Mashups, the bootleg jams blending two or more often incongruous tracks by name artists, were born in in 1994 when Evolution Control Committee dropped Public Enemy’s rhymes over Herb Alpert’s corny horns. Ten years later, Danger Mouse made his mark with a milestone of the mashup movement, blending the Beatles and Jay-Z for The Grey Album (though for fucking around with the Fab Four, you can’t beat the productions of Tom Caruana).
In 2011, Tennessee-born turntable trickster Amerigo Gazaway delivered a mashup album with staying power, parallel-parking the sounds of Nigerian Afrobeat godfather Fela Kuti and Golden Age rap icons De La Soul, the Native Tongues label’s “hippies of hip-hop”. The combination was potent, and Gazaway’s deft fusion and obvious affection for the source materials landed Fela Soul on numerous high-profile year-end best-of lists.
A decade later, it’s 2021, the year De La Soul finally regained ownership of their music. Also worthy of celebration is the tenth anniversary of Fela Soul, and Gazaway is marking the occasion with a free giveaway of a deluxe edition of the album, with some sweet bonus tracks tacked on. PAN M 360 checked in with Gazaway to look back at Fela Soul, and look forward to upcoming productions.
PAN M 360: What makes Fela Soul so memorable, from what we could call the golden era of mashups, is that unlike most of the rest, there’s no irony to it. It’s not ‘so wrong it’s right’, as much as I love that… It’s just 100% ‘this feels right’. Do you feel the same way about it?
Amerigo Gazaway: I would have to agree. I always try to ask myself the question “does this feel right?” while working on these projects, and Fela Soul was no exception. It was the first conceptual collaboration that I ever produced and for that reason it holds a very special place in my heart. I wanted to create something that sounded good sonically, first and foremost, but also provide further meaning and context for those familiar with the artists or willing to dive deeper into their catalogs.
PAN M 360: The words and music of De La Soul and Fela Kuti both carry a big charge of positive energy, De La in a more lighthearted way, Fela more militantly, agitating for positive change. Were you conscious of that dynamic while making Fela Soul?
Amerigo Gazaway: I was. That was actually one of the main reasons I chose to pair the two artists together. However, I do think my style has evolved over the years and I have become much more particular about which songs and artists to combine ,and why. For instance, on the original Fela Soul project I didn’t incorporate as much of Fela Kuti’s voice and political messages as I probably would have if I had created the album today. Which is why on the new Fela Soul track “More Than U Know”, you can hear Fela singing lyrics which directly correspond to what De La Soul is talking about in the chorus and verses. It’s those little nuances and connections that really bring these projects to life and make it feel as though the artists I’m combining are actually in conversation with one another.
PAN M 360: Which of the jams of Fela Soul are you most pleased with today, and why?
Amerigo Gazaway: “Breakadawn” is still one of my favourites, mainly because it utilizes Fela’s infamous “Water No Get Enemy” sample, but also because of the fact that it was the first seed that led to the creation of the whole Fela Soul project.
PAN M 360:Fela Soul is just the tip of the iceberg, as far as your productions go. Care to suggest another classic from your catalogue that newcomers might also appreciate?
Amerigo Gazaway: Yasiin Gaye is another Soul Mates project that I created back in 2014. It combines the music of soul singer Marvin Gaye with the lyrics of rapper/actor Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. It’s another one of those projects that just felt “right” from the start, from the music to the lyrics to the overlapping themes. This two-part album is considered a classic among many of my fans, and also marks a pivotal turning point in my career and artistic growth. But there are others as well – A Common Wonder, The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon, The Trill Is Gone, The B.I.G. Payback and more.
PAN M 360: What are you working on right now? What’s next in the pipeline?
Amerigo Gazaway: I’m currently working on a handful of projects with various MCs and artists, such as Napoleon Da Legend (Berlin) and Petty (Nashville). In addition to that, I’m working on my next instrumental hip-hop project as well as several top-secret Soul Mates collaborations. Last but not least, I’ve recently started composing soundtracks for film, TV and video games, which is something I’ve always been passionate about.
Trained as a saxophonist and composer, Montrealer Jason Sharp has followed the curve of contemporary expression to arrive at a focal point where the rays the Western classical tradition, modern and contemporary jazz, and soaring electronics converge. All of this baggage is brought together in his recently released solo project The Turning Centre Of A Still World, his third album on the Constellation label.
Specializing in bass and baritone saxophones, Sharp invites us on a new episode of his creative life, a journey spread out in eight stations. At the confluence of the genres that have forged his compositional identity, Jason Sharp brings together the aesthetics of today and offers this inspired project.
Sharp deserves to be known by music lovers, which is precisely why PAN M 360 shares this first conversation with the musician.
PAN M 360: We’ve heard you playing in different contexts, not only “serious” music but also creative pop like Elisapie’s songs. So we want to know more about you, beyond this new album. Where are you from and what led you to Montreal ?
Jason Sharp: I was born in Edmonton, but I moved around. After my first music studies in Alberta, I went to school in Toronto, then I continued in Amsterdam in jazz composition. I have been based in Montreal since 13 years.
PAN M 360: You have a jazz background, but also an electronic background mixed with contemporary. So you switched progressively from jazz to live electronics, didn’t you?
Jason Sharp: Very much so. It all adds up to my background, that’s for sure. Hopefully my recent record explores all those experiences. From the very beginning, I started to study the classical saxophone. After high school, I started improvisation in the jazz context, and then years later I went to the University of Toronto to study jazz performance. Through that cycle I started composing, drawing a little more to my classical and contemporary music background in orchestration, and then into more a compositional focus, where the improvisation is also used with the instruments that I play. It led me towards live electronics in Amsterdam, and after coming out of that school experience, I left my own devices to discover my own sound, and I feel it’s just been a progression utilizing those different backgrounds of the music I’ve been making. So when I write for ensembles and film scores, I use all of them.
PAN M 360: How is the saxophone embedded in your compositional approach?
Jason Sharp: I play mainly baritone and bass saxophones. I started off with the alto sax, then I played in a saxophone quartet and I was lucky to play my own baritone sax at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. I found a voice playing baritone, and I was also playing tenor and baritone at University of Toronto. And then I ended up with the bass sax, which qualities are close to the baritone sax.
PAN M 360: The focus in your new music is not complex melodic patterns, but more textural and harmonic. What justifies that aesthetic?
Jason Sharp: Leaving the jazz lineage, I have been less interested in crafting melodic lines over harmonic progressions, and more interested in textures, timbres, evocative moods created out of the horns in more diverse orchestrations. I believe the baritone and bass saxophones are uniquely adapted for that, it can function in a bass role, also harmonically relevant in overtones. Its textures and timbres are rich, those horns fit very well in that language.
PAN M 360: What is your electronic gear?
Jason Sharp: Baritone and bass saxes are used 50/50. There are several microphones for the saxophones, I’m also playing bass pedal, and Moog Synthesizer for bass and the harmonic foundation. For most of the orchestration above and beyond, I built a modular synth around that setup, and then a harp monitor to provide a link for the synthesizer, So all the rhythmic elements are being clocked while I play. I’ve built a modular synth setup around that concept. Then I’ve got another sensor for my breath, to control the white noise and more textural elements of the synthesizer. All the orchestrations are handled between me playing the bass pedal while I’m playing sax or modular synth responding to my breath or harp monitor.
PAN M 360: Is there a danger of being compared to your colleague Colin Stetson, because he also plays baritone and bass saxes and uses electronic devices?
Jason Sharp: (laughs) Beyond Colin Stetson comparisons, it’s good being introduced to more diverse sounds on the saxophone in particular. If my music ends up being a gateway to discover people like Evan Parker, John Butcher, Ned Rothenberg, Anthony Braxton and others that could use the saxophones with extended techniques, that’s great. It’s always interesting for people to find gateways and discover new music, also in the electronic field. What is unique about my new record is that the saxophone is at the forefront. It’s considered to be an instrument within an orchestration and it’s not in that specific case. So if I can help people discover other saxophone players with contemporary ideas, that’s also great, and all part of the evolution of the instrument.
PAN M 360: Are you also involved in projects that could implicate a different approach than the one leading your solo projects?
Jason Sharp: Yes, for a concert performed live in Winnipeg this September, I wrote some music for two drummers, pedal steel guitar, two vocalists and saxophone. This project is called FYEAR. The writing is more harmonically and melodically driven, it’s written for an orchestration that’s not so electronic, a little more rooted in the jazz idiom.
PAN M 360: Are you going to perform your new solo album project soon?
Jason Sharp: Yeah! There are also films for each track done by Guillaume Vallée. The whole album in a visual form is also released by Constellation. There will be a short movie accompanying each piece. So the next step is a live concert at Phi Center, I will be solo while the filmmaker will be projecting the images. I will provide the same triggers to the film maker. It’s gonna be a live audiovisual performance of the film, that brings the audience to the heart of the project. Then you will be able to witness the physicality of the performance and this ability to improvise with myself.
Jason Sharp performs his solo project, with the images of Guillaume Vallée, at Phi Centre, November 20.
Naya Ali has become a major figure in Quebec and Canadian hip-hop, and is releasing her second album with the firm intention of reaching the next level: international influence. Backed by star beatmaker Adrian X (Drake, The Weeknd), who joins loyal collaborators Kevin Figs and Chase.Wav, the Ethiopian-born Montreal rapper releases Godspeed: Elevated, eight bright tracks charting the journey of transcendence.
This path has been forged since childhood, through early desires to assert herself on the rap planet, a cautious retreat to university studies and a reaffirmation of her creative identity. Her first album, Godspeed: Baptism (Prelude), confirmed his talent, and with the second chapter, an ascension that was slow and sure is now accelerating.
At the suggestion of PAN M 360, Naya Ali agrees to describe the eight tracks of this new opus on the Coyote Records label.
Naya Ali: “Air Ali” is the intro. It’s about the feeling I have of having one foot in the door and one foot out the back. That feeling leads to remembering where I came from, how I grow, what I gain and lose along the way. When you grow, not everyone can come with you.
PAN M 360: A paradoxical feeling?
Naya Ali: Yes, when you try to rise you have to change your mindset, you have to lighten up to take flight. The people you come in contact with then will not all do it like you do, everyone is not at the same stage of their development in life. So there is what I was used to and there is the new world, the newness, the possibilities that are opening up for me.
PAN M 360: Who’s the main beatmaker for this track?
Naya Ali: Kevin Figs, who I work with on a regular basis, and who did a few tracks on my first album. He’s from Montreal, works a lot in Los Angeles and Montreal, and has a very Atlanta sound but is also able to create other worlds. We have a great dynamic together.
PAN M 360: Let’s move on to “Stop Playin”.
Naya Ali: I did this piece in Toronto with Adrian X. It’s a middle finger, but very joyful. It suggests this: you may not like me, but respect me. It’s also the affirmation of the neglected one who comes in with all this energy.
PAN M 360: Well… is the underdog you think you are still a successful late bloomer?
Naya Ali: I have a clear vision of who I am. Sometimes I’m misunderstood by some people, they don’t always know where they stand with who I am. Anyway, that’s part of the process and it legitimizes the energy of this track. Musically, it’s a high-BPM song and it’s a straightforward rap. I can be melodic as well, some tracks have to be sung, but it’s also important for me to keep the rap up front.
PAN M 360: By the way, you clearly impose yourself among the female MCs in Montreal?
Naya Ali: Only women?
PAN M 360: Uh, sorry. Yes, we should no longer associate a rapper’s talent with their gender.
Naya Ali: I’m with you!
PAN M 360: One of these days, these considerations will be completely gone. Until then, we can talk about the song “Str8 Up”, ha ha!
Naya Ali: “Str8 Up” is the last track I did for this album. It has an energy that needed to emerge. I had this image in mind when I created this track: a door opens and you walk through a valley with snakes in it. To get to the next door, you have to cross this valley and its snakes. So you have to make peace with the idea that there will always be snakes, that is, you have to keep your focus on what really matters in order to rise above the obstacles, doubts and hard work. Its sounds are a bit drill-y, bouncy, but are sometimes more intimate and melodic.
PAN M 360: “Another One” is clean, minimalist and powerful. Big bass, little embellishments in the arrangements, and the voice in front.
Naya Ali: I was inspired by J Cole for this track, because his flow is clean and powerful. There is no superfluous ad lib in his rap.
PAN M 360: You are also like that, direct, without detours.
Naya Ali: That’s right, so the theme of “Another One” suggests that music is a bigger medium than me. Music to me is a movement, a paradigm shift, a way to speak and energize the world. “Another One” is pure rap, very culturally charged. We used some Ethio-jazz style piano tracks. The production is by Adrian X, Chase.Wav and myself. The mix is by Mixed by Gee and John Brown.
PAN M 360: Here we are at the stop for “102 Bus It”
Naya Ali: The number 102 is my neighbourhood bus that I used to ride as a child and teenager. We also inserted samples of Ethiopian spiritual music, because this track is about my origins and the culture passed on by my parents. So I’m talking about my DNA, about Montreal where I grew up, about summers spent in Virginia with my father who lives there, and that’s why we still use Ethiopian music samples like the lyre.
PAN M 360: “Toronto’s Gold” is next. What’s that about
Naya Ali: The first weekend I met producer Adrian X at his office, there were several shootings in Toronto. Violence is not what defines this city. For the past few years, however, there has been an unhealthy vibe, a poison that has taken hold in the minds of these armed, clannish, territorial kids. This insanity is taking root in the mentality of the young boys, but also of the girls who think it’s cool to keep such company. This culture of violence is no longer simply a question of economic poverty, it has become a way to show off one’s power. So these kids with guns are eliminating their chances of getting rich in Toronto by choosing this culture of violence. And it’s happening here now too, this song could very well be called “Montreal’s Gold”. So what can we do? Change this mindset by offering young people opportunities in art, sports, science, etc. The beat of “Toronto’s Gold” is heavy, the atmosphere is dark, the tone is direct and pure. For the music, Adrian X produced this track, we completed it in Montreal with Chase.Wav and John Brown.
PAN M 360: “King”… Who is King?
Naya Ali: It’s a universal feeling: that of loss and grief. For me, it’s a personal ordeal I went through when my dog Simba died last year. The text was written while he was sick, and I wanted to prolong his life forever through this song. On this album, by the way, this is the song where I open up the most. The music is by Adrian X, we went with a Frank Ocean vibe.
PAN M 360: The last track is called “Light Switch (outro)”
Naya Ali: The album starts out punchy and assertive, and ends with emotion and an openness on my part. There is a lot of emotion in me, I’m starting to open up. No, I’ve never been afraid to open up, but I do reveal things in myself at the right time. Opening up, however, does not mean talking about my personal life. I prefer to keep my private life private and keep it a mystery… while remaining open and accessible.
The Witness is the latest addition to the discography of Montreal’s internationally acclaimed Suuns – six albums and one EP, all of high quality, including a collaborative album with Jerusalem in my Heart.
The new album explores new avenues: the inclusion of acoustic, wind, and string instruments, and superb jazz-like arrangements punctuating the hybridization between avant-rock, electronic and experimental aesthetics that Suuns has been accustomed to since 2010.
The Witness poetically addresses various angles of our globalized voyeurism, planetary facts and gestures simultaneously observed daily by millions of humans.
Reached in Paris where he lives now with his partner, Ben Shemie played the game of track-by-track for this new album.
The Witness is released on Joyful Noise Recordings and Secret City Records, an excellent opus of which Shemie is the frontman and main composer. Suuns will perform the material on September 25, during Pop Montreal.
PAN M 360: There are obvious changes happening in the new Suuns music. There are differences from the previous records, mainly in the arrangements. There are even acoustic moments with reeds and brass, and also melodic hooks. What are, for you, the main changes?
Ben Shemie: It wasn’t conscious, we didn’t know we’re gonna go in a different direction. But it happens. It is an oversimplification of something new we wanted to do. And there is also more focus done in the lyrics, we’ve never been a lyric-driven band before. This time, the songwriting is more lyrical and definitely more melodic than the stuff we’ve been done in the past. Also I think it’s more ambitious, arrangement-wise. It’s kind of nice for all of us to not do the same kind of thing again, and push ahead. And be more ambitious.
PAN M 360: Let’s take the first song, “Third Stream”.
Ben Shemie: It is like a late-era Talk Talk kind of sound, closer to improvisation and contemporary music. I like to imagine a band as a general model of trajectory by which it can evolve, something more introspective and not pop music anymore. So because there is more contemporary music background in our world, we thought it would be cool to put some into the songs. For the writing of this record, I didn’t try to make it electronic as much, but I just tried to make something very beautiful and something broader, with saxophones and flutes – played by Eric Hove, who will come on tour with us – with bigger arrangements.
I was still trying to keep the guitar, which is always some kind of a challenge nowadays. Yeah, this kind of a big sweeping, really focusing on the lyrics without trying to beat it over your head, it is now more rock ’n’ roll in a way, kind of more traditional. There is this Talk Talk sound in the arrangements, but also this solo Paul McCartney vibe. So when that “Third Stream” song came out originally, there was no specific intention, that was a demo and we built it up, yeah, I think it is really fun to play it.
PAN M 360: Is the production aspect the result of a collective work?
Ben Shemie: Mostly the band is producing the songs that I write. Obviously a lot happens in the studio, it changes. For example, we played with the saxophone to get this kind of vibe, see what works and what doesn’t, translating this into arrangements, and training ourselves with those arrangements. This is what happens organically. At the very end we have the mix that changes the sound quite a bit, in terms of what becomes a priority in what you’re hearing. That is mostly done by John Congleton, our mixing engineer.
PAN M 360: “Witness Protection” is the next song, tell us about it.
Ben Shemie: This song sounds more what you would associate with our band, a kind of minimal, dancy song. There is a lot of focus on the lyrics and the melody, and I guess that song encapsulates the themes of the record. That is to say, look, that’s something that we have in common: we see a lot of the same things, now there’s an almost pornographic way of looking at the world. Today we all have this common denominator of experiencing a lot of the same things virtually but… There is also this desensitization to what we see and what we get used to witnessing all these things. The protagonist of the song says that he needs to be protected, he needs to be taken care of. And to a certain extent we all have this kind of oversaturated world.
This song is one of the first songs I wrote. Out of that the other songs were born, not because of that, but that song helps set the foundation of the album. It’s our first release, it may be the most accessible song of the record. It’s weird, of course, all our music is weird for indie music fans, for the kind of scene that we’re in. I don’t personally think that this is weird, but for the mainstream indie movement, it is weird. We have always been in between the indie scene and avant-garde scene, that’s where we always found ourselves. So that song is like our whole career: it starts off cool and just when you think you’re gonna get the payoff, it turns into something else.
PAN M 360: The third song is “C-Thru”. What can you say about it?
Ben Shemie: “C-Thru” is a kind of a banger. Originally it was a solo piece for myself. My solo music is more condensed songs, but it doesn’t have guitar and drums, so I needed that band to make it kind of big, more massive and also to be able to fuck with my voice. I think it is a good song. And in the old-fashioned setting, the third song of an album is where you get your energy going.
PAN M 360: The fourth piece is entitled “Time Bender”.
Ben Shemie: This is the most minimal song, and I thought it wasn’t gonna make it onto this record. I thought it was too minimal, we had a hard time to find out how the groove would be. But it came out very nicely, kind of soulful, a bit more funky than I was expecting. Yeah, again, the arrangement is kind of weird.
PAN M 360: And “Clarity”?
Ben Shemie: This is the soulful song of the record. This sounds a little bit like “Third Stream”, I mean a song with a bigger sound, much more melodic than what we did previously. There is also a lot of work in the lyrics. At the moment of composing, we don’t think about the influences, but some people told us it sounds like a Robert Wyatt song and… when I listen to this music, I say wow, it’s true! The chord progression is indeed in the same style of writing. Wyatt’s music is more political than ours, it carries more like a message, but I get that comparison and take it as a compliment. Robert Wyatt is a great artist, some kind of deep.
PAN M 360: “The Fix” is another very ambitious song. Can you explain the creative process for it?
Ben Shemie: This is an old song, its first demo was recorded almost seven years ago. I was really excited about it, and we were doing the Hold /Still album in Dallas at that time. We recorded that song, and then the crystal idea of the demo wasn’t there. So you can bring it to the band and you can lose the magic that the demo had. A demo is a singular vision of a song. When you produce as a band, it becomes a group effort, and electronic music is somewhat of an individual adventure. We recorded it a couple of times and I thought it wasn’t as cool as the demo, kind of diluted. It just sucked! We were about to say forget this song, we tried enough, and we finally recorded it again, thinking maybe if it’s cool we would make it as a bonus track. It’s more like a rhythmic idea and then makes sense being repeated so often. It’s very much like the identity of the band. It’s more like a groove and a piece than a song.So I loved this weird reinterpretation, and John Congleton really did a great job mixing it. To be honest I love the new version and I still think the demo is better (laughs), but the demo is too scrappy.
PAN M 360: There is a sad song next, and there are some guitars involved.
Ben Shemie: “Go to my Head” is the first sad song I wrote. I don’t know what it means exactly, but it’s in the same spirit as “Third Steam” and “Clarity”, very ambitious in its instrumentation, classical guitar, piano, horns, a funny intro like Fleetwood Mac in their song “Albatross”. Nowadays, I find it more and more difficult to integrate the guitar in a so-called rock ’n’ roll band. I’m a guitar player myself, I don’t want to play like Jimmy Page, we were able to walk that line between electric guitar music and electronic music but… The more the years go by, the more difficult I find it to integrate the guitar. It’s not as relevant an instrument as it used to be, but I still love it, I still love the sound, I still think guitar music by rock or punk bands is one of my favourite genres of music. But it’s not necessarily the kind of music I play. Joe plays guitar in the band and his guitar often sounds like a synthesizer. It’s far from a normal guitar.
In this song, at the beginning, one of my greatest joys in Suuns is to play guitar with Joe. So I wrote an intro and an outro where we play guitar in harmony with each other. A pure, classic electric guitar sound. In an almost strange way, it sounds like new again. It seems like nobody plays like that anymore! So that’s a good way to set the stage for the main part of this song, which is more of a linear composition at first but much more ambitious in its scope.
PAN M 360: And we come to the last song of The Witness.
Ben Shemie: As the title suggests, “Trilogy” is a song in three sections. Actually, the more I think about it retrospectively, other songs of this album are done in three parts. I don’t really know why that is, but it seems to be that way unconsciously. This specific song is much focused on the lyrics and the voice being very upfront in the mix. The loudest vocal mix ever being done on our songs. And again, it’s very much our style: the beat comes in after almost four minutes and it goes out again. So there is a lot of restraint in this song. I think it’s a beautiful track.
PAN M 360: Doesn’t The Witness, such a refined and thoughtful album, owe its depth in part to the confinement imposed by the pandemic?
Ben Shemie: I’m glad this album is finally out, we pushed it further during the pandemic because we couldn’t tour. It would have been weird then to put a record out knowing we couldn’t play it. Instead, we had time to think about it, which we had never really done before. Spin, spin, spin, produce a record, spin, spin. It was the first time we could think about it. In a way, I’m strangely happy about it.
Prolific Montreal bassist Mishka Stein was stuck in quarantine after being forced to cut the last few shows of his Europe tour with chamber-pop artist, Patrick Watson, due to COVID-19, and began writing new, skeletal pieces of music.
He sent some new sonic ideas to local renowned producer Sam Woywitka—who has worked with Stein’s other band TEKE::TEKE, as well as Half Moon Run and DJ Khalil (Dr. Dre, Anderson .Paak, Kendrick Lamar)—and together they formed FHANG, a ferocious and experimental project featuring complex, intricate rhythms, lush neo-psych melodies, and mind-altering sonic textures and layers.
No song on the self-titled debut album is alike. The opening track “Stanza Fresca” is a soothing synth number, while “Vaudevillain” and “Many Moons (feat TiRon & Ayomari)” throw in the welcomed addition of hip hop. Then there’s the brain-bending “King Blame,” which sounds like old school “Lust For Life” Iggy Pop mixed in a macabre German discotheque.
Both members of FHANG were able to share their experience with PAN M 360 about crafting the diverse sounds on the self-titled debut, their self-directed music videos, Woywitka’s new label, Hidden Ship, and learning to play their songs live before their Festival de musique émergenteshow later this week.
PAN M 360: You’ve been categorized by some reviewers as psych-rock and while there are elements of that in your music, there are many more elements to the FHANG sound. A bit of hip hop, new wave, indie, post-punk…
Sam Woywitka: I agree. We’re getting added to, like, electro charts or whatever, like “new electro band FHANG, or like new Krautrock band, FHANG, new darkwave band, FHANG.” There are many different things we’re being called.
Mishka Stein: We’re just trying to take over Spotify (laughs).
PAN M 360: Did you two know what kind of sounds you wanted for FHANG, initially?
Mishka Stein: I feel like I would just credit Sam for the sound because I was just working on Ableton, trying to write the music, but knowing that Sam would be the one who would change my shitty synth pad that I picked. You know, just make it sound way better and do a lot of treatment. A lot of a lot of my projects were just very kind of skeletal; the performance, but not so much the production.
PAN M 360: So Sam you crafted the overall sound of the songs in the studio?
Sam Woywitka: Yeah, I feel like I’m a puzzle-maker sometimes, putting pieces together. When I feel like I have a melody or a cool riff or something to go off of, I can kind of paste a journey together through that. Just having having that at my fingertips, I guess.
PAN M 360: You guys also made some music videos, like the one for “King Blame.” I think the description of the video is “someone’s lonely drug trip.” It’s kind of like watching a David Lynch film, with the rabbit head and everything.
Sam Woywitka: Thanks. He’s definitely an influence, for sure. That song kind of started out with me on a guitar and a drum loop, singing the vocal hook “I am the King of Blame,” and it sounded really angsty teenage me, you know?
PAN M 360: So is the video and idea of the song based on personal experience?
Sam Woywitka: Well, back when I was doing a lot of drugs, I felt like nobody fucking liked me. I just felt blame all the time. And if you’ve ever looked at yourself in the mirror when you’re hallucinating on drugs, you can’t even recognize yourself, and that shit is terrifying. So the video was really going to be just skateboarding and getting fucked up, but the day we shot it, I walked into this costume store and saw the crazy bunny mask. We wanted some skateboard shots when the sun was rising and I asked my buddy Issac to put on the bunny mask while skateboarding, and it just became the thing.
PAN M 360: It’s funny how it was just spontaneous and it became the crux of the video.
Sam Woywitka: For sure. What did Mishka say? Oh yeah, ‘Sometimes the monkey or your back is a rabbit.’
PAN M 360: You recently started the label Hidden Ship. Did you create it to release FHANG?
Sam Woywitka: That was definitely an inspiration behind actually getting it done and sinking my teeth into it. And now, I’m pretty excited about what the future holds. I have so many like talented friends and like artists that should just be better represented on a smaller label that cares more about their music.
PAN M 360: Right. So it’s not going to be independently for FHANG releases? Do you already have artists in mind for the label?
Sam Woywitka: I want to have these jam session writing sessions where maybe we’re making songs just for the sake of making really dope tunes with some crazy musicians, and then having a place to put that out, rather than it needing to be in a like some sort of artist’s discography. Maybe we can just do some cool productions and collaborations in the studio and eventually there could be a Hidden Ship record or something. I used to work in L.A. with DJ Khalil and that’s what his studio was like. People always jamming and him steering the ship, and then sampling a part for the next beat for Jay Z or Kanye West or something.
PAN M 360: Were there any artists you mutually drew inspiration from for this album?
Mishka Stein: I think the pandemic was our biggest inspiration for it. For me, it’s really infused with all the feelings we lived. The fucking Trump stuff and COVID and all this garbage. The first few months were just really primal. Primal reactions.
PAN M 360: Is that where the name FHANG comes from?
Mishka Stein: Yeah I think so. FHANG being the jaws of the wolf and it’s really just a survival thing—which is how we all felt in those first few months.
PAN M 360: So how do these songs translate to a live setting? Being a duo, I assume playing live is a lot of multi-tasking for both of you?
Mishka Stein: Like crazy. Sam’s doing all the modular synths, singing, and playing drums. I’ve got a synth in front of me, bass pedals for the lower notes, and I’m rocking a double neck guitar/bass. So yeah, it’s going to take a bit for it to feel comfortable.
Sam Woywitka: Yeah we’re constantly jumping between different instruments. There’s a lot of octopussing going on.
From Kaifeng, in the Chinese province of Henan, Yu Su moved to Vancouver in 2013 to attend university. Already a seasoned pianist before coming to Canada, she became an artist in her own right. Within a few years, the choice to become a music professional was the right one: in addition to being a sought-after DJ on the international circuit, Yu Su has proven to be a superior composer. What’s more, her talents as a musician extend far beyond the realm of electronic references, and she now engages with all the instruments within her reach.
Drawing from a vast repertoire, including what she likes to describe as fourth-world music, Yu Su’s still young work is already formidable. This undeniable talent first earned her tours in Europe and Asia as a DJ. As for the Canadian recognition, it came slowly but surely.
Her referential universe is vast, from downtempo to contemporary through Chinese classical music, her curiosity leading her to explore several top-shelf repertoires, to absorb the best elements and throw them at electro enthusiasts, which naturally led her from Djing to composition and beatmaking. The extent of her work is just beginning to be realized.
This year, Yu Su was selected for the Polaris Prize long list for her album Yellow River Blue, thus expanding her circle of Canadian friends… although she has performed many times from coast to coast and has been accepted into the prestigious Ninja Tune label’s repertoire. True to its mandate of discovery and high quality, MUTEK has invited her in the past. This time, Yu Su is coming to defy expectations: she will perform with a group of instrumentalists that she recently formed.
PAN M 360: We perceive many influences in your music. Can you summarize your musical journey since you’ve gone professional?
Yu Su: First, the integration of Eastern traditional or classical music is not an intention to represent my Chineseness, not a conscious basis in my music. It is more like a game for me, it’s cool to be playful and make electronic music. Where I am from does matter, that makes my music sound like this, it’s in my blood, it comes from the environment I grew up inin China and what happened after. I also love music of the ’80s and ’90s downtempo and ambient stuff, there is so much to learn and enjoy about this music of the Fourth World, synthesised sounds, percussion, Japanese, polyrhythmic influences from Africa or India on the Western composers, really cool people like Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, etc. So in that time, experimental music was evolving so much, using some aspects of other cultures. Now integration of music from everywhere is more playful. Also the whole approach of electronic music and other new music is about creating the other world. I really like that. I don’t care about cultural appropriation considerations in dogmatic terms, my music is my way of criticizing it. What you can find in my music is just me, just trying being playful. Everything we experience can have an impact on the creative process.
PAN M 360: Over time, things became more sophisticated in your music.
Yu Su: Yeah but I’m still learning, I feel that I’m still not very good at the technical aspect of my work, machines, music instruments, everything’s still new. You know, I decided to do it very seriously four or five years ago, so I am still learning. If you listen to my music since my professional beginnings, you can hear how I am getting better, in particular with using machines.
PAN M 360: What is your gear?
Yu Su: I often use computers, also Wavestation and Hydrasynth keyboards, and I’m actually learning bass guitar. Because now I have a band and the performance I’m preparing for MUTEK is my band. It will be the psych-rock side of me. I will have players on guitar, bass and drums, I will be on keyboard and singing. There will be a bit of my electronic world, because I use plugins from a computer. So half of the stuff is a re-interpretation of some sounds, melodies and changes from my last album that was composed with a computer.
PAN M 360: Would you stay on that path after this first instrumental experience?
Yu Su: Yeah, I think so because you know, I’m actually discovering this world of psych-rock and music and other forms of pop-rock. I dove into this music pretty recently. You know, I only started to listen to Pink Floyd last year. I also listen to Moon Duo. I listen to a lot of Paul McCartney solo stuff, My Bloody Valentine. I listen to krautrock like Can. So this rock world is really new to me and I’m so interested. You know, I don’t want only to exist in the electronic world, I don’t really care about being really good in one music field. I just wanna be able to make any music I love, and this is why I wanna experience the band. What form or what genre doesn’t matter. On the other hand, I really work hard with the band to have the best live set I could offer. For this one MUTEK show, we’ve been rehearsing for two months. I want a really good band! I want a band that’s really tight, not just a band.
PAN M 360: What were the side effects of the Polaris long list on your career?
Yu Su: Before the Polaris, I wasn’t performing often in Canada.I was working with European or UK labels, I was touring expansively over there as a DJ, also Asia. So in Canada, I felt I wasn’t in the circle. When I was included in the Polaris long list, I was shocked because my music wasn’t well known in Canada. But I am happy that Polaris is including weirder stuff like mine (laughs). Also, I wasn’t a permanent resident until 2020. I had to leave the country every 6 months, I didn’t have a strong legal status, so I didn’t have resources here, no government support. Now it’s different. I think I will live permanently in Canada for a long time.
Porto Porto ! suggests a powerful version of eclecticism in 2021: electronic, electric, digital, analog, acoustic, improvised, written, programmed, composed suites, improvised suites, ambient, techno, ethereal wave, space jazz, groove, house, kuduro, and so on.
The digital creativity to which Porto Porto! subscribes foresees all the associations, all the amalgams, a great diversity of references. The four artists based in Montreal, with distinct origins, pave the way. Samito from Mozambique, on Fender Rhodes, programming, voice. Alex Tibbitts from California, on harp, machines, voice. Quan from Vietnam on modular synthesizers. James Benjamin aka Boogieman, from Montreal, keyboards, synths, and programming.
In the short time since forming, Porto Porto! have already recorded a lot, both audio and audiovisual, and has performed little in front of an audience. This justifies this conversation about this ambitious concert with guests, performed at M-Telus in its world premiere on Saturday, August 28 as part of MUTEK’s Nocturne series.
PAN M 360: We have an idea of what Porto Porto ! is premised on, and we want to know more about it. Can you tell us the genesis of this project?
James Benjamin: This is a fairly recent project. With the pandemic, it started last year. Samito and I had a collaboration, we played MUTEK in 2020, and then I got the duo and the new elements together at Breakglass Studios, which I’ve been a co-owner of for the past 12 years and has helped me a lot in my own music career. We started making music together on the fly, seeing where it was going. As the sessions went on, pieces emerged, we did a lot of recordings, we touched many musical ecosystems. And we became good friends. This change is natural, we’re ready for the next step.
PAN M 360: After listening to the first recordings, we could suggest that Porto Porto ! offers ambient electronic, sort of chillwave combined with different rhythms and also an influx of spacy electric jazz in the stream of the Miles Davis sessions between 1968 and 1972. How would you describe it yourself?
James Benjamin: This description is accurate, but our music also goes stylistically somewhere else. This Porto Porto music has become a real melting pot.
PAN M 360: Porto Porto! isn’t only about ethereal music, there are composition aspects. Can you talk about it?
James Benjamin: Of course, there is an experimental aspect to our music, but we are also all interested in composition. Samito and I have been working together for a few years, we also think about hooks and song structures. Samito is also a natural producer. And I like to see myself as that too. So all these influences are tangible, our next show will provide the creative framework for the upcoming album.
PAN M 360: Let’s take a look at the instrumentation.
James Benjamin: Okay. The instrumentation is based on modular synthesizers built by Quan – this guy has a very interesting mind, he designs his own instruments from scratch and he has his own company for modular synths, so we both play modular synths and we learn a lot from each other. Samito also plays keyboards, mostly the Fender Rhodes. Alex Tibbitts plays what she calls a bionic harp, an analog instrument that can also generate sound effects beyond the harp’s natural sound. She is also connected with some software and computers. So with these excellent trained musicians, we thought that it would be really cool to record long sessions, even suites.
PAN M 360: The upcoming show is another step, there will be more.
James Benjamin: For this show, we are adding bass. In the studio, we teamed up with Milo Johnson (Busty and the Bass), a fantastic bass player and composer, and recorded a few sessions. The addition of a great jazz bass player allowed us to explore other sounds with our keyboards. For the MUTEK show, however, Milo will be replaced by another bass player, as he’s currently in British Columbia and cannot travel across the country. There will also be two string players who will accompany certain parts of the music. So this will be the first time we will be presenting a whole bunch of songs and movements, different feelings, moods, vocal lines, hooks and also experimental stuff.
PAN M 360: Are there conceptual leaders in the group?
James Benjamin: It’s always evolving but this music comes from the four core members. When we started playing together, we tried to exercise that each person would be able to lead and listen carefully to each other. So things get pushed in different directions and also things get pulled into the center. It’s a team project, everybody waves in, they all say what they want to say, it’s all about consensus, we’re all making music together.
PAN M 360: So there is important evolution since the Boogieman and Samito experience.
James Benjamin: Indeed, it’s quite different but it is also an expansion of this duo, now it’s becoming an universe. There are a couple of tracks that are ready to release, an album will follow. The show at MUTEK will give you an idea of this sonic universe and the album, it will go to different places but there will be threads that connect it all.
PAN M 360: So the next step will be an album and… even more?
James Benjamin: Ambitious is a good word to describe Porto Porto. In my mind we could eventually have an orchestra around it. Our thing is not just experimental improvisation, these are trained players who read charts and chords, who really know about what they’re doing. One step at the time but… we intend to add orchestral works around this.
“Asterisms” refers to the random figures that constitute a group of neighbouring stars in the celestial sphere. An asterism has no precise shape, nor any real use. The simple fact of existing and shining in the sky is enough to justify this designation. Canadian indigenous artist Matthew Cardinal’s first solo project evokes this perfectly.
You may have heard of Cardinal in the Edmonton-based indie-rock trio Nêhiyawak. A debut album, Nipiy, caught the attention of music fans in 2020, when the band was nominated for a Juno award in the Indigenous Music Album of the Year category. When the group disbanded, Cardinal decided to continue his career… in a completely different light: electronic music.
Cardinal remains very humble when talking about his music, emphasizing that this album was created without any real preconceptions. Like a diary, each piece reveals a small part of himself, without really revealing anything intimate. Enigmatic, full of secrets, Asterisms proves to be an immersive and enveloping listen on all levels. By closing our eyes, we can glimpse the lights, shapes and sounds of the space. While Cardinal didn’t really follow a plan, or get inspired by anything specific, the rendering is clear, interesting, and most importantly, authentic. The artist can pride himself on exploring a unique sound and thus offering a work with a very intimate finish.
This Friday, August 27, Matthew Cardinal takes the stage at MUTEK. And he won’t be alone; visual and media artist Stephanie Kuse will present her projections during the concert, adding colour, texture and form to the music. The concert will take place at the 5th floor of Place-des-Arts in Montreal, 9:30 pm. In the meantime, PAN M 360 met with Matthew Cardinal to discuss the project.
PAN M 360: I read in an article that the songs on Asterisms were not all produced at the same time. Some of them were created two years ago, and some of them were created seven years ago! What took you so long?
Matthew Cardinal: I wanted to make an album for quite a long time, but I was pretty busy with many other projects. So, most of the songs on the album were created… maybe two or three years prior to now? But yeah, the first track on the album, I created seven years ago… She’s much older than the rest of them. And I just thought… it should go on there!
PAN M 360: Asterisms came out in October 2020, so just a few months prior to the arrival of the pandemic. Was is difficult to create and to produce during that weird period of time?
Matthew Cardinal: It was strange, of course. When the album came out, I couldn’t really tour it or play shows for it, so I ended up doing some streams here and there, but you know, it’s not quite the same. I was lucky to be hired for various commissions and other things. But playing live was just impossible at the time. And it was kind of funny, I wanted the album to come out in February of 2020 and then everything happened… I think the label asked if I still wanted to release it and I was like, may as well, you know?
PAN M 360: You originally were a member of the indie-rock band named Nêhiyawak. Now, you create electronic music for yourself first. What are the pros and cons of working alone?
Matthew Cardinal: I’ve been playing solo for quite a long time, but there’s pros and cons for sure. I mean, playing alone can be… you don’t have to schedule band practices, you don’t have to ask others about decisions, so it’s easier in some ways. If anything goes wrong, it all falls on me! But I miss playing in the band, for sure. It’s fun to interact with your bandmates and you don’t feel lonely, so…
PAN M 360: What response, what emotion do you want to get from the people who listen to Asterisms?
Matthew Cardinal: I would just love if people were to listen to it and feel… whatever they wanna feel. I think it’s up to the listeners. I want them to… take what they can from it. My album is really music made without any intention in some ways. They are pieces that felt good and… I just recorded them. Yeah, so… I just don’t want to tell people how to feel.
PAN M 360: So there’s no storytelling intention in this project? No story to follow?
Matthew Cardinal: Not quite, yeah. It’s a bit of a non-linear audio journal, if you will. They all are pieces that I made at various points of my life, so Asterisms is a record… of my life, in some ways? It’s a journal of sounds.
PAN M 360: You were nominated for the 2020 Juno Awards for Indigenous album of the year, and for the 2020 Polaris Music Prize long list. What did those nominations mean for you? Do you feel included in the electronic music scene?
Matthew Cardinal: For one, it’s always nice to be nominated for awards. A lot of my friends were also nominated for the Polaris, so that was nice. And as for my inclusion… in some ways, yes? I feel like… (sigh)… I feel like I’m included in a couple different circles. I’m playing these experimental music festivals during summer, like I’m playing MUTEK and I did an ambient music festival in Victoria, in Winnipeg as well… So that’s cool, but I don’t know if I’m really in the electronic world, in a sense? But I’ve played shows for indie-rock fans, people that are into new music, like experimental stuff but it’s an interesting mix, to say the least.
PAN M 360 : Are you satisfied with your media coverage ?
Matthew Cardinal: I talk to journalists every so often. I mean, it’s not a lot, but I’ll never complain about it. I’ll take what I can, for sure, but I’m not mad or anything that I don’t have interviews every single day.
PAN M 360: For the people like me who don’t quite know the vocabulary or the instruments needed in the process of creating electronic music, can you guide us a little bit in what you used for the production of Asterisms?
Matthew Cardinal: I used a lot of different things. Some of them are just guitars, some of them are with analog synthesizers, and a lot of pieces are based around the Moog for the lead sounds and the bass sounds… And then a lot of it is modular synthesizers… Basically, I work with customized synthesizers, and I created my own instruments to really get what I want from them. It grants me a lot of freedom.
PAN M 360: You’ll be performing live at the MUTEK festival in Montreal. While you’ll be performing Asterisms, Stephanie Kuse, a visual artist, will be presenting her projections to illustrate your music. How did you meet her, and what pushed you to collaborate with her?
Matthew Cardinal: Well, I met her through her partner, since I’m good friends with them. And she was already doing projections for other people, and I really liked what she was doing. And I wanted to do a show with projection, with visual art, for a while now. I think that kind of art can add to a performance. I like how it can be more… immersive, in a way. She was inspired by my own photography and she added her own flavour to it. Audio and visual together – it just makes sense.
For more than twenty years, the digital revolution has not ceased to make our environment evolve at a frantic pace and this is more and more out of step with our natural biological rhythms. Unknown to us, this new virtual extension can in return slow down the development of a more vital, more buried, more instinctive and more vibrant aspect of ourselves. In the not too distant future, this artificial evolution, now out of control, may force us dangerously into its own downfall, or conversely, show us how to refocus on the path to truth.
With the pandemic, the feelings of over-connection and relentless acceleration have been amplified and even turned into universal feelings. Presented on August 24 and 25 in preview at the SAT as part of the 22nd edition of the MUTEK festival, the new Montreal collective BEATS attempts to transform this global phenomenon into a transdisciplinary scenic experience. Combining contemporary dance, visual projections and sound creations, the performance retraces the path of the human being caught in this dizzying whirlwind of technology in search of his hidden eternal essence.
Equipped with a stethoscope and a self-contained light stick connected to the sound and visual compositions, the three performers Yuki Berthiaume, Hamie Robitaille and Molly Siboulet-Ryan each communicate their art through a choreography conceived by Stéfania Skoryna and form a whole with the help of custom-made devices designed by Ganesh Baron Aloir. PAN M 360 met with the team behind the ambitious multidisciplinary, technological and immersive BEATS project.
PAN M 360: The project was publicly launched on March 8 during the pandemic. How did this project start? What triggered it?
Hamie Robitaille: Our meeting was quite the trigger. It started with a desire to do a show with Yuki that would mix dance, music and visual elements. We quickly realized that we needed more help with the choreography. That’s when Stefania joined us to do the project. We wanted to make the creation feminine I think and to bring the subject of the incessant work, the daily life, the pressure of performance. We wanted to do this all three of us even if we were very busy.
Stefania Skoryna : I entered the project when there was already a first version of ten minutes. I asked Molly Siboulet-Ryan to participate, I found it easier to be outside to see the choreography than to be inside.
PAN M 360: For the staging, we can see in the video a slightly retro soviet set. Why this choice?
Stefania Skoryna: It came by itself. We are in the work, in a task, the chosen costume is China and the music is very mechanical.
Hamie Robitaille: As for the scenography, we knew that we were going to go towards something techno and industrial. When we talk about industrial, the codes are the line work, the barrels, the mechanical look. That’s probably where the Soviet side comes from.
PAN M 360: Yuki, you are in charge of the sound composition of the project. You have a foot in the garage rock scene (I.D.A.L.G., Jesuslesfilles), still rather analog, how do you feel about this transition to digital via the BEATS project?
Yuki Berthiaume: I did a year in electroacoustics, but it’s my only experience in this field. In the bands I play for, I always compose my part on the synth. But I had never really composed a whole piece of music, it was really new. I did it, but I don’t really know how (laughs). I managed to compose 40 minutes of material. I tried a lot of things, it was really experimenting, I don’t master the technology I use. But I thought it was interesting to have a bit of a punk approach, more intuitive. I don’t master Ableton but it doesn’t matter, I did it the same way, it was bound to give something. I learned from that, not to do like everyone else or not to master the instrument. It even becomes a strength.
PAN M 360: Your project is presented during the MUTEK festival at the Satosphere. How is the 360º experience going?
Hamie Robitaille: For MUTEK, we were offered a difficult choice: either Place des Arts or the SAT dome (laughs). Since we had already had the chance to present a rather frontal and classic show as part of Code d’Accès, we thought we could bring it to the SAT dome at 360º. Since the visuals are quite compelling, the immersion was relevant to the subject of the show. Feeling overwhelmed by the visuals around us helps to amplify the subject of the piece. It was a nice challenge. Eventually, we would like to be able to do it completely 360º. It’s a bit of a hybrid, the show remains frontal.
PAN M 360: You talk about a sense of time accelerating. One of your goals is to transform this universal feeling into a stage experience. What gives you this feeling of constant acceleration? Who do you think accelerates, the human or the technology?
Hamie Robitaille: It’s really the chicken or the egg. One of the first reflexes is to say that it’s technology. From my side, I’m not sure. Technology was developed to serve a human need, a need for adrenaline, to go faster, to be more efficient. Humans have created technology but in the end, we have lost control. Technology is the element that exacerbates all this. We saw it with the pandemic, we were extremely connected and it amplified this feeling. In the end, this need for adrenaline is human and the ability to do tasks over and over again is more the role of the machine.
Stefania Skoryna: For example, I don’t have internet data on my cell phone but I feel that there are things that go faster than me. Do we have to accept this? I take the choice to push it back. I remember to use it as a tool.
PAN M 360: You use a connected stethoscope to transform heartbeats into sounds and images. In concrete terms, how are heartbeats transformed into digital material?
Hamie Robitaille: The stethoscope was made with the help of Ganesh and Youtube (laughs). It’s a little tie microphone that is plugged into the stethoscope and that allows us to hear the heart. The sound is passed into Ableton and filtered. This heartbeat can make the visuals react in real time, it’s really a creative tool.
PAN M 360: The line between the organic world and the digital world is becoming more and more blurred, not only in relation to new technologies, but also in our daily experience. Can we say that you try to find life through the machine?
Hamie Robitaille: We don’t try to give a soul to the machine, we try to find humanity in all this whirlwind of technology. Molly embodies the human in the play.
Molly Siboulet-Rya: It’s more of a reunion than a transformation. In the show, the human has lost a part of himself and finds it again through a journey.
Yuki Berthiaume: It is also to illustrate that when we push ourselves to the limit, the body lets go.
Stefania Skoryna: The goal is to regain control before reaching that point, to take a breath.
PAN M 360: The glow stick is influenced by the sounds and visuals but it also influences the sounds and visuals in return. This autonomous process can be likened to the biological concept of homeostasis, a regulatory process that tends to keep variables around a certain equilibrium. How does the stick feedback loop work?
Ganesh Baron Aloir : The stick is bidirectional, we can send it commands to change the type of ignition it will have. Conversely, we have information on its angle, its rotation, the speed of its movement that we can attribute to different visual or audio effects.
Hamie Robitaille: For the show, since it is still a prototype, we are concentrating on the movements of the stick that make the visuals react and on the audio that makes the light in the stick react. But eventually, if we get funding, we’d like to refine it and make it available to other creators. It could even react to the weather, the air pressure. The possibilities are really endless. In the future, we will continue the research. We are working on the new prototype, it is now two meters long. It has 220 LEDs, a micro controller and four batteries to power it. Ganesh is super good with technology but he had never made a 100% connected object. He had to learn how to 3D print and program in obscure languages (laughs).
PAN M 360: The stick kind of has its own life in the middle of the show. Why did you decide to give it its own autonomy?
Hamie Robitaille: That’s a good question. We had been toying with the idea of this glow stick for a long time but we didn’t really know what it meant. It slowly turned into a question: what drives us in the end? It’s a little bit the soul in the show, something immaterial. It is a stick that lights up, that reacts, that is sensitive. It’s not always lit up as much from one part of the piece to another. At some point, I think we all put our souls aside to work. In the show, other people sometimes control the stick, manipulate it. In the end, we want to find that soul. That’s why it has its own life in the show. It was important for us to have a slightly different and majestic object.
Yuki Berthiaume: It’s like its self, its essence, its light. It’s the sense of the sacred.
Photo credit: Maxyme G. Delisle
PAN M 360 : Vous parlez d’un sentiment du temps qui s’accélère. Un de vos objectifs est de transformer ce sentiment universel en expérience scénique. Qu’est ce qui vous donne ce sentiment d’accélération incessante? Qui accélère selon vous, l’humain ou la technologie?
Hamie Robitaille : C’est vraiment l’œuf ou la poule. Un des premiers réflexes est de dire que c’est la technologie. De mon côté, je ne suis pas certaine. La technologie a été développée pour servir un besoin humain, un besoin d’adrénaline, d’aller plus vite, d’être plus efficace. L’humain a créé la technologie mais finalement, on a perdu le contrôle. La technologie est l’élément qui exacerbe tout ça. On l’a vu avec la pandémie, on était extrêmement connecté et cela a amplifié ce sentiment. Au final, ce besoin d’adrénaline est humain et la capacité de faire des tâches à répétition est plutôt le rôle de la machine.
Stefania Skoryna : Par exemple, je n’ai pas de données internet sur mon cellulaire mais je le sens qu’il y a des choses qui vont plus vite que moi. Est ce qu’on est obligé d’accepter cela? Je prends le choix de le repousser. Je me rappelle de l’utiliser comme un outil.
PAN M 360 : Vous utilisez un stéthoscope connecté pour transformer les rythmes du cœur en sons et en images. Concrètement, comment les battements du cœur sont transformés en matériel numérique?
Hamie Robitaille : Le stéthoscope a été bidouillé avec l’aide de Ganesh et de Youtube (rire). C’est un petit micro cravate qui est branché dans le stéthoscope et qui nous permet d’entendre le cœur. Le son est passé dans Ableton et est filtré. Ce battement de cœur peut faire réagir les visuels en temps réel, c’est réellement un outil de création.
PAN M 360 : La limite entre le monde organique et le monde numérique devient de plus en plus floue, pas seulement par rapport aux nouvelles technologies, mais dans notre ressenti même au quotidien. Est ce que l’on peut dire que vous essayez de trouver de la vie à travers la machine?
Hamie Robitaille : On n’essaie pas de donner une âme à la machine, on essaie de retrouver de l’humanité dans tout ce tourbillon de technologie. Molly incarne d’ailleurs l’humain dans la pièce.
Molly Siboulet-Ryan : Il s’agit plus d’une réunion que d’une transformation. Dans le spectacle, l’humain a perdu une partie de soi et la retrouve à travers un cheminement.
Yuki Berthiaume : C’est aussi pour illustrer que lorsqu’on se pousse à bout, le corps lâche prise.
Stefania Skoryna : Le but est quand même de reprendre le contrôle avant d’en arriver là, de reprendre sa respiration.
PAN M 360 : Le bâton lumineux est influencé par les sons et les visuels mais il influence également en retour les sons et les visuels. Ce processus autonome peut se rapprocher du concept biologique d’homéostasie, un processus de régulation qui tend à garder des variables autour d’un certain équilibre. Comment fonctionne la boucle de rétroaction du bâton?
Ganesh Baron Aloir : Le bâton est bidirectionnel, on peut lui envoyer des commandes pour changer le type d’allumage qu’il va avoir. A l’inverse, on a de l’information sur son angle, sa rotation, sur la vitesse de son mouvement qu’on peut attribuer à différents effets visuels ou audios.
Hamie Robitaille : Pour le spectacle, comme il s’agit encore d’un prototype, on se concentre sur les mouvements du bâton qui font réagir les visuels et sur l’audio qui fait réagir la lumière dans le bâton. Mais éventuellement, si on a du financement, on aimerait le peaufiner et le rendre disponible à d’autres créateurs. Il pourrait même réagir à la météo, à la pression atmosphérique. Les possibilités sont vraiment infinies. Dans le futur, on va continuer la recherche. On est d’ailleurs en train de travailler sur le nouveau prototype, il fait maintenant deux mètres. Il comporte 220 LED, un micro contrôleur et quatre batteries pour l’alimenter. Ganesh est super bon avec la technologie mais il n’avait jamais fait d’objet connecté à 100%. Il a dû apprendre à faire de l’impression 3D et à programmer dans des langages obscurs (rire).
PAN M 360 : Le bâton possède un peu sa propre vie au milieu du spectacle. Pourquoi avoir décidé de lui donner sa propre autonomie?
Hamie Robitaille : C’est une bonne question. On caressait l’idée de ce bâton lumineux depuis longtemps mais on ne savait pas trop ce qu’il voulait dire. Il s’est tranquillement transformé en question : qu’est ce qui nous anime au final? C’est un peu l’âme dans le spectacle, quelque chose d’immatériel. C’est un bâton qui s’allume, qui réagit, qui est sensible. Il n’est pas toujours autant allumé d’une partie à l’autre de la pièce. A un certain moment, je pense qu’on a tous mis notre âme de côté pour travailler. Dans le spectacle, d’autres personnes contrôlent parfois le bâton, le manipulent. A la fin, on veut retrouver cette âme-là. C’est pour ça qu’il a sa propre vie dans le spectacle. C’était important pour nous d’avoir un objet un peu différent et majestueux.
Yuki Berthiaume : C’est comme son soi, son essence, sa lumière. C’est le sens du sacré.
Crédit photo : Maxyme G. Delisle
Born and raised in Toronto, Uproot Andy (Andy Gillis) is a young producer/DJ very active in New York’s electro-tropical scene. Around 2015, he became friends with Montreal’s Pierre Kwenders, and started a steady collaboration. Two new songs of theirs have been released this week and will be performed at the Mural Festival in Montreal, with a DJ set from 6PM to 11PM, also with San Farafina, Jelz and AKAntu, all regular Moonshine collaborators.
PAN M 360: Could you first tell us the story of your friendship and artistic collaboration?
Uproot Andy: Pierre and I came out to play together for Moonshine parties and others in Montreal. We became friends and I used to stay at Pierre’s house when I came to Montreal. So we started to work together on beats, songs and remixes – for example, I’ve been partially involved in Pierre’s last album. We made music at Pierre’s house, cooked food, and hung out all day. Pierre also came out to perform in New York City, where I am living now. We started collaborating like that, and ever since, we meet up in different places and make music wherever we are.
PAN M 360: This most recent project was completed during the quarantine. How did it go?
Uproot Andy: Yeah, with the pandemic a lot of things changed, we had to exchange information online. We got stuck at home and for me, that kind of changed the way I felt producing music. I mean, the forms of pop music that are really quick, getting to the hooks, I didn’t feel it made a lot of sense because things kind of slowed down and changed. So I felt like making some music with a really patient and deeper approach. Also, more emotional and melodic. Both of the songs on this EP, “Ofele” and “Baluka”, reflect this need for longer developments in music.
PAN M 360: What is the common ground between you and Pierre?
Uproot Andy: I think we work very well together. We have similar tastes and similar influences, even if we have different backgrounds. I know he’ll understand my suggestions. So I make some stuff, send it to him, then he sends his work to me, and so on.
PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the new stuff.
Pierre Kwenders: The single “Ofele” is an amapiano song, amapiano is a South African style of music. Andy and I are fans of this style, which is a very hip sound in new African music, it was already happening before the pandemic. We play that style a lot at our Moonshine parties, so Andy and I wanted to have fun with this amapiano beat. “Ofele” means “free”. Why? Without wanting to be clearly political, the message of the song is a shade thrown to the politicians who make promises for free services that don’t come true. Also it is a message of hope – despite those false promises, we keep on going.
Uproot Andy: One of the things about amapiano is that it’s a style made for the club. The songs are very long and it takes time getting to it. So it also fits at home, it felt really right during the last year because it’s a patient style. Maybe that explains why it has become so popular during the pandemic. So you can stay home and get into those songs, and go a little deeper into yourself. Also this South African music has become very popular in Congo and also in Nigeria. As it spreads, it folds to the local music styles.
PAN M 360: Do you have other collaborative projects for the near future?
Pierre Kwenders: The future is full of surprises! Many things are coming and that’s all we can say. First, we will be performing the songs and a couple more together at Mural festival on the 22nd. Myself and Andy will introduce this EP to the people. We will be outdoors and it starts at 6 PM. Don’t be late!
Qama’si means “stand up” in Mi’gmaq. And this is precisely the message that Quentin Condo, a rapper from Quebec’s 52nd Indigenous community, Gesgapegiag, wants to send. On stage, he goes by the alias of Q-052 and works to communicate Indigenous issues and problems.
And when he’s not on stage? Nothing changes! Not only is he still active in the political life of his community, but he also makes sure to teach his children the ancestral knowledge of his people. And unlike many others, Q052 was quite comfortable with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to working on future projects, he took advantage of this precious time to remind his offspring of the importance of nature and the need to take care of it.
A good listener, Q052 doesn’t go easy on his interlocutor. He doesn’t hesitate to talk about the colonialist and racist tendencies of governments, to recall the murders and disappearances of Indigenous girls and women… He doesn’t talk about a single problem, but rather about finely interwoven and, of course, complex issues.
His tone is sharp, dry, unequivocal. Refusing to put on the white gloves, he reminds us of what is sometimes so easy to forget: Canada is guilty of an ongoing genocide.
Q052 has only two albums to his credit (2019’s Qama’si and 2018’s Rez Life, the latter of which was nominated for an Indigenious Music Award in the Best New Artist category) as well as a few singles. Drawing from the codes of old-school rap, his music is reminiscent of the rap-rock ardour of Rage Against the Machine, or the nuanced boom-bap of A Tribe Called Quest.
Fans will have to be patient – although a new project is waiting for release, Q052 will not make it available until 2022. In the meantime, PAN M 360 met with him to talk about his art, his ambitions, and especially about the performance he will be giving at Montreal’s International First Peoples Festival.
PAN M 360: Can you talk a little to us about your community? What do you like most about it?
Q052: I’m from the Mi’kmaq community of Gesgapegiag, one of the three Mi’kmaq communities in Gaspesie. I grew up a little bit in and out of the reservation, because my mom is Irish-American, from the Boston area. I have mostly good memories from my childhood, with my cousins, my aunts and my uncles, doing a lot of fishing, a lot of hunting… A lot of arts and crafts… You name it, you know? That’s the way it is in indigenous communities, since we have very large families.
PAN M 360: Your father is a member of the Mi’kmaq community and, like you already said, your mother is Irish-American. What’s your relationship with English, since most of your songs are written in that language? Is creating an album in your native language a future project of yours?
Q052: Yeah! So, for the language aspect, in our community, Mi’kmaq is still spoken very much. My father was fluent in that language, but still learned English and French. My mom was speaking English too, obviously, but my dad never spoke to us in Mi’kmaq, just for the fact that he is a residential school survivor. So, he believed – well, was forced to believe – that speaking his own language was bad. And he wanted me to be able to master English and French, so that I’d be able to fight the government and to express the needs of Indigenous people in their language. The Mi’kmaq that I learned was with my friends and with other members of my family. But my dad always said to me, “you can learn Mi’kmaq any time you want, but you need to learn the white man’s language. Just because it’s a white man’s world and you need to survive in it.” So, I don’t speak fluently the way I would love to, but I do get by pretty good. And the song I will be performing on Friday night with Samian will be in Mi’kmaq.
PAN M 360: How has been the pandemic for you, creatively? Did you use it to make new music?
Q052: For me, the pandemic was a blessing! And I don’t know if you remember, but right before the pandemic, we were blocking the railroads, because we were saying that we need to stop the way that we’re moving forward right now, and we must change the way we do things! We must be more aware and respectful of Mother Nature. And the government said “No, that’s impossible, economically.” Then, Covid came along and said “hold my beer.” So yeah, to me, it wasn’t a problem at all, I was ready for the reset. I even took the time to take my kids back to Gaspesie. We went to the woods and did a lot of traditional activities.
PAN M 360: What kind of ‘’activism education’’ will your children get from you, of course, but also from your own father, who I believe is an important leader of your community? What do you want to teach them?
Q052: Obviously, the environment is a priority to me, just because if we keep destroying it, we’ll soon be dead, right? We need to address the killing of Indigenous women, the mass incarceration of Indigenous people, the list goes on and on… But I try to touch base of every single one of them.
PAN M 360: I heard you were a politician before, why did you stop and chose music instead?
Q052: Hip-hop has always been in my blood, right? And it’s all because the hip-hop culture is very similar to Indigenous culture. The MCs are very similar to our chanters, the breakdancers are very similar to our dancers, and the graffiti writers are very similar to our art and crafts… And on top of that, my father was – and still is – very into political changes, so he wanted me to follow that, right? So, I grew up surrounded by the desire for social change, I did two terms of political work, then I decided to step away ‘cause I felt like… I could do more through music than politics. You have a lot of restraint in politics, you can’t always say what you want. In hip-hop, you can talk about things the way they really are.
PAN M 360: Are you currently working on a new project?
Q052: I’ve been steadily working through the pandemic, doing collaborations with other artists, I’ve got a track that will be coming out with Violent Ground, I’ve got a track with Samian, one with Melodie McArthur. I also have a whole album recorded and ready to go but I’m only putting it out in 2022. So, I’ve been very active writing, recording, just having a great time doing those things. There’s powerful stuff coming.
PAN M 360: When people listen to your music, what emotion, what response do you want to get from them?
Q052: What I wanna do is to hit you in the conscience. I want people to be aware, to be conscious of what’s happening. And I think the way that I deliver it is in your face, it’s direct and I think people need to hear it that way, rather than the political way. I don’t want to be nice about it, you know? We need to hear it, even if we don’t like it.
PAN M 360: Can we hear a certain evolution, a growth when we listen to your music. Did your vision or attitude change along the way?
Q052: Yeah, if you heard the first album I put out, I’m more in the angry, direct approach. My second one is more R&B, more of an educational approach… The next album is going to be a mix of educational and anger, but a lot of rock! I recorded it with my full band.
PAN M 360: It seems like Samian and yourself are working on a set for the festival next Friday, can you talk a little bit about it?
Q052: Actually, I’m working on two collaborations! So, Wednesday night, I’ll be performing with NEM, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Forestare, alongside Laura Niquay and Anachnid, two wonderful Indigenous artists. We’ll perform a song with a whole orchestra and that’s going to be a 20-minute song. And then on Friday night, it’s Samian’s record launch! We collaborated for a track in his new album, and we’ll do it at the show! We’re very excited about that!
In the context of Montreal’s International First Peoples’ Festival, Andrew Paul MacDonald has been recruited by Normand Forget, artistic director of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, to create an orchestral link between the NEM, the guitar ensemble Forestare and three figures illustrating the cultural energy of the First Nations – Anachnid, Laura Niquay and Q-052 will be the soloists of a new concert, given on Wednesday August 4, 8pm, at Montrteal’s Place des Festivals.
Originally from Guelph, the Sherbrooke resident is a trained composer and performer. He studied music theory and piano with Rosemarie Hamilton and guitar with Alexandre Lagoya, Michael Lorimer, Ray Sealey and Manuel Lopez-Ramos. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1981, where he was a student of Arsenio Girón and Alan Heard.
He pursued graduate studies in composition at the University of Michigan, where he earned a Master of Music (1982) and a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985). At UM, he was a student of William Albright, William Bolcom, Leslie Bassett and George Balch Wilson. Returning to Canada in 1985, his teaching career took him to Manitoba and Quebec. In 1987, he became a tenured professor at Bishop’s University, where he continues to teach composition and electronic music. Among his projects as a musician is the Ensemble Musica Nova, of which he is the artistic director. In addition to teaching and composing, he works as a classical and/or electric guitarist and also as a conductor.
Needless to say, this cross-cultural mission represents a more than interesting challenge for Andrew Paul MacDonald.
PAN M 360: How did you approach this project?
ANDREW PAUL MACDONALD: This is something very new for me. I have been composing for a long time, symphonies, string quartets, you name it, and I have done a lot different kinds of projects, like this piece for the Evergreen Club in Toronto, a concerto for harp and gamelan… and many other projects from traditional to very different things, but I’ve never come across something like this. What I think would be best is that I talk about it. Normand Forget approached me and I had very little time to do it. Thankfully, I was free at the time – pandemic – and I was ready for a new project. In another time it would have been impossible because my agenda would have been too busy. So Normand asked me to write a piece for these First Nation singers, Anachnid, Laura Niquay, and Q-052 (Quentin Quando) and combine this piece with NEM and Forestare. Originally, the aim was to have a very portable piece that could pop up on a stage in any city or event. So he gave me the instrumentation, time limitations, and he had some songs from those First Nations to reimagine inside my own work. Very similar to the way the late Hans Zender reimagined Schubert’s Winterreise.
PAN M 360: How is it constructed?
Andrew Paul MacDonald: Is it an arrangement? No it’s not. It’s a reimagining, it’s composing, deconstructing, reassembling and coming out with something new. We also must talk about the title that I have, the lyrics and the music itself. The original title was Transmission Connection, the name of the NEM project, to bring NEM, Forestare, First Nation artists and a Canadian anglophone composer who lives in Quebec, so we involved different cultures in Québec, and different types of music – First Nations rap, pop electronic, and folk-rock, combined with new contemporary music. Very challenging!
PAN M 360: So, three songs are the basic materials of the composed reimagining. Can you explain what you did with those songs?
Andrew Paul MacDonald: My piece Frames of Reference is a part of this bringing together in Transmission Connection but also Frames of Reference is a particular set of ideas or beliefs on what you base your judgement of things. Considering the artists I was working with, I felt that we must better understand what the First Nations people have experienced – residential schools, genocide crisis, etc. – and what they’re currently going through, and very importantly, to stand up and speak out about injustice. So there is a kind of a political bent in this piece. We can’t avoid it. One of the lines in the earlier refrain in the piece is this: “Silence is violence in your ear, change up your frame of reference, don’t let these terrible crimes be overlooked, stand up and speak out now.” I think that is a pretty powerful refrain, imperative.
PAN M 360: Let’s be more specific with each song.
Andrew Paul MacDonald: Right.
The original lyrics are done by Quentin Condo in his rap section, called “Q-052’s Rap Movement”, an edgy rap about residential school, genocide, and more generally, problematic government relations with the First Nations. It’s rapped in English and Micmac, there is a certain part of improvisation in this composition, leaving it up to the artists a little bit. In this first rap that Quentin does, we work things out properly between music and lyrics. I love his freestyle rapping section at the end of the piece, which combined with a singer’s improvisation. I will be unique each time they will be performing that piece.
There is also this song by the Oji-Cree singer, songwriter and producer Anachnid – her full name is Anna-Khesic Kway Harper. Her song is a pop song but… on the surface, it’s a love relationship breakup, and on another level, it is an analogy of the First Nations relationship with the rest of Canada. “You got the best of me / Trapped in your lies and your disgards / Stop it, don’t waste my time / Set me free, release me / Stop playing games with me…” So you’ve got to read it in both ways, and that fits very very well in the aesthetic of this whole work.
And then there is Laura Niquay’s song called “Moteskano”, which means “the past of our ancestors”, this a rock song about the First Nations pride and who they are. The lyrics are sung in Atikamekw, here is one quote translated: “I understood that she (my mother) was an inspiration in my life, my guide in life, it is a transmission, a way of life for future generations, let’s walk the path of our ancestors.”
PAN M 360: So how are all those elements superimposed in the final piece?
Andrew Paul MacDonald: I designed the piece for about 20 minutes, the piece is done in seven sections. The first one is a prelude, aggressive and imperative, with vocal interruptions. The second is Q-052’s rap, so I studied rap litterature very carefully, Run the Jewels, Snoop Dog, Eminem, etc. Quentin wrote the lyrics and I include a refrain. The third movement is called “Interlude One”, a big contrast to previous movements, slow, trippy… The fourth movement is Anachnid’s “La Lune”, a gentle love song with a double meaning that we discussed, and it has a static quality. The fifth movement is “Interlude 2”, an aggressive variation of the first interlude. The sixth movement is Laura Niquay’s “Moteskano”, an energetic reimagining of her rock song with a ground bass pattern. It continues with the last movement “Rave Up”, including improvisation, freestyle rap. A huge, energetic conclusion. And I must say that I am really honoured to have those three artists’ songs in my composed reimagining.
PAN M 360: So including those differents style in a cohesive piece was a challenge.
Andrew Paul MacDonald: Totally! Frame of Reference is a composed reimagining. I took those original songs apart, and I reassembled them, stretching, compressing, interrupting from different angles, turning them upside down, and all done with respect to the original forms and sentiments. I want the artists to sing what they are accustomed to. I didn’t want to mess around their pitch and their rhythm and then destroy the original aesthetic.
I also extracted motives from musical ideas in their song, in order to generate the rest of the musical material of the composition, including some instrumental parts in the piece. I find some key motivic ideas in each song, or even the rap. I also took from their traditional work certain rhythm patterns, certain melodic patterns, essentially pentatonic. I wanted to play with those elements tied into the history. So the instrumental section of the piece becomes a huge commentary on the songs themselves, to make the whole composition have a greater meaning.
PAN M 360: Happy with this very special experience?
Andrew Paul MacDonald: Very very eye-opening. I learned a lot about First Nations culture, conditions, concerns, and I hope that more people will learn about it as well.
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