Interviews

Having released her second album Waska Matisiwin last spring, an album that literally took her beyond the network of the Atikamekw community from which she originates, Laura Niquay makes music and songs to reach out to different First Nations communities, but also to those who are not part of them. The sweetness of her sandy voice and her unique style bordering on indie-folk transport us through her songs into the stories of her past and some of the realities that the Indigenous communities live. PAN M 360 spoke with Niquay for more insights.

PAN M 360: First of all, what inspires you to write?

Laura Niquay: Most of the time, I have to be in nature or in my community of Wemotaci to be productive. Even when I’m there, sometimes I can compose in five minutes, but other times it can take me much longer. It really depends on how I feel.

PAN M 360: Does coming from a musical family imply a certain pressure to continue in this way, or did it come naturally?

Laura Niquay: It really came naturally over time. My father bought me my first guitar when I was 10 years old and I started playing when I was 11. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I started singing and writing.

PAN M 360: It’s only recently that we’ve seen a greater openness to First Nations music. Were you afraid of not reaching such a large audience by singing in Atikamekw?

Laura Niquay: No, it’s a language like any other language in the world. It is the music of the world. It’s easier for me, especially at the beginning, to sing in my mother tongue. Moreover, I have always sung my own compositions, I do not sing the songs of other artists. I will never be an interpreter, I will never be able to. It stresses me out too much. So I prefer to sing my own compositions and to do a summary in French of each of them in the shows. I will always explain the theme of the song before I sing it.

PAN M 360: Your most recent album Waska Matisiwin was on the long list for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize. What was your reaction?

Laura Niquay: At first, I had no idea what the Polaris Prize was. However, when I met Louis-Jean Cormier, he explained everything to me and I finally understood that it was prestigious. Louis-Jean had already won this award in 2010. I had a chance to win, but unfortunately my album was not selected among the 10 best albums, the short list. At least, I was in the best albums in Canada. That’s great for me because I consider it my first real accomplished and professional album. Waratanak was more independent and it was mostly about learning how to produce music. Waska Matisiwin is really my biggest accomplishment and I am very proud of this album.

PAN M 360: Darker themes such as suicide and addiction are present on your album. Have you had any comments about these?

Laura Niquay: Yes, really! At the Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée, many people came to see me after the show and were very moved by my songs. They understood perfectly what I went through, because I tell a lot of my life story through my songs. People were so touched that they told me that I was their favourite of the festival. I can understand because I deal with more specific and difficult subjects. I tell the themes of my songs in a very intimate way. The subject of children who have children in our communities, who don’t have time to live their adolescence, is one that touches me a lot. I still see young girls who get pregnant, or young boys who become fathers, who don’t have time to live this period that is adolescence. I am doing a lot of awareness-raising on this subject right now. It’s really important to raise awareness among young people as well.

PAN M 360: What are the reasons for the three years it took to finalize this second album?

Laura Niquay: It would have taken two years, but with the pandemic, it delayed us and it was like that for everyone. In fact, I liked it. It allowed me to take a step back in my life and get better at therapy. I’ve been to five therapies in my life. I really needed to get the balance I needed in my job and in my personal relationships too. I was able to really work on elements that I didn’t like as much and produce an album that I liked 100%.

PAN M 360: Waska Matisiwin is very eclectic. Each of the songs is unique. Did you want a guideline for the whole album, or rather to give importance to each song?

Laura Niquay: There is no guideline. I asked, for each of the songs, people around me what they liked to hear, so, like “Nicim” with the singer Shauit, it’s about my brother who went through a depressive and suicidal period. It’s not necessarily a sad song, but rather a song of encouragement to not give up. I asked him what kind of music he likes to listen to and his answer was hip-hop, reggae, and he likes the sound of electric guitars in the background. It’s really important to listen to the people around you and know what they like to listen to. I made sure to make songs to please my audience. That’s very important to me.

PAN M 360: So it is really your entourage that oriented your album?

Laura Niquay: Yes, there is also everything that I’ve heard since I was very little. My album is the result of all this mixture.

PAN M 360: What can we expect from your concert at the First Peoples Festival?

Laura Niquay: There will be nothing extravagant. There will be 12 classical guitar players. It’s going to be a little different from what I usually do, but since I grew up with the sound of classical guitar, I immediately wanted to get involved in this project. It’s going to be very special.

PAN M 360: Which song do you prefer to sing, and why?

Laura Niquay: The second song for sure! It’s called “Moteskano”, which means “The paths of our ancestors”. It’s a song about passing on our culture, and that it should never stop. I had to walk a long way to get to where I am today. Otherwise, I also like the twelfth, which is very national. It’s really important to support the elders too, to respect them. It’s about us, the First Nations, but also the non-Indigenous people, who are a nation too. We are all human.

PAN M 360: What are your next projects?

Laura Niquay: In a year and a half, I should produce another album, but it will probably have a blues background because I would like to explore this style more deeply. The First Nations have done well in this style, so I want to bring out a kind of Indigenous blues. In the meantime, it will be full of concerts in the next few months. I’m going to take advantage of it to do my first tour and I’m looking forward to it. I wish myself good health and a long life.

Fans of nu jazz with a punk attitude, supremely bittersweet, know this excellent Australian quartet. The release of the albums Tawk Tomahawk (2012) and Choose Your Weapon (2015) by Hiatus Kayote were occasions for joy, and then nothing more until the summer of 2021.  Serious health issues experienced by frontwoman and multi-instrumentalist Nai Palm led to this… hiatus.

Fortunately, the Melbourne quartet found Nai Palm healed and in full possession of her means. On this wave of redemption, Hiatus Kayote created the album Mood Valiant, released at the end of June. PAN M 360 reached bassist Paul Bender, who gave us an interview and summed up this long awaited return. 

PAN M 360: It’s been a hard ride for Nai Palm after she knew she had breast cancer and finally recovered after a tough fight. It obviously had a direct impact on the band’s progression and also on the inspiration for the new album.

Paul Bender: Of course, it did slow things down, but Nai Palm is very resilient. She had to deal with her health and recovered. She is really a champion with that sort of stuff, she used it as an inspiration and new energy, instead of giving up. She is very strong in a crisis situation. She was very inspiring to see, with that challenge.

PAN M 360: The tension between jazz groove and punk attitude is less prominent on Mood Valiant. 

Paul Bender: It is more an emotional record than the previous ones. There is a lot of new music on Mood Valiant. We definitely covered different areas, some are fairly pyrotechnic in their approach and I guess this collection of songs reflect something else, those emotional states we went through. On our previous recordings, we had done those crazy, flashy things, over the top, we proved ourselves in that way. And life is different now, things happened to everybody in the band, so we express something different at this point. Not to say we lost interest in the previous things, but the new songs fit in a different body of work, a particular set of feelings and ideas, it is a sort of cohesive emotional statement, little more focused on this state than a wow factor of explosion, I guess. It is nice to be united around certain things. That being said, there is plenty more ridiculous nonsense, crazy-bullshit stuff to come, whatever Hiatus Kayote do next, we have no doubt. And do not worry, we won’t do boring sad shit (laughs), abrasive, technical  stuff will be back again. Choose Your Weapon was including everything we could do at that time, Mood Valiant is different and built without expressing everything. It’s more like a story and needed to be less hyperactive, aggressive or whatever.

PAN M 360: The orchestration is also different, with reeds, brasses, strings, new electronic sounds. Can you describe the process of arrangements? 

Paul Bender: I guess we are always searching for new sounds. You know, the sonic aspect inspires us to drive something. You’ve got a song, it’s got some melody, chords, the way it sounds is very important, so we always try to find different ways to capture it, to colour it and to express what the song is about. It’s always a quest. So this album is more tonally and harmonically sophisticated, but at the same time there is something more live-energy and human-feeling, and some sense of rawness and looseness that conveys certain things and triggers your imagination.

PAN M 360:  Have you played with orchestral sections?

Paul Bender: We haven’t done it yet but it would certainly be fun to extend our line-up for special concerts. We are open to this idea, there will be a time and a place for such an event. Now, we are about to give concerts in Australia and later this year in New Zealand, we can’t think about international touring until the conditions allow us to travel out of the area. Also, we included many elements of what has been recorded with arrangements of Artur Verocai in Rio de Janeiro (“Get Sun” and “Stone or Lavender”)

PAN M 360: In Australia, are there other bands more or less in the same musical niche as yours?

Paul Bender: There are a lot of crazy bands but we don’t take inspiration from any scene. We don’t claim to have invented our style, it’s all stolen in some way. The best you can do to be original is to combine pre-existing things with creativity. Truly original music can also be unbearable and unlistenable. 

PAN M 360: Certainly the combination of forms has produced something different in Hiatus Kayote. 

Paul Bender: Everyone recombines elements of music that already exist. I guess we combine enough disparate elements of music to be original. But you know, anyone who says they’re really original is a fucking liar. Yeah, a lot of the stuff in our music is pretty distinct, but at the end of the day, 90% of what you do is normal. It’s like cooking, the ingredient you don’t expect is added to a normal meal, it makes it interesting. When I went to study in a jazz school, what did I do? I found something I really liked and I reproduced it! That something then becomes part of you and takes on a different form while you’re playing. 

PAN M 360: There is also this mixture of intuition and musicianship, which is very important in Hiatus Kayote. Is that a strength, in your opinion? 

Paul Bender: Yes, we’re all students of music forever, we accumulate knowledge and try to emulate aspects of it as it comes into our tool bag, and we work with our musician friends.  We are a mix of educated – me and Simon – and self-taught, Nai and Perrin, musicians, it’s a good combination of theoretical understanding and intuitive understanding. We help each other in both directions, it’s good to keep the focus on both. 

PAN M 360: You still have fun together, that’s more than obvious. A stable and happy family?Paul Bender: The family is stable, yes, we are happy with this record, very happy to have gone through this rollercoaster. It’s not easy to reach high standards and the truth is in the expression through a long process of filtration. To get all the members to the same place, there are always battles, but each of us was super patient. At the end of the day, we were all happy to work together.

Anika made a name for herself in 2010 with a self-titled debut album with Geoff Barrows (Portishead) and the other members of Beak, while living in Bristol. With her Nico looks, cool beauty, German accent and mechanical art-pop songs, Annika Henderson had no trouble winning over an audience with more avant-garde tastes. In 2013, after the Anika EP, the German-British singer became more discreet, collaborating here and there with various artists such as Tricky, T.Raumschmiere, Dave Clarke and Shackleton. In 2016, she joined the Mexican band Exploded View, with whom she recorded two albums and an EP. Aside from the single “No More Parties in the Attic”, also released in 2016, Anika hasn’t released anything under her own name, until the very recent Change, endorsed by the renowned Sacred Bones label and co-produced by her and Martin Thulin of Exploded View. 

Joined at her home in the Berlin countryside, the former political journalist revealed the background of the creation of this second album, the reasons for her semi-silence, the changes in her life and her music, while confessing in passing her great respect for Nico.

PAN M 360: Change is the title of your new album. It’s a very significant word – what does it mean to you?

Anika: This title means so much, but so many different things. It means on the one hand that there are so many changes in the world right now. I don’t know where to start because there have been so many changes in the last year – the coronavirus, the rise of the extreme right, the different social upheavals… But this title also implies personal changes, because a lot of things have happened in the last ten years. So yes, there has been a lot of change and that is indeed the main theme of my album. 

PAN M 360: There are also some changes in the music. What’s changed compared to your last album?

Anika: The first album was made with Beak, quite simply, without any specific goal, we didn’t even think about making an album with these songs. We were only venting about stuff. For the second album, they weren’t even there. My plan was to go back to Bristol and record there, but with the pandemic that just wasn’t possible. So I had to do things differently. I recorded by myself in Berlin and fortunately one of the members of Exploded View came to join me. So yes, it’s different; I didn’t want to pretend I was in a studio in Bristol while I was stranded in a studio in Berlin, I didn’t want to pretend the last ten years hadn’t happened, you know? That would be kind of sad. 

PAN M 360: So what would you say is different? Is it less dubby? 

Anika: Well, it’s different because Beak aren’t playing the music! The whole thing changes. I’m playing most of the instruments while the live drums are done by Martin Thulen from Exploded View, and he has wide, eclectic tastes, but the reason I really wanted to work with him is because of his understanding of post-rock stuff. I kind of wanted it to be a bit different, it was a conscious decision. I didn’t want to force this dubiness. I love dub, but at the same time I’m not gonna make a dub record… I mean, I don’t want to force it if I’m working with people who are not into that music as much as I am. That’s one thing I really noticed about living in Germany, it has a very different relation with music, especially with dub. In England it’s much easier to come across people who have a lot of different understandings of different types of music, whereas here it’s just not there. Here, it’s rock and that’s it. Of course, Berlin is obviously pretty diverse, but a thing like dub is not much there. 

PAN M 360 : Would it be safe to say that there are maybe more elements of krautrock in this new album?

Anika: Hmm… maybe. Like I said, I didn’t sit down and said to myself, “I’m now going to make a krautrock album or a dub album”, it just became what it was. And it obviously has some slight elements of dub in there. A lot of it I recorded in my studio on my own. The thing that was lost, I think, was the drums, because I programmed the drums on an electronic drum machine and then when Martin came, he adapted it for live so the sound of the drums became its own thing. There were not dubby drums like, say, when I was working with Geoff, this was a very different thing. So yes, there was a lot more kraut. The way I write is like a journey. Some of the songs are more structured, more like pop songs, but most of the time the way I write is like a weird journey from the beginning to the end. “Freedom” and “Finger Pies”… these songs were just me jamming alone in my studio one night with some weird synths. If anything, we had to tame these ideas to put it on the record. So yeah, it definitely has a kraut thing but that was just from life you know, it’s the way it was, the way it was written. And to be honest, that’s what lockdown felt like, this ongoing endless sausage, when is this gonna end (laughs). Just imagine a kraut band surfing along it. You have to play a little bit longer, a little bit longer, and then you just keep playing as lockdown extends.

PAN M 360: Tell me about the album’s closing song “Wait For Something”, which is a bit different from what you have done before.

Anika: Yes, definitely! Before the lockdown, I wrote a load of demos, and a lot of them were on the guitar because that’s how I often start, with just the guitar. And also because I had nothing else than this classic guitar. So “Wait For Something” is the only song that made it from the old batch of songs that I wrote before. I felt that it had somewhere to go, but I only had a beginning, so when I played it to Martin and we were trying to work it out, we extended it and it became so cheesy, and then Martin added strings on it. It’s one of the tracks where I just let him go wild, so it became a bit cheesy but I think it’s good to have a mix of stuff, it goes to a lot of different places and I think it’s honest in that way. 

PAN M 360: Since you worked with Martin, do you think that there are some similarities with Exploded View?

Anika: Yes, in some ways. That’s why I wanted to work with him, because we’ve known each other for such a long time and we worked so closely together on various albums. We’ve been through so many tours where everything went wrong, we had face to face confrontations and he’s the sort of person that now is ideal to work with because neither of us is scared of saying no, or “that doesn’t sound very good”, and we’re not gonna take it personally. I know also that Martin hasn’t got anything to prove, he was there to help me out. Very often when you collaborate with someone more in the production role, they kind of start molding it into what they think it should be, and I did not want that to happen! But Geoff is not like that, he’s pretty laid back. But a lot of people would think, “oh, it can become post-punk” or something else, and they start changing things. I just wanted this album to be weird and I don’t have any ideas what it is. I mean, there are a lot of different genres, but I didn’t want it to be… ordered. So that was nice about working with Martin. Plus he can teach me a lot because I really wanted to co-produce it, I knew what I wanted to do with it.

It was a really focused task, from the depth of my soul. There was no energy left for anything else after that.

PAN M 360 : Your first album came out in 2010 and then you did an EP in 2013. Aside from your work with Exploded View and a few collaborations, how come it took so long for you to put out another album under your name? 

Anika: It never seemed right. There were a lot of demos made in that time though, but it  just felt too forced and I didn’t have the tools that I needed in order to put across what I wanted. And Geoff kept saying to me, “we’ll help you do the next album, just go ahead and write it and bring it to us”, but I didn’t know how to write an album! So I went into that long investigation of trying to learn how to write an album because I’ve never been to music school or anything. I did a lot of collaborations where I could learn something. And then I started Exploded View. We thought of naming the project Anika but then it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it gave the musicians credit, and it was also a new project. I think it would have really killed it if we came out with something that sounded the same as my first album. 

PAN M 360: You used to be a political journalist for a little while. Does politics affect your music? 

Anika: Yes, definitely. The world is political, everything is political. Everything we do is based on politics. All this stuff I’ve written, it’s about life, it’s about experiences, so it’s definitely political.

PAN M 360: There are three videos from the new album that were released, “Rights”, “Change”, and “Finger Pies”. You can see the same kind of aesthetic from one video to the other and also a certain emphasis on the clothes, all very chic and original. 

Anika: It’s weird because there were very different people involved. I choose to work with very specific people for very specific reasons. We filmed those clips in Berlin which is a place where I lived for 10 years, I just recently moved out. So the videos are quite Berlin in a way, but it’s not because they’re trying to be Berlin, it’s just that this place has been my life for years. I think it’s nice to put it across in a video and just work with people that I care about, they’ve been part of my life for the last 10 years and they were all saying, “Yes! You’re finally releasing something!” So I had to make them part of it as well. The styling was done by a friend of mine, except for the “Change” video. She’s been a good friend for years and I used to live in the back of her clothing store at one point, surrounded by mannequins and these crazy, inventive clothes that she used to make, so it all symbolizes this whole journey, or part of it. So yes, she makes nice clothes. That’s the fun of it all, you know? You test your own boundaries or limits, especially with “Finger Pie”… people are often trying to tell you who you are, what to do, or how you should dress… That’s why I’m constantly changing skin, you see? I don’t want to be put in one corner, it’s suffocating. I think it’s natural for artists to change in that way. Again, that’s one of the reasons the album is called Change. Some artists stay the same, but if you look at the ones that really sustained through the years, they were okay to keep changing, they changed with the times. Imagine if the Beatles wore their suits the whole time! They’d be stuck there with their same stupid little haircuts for years, and try to squeeze into these tight little suits. 

PAN M 360: Well, the Ramones did exactly that…

Anika: (laughs) True, but I guess it’s because they were messed up since the beginning, you know. For them, it was more a question of attitude. For them, it’s a lifelong sentence (laughs). It’s like Lydia Lunch… I love Lydia Lunch. Well, she got a lot of criticism, last year I think, because she became a yoga teacher… “How can Lydia Lunch become a yoga teacher?” So what? I didn’t have any problem with that, she can do what she wants! 

PAN M 360: You often have been compared to Nico. Everytime we read something about you, there is a Nico comparison, even in the press release I was sent. Aren’t you tired of that?

Anika: It was fair enough in the beginning because people are trying to place you somewhere but by now… I don’t know… I mean, I like Nico, I have a lot of respect for her, she is a very dark character. But last year, I put that whole comparison to rest, at least for myself, because I accepted this project with a string orchestra in Berlin, the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop. They’re kind of the rebels of the string scene, and we played Nico’s Desertshore album. We did it only twice because of the lockdown, and we worked so long on it. We were working through the internet, then we had masked rehearsals… But it was such an interesting project. Before that, I avoided Nico because of this comparison, somehow. But that’s the way it is. She still got there first!

Last June, Anoush Moazzeni gave an inspiring concert of contemporary and female musical creativity from Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, the United States and Canada at the Suoni per il popolo Festival in Montreal. We took the opportunity to talk to her and discover her world. At the time of our video conference, she had been in Iran for almost a year and a half, due to the pandemic.

Pan M 360: Hello Anoush. You have been in Iran for more than a year now while your home is in Montreal. Why are you there?

Anoush Moazzeni: I had come to Iran for workshops and also to see family, but the pandemic took the turn that we know and given the cancellations, postponements and other delays for the return, I finally decided to let the storm pass. I’m lucky because I live in a nice flat owned by my parents, I have a piano and I was able to work remotely (I’m an Assistant Professor, Research Assistant et Ph.D candidate at Concordia University in Montreal) and even do some music commissions. I’ve managed!

Pan M 360: Looking at your web page, we can see that you do a lot of things. In a few words, how would you describe yourself?

Anoush Moazzeni: I identify myself as a concert pianist, interdisciplinary artist, researcher, creator, educator. It’s quite varied indeed!

Pan M 360: What are the roots of this interest in the avant-garde and contemporary creation? Are they rooted in family?

Anoush Moazzeni: Music ran in my family, that’s true. My mother is a singer and has always had a love for Persian literature and music. I learned to play the piano at the age of five and my parents always encouraged my choices. At the age of 18 I started my studies at Tehran University and 3 years later I went to Lyon (France) to continue my piano studies. In parallel, I developed a love for computers, philosophy and digital arts. I completed a master’s degree in piano in Montreal, and it was there that I developed my identity as a multidisciplinary artist. I discovered a cultural crossroads that allowed me to reveal my own essence at the intersection of several artistic disciplines.

Riseopera.ca

Pan M 360: Where else did you get your attraction to the avant-garde?

Anoush Moazzeni: I travelled a lot! I went to Köln and to IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music) in Paris. Once here in Canada, I was given the chance to participate in festivals where I could try things out. I appreciate this great freedom and the opportunity to delve into unconventional territories that allow me to explore all the avant-garde possibilities and also those of a constructive dialogue between Western and Persian traditions.

Pan M 360: As a woman of Iranian origin, do you believe you are a model, an inspiration for other women in this part of the world?

Anoush Moazzeni: I don’t see myself as a role model, but I can assume that I can be an inspiration for those who suffer from the usual limitations in this region. Yes, it’s very good if my example can help to break the barrier of ‘I can’t do that’. I see that it is still a bit taboo to be a woman and to be independent. People sometimes say to me, “Did you really do that all by yourself? Wasn’t it your boyfriend?” Even here in Canada! So I can understand the difficulties of many women in the world. That’s why I give help and advice to women composers as I did with my project Deterritorializing the realm of new music.

I have also been researching the place of women in avant-garde creation, particularly women from minorities and those from the LGBTQ+ community. If my background can serve as an inspiration, so much the better. But it would be pretentious to define myself as a role model!

Anoush Moazzeni

Pan M 360: Let’s talk about Deterritorializing the realm of new music. What was it about?

Anoush Moazzeni: I commissioned works from West Asian composers (Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel) who live and create either there or in the West. The pieces were to be written for piano (I am the performer) accompanied by either voice, tape, audiovisual installation or electronic recordings.

Pan M 360: What is your assessment?

Anoush Moazzeni: I didn’t have any particular expectations, but I am happy to have participated in my own way in this vast project, which is to stimulate avant-garde creation in regions outside the West. I hope that in the long run, radical scholarly creativity will emerge from the almost exclusively Western territories. Hence the title of the project!

Pan M 360: In addition to being a performer, what roles do you play in the production of this kind of project?

Anoush Moazzeni: All of them! I book the musicians, plan the rehearsals, do the promotion, contact the festivals, manage the recording and video broadcasting, etc.

VISIT THE SUONI PER IL POPOLO WEBSITE TO WATCH THE VIDEO OF PART OF ANOUSH MOAZZENI’S CONCERT ON JUNE 15, 2021 (you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to access the video)

Pan M 360: You are definitely even more ‘multidisciplinary’ than the usual artistic label suggests! Are there any other projects of yours that we can see and hear?

Anoush Moazzeni: If people ever get to Toronto (once the border restrictions are lifted), they can visit the Aga Khan Museum, which has a beautiful exhibition by Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed, Dissolving Order. His work is inspired by the ancient art of carpets, a thousand-year-old tradition throughout the Near East region. He uses new technologies to reappropriate the artistic expression linked to this tradition. My contribution was a musical piece that included audio-visual materials. I used piano, digital and invented sounds, concrete sounds, such as those of a machine used to make carpets, etc., and I mixed everything together. The graphic notation was inspired by the carpet patterns of the region. I also asked an artist to weave these notations into a traditional style fabric.

Pan M 360: I also understand that you have a new project underway in Quebec City?

Anoush Moazzeni: Yes, it’s a production residency at the Chambre blanche in Quebec City, from August 3 to September 18. It’s called

Autopoiesis in the Making and it’s about creating original digital instruments. It will take advantage of my interest in interdisciplinarity because I will include artificial intelligence.

The beauty of this is that the result of my research there will be integrated into another project under construction, that of an opera at Concordia University. It will be very experimental, very far from the traditional form. In addition to investing artificial intelligence, I want to integrate virtual reality. The singer will have to move and interpret the score in a totally new context.

Pan M 360: Do you still give traditional classical piano concerts?

Anoush Moazzeni: No, not at the moment. I am very busy with my career in the avant-garde. But I still practice every day.

Pan M 360: Which classical composers do you like?

Anoush Moazzeni: Bach, Scriabin, moderns like Webern. I also like Brahms, Chopin, Saint-Saëns.

Pan M 360: Who inspires you in contemporary art?

Anoush Moazzeni: Artists in akousmatics, electroacoustics, and also female artists and many from first nations.

Pan M 360: Thank you

Pan M 360 : Hello Jean-Félix! How did you come up with the idea of a musical show based on the figure of Leonardo da Vinci?

Jean-Félix Mailloux : In truth, it was a commission from Wonny Song, artistic director of the Orford Arts Centre. We spoke at the Opus Prize ceremony in 2018. I offered to go and play our Debussy album, but he thought it didn’t fit in with the theme of the 2019 festival, which was to be centred around Italy. He then asked me if I would be willing to build a show inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and the music of the Italian Renaissance. I thought about it, and finally said yes! We premiered the show in July 2019.

Pan M 360 : Were you familiar with this musical universe at the time?

Jean-Félix Mailloux : Very little! I had never had the opportunity to play it. That said, it’s music and a period that I’ve loved for a long time, thanks to albums by Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras. I’ve also listened to a lot of Gesualdo, as well as modern musicians influenced by this period: Pärt and Stravinsky (his three madrigals on Gesualdo, his Pulcinella inspired by Pergolesi, among others, and even his Persephone, rather atonal, but still linked to this period, etc.), and several others.

Pan M 360 : The addition of a voice (Coral Egan’s, magnificent!) in such an extensive way is new for a Cordâme album. Why, and how did you come to choose Coral?

Jean-Félix Mailloux : Coral had already worked with me on pieces for Solawa (another ensemble founded and directed by Jean-Félix, editor’s note), and we really enjoyed our collaboration. I had been looking for a long time to integrate her into a Cordâme project. So when the idea of the Da Vinci show started to take shape, I thought of her. I don’t really like operatic voices with a large vibrato. I wanted a voice that was better suited to the early music repertoire, a pure voice with little or no vibrato. Coral has the perfect instrument for that! An exceptional talent with an infallible technique, a fluid plasticity thanks to her work in jazz, an impeccable accuracy of classical baroque level. It’s exactly what I needed!

Pan M 360 : What are the main elements that make it possible for you to create music that is both new (because all the compositions are yours!) and so evocative of the Renaissance, all without being a pastiche?

Jean-Félix Mailloux : The rhythms are very important. They make me think of folklore, because it’s music that was part of the daily life of the people at the time. I listened a lot to Jordi Savall, and the use of percussion instruments like tambourines is very present. There are also the simple, insistent motifs and the use of old harmonic modes, such as the melodic minor. I also used a lot of parallel fourths and fifths, techniques that sound “old”. It’s very technical and musicological, but the result is satisfying, both new and traditional, at least I think so.

Pan M 360 : Compared to your previous albums linked to the world of classical music (Debussy, Satie), how does Da Vinci compare in terms of difficulties and challenges?

Jean-Félix Mailloux : It’s a different job. For Satie, the connection was quite natural, because his music is quite similar to what we were doing at that time. Debussy was more difficult, because his music is perfect in itself, very directed in the writing. Debussy knew what he wanted. It was more difficult to ‘get out’ of the imposed framework. With Da Vinci and the Renaissance, it was actually easier. Once I had assimilated the basic concepts (which I mentioned earlier), I had a lot of freedom. Da Vinci composed music, as we know, but no documents have come down to us. I was therefore able to invent as I pleased sound worlds that he “could have” conceived himself! This is the central idea of the show and the album. I’m happy with the result, and I think I’m going to love these pieces for a long time.

Pan M 360: Would you have considered tackling this musical universe on your own if Wonny (Song) hadn’t challenged you to do it?

Jean-Félix Mailloux: I’m not sure, no. But in retrospect, I’m very happy! I have the impression that doors are opening for Cordâme thanks to this concept. Doors that I was knocking on without any answer. There aren’t many shows like this on the stage at the moment. I feel that we can use it to showcase our originality and play on stages or at festivals that we have never visited before. I am very happy, and I thank Wonny for that!

Pan M 360: I would like you to tell me about the lyrics that Coral sings. Who are they from and how did you find them?

Jean-Félix Mailloux: For the project, I did some research to find texts that could have been read and appreciated by Leonardo da Vinci. At first I thought of Petrarch, but I fell in love with a certain Gaspara Stampa, who lived about the same time as Leonardo. I was won over by her very strong and poetic texts, full of pearls and little wonders. She is an unknown poet outside Italy, but her work resonates with passion and is tinged with a rock’n’roll life full of emotions. She was married to a man who was away at war for a long time, so the themes of absence, of waiting, of love imagined rather than experienced, permeate her work almost everywhere.

Pan M 360: A great discovery, then?

Jean-Félix Mailloux: Yes, so much so that I’m currently working on an upcoming show centred around women authors from different eras, which I will set to music specifically for Coral Egan. In addition to Gaspara Stampa, there will be Louise Labbé, Catherine Pozzi, Louis de Vilmorin, Emily Dickinson, and others.

Cordâme ensemble- left to right : Sheila Hannigan, Coral Egan, Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau, Marie Neige Lavigne, Jean-Félix Mailloux

Pan M 360: Another project related to classical music?

Jean-Félix Mailloux: Yes. The next one will be devoted to Ravel. The work on this one is very advanced and will complete the French trilogy (with Satie and Debussy), but then (I’m already thinking about it!), I intend to tackle Stravinsky!

Pan M 360: But before all that, you’ll be performing (in front of an audience!!) in several places in Quebec, right?

Jean-Félix Mailloux: Absolutely. We’re really looking forward to seeing real humans in front of us! We’ll be in Saint-Prime on July 3rd, in Sorel-Tracy on August 8th, in Trois-Rivières on August 22nd. Other dates and locations may be added soon, thanks to the relaxing of sanitary measures. The public can visit our Facebook page to stay informed.

Pan M 360: Thank you!


Formed in Perth, Australia in 1978, the Scientists first established themselves as a punk band with pop tendencies before a personnel reshuffle (the first of many) in the early ’80s, which saw the band dive into disturbing swamp rock, tinged with Beefhearty crazy blues, Cramps-like dissonant ’60s fuzz-rock, Suicidal hysteria, Stoogian proto-punk, and apocalyptic Birthday Party-style post-punk. Raw, lo-fi sound, primal and hypnotic rhythms, dangerously simple riffs, it’s particularly this second incarnation of the Scientists that has left its mark and influenced numerous bands including the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Mudhoney. The incendiary “We Had Love”, recently heard by many in the movie Rock n Rolla, could be considered a classic of the  Scientists sound.

They’ve been crowned the godfathers of grunge, but the Scientists were far more twisted, unhealthy and sinister than anything that came out of Seattle or Sub Pop. After relocating to Sydney, then London, and six landmark albums between 1982 and 87, the Scientists faded away… only to return with the same spirit. First sporadically, then much more seriously since the beginning of the 2000s.

The current formation, still centered around the singer and guitarist Kim Salmon, gathers all the musicians of the second incarnation: guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic and drummer Leanne Cowie, who joined the band in December 1985. If the Scientists have toured a lot since this reformation, they have on the other hand released very little new material, Salmon preferring to focus on concerts. After a single released in 2017, then another for the Los Angeles label In The Red the following year and an EP for the same label in 2019, the band was convinced to make a new album. Negativity, released on June 11, brings the Australian band back to almost where they left off in 1987. They haven’t mellowed out a bit, always seemingly fueled by bad acid and cheap beer, and they’re still in the same bad mood that suits them so well. To emphasize the point, PAN M 360 reached Salmon at his home in Melbourne, where it’s almost winter. The very friendly leader of the band gave us a long interview, in which he talks about the Scientists reformation, the creation of Negativity, and his passion for drawing and painting.  

PAN M 360: When the Scientists called it quits in 1987, did you leave on a bad note? How did you get back together?

Kim Salmon: It was sort of a natural process when we ended the Scientists in ’86, there wasn’t any point in pursuing it, it seemed okay to do it, we couldn’t see any reasons not to…

PAN M 360: Had you thought about coming back together for a while before making it real?

Kim Salmon: Not really. It was one of those understood kind of things. Tony was a bit reluctant about it because of certain things that did occur in the past. He was a bit embittered about some things that had nothing to do with the band, but more about the band not being as successful as he had hoped. We were kind of on the verge of breaking into the mainstream in the ’80s but it just never quite happened for various reasons, and he was maybe more disappointed than us about that. Anyway, we succeeded in persuading him to restart the band. 

PAN M 360: Were you adamant about having the old line-up back together?

Kim Salmon: The band had a few line-ups. We reunited one of the earlier line-up with James Baker, Ian Sharples and Ben Juniper to perform a show on some rooftop somewhere in Perth for quite a bit of money in 1995, but that was just a one-off thing. And there was the line-up we had for Human Jukebox in 1987 with myself, Tony and a guy named Nick Combe, so that was another line-up as well. I like it but I don’t think it was the Scientists line-up. It’s just that people were more interested in this actual line-up, which is the one we had in the early to mid-’80s. Leanne joined in late ’85. She was the one who fit best with this line-up after Brett Rixon left in ’85. People think we got back together in 2006 but it was actually in 2002, when we were offered to tour Australia. At this point, we had tried two different drummers. One night, we played a show in Sydney and we asked Leanne if she would like to join us on stage for a song. That was a pivotal moment because that’s where we realized that we really needed her in the band, it just wasn’t the same without Leanne on drums. 

PAN M 360: How did this new album came together?

Kim Salmon: In 2017, we had the opportunity to do some touring in Australia and we had at that point reissued all our catalogue on a label called Numero. We had many, many reissues over the years, but Numero was really the most successful, and really brought the band back to life, so we went on that tour. In those days, Tony got me involved in some recording he was doing for someone’s birthday and he wanted me to sing on it. He actually did a pretty good job with my vocals and we thought that maybe we should do some more tracks with the rest of the band, so we did this single, which was a cover of Jacques Dutronc’s “Mini Mini Mini” and “Perpetual Motion”, an obscure Scientists song from the ’80s that we never officially recorded. We were’nt too much into recording new stuff like old bands do because its always fraught with disaster. So for us a single was alright. But then we found ourselves touring Europe a year after, and then the USA, so we did another single, with In The Red this time, and then In The Red persuaded us to do an EP and another tour of the U.S.

After that, we were offered a third tour of the USA but the label needed more new recordings so we finally agreed to do another album… that’s how Negativity came about! So we put the album out, but we were never able to tour… We still have an open visa until June 2022, so we’ll see how things go. Negativity was basically done through the Internet. I would come up with a rhythm on the drums, send it to Tony in London who would come up with a riff and send it to me. If I liked the riff, I would come up with something to sing on it. Then we would add the bass and send it to Leanne to add the drums. But since I had already found a beat, it was not easy for her to play over it. So we basically recorded it at Sumo Studio in Perth. We added some stuff here and there, violin, trombone, my daughter sang a bit and played some piano…

PAN M 360: Would you say that Negativity is the logical follow-up to Human Jukebox, that last album you guys recorded together in 1987?

Kim Salmon: In some ways. I think it’s more polished than Human Jukebox which is much more rough and ready. This new record sounds like it’s more produced to my ears. And there aren’t a lot of Scientists records that sound well produced, aside from Weird Love (1986) and maybe You Get What You Deserve (1985); generally, we had pretty garage-y records. We usually recorded on a low budget. I think our recording history is bizarre because our first album is very different, with a pop-punky kind of sound; Blood Red River is quite an extreme sounding record and You Get What Deserve is also different… I can hear a sort of aesthetic somehow, I think that they share some things. We’re still pursuing that minimalist sort of structure in our songs, that’s what we’ve always done. The structures are very simple in terms of notes and keys and melodies. That said, the artist is the last person to be talking about his work. But If I can draw a parallel between those two albums, it’s mostly about Tony’s involvment. Usually, I was writing most of the songs, but on Human Jukebox, Tony contributed to a lot of the music, as well as on Negativity. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXHR69POI2E

PAN M 360: Why did you choose the title Negativity?

Kim Salmon: We’ve always been a band with a dark side, we’ve never done anything very positive and upbeat – without being goth, that I want to say (laughs). So this word came to me in one of the songs of the album, on “Dissonance” I think, and I thought it would make a good title. I did something positive with Negativity (laughs)

PAN M 360: Aside from the band, you teach music and you also paint and draw. 

Kim Salmon: When I was 19, I studied fine arts for a year, painting was my primary interest. Then I took what they call a gap year… and that gap year lasted until now (laughs). But all along, I kept being interested in drawing and art, but aside from a few drawings and cartoons here and there, and a few record covers I illustrated, I never really focused on this. It’s after my last solo album in 2015 that I got more into it. In order to do the album, I had a Gofundme, but instead of doing a private show or something like that for the people who helped me, I decided to send them a card with some drawings I made. Then someone approached me about doing an exhibition of my work. So I did my first exhibit in 2018 which included a little bit of everything I’ve done since I was 16. I sold quite a few works and the following year I did another one, mostly drawings and watercolours. Again, I sold a lot of them. Then I exhibited at Mick Harvey and his wife’s gallery. Again, a big success as I sold 14 of my works. At the opening, I sold five works that I had done in a week while I was in quarantine in Perth! Since the confinement, I really immersed myself in painting and drawing. I have been quite productive and have made a lot of progress. I really love painting and drawing, I’m really excited about it and will definitely do more of it. 

(photo credit: Andrew Watson)

I’ve met with Ben Reimer, drummer and initiator of this new festival. 

https://youtu.be/2-GKgdeLpcA
Video interviews with many artists participating in the Undrum fest 2021

Pan M 360 : Hello Ben! How did you come up with this great idea for a concert series?

Ben Reimer : well, it was years in the making, at least in my mind! Since I am a drummer and also a member of Architek percussion group, I am well aware of the possibilities of drums in avant-garde and contemporary music, added to those in jazz, improv, metal, pop, rock and so on. I am a fan of all kinds of music, big range. So I wanted to bring together all those great people, musicians and thinkers of new music, that use the drum kit in innovative ways and contribute to ‘’undo’’ the usual ways of playing the instrument and shake the public’s conventional idea of music making with drums.

So with the help of my friends at Architek and also Peter (Burton) from Suoni per il popolo, everything was put in place this year to inaugurate this series within the festival and we called it Undrum, for obvious reasons! I am aware there are a lot of drum fests already out there (right here in Montreal, there is a very good one!), and they’re great, but I wanted to showcase styles and musical ideas that are less well represented in these gatherings, individual voices that express themselves in unconventional ways through drum kit playing. That’s the goal. 

Pan M 360 : May we call you the Tim Brady of drums?

Ben Reimer : LOL! Well, I haven’t done a piece for 100 drums yet, so, I don’t know… But hey, just for the principle of it, that would be an honor! And that wouldn’t be so far from the truth. I have my (drumming) hands in art and vernacular music-making, be it metal and rock, and also contemporary opera and drum kit concertos, which I have done! The difference is that I do not compose. I play others’ music, and I like it that way. I love the relationship I develop with composers (like Nicole Lizée for example). That’s my thing.

Pan M 360 : Can you drive us through some of the shows coming next in the series?

Ben Reimer : Sure! This Sunday is Part 2, and it starts with Greg Harrison from Toronto. Great artist, also associated with Jeremy Dutcher. He plays these wonderful grooves where he doubles as a synth player while drumming! Some very ambient, accessible atmospheres mixing delicate drum kit with entrancing bass lines. That’s something to look for.

Then there’s Montreal’s Mili Hong who is well versed in beautiful straight ahead jazz, but here will dazzle with incredible free improv, with purely acoustic drum kit. She knows how to invent great textures with her instrument.

Ian Chang from Sun Lux will also be there. He is like a one man DJ-orchestra! Drumming and also triggering all kinds of sound effects with simultaneous electronics. It’s shocking to hear what can come from a single person on a stage!

Jason Tait will entertain a second set. He comes from The Weakerthans, from Winnipeg. 

Pan M 360 : And later on in the month, legendary names will be in town : Susie Ibarra, from Tzadik/John Zorn fame and also Glenn Kotche from Wilco! Was it difficult to bring them along ?

Ben Reimer : No, not at all! I was introduced to Glenn via David Cossin from Bang on a Can in New York, with whom I collaborated on some work by Lukas Ligeti (drummer and son of the famous composer Györgi Ligeti!). Glenn did some lectures for my students at McGill. Like me, he is part of the ‘’popular’’ and ‘’classical’’ worlds. I never met Susie, but I know about her work, of course, and she has an idea of my own, so there is a lot of respect. She also is a wonderful lecturer, researcher and scholar of her instrument. I can’t wait to hear them and see the public’s reaction to their incredible playing.

They are wonderful and very generous individuals. So, no, it wasn’t difficult at all to bring them to the roster.

Pan M 360 : What’s the state of the drum kit as a popular instrument, considering that nowadays, popular and far reaching radio, tv and digital waves have been taken over by rap and hip hop, where the drums aren’t a usual feature?

Ben Reimer : Oh, that is a massive question! It depends if you’re a scholar, a teacher or a player. But I’d say that for sure it’s a different landscape out there from 20 or 50 years ago. I meet some students that have a surprising lack of knowledge of the historical figures of the instrument, and rock music! That being said, they are curious, and once there in the game, they come up with questions about Keith Moon and so on, so then we talk and discuss and they drink it, you know. And, as much as the internet can be a pain, it can also be a way for them to listen and discover lots and lots of things that we didn’t have access to decades ago. So, we have to tamper a bit the idea of lack of knowledge.

That being said, there is a new brand of young drummers arriving with academic and literate credentials. They come from university programs, like McGill in jazz, and they are very well trained and hungry for originality. I’d love to see more classical programs also giving space to the knowledge of drums, and the possibilities of this instrument in a more avant-garde context. But things are evolving. I gave lectures on drum history to classical percussion students. So things are changing.

Pan M 360 : Would you say that walls between ‘’pop’’ and ‘’classical’’ music-making are going down?

Ben Reimer : I think we’re getting there! You know, with pioneering work and advocacy done in the last 25 years or so by ensembles like Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, or right here by Architek, mentalities are going in the right direction, I’d say. But there is still some separation. 

Pan M 360 : What artists are blowing up your mind these days?

Ben Reimer : Oh, many, many! All those at Undrum, of course, but also some recent metal drumming. There are incredible drummers out there. So I get inspiration from them, I practice and I even get some new music based on that from Nicole Lizée! 

Pan M 360 : What does the drum kit brings to music-making that other percussion instruments don’t?

Ben Reimer : Technically, you have the option of having four things happening at the same time, so it creates a multi-limbed independance which is at the core of what makes a drum kit performance. And also, what I love about it, is the fact that you have all those great individuals, creating their own personal sound world but all tied in with the 100 year-history and knowledge of this instrument. It’s all tied-in with the politics and social fabric of the last 100 years! Yeah. And, best thing, in my mind : you can create such great grooves with it! That’s the beauty of the drum kit : playing it makes people wanna get up and dance!

Pan M 360 : Thanks Ben, and all the best with the series!

Ben Reimer : Thanks to you!

Cavalcade, the highly anticipated, newly released second album from  black midi, takes the now British trio back to the paths of unbridled progressive alt-rock music. Like the previous Schlagenheim of 2019, which revealed to the world a group of young virtuoso musicians, capable of incredible technical prowess, digging without restraint into punk, jazz, experimental music and progressive rock like children with a box of candy, Cavalcade, aptly titled, is a surprising, ambitious at times, difficult record, on which all kinds of influences and ambiances jostle together. The delirious first single “John L”, released last March, and the equally crazy video that accompanied it, furiously set the tone for what was to come: Cavalcade is an unbridled ride from which one does not emerge unscathed. 

It’s at 2 p.m. that we had an appointment with Geordie Greep at his place in London. Comfortably seated in an armchair in the basement of his house, wearing a shirt, tie and a baggy jacket (a bit like the photo in this article), the guitarist and lead singer of black midi looks like he’s about to be interviewed for a job selling used cars. Unpredictable and sometimes irascible, the talented musician is in a pretty good mood. Without going into too many details and anecdotes, he talked to PAN M 360 about Cavalcade, the new opus of the London combo featuring bassist Cameron Picton and the prodigious drummer-percussionist Morgan Simpson, completed by saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and keyboardist Seth Evans. 

PAN M 360: How would you describe Calvacade in your own words?

Geordie Greep: Non-stop thrills, adventure, action, drama, comeday, romance… it’s got it all! The highest highs and the lowest lows.

PAN M 360: The word “drama” pops up often in your interviews and even your press releases…

Geordie Greep: It’s a less limiting term than say… noise-rock or R&B or something like that. When you have a more vague and emotional term like “drama”, it doesn’t mean you have to do a specific type of music, it just means that you can use it as a guide to make music that has a form of trajectory or tension to it. And I think drama is a good thing to keep in my mind because you always want the music to be exciting, to have the serene or melodic moments still have that threat there, the tension, the drama, and to still be able to go back to a quiet moment…

PAN M 360: The cover seems to represent quite well the contents of the record, it’s a dense and intense cover but with a lot of blue, blue being a more meditative colour, not too aggressive. You chose to work again with David Rudnick, who did the cover art of your first album. Would he be your main artist for the covers, someone who creates a style that will fit the band like Vaughan Oliver did with 4AD, Peter Saville with Factory, or Malcolm Garrett with the Buzzcocks?

Geordie Greep: Well, we like what he did on the first album, even though he had a very limited amount of time to finish that cover, he did it in about a week. So now we had more time and we thought that if he could do what he did in a week for the first album, let’s see what he can do for this one in a couple of months!  He has a similar approach to his art to the one we have for our music. You get someone that you like and get him to do something that he really believes in, and not try to water him down but instead let him follow what he thinks is the right thing to do.

PAN M 360: How do you build the songs? Is it lyrics first, or do you work on the music before you add the vocals?

Geordie Greep: It’s two separate things for us. We work on the songs together or someone does that alone at home and brings it in, and then we decide who’s gonna do vocals. And whoever is going to do vocals looks for every word they can think of that fits best to the song.  So it may not be the best method because there isn’t necessarly an intelligent design in how the lyrics and the song fit together a lot of the time, it’s more like a coincidence, like what words fits more with the song rather than constructing each side by side. But there are a couple of songs on this album where the words and the music were kind of done at the same time, built around each other, but most of the time they’re done completely separately and just put together afterwards. 

PAN M 360: It seems the music stems less from jams than the previous album.

Geordie Greep: On the first album the way we would actually make the songs in the first place was to just jam out untile we had a verse or until we had a kind of chorus. On this new album, it’s more one guy sitting down and thinking, “okay, let’s make a verse and make the verse fit with the chorus,” that kind of thing…

PAN M 360: What are the main differences between Shlagenheim and Calvacade?

Geordie Greep: I hope that the main difference is, there ius much more nuance to it and more dynamics, I hope there are more colours involved. It’s just a more interesting album, I think. The songs are more melodic and have more longevity, meaning that you can listen to them longer without getting bored. 

PAN M 360: What did you try on this album that you haven’t tried before?

Geordie Greep: I don’t know… It was a fairly similar method of recording and everything. Aside from the songs written completely differently, we used a click track on a couple of songs, which is something the we never did because there were bits in those songs that had to be recorded separately, and there were also songs that didn’t rely so much on the push-and-pull tempo, like a lot of our other songs. 

PAN M 360: You used different instruments too, for the new album, no?

Geordie Greep: Yeah, we used different instruments. It was the same as the first album though, we took advantage of what was in the studio. You know, if there is an instrument laying around, it’s best to use it whenever possible, it’s good to make the most of the place you’re in. But I think a lot of those overdubs and strange instruments are much more apparent on this album because on the first album, a lot of the time all these different instruments we used were buried in the mix, or sounded more like something else. It was less obvious that there was a wide range of instruments on the first album. 

PAN M 360: So what about that wok, how and on what song was it used?

Geordie Greep: Oh, yeah (laughs). I think it’s on “Diamond Stuff”, and I think what Morgan (Simpson) was doing there was just using a bow on the side of this bowl or frying pan to make a kind of a ghostly sound like you do with the cymbals, so it’s more that kind of thing than hiting on the thing.

PAN M 360: Tell us a bit about the recording. I understand you guys went to a studio in Ireland just to record a kind of a demo, but ended recording most of the album there.

Geordie Greep: We went there to record a few tracks, just to see how it is to work with John Murphy, the producer of the album. But the atmosphere was really good and the songs sounded really good too, so we ended up recording all the tracks on the album to a kind of half-finished degree. We did it all in between lockdowns. You know, we had this free time so it would have been a tragedy to not take advantage of it. If we would have stayed home and did nothing, that would have been such a waste of time. 

PAN M 360: Did Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin help on the album before he took a break from the band?

Geordie Greep: (hesitant)… It kind of happened before we recorded it and even writing the tunes. He did work on two songs that we wrote a few years ago and put on the album, but for the rest he did not take part in any of it. 

PAN M 360: How did you cope or adjust to his departure?

Geordie Greep: The whole situation with Matt has been developing for a long time, so there wasn’t really a sudden change. But it was quite cool on some of the tracks to lean into kind of the trio aspect, a kind of a more spacious element, on tracks like “Dethroned”, it’s like kind of a power-trio sort of thing, like Jimi Hendrix’s Experience or The Police, it’s great to have fun with that sort of space sometimes. It probably did change the writing process as well, because there is one less cook in the kitchen, you know? 

PAN M 360: Your label has this Golden Ticket contest, where a ticket will be inserted into a Cavalcade album in the U.S. and another one in the U.K., and will give the winners the chance to either have black midi as a band for an event of their choice, or a day in the studio with the band for a creative collaboration, or tickets for two to all future black midi worldwide shows for 10 years, but there is also a pretty special flexi-disc that comes with some of your albums – what is it about exactly?

Geordie Greep: We did a poll asking different independent record shops from around the world to do a list of ten songs that they like, and get their customers to vote for the one they prefer so we could cover it. Then that song will be on a flexi-disc that will come with our album, but only available at the store that voted for the song we covered. So there are as many songs as there are different record shops, meaning it’s not going to be the same songs on every flexi, depending of the store where you buy the record. It was really fun doing it because there was quite a range of songs. We did songs like “Nothing Compares 2 U” from Prince, “21st Century Schizoid Man” from King Crimson, “Psycho Killer” from Talking Heads, “Love Story” from Taylor Swift, a Captain Beefheart song… quite a funny mix.

Crédit illustrations: Anthrox Studios

On Sunday, May 30 for the concert version of Flute Passion: Mozart and on Tuesday, June 8 for the Concerto for flute and harp (also by Mozart), with Valérie Milot on harp and Arion Orchestre baroque conducted by Mathieu Lussier, Nadia Labrie will take the stage in front of an audience that is certainly impatient to see her again. I spoke with her about ancient flute, beauty and Mozart.

Listen to the album and read our review of Nadia Labrie’s album Flûte Passion: Mozart

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.

Watch and listen some of Tim’s concerts on Le Vivier web site!

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.

Subscribe to our newsletter