Catherine Major, her husband Jean-François Moran, and their four children have been living in the Eastern Townships for about two years. In an era of disillusionment and global concerns, they have their own life strategy – a large family, a steady supply of songs, professional independence, a bucolic setting, a hint of autarchy.
“We were fed up with living on a third floor in Outremont,” says Major, reached at home. “I had our third child in town, so we thought we should move from there. We needed land, the countryside for our family, and that was the best move we made. And then I got pregnant by surprise, I had my fourth child in the country. I’m still breastfeeding Carmen! Well, it’s a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of work.”
Despite the pandemic and its dramatic impact on the cultural economy, life goes on and the Major-Moran couple intends to celebrate it.
“Things are going pretty well professionally, though less so now with COVID-19. I have a lot of projects, I’m in demand on a lot of projects. For example, I did Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano. In addition to writing and creating his songs, Jean-François is also a part-time artistic director at Ad Litteram, a record and publishing company.”
Photo credit: John Londono
Catherine and her husband are very aware of the current economic situation, but they are not giving up and are staying the course.
“We try not to be too insecure. We have a big house, we have to pay the bills and Jean-François does all the work, renovates everything… We just spent eight weeks with our four children, 10 years, six years, three years, and nine months. I’m a demanding person, I want to do it all and leave nothing half-done. Our relationship has changed a lot, it’s better than it ever was. We have our peculiarities like everyone else, but we move fast, we move forward well. We’re not perfect, we have to compromise, we can hit walls… sometimes we’re out of breath. We’re meant to be together, we might as well work together!”
Carte mère describes the situation well: Catherine Major is the undisputed mother of her record project.
“I began by opening up to the idea of working alone,” she says. “I bought a computer, I learned to master production software, I started to play around with it. Before that, I was always at the mercy of others who manipulated technology for me. I had my piano, my pencil, my paper, my instructions, I would come to the musicians with a tune and tell them what I wanted. And then I got tired of it. I had to start somewhere, to be master of my productions.”
For the first time, therefore, Catherine Major produced an album of her own songs.
“I wanted to start from that, and in the end it was too much of a machine for my taste, except for Martin Lavallée’s drums on some songs, with keyboards but without piano… I had to get back to an organic aspect. That’s when I came up with the idea of a symphony orchestra, an idea that could hardly be more organic, like a punctuation mark to the electronic environment.
“So Antoine Gratton and I wrote orchestrations for several weeks. We recorded this on December 15 via Skype, with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. It was the sweetest thing! The original arrangements [without orchestra] already dictated lines to be respected, the album was already built, the order was determined so that things would fit together, so that the songs would blend into each other. Claude Champagne mixed the whole thing in accordance with my wishes.”
Photo credit: John Londono
Major composed the music, created the arrangements and orchestrations. With few exceptions, she entrusted the lyrics to her husband, a high-profile lyricist.
“J-F’s a great writer, and he knows what I’m going through. He’s able to write things as if I’m the one who’s been through it. It’s been that way all along. With great precision, he wrote everything over melodies that were already rhythmic, he respected the onomatopoeia by replacing them with words and made it sound, so that the lyrics groove. Jeff is my boyfriend, he’s so close to me!”
“He’s able to put his finger on the things that concern me deeply. We’ve gone on wanderings. I thought it would be fun to have him writing the lyrics all the way through, except for one song which is a heartfelt cry for a friend who died of cancer – ‘Tableau glacé’. I write less than I compose, I feel more seasoned in music than in literature, but at the same time, I’m happy with what I read when I write.”
Carte mère‘s texts are inspired by everyday life, the societal issues of our time, and the reflections that existence provokes.
“Motherhood is at the centre of my life and that’s why the album opens with the surprise of Carmen, my newest baby, who arrived in the middle of all that – the emotion and the fear of a new pregnancy, the belly, the love. The rest of the album is a journey through themes about family, love, brotherhood, friendship, dependencies, tolerance of religious displays, aggression against women and men, human stupidity in general, love for my little sister, the death of a friend. These themes are at the same time very personal and universal; they resonate with people. We are all the same, after all!”
When the concerts become socially acceptable again, Major will, of course, perform her new repertoire. In symphonic mode?
“The album lends itself well to that,” she replies, “especially since I’ve been doing symphonic projects. In May 2019, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, under the direction of Fabien Gabel, accompanied me. We did some of the new songs, and many from my familiar repertoire. So the symphonic experience could be repeated, it’s in the plans. In the meantime, we have to start with a virtual launch, live from my home. To access it, you pay $10 and you get the album at the same time. Yeah, it’s not expensive. It’s not expensive at all. You have to stop thinking that culture is free. If you can buy a bottle of wine, you can certainly buy an album.”
Photo credit: John Londono
Photo credit: Lou Scamble
PAN M 360: What was the genesis of the album? What made you decide to do it?
Jeffrey Stonehouse: The creation of the album was motivated by a deep fascination with James’ music. After collaborating with him on the creation of his work AMONG AM A in 2015, I called upon him again for a Carte Blanche concert in our 2018-2019 season. For this concert, Paramirabo’s musicians had the chance to discover his other sextet and create a brand new work, Alone and Unalone. Its title has become the title of our album, and resonates in a singular way in these strange times we live in.
PAN M 360: Was there a particular concept for the content of the album? Apart from the fact that it’s monographic.
James O’Callaghan: There is a curious conceptual thread throughout these works, based on the apparent contradiction of recording them for an album. The pieces were all conceived for the concert hall, and they play specifically with this context. There are therefore many spatial aspects to the music, movement of the musicians on stage, and more fundamentally, a reflection on the function of concert music.
The album has then become an opportunity to experiment with spatial illusions and imagery in the mix — how to “simulate” the musician’s movement, electroacoustic spatialization, the distinction between an acoustic or an amplified sound, etcetera on a stereo recorded medium. For example, we spent a lot of time recording footsteps and chair-squeaking in the space in order to “manufacture” this artificial human presence. These moments of the session were particularly fun and captivating.
Photo credit: Anna van Kooij
PAN M 360: How did the recording go?
JS: The recording process was a little, how shall I say, surreal. As performers, we rarely have the opportunity to immerse ourselves for so long in a composer’s sound universe. The instrumental parts of James’ works require special attention to the rhythmic synchronicity of the ensemble, so that the hits are perfectly coordinated. I consider these moments of tutti attacks to be highlights of James’ writing. As we’re an undirected ensemble, it adds spice to our recording sessions because we all have to perceive the music in the same way at the same time.
PAN M 360: How would you describe James’ music?
JS: What I love about his music is that you can’t tell the difference between the acoustic and electronic elements. It’s crazy because sometimes you listen to his music and you can’t tell the instruments from the sounds in the band! You feel as if you’re walking around in an environment where the sounds of nature or the city are mixed with the instrumental writing. I don’t think there’s a composer out there right now who can achieve such a mix of acoustic and electronic elements. It’s a fascinating music. Strange, but fascinating.
PAN M 360: How would you describe the interpretation and playing of Paramirabo?
JOC: Fearless. And that’s why I feel free to take risks and try strange new things with them. I have a beautiful memory of thanking the ensemble for being so open, and Jeff responded, “it’s not our first rodeo!” The ensemble has a relatively polystylist artistic direction, and so the musicians are incredibly flexible and experienced in many different techniques and approaches to performance. It doesn’t hurt that they are all also incredibly talented.
PAN M 360: The album is nominated for a Juno Award, how did you take the news?
JS: I found out from a text message from a friend who was listening to the live release. What an incredible surprise! Especially after receiving the Opus Performer of the Year award… To be selected alongside Marina Thibeault, James Ehnes and the Quatuor Molinari, among others, is a great honour and shows a great openness on the part of the Junos.
JOC: It was especially meaningful because it’s relatively rare for an album of experimental contemporary music to be nominated in this category, alongside performers of the classical giants.
PAN M 360: What is the impact of the pandemic on your season and your career?
JS: Phew! The impact on Paramirabo is huge. It goes without saying that the musicians of the ensemble, who are all freelancers, have lost a lot of work. Paramirabo had to cancel two self-produced shows in Montreal that included three original works. A Montreal revival of Alone and Unalone was scheduled for April 3, at the same time as the premiere of Philippe Leroux’s arrangement of Voi(Rex) for male voice at the IRCAM Forum in Montreal. It’s grievous for the ensemble, especially since we had already started rehearsals. In addition, Paramirabo had to postpone a concert in Berlin – again in collaboration with James. Finally, there is the cancellation of the Musique Nouvelle workshop at Domaine Forget where we were in residence. But above all, to no longer see each other and make music together is infinitely sad. We can’t wait to get back together!
JOC: It’s somewhat demotivating, to be honest. But at the same time, I am very lucky as a composer that my income is largely based on commissions, and so, contrary to performers, my means of subsistence are not really in jeopardy, and I continue to work on my different projects toward an uncertain future.
Photo credit: Andy Jon
“I’ve always liked the differences from one album to another, I don’t like repetition. I know people like safety in general. For me, it’s the opposite. Discovering things reassures me. What always stays the same depresses me.”
That’s Mara Tremblay’s stance in the face of the stability of acquired tastes, and that’s exactly why we appreciate so much the right balance struck between exploration and her own unique style. This desire to shake up her own sound in no way prevents her from maintaining stable relations with Quebec guitar hero and multi-instrumentalist Olivier Langevin, the main collaborator of her recording career.
“Working with Olivier,” she says, “is the greatest musical pleasure of my life. This time, we went elsewhere. We’ve managed to go even further, to take on things we didn’t take on before. After 23 years of collaboration, Olivier remains very close to my work, he’s produced seven of my eight albums, except for Cassiopée. He’s a very good judge of my lyrics, he’s super good at directing the interpretation, he knows how to make me surpass myself in emotion. He knows me so well!”
More than two decades of collaboration can rule out repetition. Can’t longlasting couples revitalize their relationships through creativity and innovation? On the professional side, here’s a convincing demonstration:
“A few songs were recorded live, notably with François Lafontaine on keyboards, a precious ally who always understands what we do. My drummer son, having lived inside me for nine months, no one else but Victor is capable of understanding my beat that well. He knows it, as well as my emotions. No one else can understand me like that. Drummer Robbie Kuster has also done things that no one else can.”
Apart from these recordings made as a team, Uniquement pour toi is the result of a watertight bubble within which Mara and Olivier evolved for a year.
“Our goal was to surprise ourselves, also to have fun in the ‘Langevin laboratory’. We played with new software that allowed us to get higher quality sounds. This software cost little or nothing, whereas the same sounds were much more expensive to produce before. So we liked to mix the warm sounds of analog instruments and synths with slightly colder, sometimes cheaper sounds. The playing field has changed.”
Photo credit: Andy Jon
To relaunch their collaboration, Mara and Olivier first found themselves in a workshop context:
“In the beginning,” she says, “we didn’t know where we were going. But… when laughter comes up, that’s where you have to go! Olivier had programmed a beatbox and brought out some keyboard sounds and I started singing. A year later, I hadn’t played much on the album, just a bit of violin and guitar… I preferred to concentrate on the singing, the emotion of the voice and the arrangements around it.”
Uniquement pour toi, a hybrid offering at the confluence of Americana, prog, space-rock and electro, was conceived at the end of a troubled period. The autobiographical diffraction of some of the songs on the programme bears witness to this.
“The last few years have been very difficult for me,” she says. “I was living in my house in Saint-Bruno with my son Édouard, then he left home – today he makes his living as an actor, he’s also a very good guitarist, singer and performer. After that… nobody comes to see you in Saint-Bruno! I’ve lived for long periods in solitude, extremely dark periods.
“It’s no secret that I suffer from a type of bipolarity which intermingles with other complex problems that are almost impossible to treat. Medications don’t always work and there are side effects – fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chills. This generates big highs and big downs, it’s very hard to bounce back in such conditions. And then… being a woman in her fifties, without a lover… not easy! I didn’t think a man would be willing to love me anymore.”
And then the tide finally turned.
“I went to Nashville for two weeks to work there, and it was a lifesaver. It did me a tremendous amount of good, I wrote three-quarters of my new songs there. I even met my idol Gillian Welch and her boyfriend Dave Rawlings… what a joy! I came back to Quebec taller, stronger, it really helped me a lot. In a writing workshop with Gilles Vigneault, I met Stéphane [Lafleur], of whom I’m a big fan, and he offered me lyrics for two songs a year and a half later. These songs represent for me a return of light, peace, and happiness. And… I’m in love again, at last! I’ve had a new boyfriend for a year now and I’ve been living with him. My house in Saint-Bruno was sold on the eve of the pandemic, I’m in the process of moving.”
So the light at the end of the tunnel is called Uniquement pour toi.
“I wanted to talk about it and write about it because I’m really not alone in living with it. I have to share my struggle, even though many people already understand it. The more we talk about it, the less loneliness there will be, the more we can count on our friends when we go through these difficult moments. It’s all well and good to turn your suffering and heartbreak into songs, but – can you move on and experience love?” Concluding our chat on the phone, Tremblay lets an infectious laugh erupt.
In this case, the contagion is welcome!
Photo credit: Sarah Bo
The foundation of Pantayo’s sound is kulintang, which is, as band member Kat Estacio explains, “a group-based form of atonal metal percussion and drum music that originated in Southeast Asia, and the specific tradition that we borrow from and are inspired by is from the Maguindanao and T’boli tribes from the southern part of what is now known as the Philippines.”
The one reference point most new listeners might have for kulintang is Indonesian gamelan, a similar metallophonic music, its rich clangour familiar to anyone who’s seen the famous anime film Akira. There are pronounced distinctions, however.
“Kulintang is a community ensemble, meant to bring people together – in ceremonies, weddings, and so on – and is used for relaxation after a long work day,” says Estacio. “From what I know, gamelan is more like an orchestra, played in courts for the enjoyment of royalty. With this in mind, it makes sense to me that kulintang instruments are tuned to each other, and the tunings depend on the maker. There is no one way to play kulintang – innovation, interpretation, and playing according to how you feel is encouraged. It also makes sense that anybody, regardless of class or social role, can just pick up and learn kulintang.
“1960s psychedelic music popularized the gamelan,” adds Jo Delos Reyes. “It was through the Western lens of the exoticization of the ‘orient’ that the gamelan became more highly researched. Gamelan has more standardized tuning, whereas kulintang does not follow specific tuning. The tuning depends on the making.
“This resulted in a really interesting and sometimes challenging songwriting experience for us, as we tried to write with tuned instruments. It made us reimagine new ways of approaching how we use kulintang-ensemble instruments in our arrangements.”
Photo credit: Sarah Bo
Kulintang, it’s vital to note, is originally women’s music. “This was a tidbit that we didn’t know initially,” says Estacio.“We learned about it as part of our ongoing decolonization work, to inform ourselves of the context that kulintang music comes from.
“What I learned from one kulintang teacher, Titania Buchholdt, is that since the Maguindanao culture is a mix of indigenous and Muslim cultures, some if not most of them follow a rule where a woman isn’t able to travel without being accompanied by a man from her family – husband, brother, father, uncle, son. This resulted in Maguindanao Kulintang teachers in North America, and in some cases in Manila, to be mostly men.”
“However, we also remember women, queer, and two-spirit people’s important roles in a lot of Indigenous cultures. They are birth workers, mothers, healers, priestesses, musicians, performers, and occupy a variety of other roles that are central to their respective communities. It is no surprise to me to now make the connection that women are at the centre of kulintang music traditions too.”
“Pantayo has nurtured us in many tender and constructive ways that enabled our personal growth,” adds Michelle Cruz. “Being an all-women band certainly contributes to that.”
“As women,” Estacio continues, “I also think that playing a percussion instrument is so empowering and an important addition to the narrative of what women’s roles are, in labour and in music. At the end of the day, playing gongs, just like any percussion instrument, is very cathartic!”
Alaska B with Pantayo’s Kat Estacio and Jo Delos Reyes
Assembled bit by bit over the course of several years, Pantayo (on the label Telephone Explosion) acts as a record of its own creation, an “audio diary”, as the band puts it, of their collective evolution. Essential to that process was producer Alaska B, leader of Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. She’d worked with Pantayo since 2014 on various projects, including the score for the award-winning video-game Severed in 2016, and YT//ST’s 2018 album Dirt. Pantayo’s Delos Reyes also sings in YT//ST.
“Prior to this album project,” recalls Kat Estacio, “we were only playing live shows and offering our KuliVersity music and cultural workshops on how we learned, and play, kulintang. Alaska offered a perspective that having an album works like an archive, so that there’s a record of kulintang music played by queer diasporic women in Toronto in 2020.”
“It ended up being outside the scale of most projects I’ve worked on,” Alaska B recalls, “as it was spread over many years of on-and-off work. At the beginning, they had envisioned it as taking the gongs to outer space. I remember Michelle sending me a message using alien and ghost emojis to describe her ideas, so we tried to work some very electronic ideas into their very not-electronic gongs.
“I tried to keep the focus on the dynamism of live performance by wrapping their performances in electronic layers, instead of trying to build a base layer and inserting the gongs on top, so many of the gong elements were recorded first, and then built on top of, months after.”
“As it was the band’s first shot at making a record, we honestly did not have a clear direction, and Alaska helped us navigate this,” says Cruz. “She encouraged us to really dig and find our way. She warned us that it would be a tough grind. She didn’t sugar-coat anything.”
“Alaska ingrained in us a type of work ethic,” says Estacio, “to get to know our instruments so well that we could fall in love with them over and over again. I think this is one of the reasons why each song in the album sounds so different. This collection of songs is a way for us to present the different explorations we’ve allowed ourselves to go through during this process.”
“When we first started working on the album in February, 2016,” says Eirene Cloma, “Alaska asked us a question somewhere along the lines of, ‘who is Pantayo without the gongs?’ This forced us to think about our individual and collective creative expressions outside of kulintang music. Our first foray in this different way of thinking was when we wrote ‘Eclipse’.”
Appropriately, ‘Eclipse’ opens the album. It’s followed by lead single “Divine”, possibly the most accessible tune for new listeners. “To me, this song speaks about how love is action, labour, and a sacrifice,” says Kat Estacio, “whether it’s romantic, platonic, to your pets or plants or whatever. And most of the time, the universe conjures alignments beyond our control – and this is how we meet people whom we have deep connections with. The universality of it seemed like the perfect introduction to Pantayo.”
Also appealing is “Taranta”, alternately vulnerable and combative, with its taunting chorus – see the TV appearance, above. “The verse and bridge melody was inspired by ’90s R&B and hip hop,” says Cruz. “The lyrics were heavily inspired by assholes.”
The title, Estacio explains, “means to panic or to feel frantic, as a mindless response. The chorus came together as a way to rally up the ego, a means to tell myself to keep my composure and not let myself be affected by what other people think, and to tell those who don’t got your back – or worse, those that put you down – to fuck off, ha ha!”
Then comes “Heto Na”, all gentle and elegant before switching up into some bouncy hip hop fun. “It takes inspiration from ’70s disco OPM (Original Pilipino Music), vogue and ballroom beats from queer dance parties that we go to, and drum-and-lyre ensembles at town fiestas in the Philippines,” Estacio says of this one.
“The lyrics came together super last minute. If I remember correctly, it was written the night before we were going to track vocals in the studio. The song asks its listeners to loosen up and dance, to take ownership of not only their bodies but also of the dancefloor.”
“When we brought on Tricia Hagoriles as director,” says Katrina Estacio (Kat’s sister) of the video for the song, “we knew we wanted to portray the environment we had in mind when we wrote it: a world of our own where we can let loose, connect with our friends, and just be. Our members Eirene and Kat individually contributed music to Tricia’s previous films The Morning After and Lola’s Wake, respectively. We adore her work so much.
“Tricia’s world-making is very much connected to her style, which made her a really good fit for this project. The ‘Pantayo world’ she created in the video feels lush, warm, and fun! Complemented by the motion graphics of Manila-based animator Pauline Vicencio-Despi, production design from Toronto-based artist Cathleen Calica, and the Tita Collective, we were able to capture a piece of the dancefloor of our dreams.”
Photo credit : Yannik Anton
Of “Kaingin”, Kat Estacio says, “the vibe of the song is pretty heavy and sorta silly. The synths are so anthemic, but in like a hilarious ’80s prog-rock, anime opening-sequence sense. The title means ‘slash and burn’, as in, the agricultural process. It’s a tribute to the land that we are so grateful to reside and create on – Tkaronto, the land of the Haudenosaunee, the Petun, the Wendat, the Anishnaabe, and the Mississaugas of the Credit, and a tribute to the Indigenous peoples that our instruments and kulintang knowledge is inspired by, the Maguindanao and the T’boli.
“The lyrics talk about oppressive systems – colonial, patriarchal, heteronormative, ableist, racist, classist, fascist, etcetera – and the exploitation, marginalization, and trauma of Indigenous peoples. These aren’t easy topics to talk about, so I thought Alaska’s approach of making the vibe a little light was an accessible one, to bring this message forward.”
The album’s fifth track, “V V V (They Lie)” is the one with the lowest kulintang quotient. It’s also the most uplifting, to this writer’s ear.
“‘It’s uplifting for me too,” says Estacio. “We wanted this song to feel free. This song feels like the closure that you give to yourself, because it sure won’t come from any other person. A quick side note – in numerology, 5 is a pivotal point, the middle of 1 through 9. It symbolizes positive change and can bring hopeful opportunities in the future.”
“We formulated the song over bubble tea,” adds Katrina Estacio. “The only prominent ensemble part is the bandir, the timekeeper. It started as a scratch recording when we were thinking of what our sound would be like if we removed kulintang, after Alaska posed us the question. It helped us describe our sound to be lo-fi R&B gong punk.”
Photo credit: Sarah Bo
“Although the process had its share of challenges,” Cruz reflects, “it was a process we had to go through in order to grow – and finish an album!”
The stretched-out timeframe was among those challenges, for all involved. “The most difficult part was keeping on top of a project that lasts that long,” says Alaska B. “Lives change a lot during that period, and it was constantly broken up by my touring, so it was like rediscovering the project constantly until there was nothing left to rediscover, and it was just time to call it done, export, finished.
“The one great thing about it was how close we all became. We had been collaborating on Severed already, but instead of this being a project that took a month or so then never talk to each other again, it was something that kept us connected while everything else around us was changing.
“I’ve consumed hundreds of momos and gallons of coffee with them, working in the studio, they all attended my wedding, and Jo and I ended up logging at least 150 days on the road together with YT//ST. There’s a lot of love in that record.”
“I guess it’s fair to say a lot of our earlier recording, particularly on SoundCloud, was part of our process of how we got to where we are today,” says Delos Reyes. “We worked hard to get to where we are, but really didn’t plan it out this way. Working with Pantayo and our collaborators is like a creative safe space where we feel comfortable collaborating, learning, and making mistakes with each other in exploring all the sounds!
“I think it’s important to note that kulintang music is traditional in a sense that is the OG Filipino music (!!), and not in a sense that it is fixed and something of the past. This is still practiced and evolving every day. With the migration of Filipinos across the globe, it’s great to see the ways in which kulintang music is being explored in different Filipino-diasporic communities, and how our different environments, both sonically and geographically, can create a sound.”
From La Papessa to the excellent Miss Colombia, Lido Pimienta describes a “long and necessary” journey:
“La Papessa is my music school and also my music industry school, my music school in general. I learned how to record myself, how to orchestrate my songs, etcetera. Those tools are very useful for the next steps, and led me to this album. All those new skills that all gathered, and also the patience that it takes to do something of quality.”
Although La Papessa won her the Polaris in 2017, Pimienta believes that her debut album was just a starting point.
“When I started recording myself in La Papessa, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I felt that I just had to put something out fast. Mainly because I just wanted it out and I got a grant for it, and I didn’t really care about the details. So I was anxious to get started with Miss Colombia, I wanted to achieve something of high quality. That’s where the two albums are different and that’s where each project supported one another.”
The artist points out that Miss Colombia required a lot of patience and discipline and, above all, relied on “fewer cooks in the kitchen”.
“That’s the biggest lesson from La Papessa. A lot of people involved, a lot of opinions, a lot of stress not needed. With Miss Colombia, I truly listened to my own voice. If there were too many opinions on something, I would tell them to fuck off (laughs).”
A multimedia performer halfway between pop culture and avant-garde, Pimienta is a complete artist, music is only a part of her universe… and she intends to keep it that way.
“I’m very lucky because I’m able to do a lot of things, so why not you show them off. I paid more attention to the quality of the music. I’m more focused on music but the visual aspect remains as important. I think this is a whole. I tried to bring both my visual art and my music. It was important for me to package my music in a way that makes sense and most importantly that is true to myself. I write all my storyboards, I write all my treatments, I do every single drawing and I collaborate with people that I know that would be the perfect fit for my vision. I’m making sure that my music goes to the next level. I’m basically thinking about the next album and taking steps too. I’m obsessed with making something even more beautiful for the next album.”
The process of creating Miss Colombia began in 2015, first in Chile and then in Nova Scotia.
“First, I went to Santiago de Chile and I worked with my friend Andrés Nusser. We did a bit of record engineering, working the voice, making sure that I knew how I was going to mix it. And then I went on tour again, and then I went to Halifax to do these wind instrument demos – clarinet, flute, trumpet – that I made with Robert Drisdelle and his colleagues.”
Pimienta then completed the work with Prince Nifty.
“I’ve always wanted to work with him. He’s the best producer for me. He’s very good at experimental music, he understands the production and interpretation sides of my work perfectly. So I went to his place, showed him some demos, and we talked at length. Then we built a studio in Toronto, where we worked for about seven months. Our sessions were many sessions, short and intense. Nifty and I had a domestic relationship throughout this work, and I gave birth to my second child during that time. I was breastfeeding while recording! We were able to grow up with the new songs in an intimate setting. It was a relaxed atmosphere, even though there were a lot of difficult questions to answer.”
Miss Colombia was finally finished in her homeland. The title of the album is an ironic nod to the Miss Universe award that was wrongly given to Miss Colombia, who made headlines in 2015.
“We had all the songs, but I also wanted traditional Afro-Colombian music to find its place on the album. Before emigrating to Canada, I was very much influenced by the music of the Palenque region in the Bolivar province – where Cartagena is located, more precisely, on the Caribbean coast. So I worked with the Sexteto Tabalà ensemble. It was wonderful because we weren’t confined to a studio, we could hear cars going by, children, horses. I became friends with these musicians, and we have other plans for the future.”
Pimienta, it must be said, is a universe in herself. She’s fully aware of this, and works with her composite culture:
“Cumbia, porro or champeta are only a part of me. I am African and indigenous, I’m a mixture of slaves and slave owners. I am everything that comes from Colombia. It seems natural to me to express it, without even intending to explore it. I’m also the result of my own migration. I found my home in Canada, I had my two children – 12 and one year old – my partner is also a child of immigrants. I feel at ease in Canada, every day I understand more and more this culture which reveals sometimes surprising things to me, especially about the indigenous, the francophones and the cultural communities.”
What about the Polaris 2017? Not an unqualified win, the main interested party recalls…
“There was a lot of negative reaction when I received the award. On social media, people said I wasn’t really Canadian and I didn’t sing in English. It’s a shame, because this diversity of languages in Canada is an opportunity to enrich our culture. Artists like me are the culture of Canada today. You know, I tried to write things in English, but it didn’t sound good. Maybe if I wrote in French or Portuguese, it would work…”
Pimienta succeeded in dropping a vindicating opus three years later, an eloquent demonstration of her immense talent and long-term viability.
“Yes, Miss Colombia is getting very good reviews everywhere, hopefully this will mean more shows and more income for my family. I would be thrilled if I could give my children a home. Otherwise, I am very happy with my business partners, my colleagues, my family. I have very specific ideas for my next show, I want people to feel like they are in another world. Finally, I know exactly where I’m going for my next album. I want it all to be beautiful! I want to offer songs that will make people cry. I’ll stop at nothing to do that!”
Photo credit: Richmond Lam
PAN M 360: Are You In Love? is the fruit of you being in love, but also of going through mourning. How would you say love, on one side, and grief on the other, influenced your work, or inspired it?
Basia Bulat: There is a very beautiful book by Kahlil Gibran called The Prophet that explains this feeling better than I ever could. I come back to this passage from the book all the time, and was re-reading it while I was making my album:
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
PAN M 360:How did you manage to channel this duality?
BB: In my experience, the sonic direction of any recording I’ve made comes from the lyrics, and from the environment and energy of the recording space … So I was lucky that I was recording most of this album in Joshua tree, which is a very spiritual place. Even on a simple level, the difference and changes that the landscape goes through between day and night are really profound, and had an effect on the energy in the recordings, so I’m glad if you can feel that coming through your speakers or headphones.
PAN M 360: You wanted to make an album about compassion – can you explain a bit about the creative process, how and where it was conceived and recorded?
BB: Before I started recording the album, I had written to my friend Jim James [of My Morning Jacket], who produced the album, and we were talking about how I wanted to write songs about compassion. I didn’t know what that would sound like, or what kind of songs they would be, just that I wanted to use that feeling as my guide. I was writing a lot about different experiences in my life that I had been afraid to write about before, which required a kind of compassion for myself that I hadn’t anticipated.
I started writing some of the music and lyrics before getting to Joshua Tree and then a lot of the lyrics and music were finished there. It was a place I’d always dreamed about visiting, and the experience inspired a really deep listening in my body and in my heart. Everyone working on the session would take the morning to themselves, so I would spend the morning just playing guitar or writing lyrics on my own. Then everyone would meet up around noon and we’d start playing a song and working on an arrangement with the band playing live.
We would always take a break to watch the sunset, and see all the animals come out and a new side of the desert would wake up with the stars – and it was with that new night time energy that we would often record “the take”.
PAN M 360: “Already Forgiven” is a beautiful song. How was it created? I read somewhere that your husband recorded the sound of the wind through a window and then you put that through a guitar pedal?
BB: I love how this song came to be. My husband Andrew, who played many different instruments and also did some engineering on the album, recorded the wind as the storm was picking up outside and took the signal through a few different pedals and various electronics, so that the wind began to sing its own melody. When I heard the melody singing along with the original sound of the wind, I was inspired to write the rest of the lyrics for the song that I felt were missing until that moment.
PAN M 360:Why did you choose to work again with Jim James?
BB: Jim is one of my favourite artists and songwriters. He’s such a wonderful person to work with as a producer because he’s not interested in doing the same thing twice, and neither am I!
PAN M 360:Any funny or strange stories about the recording?
BB: A lot of people go crazy and get lost in the desert and I might have been one of those people… but I won’t go into more detail than that!
PAN M 360: if you put all your albums in perspective, what would you say about this one compared to the others?
BB: I try not to spend too much time comparing things, actually, anytime I’ve done that to my songs, they come back to prove me wrong! I’m finding that even my oldest songs are finding a way to be relevant to my life again, which is really strange. It comes in cycles for sure.
PAN M 360:How do you spend your time in these days of confinement? What do you listen to?
BB: I’m trying, like everyone else, to stay inside as much as possible! Thankfully, being an artist, I’m already accustomed to being alone, but this is different and more difficult because of not knowing when I can see my family again and how long this will all last… but in the meantime I’m reading a lot and talking with my family and friends on the phone and trying to help out anyone in my neighbourhood who needs it. I’ve started a lot of seedlings so watching them grow and slowing down to their pace has been very calming.
I’m listening to Music For Airports by Brian Eno often, and I play a compilation called I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950-1990 a lot too. I’ve also carried on the tradition of watching the sunset each day since recording in Joshua Tree, so going outside to watch the sunset any day that it’s possible helps me feel some balance in this very strange time.
Photo credit: Bowen Stead
PAN M 360: You’ve just released a new, stand-alone Elephant Stone single, “American Dream”. Musically, it’s a lovely bit of psychedelic folk rock. Lyrically, however, it might as well be an enraged hardcore punk track. It’s an angry song, which is uncharacteristic of you, and I imagine it wasn’t easy to work through.
Rishi Dhir: The key to most of my lyrics is empathy. I try to feel what the person in the song is feeling. “American Dream” is definitely my most lyrically direct song so far. However, I find a number of my songs to have a cynical or angry twist to them, albeit over breezy melodies – “Bombs Bomb Away”, “Manipulator”, “Masters of War” – the list goes. It did take bit to figure out how to say what I wanted to say. Once I got the opening verse, things just rolled out.
PAN M 360: Proceeds are going to the PLUS1 COVID-19 Relief Fund, earmarked for people in the now sorely beset live music industry. PLUS1 is the sort of meta-charity that evolved out of Arcade Fire’s Haitian relief efforts. Why did you choose them in particular to channel proceeds to?
RD: I’m good friends with [PLUS1 founder and CEO, and former Arcade Fire member] Marika Shaw, and always admired her passion and the work done by PLUS1. It seemed like a natural fit.
Photo credit: Caroline Perron
PAN M 360: You were a pretty early adopter of the live-streamed confinement-time performance with your Sacred Sounds Sessions, which are a little looser than straight-up concerts. They’ve evolved in the few weeks that you’ve been doing them, and you’re doing another this Tuesday night.
RD: With the cancellation of our SXSW show and U.S. tour, I felt compelled to try to connect with our fans and friends. The first week or so of the quarantine was pretty emotional for me, and I felt like I needed to do something. The first SS session had a much bigger impact on me than I anticipated. I realized that we’re all facing the same challenge together. It was beautiful.
PAN M 360: Any hints about what to expect during Tuesday night’s stream? Will you perform “American Dream”?
RD: I usually work things out the night before the sessions. I always open the session with about 15 minutes of sitar, and then go from there. Yes, I will most likely be playing “American Dream”. The reaction to the song has been strong.
PAN M 360: Tangential question – what’s up with Acid House Ragas? Will you do more of that? Will you play any during Sacred Sounds Sessions?
RD: I started Acid House Ragas kind of as a reaction to the years of recording and touring with Elephant Stone. I needed a break from the song-based arts, and wanted to explore something more groove, more acid house. Stephen Ramsay, my partner in the project, and I have discussed working on music remotely. We had a couple of jams before the whole COVID-19 outbreak that seemed very promising. I’ve been thinking about bringing out some electronic elements for a Sacred Sounds session – maybe next month!
PAN M 360: It’s actually kind of exciting, watching the overall media and arts communities, particularly the indies, adjusting and innovating to the current situation, and what may follow.
RD: Yes, artists are doing what artists do – creating. I’ve been very productive over the past few weeks. “American Dream” came together within two weeks, I’ve been doing a bunch of virtual festivals in addition to Sacred Sounds Sessions, writing and composing, practicing drums, making pizza…
The next Sacred Sounds Session happens tomorrow, Tuesday, May 5, at 9pm EST. You can tune in here. You’ll have to make your own pizza, however.
In his spare time, Embury participates in countless side projects that share a penchant for brutality. Brujeria, Venomous Concept, Locked Up, and Anaal Nathrakh are among the bands he has collaborated with. As if that wasn’t enough, Embury now presents Dark Sky Burial, his solo project. This time, the tempo is dialed down and there’s no trace of metal. Dark Sky Burial’s music is as dark as Embury’s other projects, but it follows the electronic paths of dark ambient. A change of tone, but not necessarily of Embury’s universe. We had the chance to discuss with the man with 1000 projects, so that he could tell us a little bit more about it.
PAN M 360: When did you start making electronic music? Did you know from the beginning where it was going to go?
Shane Embury: “Commands from Beyond” is one of the first tracks I attempted to create, and also “Hallowed be thy Names”. As I invested more time in sounds and ideas, they evolved over the course of two or three years, I suppose. I’ve just unearthed 12 solid ideas from my old iPad in Garageband – it’s quite amazing what you can come up with wherever, now! But I’ve been obsessed with simple loops for a long time, and seeing how many counter-melodies or percussive sounds I can build on top from the very first loop – at times it can switch around those ideas and mistakes become better ideas, I like this. I’m not reinventing the wheel, but also trying not to to jump into harsh noise all the time – that stuff will come, as I envision DSB as an evolving concept one that at some point might include other people for eventual live performances!
PAN M 360: One would have thought that for your first electronic project, you would have rather taken the paths of pure industrial, noise, or more hardcore techno. Why did you opt for something more ambient?
SE: I’ve been wanting to do something electronic for years and the timing seems right. There’s no set agenda with this project , it reflects my horror-based, sinister notes. I’d also like it to be uplifting, while at the same time forcing me to isolate myself, which I hope will lead to reflection and new possibilities. Having said that, I have dabbled in the past with industrial, I guess, In the form of a project called Malformed Earthborn, which came out I think maybe in 1995, ’96!
PAN M 360:De Omnibus Dubitandum Est has been released on Extrinsic, your own label. Why?
SE: The reason for me starting Extrinsic Recordings was originally and solely for Dark Sky Burial, but obviously this album wasn’t the first release, that was the Born to Murder the World album that had been hanging around unheard for some time, but both needed to be put out in a slightly alternative manner, I suppose. I tend to be Impatient, for sure, and am always working on music or projects, and depending on the day or mood I am in, I get tired of the usual rituals that have to be performed to release albums I’m involved in! I guess it means more control for me, and I also like to experiment, to please myself – this is less hassle and no pressure. The DSB project is also the start of something different for me. I’m in no hurry to see where this takes me.
PAN M 360: Before DSB, some former members of Napalm Death, such as Mick Harris and Justin Broadrick, were known for their electronic music, which is quite unusual for a heavy metal band…
SE: Well, knowing those guys as I do, and also Nick Bullen the founder of Napalm Death – these guys were always distorting the boundaries between different types of music, and when I met them in 1986, they were at that time crossing over into death metal or thrash, and I was going the other way into punk, etcetera. They loved Swans, Throbbing Gristle, Killing Joke, these were unknown to me at the time, but appealed to me rather quickly. It was normal for us to search out other stuff. It was an adventure based on what John Peel had said the night before, or what we read in the NME. I also spent a lot of time at the Rough Trade record store in Portebello street, London. I am not sure if it’s the water, but some fans of music are, as King Buzzo once said to me, musical anthropologists. This makes sense !
PAN M 360: De Omnibus Dubitandum Est is the title of a book by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, which could be translated as “we have to doubt everything”. Is that where the title of the album comes from? Does the cover have a link with all this?
SE: Yes. The title is from the book. On one of my late-night internet quests for lyrical inspiration, I came across it. I am generally a nonbeliever of sorts, but then sometimes quite the opposite. But the title seemed apt for the timing of the release. The artwork is based on the tower of silence, and linked to the sky-burial rituals, which I find fascinating and inspirational.
PAN M 360: When you produce electronic music, the border between creative and technical aspects is never watertight. With Dark Sky Burial, do you see yourself as a musician, a producer or an engineer?
SE: A musician, I think. For now, this is the beginning of a long journey, I hope, where I have plenty to learn – followers of DSB, I thank every one of you, and hope you have the opportunity of seeing me get better at this. I hope for some collaborations with other like-minded people, also. The technical side of this can be quite frightening, but everyone has their way of using the tools at their disposal.
PAN M 360: As a member of a group, you’re used to receiving feedback from other members. With DSB, have you sought feedback from others?
SE: I love the isolation of creating tracks, either at my home studio or in a hotel room after a show. I zone out in the sounds and time passes by quickly and trance-like. It’s excellent escapism, which is what I’ve always been, really – an escapist. I’m quite fortunate to be able to start this all now. I do play some of the tracks to some of my friends, and take on board what they say, but from the start, I wanted this first album to reflect moods and drama.
PAN M 360: For the moment, the album is only available for download, do you plan to release it physically?
SE: Well, last week I got to thinking, since the 13 tracks for this album were chosen from a whole bunch of tracks I have here that I have put together, that I’m going to try and release an album every three or four months, possibly. Initially, anyway, for now. After the fourth release, I would like to put out a limited four-CD box set and vinyl – something like that, I hope.
PAN M 360: Feralyzed is in keeping with the previous Cat Temper releases – straight-up synthwave. The first album’s song titles alone are perfectly archetypal of the genre – “Dark Matrix”, “Vector Blade”, “Toxigon”. That said, you manage to find a constant reservoir of fresh and interesting ideas within that particular style. What’s your perspective on synthwave?
Mike Langlie: I grew up in the 1980s and enjoyed the music that inspired the synthwave movement firsthand. Being a synth-pop fan back then was not the least bit cool – at least not in my small town – so I’m thrilled to see it finally getting appreciation and respect.
I also started playing music in the ’80s. The artists that influenced me then continue to do so to this day. I’m making the music I’ve always enjoyed hearing and playing, rather than approaching it from a nostalgic angle or trying to fit a formula. Other influences over the decades creep in as well, so I don’t consider my work to be “true” synthwave. It crosses over enough that the scene takes notice.
PAN M 360: Your earlier project, the “toytronic” explorations of Twink, had a cute lil’ bunny as its mascot. It was very kawaii, as the Japanese would say. Cat Temper’s totem beast is of course feline. Why the cat, for this body of work? Are you, by the way, a member in good standing of the Cat Fancy demographic?
Mike Langlie: My toy instrument project Twink was a sonic amusement park of hyper happy tunes. One review described it as “the sound of Lisa Frank on acid.” After doing that for so long, I was ready to change direction. I returned to my electro-punk roots of earlier bands, dialing up the snark and distortion. Cat Temper jumps between accessible and aggressive, so it seemed fitting to embody a mischievous feline persona. And yes, I’m 100 percent a crazy cat person!
PAN M 360: You followed Cat Temper’s debut, Purring for Vengeance, with Henry, an alternate soundtrack to David Lynch’s early masterpiece of midnight cinema, Eraserhead. What was that detour all about?
Mike Langlie: I’ve been a huge David Lynch fan since I was as a kid. Another thing I enjoy is alternate scores for classic movies. Eraserhead‘s sparse soundtrack struck me as an opportunity to combine those two loves. It was a fun challenge to focus on scenes as individual music videos while maintaining consistent threads. The acting and pacing in Eraserhead is so alien compared to normal films. Figuring out each scene’s rhythms and dynamics forced me to break my usual writing habits in ways I never would have thought of otherwise. I watched the film literally hundreds of times over the year I worked on the album, and though I know it inside and out, I still don’t feel any closer to explaining it!
Henry, named after the main character, is the release I’ve worked on the hardest and which has the smallest potential audience. I realize the hubris of replacing Lynch’s brilliant sound design, but one motivation was to help make the film more accessible to people who wouldn’t normally give it a chance.
PAN M 360: The third Cat Temper release, Digital Soul, had a distinct theme as well, a man-versus-machine chess game with existential implications. What’s the story there?
Mike Langlie: Making Henry was so fun that I wanted to try another alternate soundtrack. I settled on a quirky indie mockumentary from 2013 called Computer Chess, about nerds at an early 1980s AI conference. It has a wry sense of humour and strangeness reminiscent of Eraserhead, also filmed in black and white, and the minimal score left room for my own music. However, a few scenes in, I felt like it wasn’t working and decided to turn what I started into its own album. I ran with the theme and created my own sci-fi story of man versus machine, to guide the songs’ flow and tone. The soundtrack work of people like John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, and Giorgio Moroder gave a lot of inspiration.
PAN M 360: With the two most recent albums, Something Whiskered This Way Comes and now Feralyzed, you seem to have given in to temptation, and titled every track with a cat-related play on words. Do you think you can come up with more, or has that cat used up its nine lives?
Mike Langlie: As a graphic designer, I appreciate the importance of branding, so it was a natural decision to maximize the cat theme. The puns on titles of classic metal songs and albums is also my way of paying tribute to some unlikely influences in my synth-heavy music. I keep a notebook of ideas, but admit it’s getting harder to come up with new titles, especially seeing more cat-oriented bands popping up. By the way, my favourite of those is a death-metal duo called Litterbox Massacre.
PAN M 360: With Twink, and now Cat Temper as well, you maintain a strong design aspect for your productions, top-notch graphic work and illustration, always in perfect keeping with the theme. However, with Cat Temper, you’ve opened the door to other illustrators for the artwork.
Mike Langlie: I did a lot of musical collaborations with Twink and so far, Cat Temper has been a solo project. I miss the fresh and surprising perspective another person can provide, and wanted to see how others would treat my stuff visually for a change. Also, my creative time is more limited these days and handing over the cover duties frees me up for more music. All the artists took their own unique directions, which I think illustrates each release perfectly. They hint at the overused graphical tropes of synthwave while doing something fresh for the genre.
Above: Quinnzel Kills’ artwork for “Feralyzed”
PAN M 360: For the edification and gratification of the synth geeks in our readership, could you rattle off a list of the gear involved for Cat Temper?
Mike Langlie: I’ve sold off most of my physical gear over the years and work almost entirely with Reason on my laptop. It’s a collection of synths, drum machines, sequencers and effects, with a fun interface. Some of the toy keyboards I’ve collected also pop up here and there. Over the past year, I acquired some new hardware that I plan to use on future albums, including a bunch of little Pocket Operators by Teenage Engineering, Korg Volca FM, which is a mini DX7 clone, Bass Station II, and Roland JU-06A. I’ll never part with my first instruments, a Casio CZ-101 and Mattel Synsonics toy drum machine.
PAN M 360: What does the future hold for Cat Temper, on the other side of Feralyzed? Where would you like to take this project next?
Mike Langlie: Two more albums are just about ready for release later this year. The first one has a bit more growl than previous albums. The second is collaborations with different vocalists for each song. Everyone wrote their own fantastic cat-themed lyrics and I can’t wait to set it free into the world!
Photo credit: Valtteri Hirvonen
PAN M 360: Tuomas, how are you?
Tuomas Saukkonen: Complicated time! It changes every hour. The whole world is getting kind of fucked up at the moment. It’s weird.
PAN M 360: You were about to start the Devastation of the Nation Tour when all concerts were shut down. What are the consequences for the band?
Tuomas Saukkonen: Yes, it was quite a big thing for us. We had all the visas supplied and paid, the bus was booked, we had 500 t-shirts for the tour, lots of rehearsals. Everybody set their schedules, took holidays from work, so it was a huge thing. But I think it’s easier to process because everybody is in the same situation. I would be so much more bumped if only our tour got cancelled and everybody else would be touring. The whole world is shut down, so it’s easier to understand. At the same time, we kind of got lucky because the tour was cancelled four days before our flights. So it was easier to do the damage control at home in Finland than coming to North America, play one or two shows, then getting everything cancelled and try to figure out what to do next and how to get home. It could have been so much worse!
PAN M 360: Lucky us, we already know when the tour is coming back. The Montreal concert will be February 24, 2021.
Tuomas Saukkonen: Yeah, that’s also what is very cool about our agency and management. I think that tour was the only one that was instantly rebooked with all the same bands, basically the same thing but ten months later. So we still have something to look forward to.
PAN M 360: You just announced that your session guitarist Vagelis Karzis (ex-Rotting Christ) is now a full-time member. When did you make that decision?
Tuomas Saukkonen: We made it last September. He played a six-week summer tour with us, it was a good test to see if it could work. Like two or three gigs wouldn’t say anything, a set of rehearsals wouldn’t say anything, but when you are stuck with the person for six weeks in a bus, you will know if you want to continue with this person or not! It was a really good test. Vagelis is an amazing guy, an amazing guitar player, and we already confirmed with him some time ago, but we wanted to wait for the album promo to make it public.
PAN M 360: Vagelis left Rotting Christ to play with Wolfheart.
Tuomas Saukkonen: Probably there wouldn’t be any issues at all, I know the guys from Rotting Christ also, but since the tour would have been with Rotting Christ, I don’t know if there would have been any tensions between bands? Probably not. Vagelis played for seven years with Rotting Christ, then he joined us. I’m not aware exactly what they thought about that.
PAN M 360: Why did you choose to talk about the Winter War on Wolves of Karelia?
Tuomas Saukkonen: There are probably two reasons why this album is about that war and that area of Finland. On the album Constellation of the Black Light (2018), we played about 140 gigs in ten months, so I was constantly travelling. We did two American tours, two European tours, South America, Asia, we were even in Dubai. We were in so many different countries and places, and what I know is the more you travel and more you are away from home, you see your home and your home country differently. Because of that, I started thinking more and more of my own childhood and the area where I was born and spent my childhood and the Karelian area, the small village where I was born and where my father’s family still lives. And also, it was when I started writing the lyrics for the album it was near the Independance Day of Findland. So, it was quite big in all the media in Findland and I kind of summed it up. For a Finnish person, the whole Winter War is very inspiring. It’s not that far in the history and it’s very present in the media around the Independance Day. I was listening to interviews of the veterans on the radio, I was reading all the veterans stories, and the lyrics are based on those stories. At least for a Finnish person it’s very inspiring.
PAN M 360: It’s important to share that history to the younger generation of metalheads! Even if it’s in the past, it’s still relevant.
Tuomas Saukkonen: Yes. The best way to learn how to deal with the future better is to learn about history. See the mistakes the people already made, see how they solve the issues. The most remarkable thing about the Winter War was how outnumbered the Finnish army was, and still able to stop the invasion. We didn’t basically win the war, but we did stop the Russians and they were unable to invade Finland. That became a big part of this whole mentality and attitude in Finland. There is a word – sisu – which means courage, tenacity of purpose, that underlines this mentality that I think at least our generation is losing. So, going back to the history is a really good reminder of what our grandparents and their parents had to go through, so people would not be complaining nowadays about smaller issues… be less whiny because it could be a lot worse. The sacrifices that we do could be a lot bigger. Now if you have a bad Internet connection or the store don’t have your favourite candy bar or soda, your whole day is completely ruined! You have a different perspective when you read about a family who had to burn their whole farm so that the Russians can’t use it as a base, or you’re just sitting in the snow for weeks when it was -40ºC outside with no actual army equipment. This story was told to me by an American reporter. It’s very inspiring to hear about other people also knowing facts about this war.
PAN M 360: What comes first when you compose: music or lyrics?
Tuomas Saukkonen: Music always comes first. Technically, I could write the lyrics before the music, but there are no connections and it just feels ridiculous to me. I always need to hear the song pretty much ready. So, most of the time, I write the lyrics in the studio. I never have anything written down before the songs are recorded. The way I write the lyrics is when I get the song ready, I always get this kind of still image in my head. Like a movie poster. I think it would be the best way to explain. It’s like a movie scene, and then I write the lyrics of the image.
PAN M 360: It must be stressful.
Tuomas Saukkonen: Not really, because I know exactly this scene that I’m writing about. The image is really clear, so I don’t need to think about what I’m writing. I’m just deciding the best wording and rythm. I really know the story that I want to tell. It’s basically just a technical thing when it comes to writing. Finding the best rhymes and the words and the phrases, but I don’t need to think at all what I’m writing about. I think that’s usually the biggest writer’s block, to not be able to come up with the ideas to write about. It’s more stressful for other members of the band. For example, our bass player Lauri Silvonen, who does backing vocals. He would like to rehearse the vocals and get prepared. It’s more stressful for him because, when he comes to the studio, I have nothing ready and I write everything on the spot, and he has to sing everything as a completely new thing for him. I’ve done more than 20 albums this way, so it’s not stressful at all for me.
PAN M 360: You are the main composer in the band, but are you open to suggestions from your bandmates?
Tuomas Saukkonen: Yes, I always ask about their ideas. I’m always open for any kind of new ideas. I also ask the opinions of my sound engineer and the guy that does the mixing. I think that it would be a wrong way to just decide that your way is the only way. When you keep your ears open for other ideas it makes the final result better. The only way you can learn about becoming a better or more versatile songwriter is to listen to the other opinions, otherwise you’ll be just stuck in your own head and stuck in your own vision, and not be able to open any new doors when it comes to being creative.
PAN M 360: You direct all the music videos for Wolfheart. Why?
Tuomas Saukkonen: I really, really enjoy making music. When I was a child, I was watching a lot of stuff like Headbangers Ball, and I was finding so many bands through music videos. I didn’t listen to radio, I wasn’t reading music magazines that much. To me, it’s very important to have that visual thing to support the music. I have done all the music videos with the same camera guy, and I think it’s the coolest thing ever. I get to burn a lot of stuff in the music-video shoots, I get to travel to cool places like with the previous album, Constellation of the Black Light. We went to Iceland for five days. Just running around with the car in Iceland, finding cool spots to shoot the music video. It’s a really inspiring and interesting creative outlet for me. I’ve done some music videos for other bands. I would like to do more videos but there’s only 24 hours in the day, so I need to focus on my band first.
PAN M 360: You made videos for which bands?
Tuomas Saukkonen: Ensiferum. I did the music video for the song “Way of the Warrior”, from the album Two Paths. The other videos I made were for the bands of friends of mine. Ensiferum is probably the biggest band that I’ve made a video for.
PAN M 360: Since the Devastation of the Nation tour is not happening this year, what are the next projects for the band?
Tuomas Saukkonen: That is an interesting question. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen, with the touring industry and the whole world. The next tour we have booked is the European tour in September and October. We are probably going to lose most of the festivals or even all of them. So it look like there’s gonna be a half a year of nothing when it comes to playing live. We need to find an interesting or creative way to keep the connection with the fans, using the tools of the Internet and social media.
PAN M 360: Ariane, you’re without a doubt the best-known personality in this collaborative project. What was your motivation in working with this new generation of Quebec musicians who are well-versed in hip hop and electro beatmaking?
ARIANE MOFFATT: It started after Petites mains précieuses, my last solo album. Having bet mainly on a neo-’70s approach, I had the feeling that I didn’t go all the way to what this album could have been. I felt a sense of urgency, and I went to Étienne to try something else, to make up for the part I hadn’t achieved. In the end, I took something else all the way.
PAN M 360: What was the spirit of the concept of the SOMMM project?
ARIANE: We didn’t have a plan, it was a studio project at the outset. With one guest artist per song, the idea was to carry out a project more in line with today’s ways of doing things, rather than working for two years on a $100,000 album. The idea was to release one song at a time and… we got caught up in the game – we’re releasing a full album.
ÉTIENNE DUPUIS-CLOUTIER: You start from scratch and you put a song together the same day, you do the beats, the arrangements, the hooks. For our first session, we worked like that and it really clicked. For Ariane, as for me, this was a new creative approach, a mix of the modern and the old-school, an ideal balance. Instead of introspection, alone in her corner, it was possible to do it together. We were able to take it further by creating an album, it became a real project.
ARIANE: We both come from a classic form of songwriting. So either it leads us to be more conformist in our structures, or it allows us to make not just beats, textures or samples, but real songs with these practices. It’s a mix. With that in mind, we wanted to do chanson with rap features, we wanted the songs to be more aerial, de-compartmentalized. The 12 bars of a rapper who steps in, they have to be coherent, you have to manipulate the structure so that it becomes a song.
PAN M 360: More concretely, what was the way to do it?
ARIANE: We were always together in creating, really together. Everyone in their own studio, but our two computers open at the same time. My piano was always there… We would send each other tracks by AirDrop and… The fine-tuning of the production, it’s a dance that can last for long hours. This work is also songwriting. Nowadays we can consider the computer a musical instrument in its own right.
ÉTIENNE: I love working in the studio with people who have ideas for recording the vocals. Ariane keeps throwing ideas at me, it’s really inspiring creative material. It allows me in turn to develop the idea and produce those vocals. As a producer and creator, there’s nothing I love more than getting ideas from artists, and then going back to my studio to deal with it all.
PAN M 360: You are by turns musicians, arrangers, beatmakers and producers on this project. Tell us about that.
ÉTIENNE: Previously, I’d toured with Ariane, Coeur de pirate and other artists. I played drums, percussion, and synthesizers. In 2016, I decided to focus on production and composition. I had to think about the production method, which led me to DRMS. It allowed me to do many collaborations as a producer, and to do SOMMM with Ariane. I had to explore more in depth, both rap and pop. I had to observe how others work and collaborate, which is super enriching. Collaborative work is in vogue – more and more, producers want to work together, share their knowledge, share different visions of voice processing, for example.
ARIANE: I’m pinching myself! I can talk about my voice tuning and production! I worked with DRMS, I don’t call myself a producer but I am interested in production as a writer, composer and performer. This way, I push my producer side and it feeds the creativity.
PAN M 360: Tell us about this diversity of artists involved with this project.
ARIANE: We ended up with the new hip hop vanguard, and also with some girl musicians that I like a lot. I wanted to go and see how they create, how they work, what drives them. I was playing the cool girl who invites young kids into her studio. We laughed a lot at the age difference!
ÉTIENNE: When we invite an artist to join us, they need room to breathe, a bit of freedom. We do sessions, we build a shape together, we complete the preliminary songwriting. We can say, hey! Maybe it could use some real instruments – bass, drums, guitar… One thing leading to another, the song becomes more precise. It’s a playground. After that, Ariane and I have to make sure it’s what we want.
PAN M 360: Examples?
ARIANE: On one or two tunes where we wanted more liveness, we added François Plante’s bass and Max Ballavance’s drums, a pretty potent rhythm section! They are notably to be found in the song “Le ciel s’est renversé”, which also involves Rosie Valland. Rosie came into the studio to do a session with her own proposal, this chorus that’s nested in the lyrics I’d started writing. That’s exactly what we were looking for. “Get Well Soon” involved rapper Maky Lavender. He came with his tracks ready to insert into the song. He called me Madame Ariane, ha ha! I played the bass on that song, I didn’t mind because you can process, edit, take it somewhere else.
ÉTIENNE: For the song “Essence”, La F arrived in the studio, two producers, three MCs with Ariane, everyone composing together, a raw song was conceived by the end of the day, followed by long sessions of fine-tuning in the studio, going back and forth on the lyrics, etc. It was a nice balance between spontaneity and structured work. We had to be attentive, every little corner of each song had to be taken into account.
ARIANE: Although kind of introverted, the beatmaker Ruffsound is very important to the careers of Quebec rappers, starting with Loud. With him, we started the song “Finir seule”… and then some jerk chicken, a couple of beers and whoop! “Sunshine” was in the workshop! I then had the idea of a chorus in English, Clay and Friends came to mind, and so on and so forth. Same when I included “zay” [French rap slang meaning “cool”] in the song “Danger”… I was sure FouKi would appear in it. I also thought of Marie-Pierre Arthur for “Chérie”. I couldn’t imagine someone so close to me playing in this intimate atmosphere, our spoken voices blending together, and it ends the album smoothly.
PAN M 360: To summarize… where did this project take you?
ARIANE: I’ve had a lot of questions throughout this work. I wanted it to be emotionally credible without sounding like I was trying too hard. It was the risk of making songs that way, that was my biggest challenge.
ÉTIENNE: Nothing was forced. I’ve wanted to do something like this for several years, but it took context, it took an Ariane in front. It took an artist with a strong enough identity to tie it all together, and one who was very careful to maintain her identity through this process. And it took young people, this new guard of millennials who were open enough to make their work evolve through these encounters. They felt valued through this project, it was very enriching for all of us. And if it can build bridges, so much the better.
Photo credit: George Dutil
At the time of posting, the program of this concert was not quite complete, but it will include:
Entre chien et loup, by André Hamel… For baritone saxophone and real-time digital processing …su Innocente X…, by Donald J. Stewart… For saxophone quartet La Ballade de Mon’onc Ovide II, an original by Quasar and guests For saxophone quartet, electric bass and Babel Table.
At the risk of repeating ourselves, let us specify that everything will be played live, with all the risks that this entails.
Marie-Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard will be at the Réserve phonique, the band’s rehearsal space in the Ahuntsic neighbourhood, André Leroux will be at home in La Petite Patrie and Mathieu Leclair will also be at home in Ahuntsic.
Guest musicians Jean-François Laporte, on the Babel Table, and Éric Normand, on electric bass, will also be live from the Saint-Michel and Rimouski neighbourhoods respectively.
Photo credit:Marie Lassiat
Quasar (ˈkwāˌzär): noun – Astronomy. A massive and extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy, and typically having a starlike image in a telescope. It has been suggested that quasars contain massive black holes and may represent a stage in the evolution of some galaxies. Origin: 1964 contraction of quasi-stellar radio source. – Oxford Dictionary
Since 1994, the name also designates a Montreal saxophone quartet dedicated to the creation and promotion of contemporary music.
It is worth noting that its members have remained the same since its founding: Marie-Chantal Leclair, soprano saxophone, and artistic and general director; Jean-Marc Bouchard, baritone saxophone and director of operations; Mathieu Leclair, alto saxophone and administrative director; and last but not least, André Leroux, tenor saxophone, also very active on the Montreal jazz scene, notably with François Bourassa as a regular member of his quartet, with the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal, Michel Cusson, James Gelfand, and the late Vic Vogel.
Although the group has been in existence for more than 25 years, winning six Opus Awards, premiering more than 150 works with composers from here and elsewhere, and performing across Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Asia, and in a dozen European countries, it remains little-known in Quebec.
Meeting with Marie-Chantal Leclair and Jean-Marc Bouchard, partners on stage and off
How did it all begin? What were their first musical emotions?
Marie-Chantal remembers her father playing the organ in the family living room, and that he loved the mambo. A little later, when the band was frequently on the radio, she liked the Supertramp pieces that featured saxophone solos. In grade 10, she remembers playing the Rocky theme on the saxophone, and experiencing a true epiphany. Also, by the age of 12, she knew she wanted to study music. And when she began her studies, her eagerness to learn was such that, “by the third week, I had gone through the year’s method manual,” she recalls.
In Jean-Marc’s case, it was Ian Anderson’s flute in Jethro Tull that first caught his attention. So much so that he quickly began taking lessons. Then, one day, his teacher, who also played the saxophone, gave him a demonstration of his know-how on this instrument. “Wow,” he recalls, “the sax sounded as loud as ten flutes!” Jean-Marc bought one soon after.
Although Jean-Marc and André met at CEGEP, and started playing together at that time, it was at Université de Montréal, in René Masino’s class, that the four members of Quasar met.
Since the repertoire of music for quartet was quite limited – apart from the great classics, of course – their teacher encouraged them to mingle with the students in the composition classes. Thus, as Marie-Chantal says, “it is not so much works as the musical practice of creative music that led us in this direction.”
Photo credit:Marie Lassiat
PAN M 360: But why a saxophone quartet, why did you choose to be in a group?
Marie-Chantal: Because it’s more fun to be in a group than to be a soloist. As long as you put energy into a project, it’s more fun and stimulating to be in a group. At the same time, it’s not anonymous like in a big orchestra. When there are four of you, it’s a bit like being four soloists.
Like us, our goal is not to champion the saxophone, but to do interesting music projects, it remains a vehicle that offers a lot of possibilities. With the four saxes, the sound palette is really wide. There’s an amazing blend because it’s the same family of instruments.
PAN M 360: How was the name of the band chosen?
Jean-Marc: There’s still a dispute about who came up with the name, because we can’t remember, it’s been too long. But what we do remember is that we wanted a short, bilingual name.
Marie-Chantal: It doesn’t matter who came up with it, the important thing is that there was a consensus on the name. I can still remember sitting at the table with an open dictionary… There was also a joke about being the astronauts of the world of sound… the notion of the cosmos, of research, of exploration of a still unknown world…
Jean-Marc: There was also the question of the consonance between quasar and quartet.
At the time of Quasar’s arrival on the Quebec music scene in 1994, there were very few chamber music ensembles dedicated to creative music: the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (now ECM+) was founded in 1988 and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM) in 1989. It was only afterwards that the Quatuor Molinari (1997), the Trio Fibonacci (1998) and the Quatuor Bozzini (1999) were added.
PAN M 360: Were there any moments during these 25 years when you felt like going in musical directions other than contemporary music? Were there any temptations or proposals from outside?
Marie-Chantal: As we’re versatile – creation is a term that encompasses a lot – our project, us, it’s not just to make ‘contemporary music’ à la Boulez. It can also be improvisation. Sometimes we’ve done things a little more…
Jean-Marc: We played The Nutcracker, for example, because we had to make a living.
Marie-Chantal: Superb arrangements, mind you.
Jean-Marc: We take the gigs that come by. If someone wants us to play “Rhapsody in Blue”, we’ll play it. But the reason we’re still here is that we’ve always put the artistic project first. If you try to wear too many hats at the same time, at some point, what’s your identity? Our identity is clear: we’re a creative group, but if opportunities arise…
Marie-Chantal: The group has its integrity, but we’re not purists.
Jean-Marc: Our job as performers is to bear witness to what’s going on. It’s not just this composer or this school…
Marie-Chantal: We also have a kind of mission in relation to our community, that of musicians, listeners and creators, we have a duty to be open.
Photo credit: Charles Belisle
This responsibility to the community was apparent from the first concert, which included four premieres, and has never been questioned since. Indeed, collaborative projects have accrued over the years, both with composers from here (from Jean-François Laporte, Tim Brady, and Denis Gougeon to André Hamel and Michel Frigon, as well as Monique Jean and Simon Martin, to name but a few), and from abroad.
Marie-Chantal: Quasar is definitely more exploratory now than it was in its early days. There are things we do today that would not even have been conceivable 20 years ago. Through contact with composers, through exchanges with them and the sound research we’ve done together, our palette has broadened, the group has developed a language, its own language.
Jean-Marc: There’s also the fact that electronic music has had a growing influence on instrumental music, and in return, instrumental music has begun to influence electronic music.
Marie-Chantal: In the same way that improvised music began to influence written music through cross-pollination.
PAN M 360: With regard to the dissemination of creative music, have you noticed any changes over the past 25 years?
Jean-Marc: Yes, there has been a major change, it was the death of Radio-Canada radio. Hélène Prévost [who hosted the new-music program Le Navire Night, one of the many programs dropped during the “Lafrance-Rabinovitch reform” in 2004, which sounded the death knell for the CBC radio’s cultural channel] was one of the first to encourage us. If she knew, for example, that we were giving a concert in Jonquière, she would ask a team there to go and record it. At the time, it was common for Radio-Canada to travel and record two or three Quasar concerts every year.
Our first record was made thanks to Radio-Canada. We recorded it in Studio 12, for a whole week, in great conditions, especially for a young band like us who was just starting out.
This sudden change of direction by the state-owned company had a major impact on the dissemination of so-called creative music such as Quasar. All the more so as this rupture had a perverse effect: as it was suddenly no longer broadcast, this music was no longer as “visible”, and the coverage it had enjoyed until then in the print media also ceased.
Marie-Chantal: Except that we worked a lot on self-releasing. Quasar produces its own concerts. Our model is not unique in the world, that’s for sure, but in Europe it works much less like that. There’s more money to subsidize the work of artists, it’s true, but the structures are bigger.
If we decide to do such and such a concert next year, we don’t have to convince a producer-broadcaster to take our show. We can say, we believe in this project, and then we do it. It gives us a lot of artistic independence.
After that, we have to be accountable to the public, to the people who give us grants, of course, but we’re more independent. In fact, the quartet has been incorporated since 2000. We’ve also worked hard, establishing production partnerships, with the SMCQ, for example, with Code d’accès, with Sixtrum, with SuperMusique….
Things improved recently when the budgets allocated to culture and the Canada Council for the Arts were increased [with the arrival of a new government following Stephen Harper’s]. That too had an impact, and it’s not insignificant. But before, because the creative music community is quite poor, people who worked together were more cohesive. That’s how le Vivier [of which Marie-Chantal is the current Chair of the Board] came into being [in 2007], people were used to working together.
Photo credit:Marie Lassiat
PAN M 360: About le Vivier, what do you think has changed since its arrival?
Jean-Marc: In fact, the positive impact of le Vivier is just beginning to be felt. The organization is now better structured, better organized. Concert attendance figures are on the rise. We’re on the right track.
Marie-Chantal: The idea is that groups like ours can focus on the artistic dimension of their work and that the presenter organizations are more concerned with publicizing the concerts and getting people in the venues, which is still a challenge. It takes time to get there. It takes sustained work, for audience development.
We’re aware that we’re not making music for the masses, they’re not going to invite us to do the half-time show at the Super Bowl, but there are still a lot of people who are curious.
We went to play at C2 Montréal, we did the opening number of the conference with Jean-François Laporte’s instruments, and people were tripping. Even when we were out in the regions, people liked it.
For the past three years, the quartet has finally had a place to rehearse on a regular basis, three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Initially, Marie-Chantal feared that this schedule would be too restrictive, but the group quickly realized that this measure was much simpler than organizing rehearsals on an ad hoc basis, which always raises the same age-old problems of availability.
Also, as Jean-Marc says, “it takes up space, but once it’s been sorted out…”
“It changed our lives!” Marie-Chantal concludes.
PAN M 360: What is the most difficult thing you find in your job?
Jean-Marc: It’s the organization, the logistics…
Marie-Chantal: Nothing’s ever taken for granted.
Jean-Marc: When you have to devote a lot of time to it, you don’t have enough time to rest, and in the long run, it’s exhausting. When we don’t have time to do our work in a calm and relaxed manner. And of course, on tour, with even more logistics?
PAN M 360: What gives you the most pleasure?
Marie-Chantal: Playing!
Jean-Marc: The first glass of wine after the concert.
Marie-Chantal: It’s when you feel the current is flowing with the audience, that’s the fun.
PAN M 360: Are there countries where the audiences are particularly receptive, where the current flows more easily?
Marie-Chantal: We did a concert in St. Petersburg, I wailed so loud…
Jean-Marc: On that tour [Russia and Estonia in 2014], it was sold out every night.
Marie-Chantal: So we were in St. Petersburg and we were playing a piece by Glazunov – we always have interpreters on those trips – I was talking to the audience, but in English, I was explaining that for us Quebecois, coming to play like that in their own country, in a country with a great musical tradition… and people were listening, I felt them so present, I became super moved…
In Estonia too, it was special.
Jean-Marc: Yes, it’s the place with the most choirs in the world. There’s a choir festival in the spring, I think there are 10,000 of them, a huge choir.
There was a time when this was the only context in which citizens had the right to speak their language, because under the Soviet regime, they were obliged to speak Russian at all times, but when the time came to sing – and they are a nation of singers – they could express themselves in their language.
On that tour, we went to nine cities, some of which were not very populous, but it was always full, the mayor was there, the children in the front row….
Marie-Chantal: When there’s a concert, it’s important for these people. Sometimes there were even people standing because they’d sold too many tickets.
Jean-Marc: Often in the central squares in those cities, the statue you see is not a politician, but a musician, with his accordion for example.
Marie-Chantal: Yeah, in Eastern European countries, music is important. It was touching.
Photo credit:Marie Lassiat
PANM 360: What are your plans for the 26th season?
Marie-Chantal: We have international exchanges planned, that’s interesting. One with the Basque countries, musicians and composers, and another with the city of Hanover. We go there and they come here, and we work together on pieces.
Jean-Marc: Commissions for Quebecois, commissions for Germans…
Marie-Chantal: There’s also the return of Je ne suis pas un robot at the Gesù in December [the revival of the “tragicomic experimental technopera-ballet” that in addition to Quasar brought together Jérôme Minière (music, texts and dramaturgy), Jean-François Laporte (music, instrumental design) and Marie-Pierre Normand (set and costume design), presented at the Éthel parking lot in Verdun in the summer of 2019].
Jean-Marc: In October there’s a play by Thierry Tidrow, a Franco-Ontarian who lives in Dortmund, Germany. It’s musical theatre, but more musical than theatrical.
As part of the MNM festival, there is also a one-hour work by Walter Boudreau, a saxophone quartet. It’s a revival of a work called Chaleurs, which was composed [in 1985-86] for a ballet by Paul-André Fortier, but this time without dance.
Marie-Chantal: We’re going to be hot regardless.
And this Saturday, April 25 at 4 pm, don’t forget, there will be the live concert – the third broadcast on the group’s Facebook page.
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