of your music is even more present on this album compared to the previous ones. Have you ever thought of playing in a cathedral?
JL: Yes, many times! It’s really hard to organize shows in spaces like that but we’ve talked about it so much, playing shows in places that have this grand experience, just to be in them. It would be such a beautiful experience in this beautiful surroundings. It also compliments the music.
PAN M 360 : You also had, in 2018, a small solo project in which you played organ. Where did you learn to play it?
JL: Well, I didn’t (laughs). I submitted a grant application to the Canada Council and they gave me the grant to build the machine. I wanted to make a Hammond organ played through four Leslie speakers rotating in a room at the same time. The box to make that happen didn’t exist so I had to get my friend Tim, who is an amazing electronic engineer and also the drummer in Godspeed. All I did was improvise. The big thing for me is creating the drones. I feel like the organ has just such amazing overtones, I often get lost just pressing down a couple notes. I don’t really play it as a conventional instrument making melodies. I mostly play it to create these overtones. It’s maybe one or two notes during maybe half an hour. It’s more of a meditation. It’s loud but it’s not harsh, you kind of feel it in your chest more than you hear the harshness, We keep the bright noises down so it’s coming from inside. It’s very soothing, it’s pretty awesome.
PAN M 360: The album can be lived as a pilgrimage or a journey. Was that your intention? How would you describe it?
JL: Whenever we make a Besnard Lakes record, the concept sort of presents itself to us. When we started making this record, we realised pretty quickly that we were dealing with a lot of ideas of death and life. You know, my dad had passed away, Prince had passed away, Mark Hollis had passed away, they were big musical inspiration to us and my dad passing away was a pretty intense experience. We wanted it to be a concept album to begin with. We realised that the album was taking this arc, passing through life into death, after death back to life again. We really developed this idea. We had a few incarnations of the album before we settled on this sequence because we wanted to have this arc. Right at the end, we wrote “Christmas Can Wait”. After that, everything felt into place. That was sort of the climax of the record, the height of where death happens and the beginning of the trip that happens after death.
PAN M 360 : You say that being on your deathbed must be the most psychedelic experience you could ever have. What do you mean by that?
JL: Watching your father die a slow death – he had cancer – was a bizarre experience. I felt myself thinking a lot about what was going through his mind, because he knew he was dying. When people are in those situations, the doctors give them morphine, so my dad was on some pretty heavy doses of morphine during his last days of his life. He woke up in this morphine high moment, he looked at me and he said, “do you want to know what I see right now?” And I was like, fuck yes, I do. He told me that on his blanket there was a window. And inside was a carpenter who was carving small intimes and making small things. And he went back to sleep. I still think about that a lot.
When you die, the body releases DMT, which is another psychedelic drug. So at that point of death when you’re getting to this moment, because it is something that no one has ever experienced before and your brain is dealing with this moment that it can’t understand, you don’t understand, it’s a lot like an acid trip. When you’re on acid or mushrooms, your brain is confused and you try to make sense of things that are happening in much the same sense your brain might be confused when you try to grasp the idea of death. You don’t know what is over there. In the same sense, taking psychedelic drugs, you don’t know what’s over there either, you’re taking a risk everytime you do it, you don’t know what your brain is gonna show you. With death it is the same thing, you don’t know what your brain is gonna show you in those last moments when your body is dying and your brain is releasing DMT.
PAN M 360: Your live shows have a significant amount of lasers and fog to create an immersive set. When I experienced it, it felt like getting in touch with my inner space in a magical way. What have you planned for remote live shows?
JL: That’s the way we want people to experience it, that’s perfect. We planned the same thing (laughs). We have the fog and the lasers. I built a wall of strobe lights behind us. Of course it’s not gonna be the same as having an audience, but we wanted to approach these shows as if we were playing in front of an audience.
PAN M 360: The artwork was done again by Corri-Lynn Tetz. Is the painting about a specific event or subject? JL: I saw a paiting a couple years ago, it was almost a Hieronymus Bosch painting. It kind of looked like what the pits of hell would look like. I showed her the painting and I asked her to paint this cliff on either side coming down into a river. Usually I don’t give her much more information, just the basic stuff. The painting is georgous. Todd Stewart, who does our EP artwork, the illustrator, I asked him to do a mirror image of her painting in the inside gatefold, but more sort of like a purgatory, like the ugly side, the inside is tearing apart, the innards of what’s going on inside. On the inner sleeve you have all the elements from all the older albums. The artwork encompases all what we’ve done so far, almost like a family portrait.
PAN M 360 : You called this album a thunderstorm warning. What do you both see in this thunderstorm?
JL: This title comes from when I was a kid, before the internet, when there was a thunderstorm warning, they would put it on the TV. It would flash blue and red and it would interrupt whatever TV program you were watching. I always felt so excited when there was a thunderstorm warning. It’s mostly being in awe of this storm that’s coming. It’s nature and its awesome power, it interrupts your day. How we go through life all the time not realizing nature is all around us and at any moment, it can completly disrupt what we’re doing. We’re so consumed by the speed of news, technology, and social media, we don’t really pay attention to those things that could create massive change.
We made this concept record that’s an hour long in which we want people to lose themselves. In the meantime, there is Spotify and Apple Music and everybody wants to listen to their one song. Albums aren’t really cool. We feel like we are one of the last of the antiquated system and album-focused.
Frontman and mastermind of the ferocious, longstanding punk soul revue King Khan and the Shrines, Berlin-based former Montrealer Arish Ahmad Khan, welcomes the new year with an album of back-to-basics, no-frills punk rock. It caps a pandemic year that was incredibly productive, even by the standards of this human tornado. Cosmic jazz for departed comrades, cartoon hijinx, and the next step for his famous Black Power Tarot were all on the table when PAN M 360 reached King Khan, who looked back at a strange year, and ahead to a future “ as devastating as it is enlightening”.
PAN M 360: Let’s start with the latest thing, your new album Opiate Them Asses. From start to finish, it’s a celebration of simple, snotty punk rock from the end of the ’70s, a kind of golden age for punk, wouldn’t you say?
KING KHAN: “Indeed! I grew up on punk rock and this album is an attempt to analyze modern times through the eyeballs of an electric eel. My band is entirely from Bordeaux, France. Les Magnetix (Looch Vibrato and Aggy Sonora) on drums and guitar, and Fredovitch (from the Shrines) on bass. I have been playing music with these folks for over two decades, and not only are they fierce players, but I have seen each of them display incredible feats of absolute magical nonsense. I saw Looch Vibrato take a sip from a can of beer which was full of piss and then grab the pair of glasses off the face of the culprit who passed it to him and eat his glasses without blinking. I knew from that moment on that I had to play in a band with this man.”
PAN M 360: The cover art is again by Mike Diana, a controversial and tragic character from the pre-Internet days of snail-mail zine culture. Are you two in touch frequently? The 2018 documentary about him suggests that he’s really a very sweet and reasonable person.
KING KHAN: ” Mike Diana is a wonderful man and I have been an admirer of his art since back in the Montreal days. I imagine it must be difficult for him to get his art out there in this modern world of cancel culture and all that bullshit. I have been buddies with Cynthia Plaster Caster for many years, so I have even held Mike’s plaster penis in my hands once. I guess that makes us more than just friends.”
photos crédit : Orestes Rovakis for Viva Con Agua
PAN M 360: Let’s go back to late last year, and your excellent album The Infinite Ones. That was you exploring psychedelic jazz, to great success. The album is obviously a tribute to Sun Ra, including participation by long time members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. But it’s also a collection of salutes to amazing friends of yours who are now part of the cosmos.
KING KHAN: ” I have been buddies with the Sun Ra Arkestra since 2005, when I stayed with them on a couch in their living room for three days while we played at the NXNE festival. That was when I first got my dose of spiritual jazz training from Yahya Abdul Majid. He spoke to me for what seemed like an eternity, while he burned a mini-volcano of myrrh and frankincense in a makeshift receptacle of two empty sardine cans on top of each other. The smoke filled the room and he told me about learning discipline from Sun Ra and Islam. He told me about his travels around the world living with Tuvaan throat singers, meanwhile he played a Chinese harp and jammed along to Tuvaan throat singing on a small CD player with mini portable speakers.
” He passed away recently, but I was able to send him “Theme of Yahya” which was a song I wrote for him. I even have four harps playing in a stereo circle on the track because of that first meeting with Yahya. It made me very happy when he got to hear the track, he said he was proud of me.
” Danny Ray Thompson was another amazing man who was with Sun Ra since the ’60s, and he loved it when I would read his tarot. Whenever we met at different festivals all over the world, he would grab me and ask me to read his cards on the spot, no matter where we were, even on a sidewalk. “Tribute to the Pharoah’s Den” was a requiem I wrote for him.
” When I began working on my jazz album, I asked myself who I would want to do this with, and Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott immediately came to mind, so I called them up and they were in. We even recorded the tracks in the Sun Ra House in Philly, with Marshall’s old microphones, during the pandemic!
” Sun Ra’s music mutated me from when I first delved into it, and I believe that it has lots to do with following the path of illumination. Hal Willner is another important cosmonaut who left our planet because of Covid. Hal and I had worked on many projects together and I met him with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in Australia a while back. Hal and I produced the Let Me Hang You LP with the “unspeakable parts” Naked Lunch recited by Old Bull Lee himself! He really meant the world to me and the last song on the jazz album is a requiem to him. I tried to imagine him walking through the streets of old New York City in busy traffic, and recreate it. I miss him every day.
” I called the album The Infinite Ones because these people will always live on for eternity in music, in memories, and most of all in my heart and mind, they shaped the being that I am today. I have actually almost finished the sequel to this album and it’s dedicated to the fight for environmental peace and justice. It’s called The Nature of Things and even has a strut I wrote for David Suzuki. I hope to release that later this year.”
PAN M 360: These are just two of the many recordings you’ve put out in the last year, in what seems like a burst of COVID-quarantine cabin-fever creativity. Despite the social isolation, they still involve a lot of interesting and important collaborations. You seem to get a real kick out of what happens when creative weirdos get together to make something.
KING KHAN: ” I am so lucky to have so many creative weirdos in my universe, I guess we are spiritually drawn together by some sort of alien magnetism, or perhaps some sinfully flexible imaginary tongue keeps us bound together playfully for life. Bipolarity helps as well, sometimes it can feel like a superpower. But the forced isolation actually gave me a chance to get healthier thanks to my wife guiding me through it. All those 20 or more years of constant touring really took a toll on my health and I am grateful that I was able to repair things before it was too late.”
PAN M 360: 2021 also brings the news that you’re doing voice-acting work for the forthcoming animated feature film Schirkoa, alongside Asia Argento and Gaspar Noé. It’s directed by Ishan Shukla, expanding on his own short film of the same title, and promises to raise the profile of India’s animation industry. Got more info on that?
KING KHAN: ‘ So, I’ve been doing stuff for Rapid Eye Movies for a few years now. The last project was that I got to score some music for a softcore japanese “pink film” from 1968 called Blue Film Woman. It was a dream job, I made music to a very odd and amazing film, and the scenes I scored mostly involved naked gogo-dancing women with 8mm pornography projected on their naked dancing bodies. So when I got asked to be a part of Schirkoa, I met with Ishan and we bounced around tons of ideas and the story was really inspiring. He also wanted my character to be very much like me, so that wasn’t too hard to pull off. In my sessions with Ishan, we were discovering each other’s madness like two dogs sniffin’ butts. I didn’t realize it at the time but he seems to be reinventing cinema and anime, and taking it into a new frontier. I guess the natural next step would be to get plastic surgery and just get my forehead sculpted into the Klingon way I was born to be.”
PAN M 360: You’ve become an animated cartoon character yourself, in the past year. The animated short film The Tandoori Knights vs. The Desaturators features your duo with the marvelously disgraceful Bloodshot Bill. Can you tell us more about that?
KING KHAN: ” I find most of what little kids watch these days is so atrocious, really mediocre, thoughtless drivel! My kids were raised with SpiderMan from 1967, Fat Albert, Barbapapas, the Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and lots of really wonderful old-school cartoons. I wanna create an animated show inspired by this golden age of toons. I have known Bloodshot Bill since I was 14 and our life together really is worthy of animating. The biggest challenge now is how can we hogtie Norm Macdonald and get him on the show.”
PAN M 360: Let’s talk about your Black Power Tarot. How would you explain the project, and what’s the latest news there?
KING KHAN: ” I have been a Black Power advocate since I was 12 and my father gave me The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I have always been very inspired by the civil rights movement, and especially the music that accompanied and strengthened it. For almost a decade, I was working on the film soundtrack and score for a documentary about The Invaders, a Black Power group of young black folks from Memphis in the late ’60s. They caught the attention of Dr. King and eventually became a part of his Poor People’s Campaign. Their story had never been told, and I hope the film comes out sometime this year.
” The Black Power Tarot came from a dream I had years back about my guru Alejandro Jodorowsky, asking me to show him “a card that is weird”. I woke up from that dream realizing that I had to make a new deck based on the Tarot De Marseilles and Black Power. Jodo has been my teacher for the past 10 years, he invited me to his house and gave me the Tarot de Marseilles and began my training. Since then I would send him ideas, poems, movie outlines and all sorts of stuff, and he in return would send me books, comics, teachings and life advice. When I told him I wanted to make this new tarot, he was thrilled by the idea and advised me to not use my ego, and supervised the whole shebang.
” During this time, thanks to the dance of reality, Michael Eaton reached out to me from Belfast. Besides being an amazing artist, he also worked on the art for Game of Thrones. When I saw his art, I knew he was the one I needed to work with for the Black Power Tarot. Since 2015, I have done lots of exhibitions all over the world with huge door-sized prints of the deck. I asked the galleries to fly in John B. Smith from The Invaders to many of these exhibitions, and gave him a chance to tell young people about his activism, his work with Dr. King and his amazing life.
” I also began working with Malik Rahim, a Black Panther from New Orleans, and we started the Global Solidarity Forever organization. During the pandemic, I raised a bunch of money to help Malik avoid homelessness by reading cards for people all over the world, and selling tarot and T-shirts on my Hello Merch store. I actually got the blessings of the New Orleans branch of the Social Medicine Consortium and right now, we are trying to build a community centre in Algiers, 15th Ward, New Orleans, where we will help Malik, with a team of doctors and healthcare workers from New Orleans, in organizing diabetes education programs to help diabetics learn on how to properly deal with their ailment.
” Malik also wants to continue his Save The Wetlands initiative to plant tall grass in the Wetlands, to help absorb the impact of hurricanes. I think all this work is very important, especially since so many businesses are going broke everywhere, building this community centre, which we call the Just Insulin House, is meant to bring hope to a devastated community.
” Algiers is very important as it is one of the birthplaces of jazz and even the Beat movement. William S. Burroughs lived there in 1948-49, and his house was written about in On The Road by Kerouac. New Orleans R&B was also one of the biggest influences on me starting the Shrines over twenty years ago, so I see this as a way I can give something back.
” I never imagined the scope of what happened and continues to happen with the Black Power Tarot – besides being loved and used by many people from all walks of life, it even made it into a Taschen book all about Tarot! Michael Eaton and I also just released a new collection called the Dots & Feathers Flash Cards. I worked with eight amazing First Nations healers and helpers from all over America, from several different tribes (Mohawk, Osage, Cree, and Inuit) and even got the blessings of Tanya Tagaq and Buffy St. Marie, who are included in the deck. The Painter Joe Coleman even guided us on one of the cards.
” I really believe that the tarot is a tool that we need right now to help us follow a path of illumination. It has guided me for over two decades and I look forward to where it shall take us. The world is finally ready to evolve into something new, and its as devastating as it is enlightening. The most important thing is to be a part of the change and make sure its for the good of all humanity.”
The British artist Steven Wilson launches his sixth solo album. Another evocation of the glorious past of English pop-rock? Wasn’t Wilson considered the reformer par excellence of progressive rock, with the album Hand. Cannot. Erase (2015)? Wasn’t he the frontman of the neo-prog band Porcupine Tree during the ’90s and 2000s? Wasn’t he directly inspired by the English auteur pop of the ’80s with the album To the Bone (2017)?
Asking the question… is not answering it, at least this time.
Sticking the prog label, or any other, to this singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist is not to know him well, we have to admit. Here we are in 2021, and Wilson has changed again, so let’s set the record straight.
The Future Bites explores human thought in the digital age: fake news, echo chamber, the reign of sorcerer’s apprentices, cyberaddiction, so many other generalized practices in the empire of the clickbait. In addition, the nine songs on the program underline their creator’s assumption of a musical universe dominated by electronic production.
This amply justifies PAN M 360’s virtual interview with Wilson, who was contacted at his English home a few weeks ago.
PAN M 360: Doesn’t this new album represent a big change, compared to your previous projects?
STEVEN WILSON: Absolutely. I’ve been creative over the last few years, but it’s become frustrating in the long run. I never thought I was a progressive rock musician, or some generic musician. But I’ve already recorded in the progressive rock tradition, those records have been successful for me and I’m very proud of that. Maybe that’s the problem, my albums made that way connect with people! (laughs)
PAN M 360: Isn’t it ideal to know the music well, and to find something new with full knowledge of the facts?
STEVEN WILSON: That’s true. But most people seek what is familiar to them, seek to find the path of novelty by looking for what is familiar. I think I was slightly different, I was looking for something unknown. Today, I’m still looking for something that I can’t quite pinpoint where it came from. And I haven’t always lived up to what I preach, some of my music was too close to homage, but I think that with The Future Bites, I’m taking a step towards a world where I’m getting to something unique, my sound palette, my sound world.
PAN M 360: Electronics have always been part of your instrumentation, but this time they’re dominant. How do you justify this choice?
STEVEN WILSON: But you know, I started in the early ’90s with a synth-pop band called No Man, the first band that got me a record deal. So there was a precedent for what I’m doing now. I don’t want to say that I do synth-pop, but what I do is certainly not associated with the classic forms of rock. All these classical elements have disappeared in this album. That doesn’t exclude a sense of travel, a very ambitious narrative approach, very experimental, epic in a way. My allegiance to classic rock or progressive rock is not broken, I could come back to it, but I don’t find any interest in it at the moment. I want contemporary and fresh music that reflects the world we live in today. The electronic world!
PAN M 360: More precisely, what are your interests in electronic music?
STEVEN WILSON: It’s probably one of my favourite kinds of music. I’ve always liked electronic music. It started when I was a child, with Giorgio Moroder. I became a big fan of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the electroacoustic current. I grew up in the ’80s, so I was surrounded by OMD, Depeche Mode, and all these English bands who were into electronic music. I also like ambient, drone, all forms. In the ’90s, I discovered Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, etc. I’m a big fan of electroacoustic music. I also like the neoclassical of Max Richter and Nils Frahm, these artists create a modern hybrid inspired by both classical music and recent trends, especially electronic music. This has always been in my musical DNA. So it makes perfect sense for me to make electronic music, I’m surprised myself that I haven’t done it before! But in a way, I’m going back to one of my first loves in music.
PAN M 360: Instrumental music can constantly evolve, but the textural possibilities of electronics take us elsewhere, indeed. Does that justify your current approach?
STEVEN WILSON: Yes. Rock ’n’ roll was the dominant form of music during the second half of the 20th century, and jazz was the dominant form for the first half. These musics followed their natural cycle and today, I think the guitar-bass-drums form is foreign to many young people. The guitar is certainly no longer at the forefront of the mainstream, it has become what was the jazz trumpet for rock fans, the dominant instrument of another era. Of course, there will always be jazz fans and rock fans, but as far as the mainstream of popular culture is concerned, there is no doubt that electronics dominates. And my music reflects that reality. Without trying to sound one way or another, however, this new proposal remains consistent in my discography.
PAN M 360: The references of The Future Bites are vast, from synth-pop to R&B to krautrock and IDM, all perfectly distinct from the previous cycles.
STEVEN WILSON: Yes, I think my audience will be slightly surprised and enjoy it afterwards, because it’s an integral part of my musical universe. I’ve always aspired to create that musical climate where the idea of genre is irrelevant. In this album, I dare to believe that it is not possible to describe what I do in terms of genres. All you can say is that this is music by Steven Wilson. My early role models were David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Kate Bush, Neil Young, Tom Waits, the kind of artist you can’t describe through a genre of music. All you can say is that they make their music. I don’t compare myself at all to these great artists, but from a philosophical point of view, that’s what I want to do: to create my own musical genre, to allow myself to confront it with my audience. Your fans are with you because they respect your right to do different things. It’s not easy to do that, not to be generic, not to be easily categorized. I hope I’ve become that artist.
PAN M 360: Couldn’t you do something else in the future?
STEVEN WILSON: Absolutely! That being said, this album is not totally different from the others, it’s a progressive evolution of my music. It’s not a complete change, it’s a slightly more direct mode of expression with a more pop sensibility. The guitar is downplayed on this record, it’s played in a more abstract way, in a more sound design way. The instrument in the foreground of this album is the synthesizer. Because this world of sounds in which we live is electronic. The sounds of computer games, cell phones or even doorbells are electronic.
PAN M 360: This time it’s the song that counts. Your music serves the song. In the previous cycle, your excellent musicians, all of them virtuosos, fantastic shredders, etc., have been very good. This time, everything is built around the song.
STEVEN WILSON: Yes, the guitar is more of a sound design element, a textural element. The only guitarist on this record is me, and I don’t have any aspirations to become a shredder. I’m a singer-songwriter who uses the guitar to create sounds for his songs. I’m only interested in using tools to serve the song. So I play guitar and other instruments, bass, all keyboards… I know that some people are legitimately interested in showing what they can accomplish on their instrument, I am personally interested in creating songs and music. So this is my loneliest record for many years, since before the birth of Porcupine Tree.
PAN M 360: Why this more pop sensibility in The Future Bites?
STEVEN WILSON: This album is much more about melody, singing and sound, not really about big solos and musical complexity. I don’t mean to say that there’s no sophistication: it’s hard to create sophisticated pop songs. The fact that this album has more catchphrases, stronger melodies, reflects a stronger chorus presence.
PAN M 360: An album of nine songs – why such brevity?
STEVEN WILSON: I had nearly 25 songs to record but I wasn’t going to exceed 45 minutes. It’s a 42-minute record and I’m very proud of it! Most classical albums are in the 35-45 minute range, the natural attention of the listener can’t be longer than more or less 40 minutes, so… You know, it’s not easy to exclude songs you really like.
PAN M 360: Who are the guest artists?
STEVEN WILSON: They appear here and there, each on a song. Nick Bates plays bass on one, Richard Barbieri plays keyboards on another. There are backing vocals… In my opinion, the main guest is David Kosten, my co-producer. I’m a big fan of his work – Bat for Lashes, Keen, Everything Everything, and so on. We are the same age, we grew up with similar inspiration. David has a great knowledge of music history, but he never works on its reproduction.
He made me realize that some of my previous work could be hidden behind the tribute. To the Bone is a tribute to the experimental pop of the ’80s, Hand.Cannot.Erase. is a tribute to the progressive rock of the ’70s . So David was very effective in keeping me from getting lost in another tribute. It really refreshed me, because I’m easily sucked in, impressed by things that remind me of others I already liked. Instead, David wanted to push me to find something else that was totally mine. And so what I like about The Future Bites is that there are no obvious references. It’s all there, but I don’t think the musical references are simple, and I don’t think they’re a tribute to the past.
PAN M 360: How can you avoid references that are too obvious?
STEVEN WILSON: As we get older, our knowledge of the history of music becomes more solid, we are able to recognize musical references when we listen to new productions. Let’s take the example of Kamasi Washington, the new face of jazz, according to many journalists; I listen to his music, I hear Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, music I already knew. What’s the problem? Are the references too familiar to me? Maybe they are… On the other hand, I listen to Billie Eilish, so young, probably unaware of all these references… which leads her to be incredibly refreshing! In a way, her ignorance of pop music is a great advantage for her.
PAN M 360: How would you translate your new songs on stage? A choir and an army of synthesizers?
STEVEN WILSON: I’m starting to think about it. There will be a band, if not to play the most complex songs in my repertoire. There will be more intimate moments with me and electronic accompaniment. In fact, I will always have a full band, even for the more electronic aspects of the new album. There will also be stronger elements for the visual side of the show, images, movies, lighting, etc. We should start the tour next September if the world situation allows it, of course.
In 2013, Rhye released Woman, an album that heralded a most promising career. A magnificent countertenor voice, cautious use of digital technologies, inspired melodic proposals, extremely refined pop. We swooned, and here we are seven years later.
Rhye was initially a duo made up of Canada’s Mike Milosh and Denmark’s Robin Hannibal, but the latter abandoned the project before it even took off, due to contractual conflicts for another recording project, the group Quadron.
Under the pseudonym Rhye, Toronto-born (now in Los Angeles) Mike Milosh has since released the album Blood in 2018 and the EP Spirit in 2019. His film scores, a dancefloor project he plans to do with the world-famous producer Diplo, and the high-flying works he created for Secular Sabbath, an immersive event concept designed with his wife Genevieve Medow Jenkins, are among his several creative projects.
Now comes the imminent release of Home, under the Rhye banner and on the Last Gang label. Composed in 2019 and 2020, Home was recorded at United Recording Studios and Revival at The Complex (Earth Wind & Fire), and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine).
This is an excellent opportunity for a chat with Mike Milosh in early 2021.
PAN M 360: Listening to your new album, it seems obvious that you are not working alone, right?
MIKE MILOSH: I work alone at first, then I surround myself. I’m responsible for all the production, I do most of the composition and writing, then I team up with other musicians to raise the proposal. About 30 musicians take part in my projects, eight of us are on stage during my tours. I constantly have to adjust with this group of colleagues who have families and cannot always be free for long periods.
PAN M 360: There was a five-year gap between the release of the first album and the second. Since then, 2018, however, three albums have been released. How do you explain the first hiatus, which was much longer than the others?
MIKE MILOSH: I’ve given more than 800 concerts since 2013, I’ve toured a lot. I toured for five years after the first album, but I had contractual problems with the label at the time (Polydor), I had to get out of that contract by touring and reaping the income necessary to achieve my goals and find a new recording contract. It was very complicated to do this, legal fees, etcetera. There was a big black cloud over the Rhye project, it eventually dissipated. So I recorded Blood, then Spirit, a piano-vocal EP, which then led me to the creation of Home. It’s amazing how far I’ve come! I don’t really have any regrets, the past is the past and I’m still making music, which is what I like to do most in life.
PAN M 360: You had a contractual agreement with Universal (Polydor), a major, you’ve finally chosen an independent record deal. What justifies this choice?
MIKE MILOSH: Shooting or recording with a lot of people is expensive. I became a kind of entrepreneur, I had to really think about the expenses and the possible survival of the project. I have to reinvest the profits in the heart of the project and sacrifice any excessive expenses, especially lighting. I assume that my show will be intimate and really dedicated to music. So I see myself in a way that the music industry doesn’t see me, as a singer, director, composer, producer. I also have to vary my projects, which I do with great pleasure. When I compose for the cinema, it’s closer to classical music. I can also do classic rock, I have a more dancefloor project going on with Diplo, I also do the ambient music for Secular Sabbath, a project with my partner Genevieve that welcomes people in an intimate environment where music rubs shoulders with relaxation and gastronomy. I love making music in many forms, I also love photography and painting. I don’t see myself as a celebrity, I’m a relatively well-known musician who has to wear many hats, including the one that allows me to make money to keep going.
PAN M 360: Listening to Home leads to this observation: music recorded in the studio is closer to a performance on stage. How to explain this transition from an electronic production to a production based on instrumental music?
MIKE MILOSH: Before, I went through a phase where I was doing a lot of production, including many processes inherent to the use of digital technologies, a lot of editing as well. Now, the new album doesn’t have MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), everything is much more organic. It’s, I think, the consequence of my tours where there were eight of us on stage. No computers taken into account, the emphasis is on the uniqueness of each performance. When I compose now, I try to see how it translates on stage, how it can vary from one night to another. I play several instruments myself: drums, cello, most keyboards. I’m very interested in synthesizers, I can also write string arrangements. All in all, each instrument involved is really played by a human being.
PAN M 360: But why did you give up the electro side of your early Rhye material?
MIKE MILOSH: You know, Rhye remains Rhye. Before launching this project, I had another electronic project called Milosh, a pop project close to songwriting but electro. There was a time when I used to love electronic production, but at a certain point I got bored with the use of the computer. My body wanted to listen to real instruments, real strings, real wind instruments, real drums, a piano sound resulting from a subtle adjustment of the recording. There is in the instrumental performance this magic that is missing in electronic production, although the experimental side of electronic music remains very interesting for me.
It’s less interesting for me as a director. I’m currently interested in the textures of the instruments, the natural reverberation, the careful use of microphones, the warmth of analog technologies. But it remains the same style, my approach is centered on my ability to sing and compose songs. It’s always me you hear in the end. I don’t reinvent the wheel. I want to record what I like to hear in a song, in the sense that there is often something missing in pop production and that’s what I try to fill in.
PAN M 360: What do you think are the distinctive features of Home?
MIKE MILOSH: On this album, my dearest achievement was the recording of a Danish choir of about 50 female voices. It wasn’t easy to bring these singers together in one room and get the best out of it; the operating costs are high, the choral arrangements have to be well done, but it was quite natural for me to arrange these voices as it was the case with the strings on this recording.
On the other hand, I was very careful to maintain the balance of the arrangements, not to overload them, to arrange them soberly, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. In fact, it’s all a continuous process whose link is none other than myself. Basically, it’s similar to my early electronic recordings, although the means to achieve it are different. I’m trying to capture the human spirit involved, mine and that of my collaborators.
PAN M 360: On the lyrical side, can you explain the link between inspiration and result?
MIKE MILOSH: The inspiration for these songs comes mostly from real-life experiences. In my opinion, each of my songs must be embodied in real life experiences. My personal life and my artistic expression, therefore, are intimately merged. Of course, I try to exclude direct elements of my private life in my song lyrics, but my own experiences are certainly reflected without anyone knowing exactly what happened.
PAN M 360: Can you give us some examples?
MIKE MILOSH: I’ll give you two. The song “My Heart Bleeds” was a work in progress, I was working with a colleague in Los Angeles at the time, I wasn’t sure where I was going and I decided to wait for the idea to take shape. While I was waiting, my colleague’s African-American cousin was the victim of a racially motivated crime – she was stabbed, and fortunately got away. This event obsessed me… and clarified the idea of the song. Currently, there is a lot of racial tension in the United States, it affects me a lot and the lyrics of “My Heart Bleeds” is finally the result of this state of mind. Even though I don’t address this fact directly in the song, the text is a result of it.
In “Sweetest Revenge”, I express this idea of not conveying hatred and aggression towards anyone who can hurt me. I feel it is better to get on with my life and try to be happy. There is no point in taking revenge, the best therapy in the face of aggression is to move forward and find beauty in life.
From 2006 to 2020, Kent Nagano was Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, the global pandemic ruined the end of his Montreal stay at the helm of the OSM, a series of special concerts planned for last spring and summer… cancelled or postponed, obviously. We can already imagine invitations in 2021 when the concert halls will be allowed to reopen. In the meantime, he granted this in-depth interview to PAN M 360.
The first question that comes to mind after this year of profound disruption in the music world concerns the maestro’s final round, of which 2020 was his last year at the helm of the OSM, an exit unfortunately overshadowed by the pandemic.
“Of course, it’s disappointing. I’m afraid that the current situation is simply out of our control. We must remain positive. And I think the vaccine will have a positive effect by late spring or early summer. The finale was really very rich, not one concert but a rich process, that’s the best word to use. Several concerts linked together, which were going to have a crescendo or a general recapitulation towards the end, and that involved not only the OSM but also the community and many artists from Quebec who joined the orchestra, it was also the last Classical Virée that was going to give Andrew Wan another chance to perform the Samy Moussa concerto that we recorded. It’s always different when you play a brand new concerto twice.”
It’s easy to imagine that the conductor, based (mostly) in Paris and (sometimes) in San Francisco, and whose main job is in Hamburg, will be entitled to important invitations when the Maison symphonique reopens. In the meantime, he remains Honourary Conductor of the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, where he was Music Director from 2000 to 2006, but his most important duties are in Hamburg, where he is Music Director of the State Opera and the Philharmonic Orchestra.
A more festive conclusion to his Montreal direction would have been desirable, but… At 69 years of age, Nagano accepts his fate wisely and expresses a deep attachment to the city that has embraced him for at least 14 years.
“When your child leaves home, the relationship is different, of course. You don’t see each other every day, but that has nothing to do with the love you have for your child. In this case, I actually feel like it’s not over yet. My respect and admiration for the OSM is just as strong today as it was on day one, if not more so. My feelings for Montreal and the orchestra are much deeper today. Because the orchestra can accomplish so much, which means that we have developed a very, very intense personal relationship. And that hasn’t ended. So yes, I’m looking forward to the future.”
The maestro leaves with his head held high after 14 years of service to the OSM, and is proud of his Montreal achievements.
“What am I most proud of? It’s terribly difficult to say. Together, we have done so much.”
Without claiming to be exhaustive, it nevertheless lends itself to gambling. The construction of the Maison symphonique comes first:
“We started by bringing the orchestra closer to the community. We first filled Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, which led us to the realization of an old dream of which Quebec can be very proud. The construction of the new concert hall was carried out in 2007, 2008 and 2009 in the midst of a global banking scandal. It is so impressive to me that Montrealers and Quebecers were saying ‘Let’s do it’, very impressive despite the global financial fragility.”
The OSM Choir, under the direction of Andrew Megill, is then touched on by the maestro.
“I had always felt that we needed a choir that could sing at the same level as the orchestra, so we created the OSM Choir.”
The acquisition of the Pierre Béique organ is another source of great pleasure for Nagano. The purchase of this orchestral organ was made possible thanks to the late Jacqueline Desmarais, a patron of the arts. Its name honours the contribution of Pierre Béique, the OSM’s first director general, from 1939 to 1970.
“Many concert halls have left an empty space where the organ was supposed to be!” Nagano laughs. “Installed at the Maison symphonique, the Pierre Béique organ is currently one of the best in the world.”
The Maestro is also pleased with a relationship that he feels has been strengthened between the Montreal community and the OSM, beginning with the Classical Tour, which is normally presented at the end of the summer.
“That’s why we’ve set up our summer festival, La Virée classique. I’ve always felt that one of the unique, special features of Montreal is its summer festival season. There’s a great atmosphere and there’s a place for classical music.”
Maestro Nagano goes on to cite La musique aux enfants, an OSM music-education initiative conducted in partnership with the Université de Montréal and the Commission scolaire de la Pointe-de-l’Île. The goal was to introduce preschoolers to intensive music learning. The project was inaugurated in November 2016, first initiated at St-Rémi public school in Montréal-Nord.
“I am very happy with our involvement in this very special school, which provides children with a high level of education.”
Finally, the rejuvenation of the OSM’s audience is a great victory for Maestro Nagano.
“For me, one of the things that people don’t realize so much is that over time, the orchestra and I have lowered the average age of our audience; we see young adults, teenagers, whole families. The orchestra today has one of the youngest audiences in all of North America, without neglecting our mature audience. I’ve always thought that the OSM audience should be the people you meet on the streets of Montreal, people from all walks of life, all age groups, all interests, all levels of experience and education.
“The idea was to reflect Montreal, a very special city: mosaic of cultures, high quality of life, cuisine, arts, culture, education, visionary industries, advanced technologies, etc. When the Montreal public comes to us, they can feel, hear and be nourished through the OSM, the sense of belonging develops, it makes the orchestra all the more relevant. Slowly and surely, this representation of Montrealers is tangible in the OSM. It’s a sign of good health, and I think we can really be proud of it.”
Kent Nagano has not always enjoyed unanimous support. His conducting has sometimes been considered too soft by some. His artistic orientation, very open to the contemporary corpus and therefore not always consensual for the “classical audience”, has displeased those who are reluctant to change. It is also possible that these differences in values sometimes had a negative impact within some of the orchestra’s staff, which may have affected some performances.
Regrets, Maestro Nagano… He takes responsibility for everything, starting with an artistic direction that he feels he has imposed through dialogue.
“We had a fairly open dialogue between members of the OSM, the decisions that were taken were not unilateral. There was a lot of discussion among us, because when we wanted to do something important, because we all had to go in the same direction. If you divide and go in different directions, you can’t achieve your goals. Without discussion, by losing the sense of unity and community, you may find yourself in very dangerous situations.”
That being said, the maestro remains aware that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
“If you are an artist and you take risks, you have to assume the difficulties and the consequences. Not everyone will systematically understand, not everyone will be able to feel at the same time what has been implemented. The orchestra quickly achieved my initial goals and each year I set the bar higher and higher. My only regret is that I didn’t have enough time. But maybe that’s a good thing…”
In this, he suggests that the development of the OSM must continue, a new direction must now take over with Maestro Rafael Payare.
“I think it’s important for an orchestra to be able to go back to the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and to get to the present day. The idea of an orchestra for musicians is to make music together. Artists from different nationalities, cultures, or social classes pool their talent to achieve what they cannot accomplish individually. This is a kind of metaphor for democracy.”
Photo: Martin Girard/Shoot Studio
The spotlight was on Louis-Philippe Marsolais as he performed the French-horn encore that brought to a close the first European tour in the history of Montreal’s Orchestre métropolitain, at the Philharmonie de Paris.
“It was like weightlessness,” Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin recalls. “All of a sudden, there was no longer any barrier between emotion and playing. It gave us wings.”
Three years later, almost to the day, Louis-Philippe Marsolais, 43, embraces the lull caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has allowed him to catch his breath after a marathon of concerts, recordings and tours. From one day to the next, we went from 100 miles an hour to a wall,” recalls the bearded horn player. “It was great, it gave me a chance to step back.”
Principal horn of the Orchestre métropolitain (OM), member of the Pentaèdre wind quintet, professor at l’Université de Montréal and father of Violette, Henri, and Victor, Louis-Philippe Marsolais has not been idle since the beginning of confinement in mid-March. Like everyone else, the classical music industry has had to conform to this new norm of physical distancing and atomization of society.
Orchestras, the very incarnation of strength in numbers and esprit de corps, have been fragmented by health measures. It is difficult to become accustomed to the transformation of this environment for which tradition is the backbone. Abroad, for example, acrylic panels separate the musicians of the wind instrument section of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. In our backyard, the OM has to occupy an entire hall – including the floor – in order to be able to rehearse with sufficient distance. Enough to distort the essence of classical music? Yes and no, answers Marsolais.
“[With distancing in the hall,] the speed of sound comes into play,” he explains. “We noticed at the beginning that we were always playing early or late. You always have to readjust the scales, it becomes mathematical.” This goes against an orchestra’s personality, he says, as he emphasises the communal qualities of music, where listening and reacting to the playing of others prevails. “For me, the great pleasure of making music is being with the people I love and having fun together,” says the musician, partially hidden by his spotted mask. He gets this feeling much more often “with his gang in an orchestra” than on tour as a soloist.
Louis-Philippe Marsolais (in the center). Photo: François Goupil
Rockstar in Austria, nuisance on the orange line
Marsolais cherishes unforgettable moments from his expeditions in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Like this time he went to Austria for the most important festival paying tribute to Schubert’s music, The Schubertiades. His Pentaèdre Quintet presented a newly released recording before “1000 old Austrians singing Schubert at night before going to bed”. Marsolais had experienced one of the moments in his career that made him feel like a superhero. “At the end, people came to us crying… it’s really quite a feeling,” he recalls today, wearing a Captain America T-shirt. “It doesn’t happen often in classical music.”
He first tasted this collective appreciation for classical music some 20 years ago when he was completing his training at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany. After obtaining a DEC at Joliette and a BAC at McGill, both in music, he decided to go abroad to the home of Bach and Beethoven. “I used to get stopped on the street by passers-by who would tell me how lucky I was to play the horn, and that they couldn’t wait to hear me play,” he recalls. “Here in Montreal, you’re more likely to get yelled at in the metro because you take up too much room!”
You don’t need to have written a doctoral thesis to understand why classical music is so marginal here in Quebec. It has simply never been part of its (young) popular culture. However, can it still be described as inaccessible, or worse, elitist?
“We’ve tried hard not to,” says Marsolais. “There is so much diversity, so many free shows. It’s possible to follow the scene very closely, even for students or people with little income.” According to Marsolais, this has resulted in a rejuvenation of the fanbase of Montreal orchestras, whereas young professionals have been gaining ground on the bluehairs for the past decade. The OM has seen its proportion of unit tickets sold to the under-35s jump by 188% between 2015 and 2020. The same is true of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), where the number of subscription packages for those 34 and under also nearly doubled between 2015 and 2020.
OSM and OM, opposite atmospheres
In addition to being the solo horn for the OM, Marsolais also served as third horn for the OSM between 2013 and 2015. “I dug that job a lot less, it was much less demanding, but people found it cooler and I made five times more money,” he says with irony.
Shortly after his arrival in the Nagano troupe, “political jousts” got the better of him. Although he was assured that the brass section had never sounded as good as it did in with him present, he was given no clear explanation as to why he had been dismissed. “When all this happened, it really knocked me down,” he confides. “It made me lose faith in the importance of music, in a context like that.”
The months that followed this turning point in his career were not easy. Marsolais plunged into an implacable quest to prove to everyone that he was still first in class. With hindsight, he now understands the darker side of his competitiveness, which has sometimes overshadowed his interpersonal relationships. “When I was younger, I wasn’t aware of what it could do to others,” he says.
This departure from the OSM was perhaps a life-saver for Marsolais’ professional health. He was able to devote more time to the OSM, which he now places on an equal footing with its main competitor. “On paper, the OSM has better musicians,” the horn player says. Afterwards, you wonder how it is that the OM sometimes sounds better than the OSM. “It’s really a matter of cohesion.”
They owe this cohesion in large part to their captain, the Quebec prodigy Yannick Nézet-Séguin. “It makes all the difference in the world to have a leader who is strong, inspired, respected and competent,” says Marsolais. “There is no confrontation, no ‘I will play louder than you to show that I’m better’.” For me, it comes from the leadership of the person at the podium.”
Marsolais’ admiration for Nézet-Séguin is not unreciprocated, far from it. “When he became the main French horn of the OM, it was an extraordinary addition,” the conductor says. “Louis-Philippe has this way of inspiring us all. He is so dedicated and reliable, which is very important for horn players.”
Nézet-Séguin nevertheless describes his “fluidity of style” as “one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the world, and the great horn players he knows.” It’s thanks, among other things, to his various orchestral and chamber-music experiences with Pentaèdre that Marsolais was able to build his enviable versatility. So much so that he estimates he has performed 90 percent of the French-horn repertoire that’s commonly played.
Making music for the right reasons
The next step for Louis-Philippe Marsolais? The organisation of an international French-horn festival, which had been suspended due to the pandemic. Until then, the most accessible of Quebec virtuosos advises neophytes not to be impressed by the immensity and complexity of the classical repertoire. “You can listen to classical music and think, ‘wow, that’s beautiful.’ You don’t have to say to yourself, ‘ah, there’s a 1-4-5-7-1 progression here!’” He also assures you that his grandiose knowledge of solfège and music theory has in no way affected his appreciation of his favourite non-classical artists – he’s followed the career of the Cowboys Fringants since their beginnings and loves the works of the great French chansonniers and American crooners.
Marsolais has the career he has because he “makes music for the right reasons.” He adds, “I don’t know if it’s because I came from another planet, but I never wondered if I was going to be able to make a living from it. I think that innocence at that moment in my life allowed me to go wherever I wanted to go, without needing security or answers about what was waiting for me.”
“Even when he was young, everyone admired Louis-Philippe,” Nézet-Séguin recalls. “He handles this with great humility. It’s a beautiful story that continues to be written through people, like Louis-Philippe, who have joined OM over the years.”
Sunday, 3 December, 2017. After performing a moving six-minute solo by Ravel in front of his lectern at the sumptuous Philharmonie de Paris, Louis-Philippe Marsolais burst into tears. At the end of this “moment of grace,” as his conductor described it, this likeable rock star from the shadows could once again say, mission accomplished.
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